How can I convert my debian machine to Fedora? (solution!)

[Ken Young]

Hi,

    I finally have Fedora running happily on my Motorola MVME-2700
single board computer.   I'd like to thank Bret Hughes and Colin Charles
for responding quickly to my initial cry for help.   Their responses
sent me down several useful pathways.   Although I doubt anyone's
been losing much sleep over this issue, I thought I should close
the thread out by summarizing how I got it to work.

1) The kernel image on the CD distribution would not boot at all.   I
   used cross development tools on an x86 linux box to produce a bootable
   kernel.   If anyone ever needs it, I'd be happy to supply a .config
   file that will work for these Motorola VME boards.   The page
   http://kegel.com/crosstool makes configuring an x86 linux box to
   produce PowerPC code very, very easy.

2) I extracted the files in ramdisk.image.gz, and placed them in a
   directory on the linux x86 box which would be the NFS server for
   my diskless MVME-2700 target.   This will be the initial root
   directory.

3) I used rpm on the x86 box, with the --ignorearch and --root switches,
   to install all the PowerPC rpms needed for the rpm command itself.
   In most cases the post install scriptlet failed (probably because I was
   running on an x86 box, installing PPC code) and in a few cases I had
   to use the --nopre switch because even the pre-install scriptlet
   failed.

4) I booted my PowerPC target, with the new root file system NFS mounted.
   Obviously, since many of the scriptlets had failed, the rpms were
   installed poorly, and the whole system was suspect.   But the critical
   thing was the rpm command did work on the target.   So I now produced
   a new directory (/newFedora) on the target, and created subdirectories
   down to /newFedora/var/lib/rpm/tmp .   I then mounted the iso image
   of the first PowerPC in loopback mode, and reinstalled the rpms
   into this new root directory (after initializing the rpm database,
   of course).   Since I was now running on a genuine PowerPC, the
   scriptlets worked correctly, and my rpm installs were clean.   I
   installed virtually all the rpm packages I wanted at this point.

5) I rebooted with the "newFedora" directory as my root directory, and
   virtually everything was perfect.   I had to configure the network,
   and for some reason /etc/fstab had no entry for /dev/pts (which
   prevented ssh logins to the target), but after fixing those minor
   issues, I had a fully working Fedora machine.   What luck!

Ken