Introduction

This architecture is for 64-bit IBM POWER7 machines using big endian byte ordering.

This is the second major release of ppc64 by the AltArch Special Interest Group. This release is based on the Source Code from CentOS 7 (1804) x86_64 Architecture and includes all current updates from the main CentOS 7 tree. It is derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5.

Known Issues

Installation

Installation is performed via the install ISOs and is the same as described in the standard CentOS 7 installer articles.

Basically, boot one of the install ISOs and use the anaconda installer OR use a custom kickstart file.

Install ISOs are available here:

http://isoredirect.centos.org/altarch/7/isos/ppc64/

sha256sums

33f4f242ccc58f34767ab71f692ee9069a7ec4aedd05d8350953cb75847a2c22  CentOS-7-ppc64-Everything-1804.iso
1d2cf9dd8d4f29f9f0f08a58743c9a13201ed1c9daf495f2544acefa671326bb  CentOS-7-ppc64-Minimal-1804.iso
2328edda16b1996d3898f408781b7e3948cb5c00fa4ef90aec79174ffd38ff56  CentOS-7-ppc64-NetInstall-1804.iso

ppc64 RPM repository:

http://mirror.centos.org/altarch/7/os/ppc64/

Getting involved

The ppc64 effort is being done as a community SIG project. Everyone is welcome to participate. We still need community help to maintain documentation and also fix issues that may arise in this architecture.

We encourage vendors to come and join this effort, especially OpenPOWER community members.

The wider CentOS Ecosystem is also welcome to engage with us, both at the project and code level. If you are working with a project that interfaces, manages or develops on top of CentOS, especially in the virtualization, cloud, container and infrastructure management areas - we would love to have you guys get involved.

Package Changes

Most packages are clean builds from the most recent release of CentOS 7, but there are some changed sources specifically for ppc64, as listed here:

Packages unique to ppc64

These packages are exclusive to ppc64le/ppc64

Packages not in ppc64

The following packages exist in x86_64 but are not in ppc64:

Bootstrap Process

Fedora 19 ppc64 was used to bootstrap the first CentOS 7 ppc64 rpms.