Installing/Getting Started
With PS2 Linux

Putting the Hardware together

Once you've got the right things together, it's pretty simple.

First, plug your PS2 into a TV and get it so that you can stick in a disc and it will play it. I don't have a TV and I got it to work, but it was really hard to answer the language questions with the screen so blurry. It goes to VGA mode when Linux boots.

Next, take off the plate that says "Expansion Bay". You may want to write down the serial number of your Playstation, since the network adapter will obscure it.

Then, plug the hard drive into the network adapter and plug the network adapter into the PS2. The hard drive should slide into the expansion bay. There is something in the manual about "lock tabs", but I could never figure that part out.

Put the VGA/sound cable into the slot in the back and plug your monitor into that. You can use a TV for Linux, but it's terribly low-res (read the how-to here). To get the sound to work, you'll have to buy an audio cable with RCA jacks on the ends. RCA jacks are the normal TV hookup connectors (the ones that are big and colored with a short pin in the middle). Most computer speakers don't have RCA connectors, so you'll probably have to find the right cable for your speakers.

Also you should make sure your monitor is compatible by consulting the "Supported Monitor DB" at playstation2-linux.com. Supposedly, all monitors that support sync-on-green are compatible. If not, you may have better luck with a Blaze VGA cable. Still, that's no guarantee. Thankfully, one of my monitors works with the Blaze cable. This monitor stuff is the hardest part of PS2 Linux.

Now, plug in the keyboard, plug the mouse into the keyboard, and put an empty memory card in slot 1. This card will be formatted to the normal Linux filesystem format and not the Playstation format, so you can't put any games on it, but you could put files on it, I suppose. The Linux stuff takes up about 4 of the 8 MB. Your PS2 will boot from this card every time it boots. I guess it's a little bit like booting from a floppy.

Installing

Next, put Linux DVD 1 in the drive. When you open the Linux DVD case, you have to flip past DVD 2 to get to it. The average person would think the disk on the front would be disk 1, but noooo. (It won't boot if you put disk 2 in like I did.)

The disk loads like any PS2 game. After you select "Install," it will ask you to stick in disk 2, then disk 1, then disk 2, then disk 1, and so on until you lose track of which disk is in the drive. Once this is completed, it will ask you the normal Linux install stuff.

Partitions for Beginners
(This explanation is for all types of Linux, not just PS2 Linux.)

At first, I found partitions hard to figure out, but it's really pretty easy. This explanation is for all types of Linux, not just PS2 Linux. I use Disk Druid to do the partitioning since fdisk had a maximum partition size that was 4 MB, or something like that. Hopefully, the GUI is self-explanatory.

I don't think you exactly have to have multiple partitions, but Linux runs faster with two partitions (one for swap and the other for everything else), so two partitions is generally considered as the minimum. However, I think it's best to use six partitions (/ , /home, /usr, /var, /tmp, and swap). Here's a breakdown if you don't know what all of these are for:

/home - All of the home directories. It's on its own partition so when you
        change from distro to distro, you can keep it.
/usr  - All of the programs you've installed. Similar to Program Files on Windows.
/var  - Where the log files are stored. If this wasn't on its own partition, a 
        denial-of-service (DoS) attack could fill up the entire hard drive and crash the
        computer.
/tmp  - The directory where temporary files go. Since everyone has access to this, it's
        better to confine it. 

swap  - When your computer runs out of RAM, it uses the hard drive to store stuff.
        This isn't nearly as fast, but it gets the job done. Swap runs faster if 
        it's on its own partition.
/     - All the other files
/boot - Some people put this on its own partition so it's less likely to get corrupted.

When you partition, let /, /home, /usr and /boot (if you have it) "grow to fill hdd". If you think the users on your system might fill up the drive with their stuff, you can constrain /home to the specified size by not selecting "grow to fill hdd."

How big should each partition be? For some reason, no one has come up with a formula. Here are some helpful rules. These sort of assume you'll be using the PS2's 40 GB hard drive.

1. If you've got a lot of RAM, you don't have to allow a huge amount of swap space, but make sure the the total amount (RAM + swap) is about 1-2 GB. The PS2 only has 32 MB of RAM, so 2 GB or so is probably sufficient. Since older computers with smaller hard drives probably won't be using really heavy software, it's okay to set it to less than 1 GB.
2. You never know what kind of files a program will put in /tmp, so it should be fairly large (1-2 GB).
3. /var is where your logs and mail go. Since these are just text files, you don't have to have a huge /var partition. 1 GB is probably more than enough, but it's good to play it safe.
4. Now, take the remaining space and divide it evenly between /, /home, and /usr. The size really doesn't matter, assuming you select "grow to fill hdd."

When you set the partitions, it's good to check for bad blocks while you're at it. However, this takes a very long time.

Other Installation Tips

Everything else is pretty straightforward. One curveball is that you have to select a "custom" install if you want KDE and some other stuff that should be default. I forget how much space it took up when I installed everything, but it wasn't all that bad. Also, select an IP address, hostname, and netmask no matter what. eth0 is unhappy if you don't. You can leave the default gateway box blank, though.

Once it's installed

One of the things that puzzled me at first was that I couldn't set the window manager with an .xinitrc file. It turns out that you set it by typing "sdr". It says in the manual "You can select LANG and the desktop environment" (item 4-3-2). I thought since they mentioned "LANG" that that the "desktop environment" was something that had to do with regional settings. (They mean "window manager" when they say "desktop environment".) Anyway, when you type "sdr", it gives you an ASCII GUI where you can select your language and window manager. You can also choose to define the WM yourself. I assume you do this with an .xinitrc file, but I don't know.

It's also good to set the language to English+Japanese because if you don't, the Japanese text comes out as gibberish. There really isn't all that much Japanese writing, and you may not be able to read Japanese, but it looks a little better. Also, if you select English+Japanese, KDE defaults to Japanese. It's better to set the language as English first, set the KDE language to English, then set the main language to English+Japanese.

The PS2 doesn't have a floppy drive and the CD drive won't read non-PS2 CD's, so the only way to get information into it is through the network. You'll have to longhand a smb.conf file the first time. I still haven't gotten Samba running yet, but I've never been able to on any Linux computer.

Newer PS2's (like mine) get thrown into a loop by eth0 when they shutdown. This can be fixed by some files they've got on playstation2-linux.com, but if you haven't gotten Samba running yet, you'll have to think of some way to get the data on the Playstation. It's far too long to type it all in. I stuck my dad's Compact Flash reader into the USB port to see if that would work, but it said that no driver claimed it. Oh, well. I'm back to fighting Samba.

From there, it's pretty much like using any other Linux computer.

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