Debian on PowerLinux

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Debian is one of  my favorite distributions with its fast  installation and light-weight deployment.

Actually, it is not officially supported on PowerLinux machines. But I knew that a ppc version exists, and I wanted to see one on action.

Recently,  there was an opportunity to test Debian on Power. 

Downloaded the basic image, give it a try. It was a nice experience, there were no problems with installation.

Check out the version and kernel

root@debian:~# cat /etc/debian_version
7.0

root@debian:~# uname -a
Linux debian 3.2.0-4-powerpc64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.41-2+deb7u2 ppc64 GNU/Linux

All hw devices seems to be present ( not the full output, just partial)

root@debian:~# lshw
debian                    
    description: Computer
    product: IBM,8246-L2C
    serial: IBM,03100121A
    width: 32 bits
  *-core
       description: Motherboard
       physical id: 0
       capabilities: ibm_8246-l2c
     *-firmware
          product: IBM,AL740_077
          physical id: 0
          logical name: /proc/device-tree
    ............................

I installed mysql, apache and put some  load in it. My tests were successful.

There were some issues;

1. The DLPAR does not seems to work at the moment.
2. Also there were some issues with the entitled capacity usage reporting.

If you have the time, you can give a try yourself.