User:Aslantis/Rich's PPC handbook mods
Some changes I want to stage.
overall
While the distinction between apple ppc vs ibm ppc vs iseries vs pseries is self evident, there distinction between OPAL/powernv/open(bare metal) and powervm(firmware type1 hypervisor) is less clear. In addition to adding instructions for OPAL to the handbook, the distinction should be explained, and brief instructions to change what mode your box boots in. All(most? not sure yet) current pseries instructions should be renamed to IBM pSeries(powervm), and the new instructions as IBM pSeries(OPAL). Still need to learn about how iSeries works. Not sure on the best place to insert these, but probably before the first distinctions are made.
Additionally, I think brief instructions for accessing the system/firmware via SSH and telnet should be provided too, so users are not required to obtain a serial cable (or GPU). While on power9 this is quite obvious, on IBM power8 systems finding this is really impractical
TODO, actually write this
Media
Booting
IBM pSeries (OPAL) [new segment, below the other IBM pSeries]
On OPAL, the petitboot bootloader is enforced. Most boxes should automatically load the liveISO, but in case petitboot was peviously configured to not autoboot, the user wants to specify certain kernel boot options, or select between multiple boot drives, petitboot can be interacted with either via serial, or with a keyboard if a compatible GPU is present on the system.
Disks
I personally think the instructions should be named Mac PPC and IBM PPC instead of default: mac-fdisk and alternative: fdisk
Also, the fdisk options go through a dos part table. I need to research which boxes support GPT
Also, in the FS section, "For instance, to have the EFI system partition partition (/dev/sda1) as FAT32 and the root partition (/dev/sda3) as xfs as used in the example partition structure, the following commands would be used: " << this is not the example partition structure on PPC
unrelated to PPC, this is in general, there should be a disclaimer on f2fs's entry in the FS section that SSDs and NVMEs aren't what "flash-based storage devices" means.
Alternative: Using fdisk
In the 'partition : description' table at the top, put a (Not required on OPAL!) after 'PC PReP Boot partition' in the table
Creating the PPC PReP boot partition [add the following tip box to the top]
On OPAL systems, this step is unneeded, and can be safely skipped.