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z970

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Jun 2, 2017
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I'll give that a try.

In other news, on my DP 2.0 ghz G5, the Radeon 9600 Pro card is absolutely borked in linux, and not just sid. Stuttering and choppiness abounds, even with the proper firmware. I've had that issue on that machine, with that particular card, since Wheezy, and with Lubuntu and Ubuntu MATE. I'm hoping a cheap Geforce FX 5200 will work better, so I've bought one.

64-bit Arctic Fox also crashes.

Maybe we ought to add a GPU blacklist to this guide, to avoid unnecessary frustration...

As for ppc64 Arctic Fox, I haven't had any problems with .16 from PowerProgress. Well, not of the crashing kind, anyway.
 
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galgot

macrumors 6502
May 28, 2015
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We've got GRUB on PowerPC-

grub.jpg


Unfortunately, you cannot manually partition your drive and set the mount point of the NewWorld partition to /boot/grub/. It must be done the "lazy" (guided) way to get GRUB to work.

Aha ! So this is the Holy GRUB... (btw they should change the wall paper, looks like a broken LCD screen).
Is there a way to install it after you already done an install with yaboot ?
I've done my partitioning manually , like :
/1Mb new-world AppleBootstrap / 2Gb of SWAP / 80Gb Debian Sid / 80Gb Leopard / 60Gb Tiger.
 
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z970

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Jun 2, 2017
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Aha ! So this is the Holy GRUB... (btw they should change the wall paper, looks like a broken LCD screen).
Is there a way to install it after you already done an install with yaboot ?
I've done my partitioning manually , like :
/1Mb new-world AppleBootstrap / 2Mb of SWAP / 80Gb Debian Sid / 80Gb Leopard / 60Gb Tiger.

I really hope you meant 2GB of swap.

Actually, you might stay away from GRUB for the time being. After I installed an update to grub-ieee1275, my system wouldn't see it, boot to it from OF, or be able to rescue it off a install drive with "install-grub" and "update-grub2". There's a chance it's just me, but I think something's wrong. The mailing list has been notified, and I'm currently waiting to hear back.

So, writing this on OS X.

We're still working out the kinks, you see. ;)
 
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z970

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Jun 2, 2017
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Well, thanks to a stupid amount of trial-and-error + experimentation on my DLSD all hours into last night, I got the powerpc package installation segment finished, so the powerpc installation process is no longer broken. Along with that, I added a non-working GPU section for reference, so I encourage people to add to that on the basis that they do not work on both the open-source radeon drivers, and the non-free firmware. Also tuned and refined other parts of the wikipost to be simpler to follow. :)

At this point, the state of ppc64 is better than ever, and as of now has the most functional installer, so all G5s are recommended to install that, and G3s / G4s stick with the powerpc releases.
 
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swamprock

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I removed the entry for the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro video card. It turns out that it's probably my machine that's borked. The Geforce FX 5200 didn't improve the stuttering issues that I was having. In fact, things got much worse when running Arctic Fox, with glitching on the desktop whenever I moved the window, whether I was running compton or not. This is after installing xserver-xorg-video-nouveau and removing the Radeon AGP append line from GRUB.

This machine (a DP 2.0ghz G5 from July 2004) just HATES linux. Every single distro I've run exhibits the same constant stuttering issue. I've tried everything- different drives, removing RAM, changing video cards.... nothing works. It is now forever a Tiger and Leopard machine, and I'll continue to try and get my Dual Core 2.0 G5 running with linux. Not having much luck with that one, either. I'm completely boggled as to why it refuses to boot, instead giving me a "corrupt file system" error every time, no matter what partitioning voodoo I try...

... and it refuses to install GRUB as well. At least my DP2.0 installed that...

(Posting this from my Mac Pro 2,1 running Elementary OS 5.0 Juno)
 
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z970

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I removed the entry for the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro video card. It turns out that it's probably my machine that's borked. The Geforce FX 5200 didn't improve the stuttering issues that I was having. In fact, things got much worse when running Arctic Fox, with glitching on the desktop whenever I moved the window, whether I was running compton or not. This is after installing xserver-xorg-video-nouveau and removing the Radeon AGP append line from GRUB.

This machine (a DP 2.0ghz G5 from July 2004) just HATES linux. Every single distro I've run exhibits the same constant stuttering issue. I've tried everything- different drives, removing RAM, changing video cards.... nothing works. It is now forever a Tiger and Leopard machine, and I'll continue to try and get my Dual Core 2.0 G5 running with linux. Not having much luck with that one, either. I'm completely boggled as to why it refuses to boot, instead giving me a "corrupt file system" error every time, no matter what partitioning voodoo I try...

... and it refuses to install GRUB as well. At least my DP2.0 installed that...

(Posting this from my Mac Pro 2,1 running Elementary OS 5.0 Juno)

Yeah, I'm going to reiterate here, for my own reasons, PowerPC Linux is HARD. It takes serious guts, skill, and moxy to even care enough to have made it this far at this point in time.

Linux on my P4 box is absolutely blissful compared to what we've got here (which is another reason I've now got a growing appreciation for Pentium boxes; Intel before they were insufferable). I think GRUB, at least at the moment, is broken and does not want to install unless under specific circumstances, and screwed up the booting process on my G5, making it so that I have to boot into Linux via OF only.

It's very interesting to me that your DC is still refusing to boot up, as I've got the same machine and when I partitioned it as such, made the error go away. Give the manual partition instruction I just added to the wikipost a shot. It's a little bit different from the one on the Lubuntu thread. If that doesn't work, well damn, try a different hard drive.

What exactly does the error say?
[doublepost=1555559208][/doublepost]After GRUB wouldn't install on my DLSD no matter how I partitioned anything (couldn't find sda, for whatever reason), and yabootconfig suddenly needs the /proc filesystem, essentially breaking the Yaboot fallback and blocking all routes of entry, I put a notice detailing how the installer can be very unpredictable and that no success is guaranteed. Which should have been there from the beginning, come to think of it.

I'm taking a break from Sid. Going to Wheezy.
 
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wicknix

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Jun 4, 2017
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This machine (a DP 2.0ghz G5 from July 2004) just HATES linux.
You must have a very stubborn machine indeed. I have the same 2ghz DP, with the radeon 9600 and it works flawlessly with lubuntu 16.04. Haven't tried with debian as i've gotten lazy in my old age and i like stuff to just work. I can't say that for any debian on any machine i've ever tried, ever. Other than installing the wifi driver on lubuntu, i didn't have to do a thing. Everything works flawlessly.

Cheers
 

galgot

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May 28, 2015
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I really hope you meant 2GB of swap.

Actually, you might stay away from GRUB for the time being. After I installed an update to grub-ieee1275, my system wouldn't see it, boot to it from OF, or be able to rescue it off a install drive with "install-grub" and "update-grub2". There's a chance it's just me, but I think something's wrong. The mailing list has been notified, and I'm currently waiting to hear back.

So, writing this on OS X.

We're still working out the kinks, you see. ;)

2Gb yes. Typo:)

Thks for the infos.
 
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sparty411

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Nov 13, 2018
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Yeah, I can't get grub to install on my 15" PB 1.33 GHz. I went back, and followed steps 4-7 again, yet no dice.
 

z970

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Jun 2, 2017
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Yeah, I can't get grub to install on my 15" PB 1.33 GHz. I went back, and followed steps 4-7 again, yet no dice.

Same experience on my DLSD. A warning notice was placed at the beginning for a reason.

There's an active problem with GRUB going on where it gets the wrong ofpath names, and its boot orders are screwed up, and as a result, won't install properly. If you already happen to have Sid installed, and update GRUB to the newest version, you'll essentially get locked out and will need to resort to OF to get back in. To top that, Yaboot doesn't want to install as a fallback for whatever reason.

My advice is to either wait for the fix, or just install Wheezy, which is the last version with next to no issues with PowerPC machines (in my experience). Jessie screwed some things up with the kernel images, and had some goofy nouveau issues, which shouldn't be too much of a problem on G4s, but basically borks the experience on G5s. It can be fixed with modified kernel images available off the web, but that takes a slight amount of know-how to pull off. [EDIT: Not anymore! Visit The Linux Thread for details.]

Another option, download one of the older images, like 04-09, and use the archived guide to install that. That should work OK.

In any case, my DLSD is now happily running Wheezy, the browser situation isn't bad, sound was easy to get working, the trackpad is working fine out of the box, and, *gasp*, it goes to and wakes from sleep with flying colors, which is something I don't think we'll ever see past kernel version 3.2.

EDIT: I can confirm Arctic Fox is working under 7.11 after installing a couple required packages.

I'll make a thread with a bunch of fixes, tweaks, and workarounds to get Ubuntu and Debian versions (not exclusive to Sid) running as well as possible sometime soon. I'm actually kind of looking forward to it. These older versions are still pretty good, and are still far more secure and updated than Leopard.
 
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swamprock

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You must have a very stubborn machine indeed. I have the same 2ghz DP, with the radeon 9600 and it works flawlessly with lubuntu 16.04. Haven't tried with debian as i've gotten lazy in my old age and i like stuff to just work. I can't say that for any debian on any machine i've ever tried, ever. Other than installing the wifi driver on lubuntu, i didn't have to do a thing. Everything works flawlessly.

Cheers

Yeah I don't get it. I'm wondering if pushing all of the USB through the cinema display might be the cause of the stutter (mouse stops intermittently, as well as stuttery glxgears and scrolling). I'll have to test this theory, but I don't have issues until I install the non-free firmware, so...

EDIT- ignore that last line. it doesn't matter if I have the non-free firmware installed or not...
 
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XaPHER

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Oct 13, 2010
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Yeah I don't get it. I'm wondering if pushing all of the USB through the cinema display might be the cause of the stutter (mouse stops intermittently, as well as stuttery glxgears and scrolling). I'll have to test this theory, but I don't have issues until I install the non-free firmware, so...

I'm not sure but I possibly have an idea. Do you have hardware accel right now(what does glxinfo | grep render in a terminal say)? Do you get lockups with firmware-nonfree? Either using GRUB or yaboot, what are your kernel boot arguments?
 

swamprock

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Aug 2, 2015
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I'm not sure but I possibly have an idea. Do you have hardware accel right now(what does glxinfo | grep render in a terminal say)? Do you get lockups with firmware-nonfree? Either using GRUB or yaboot, what are your kernel boot arguments?

Yes I do. I installed firmware-nonfree. I get stuttering with AND without firmware-nonfree; with AND without acceleration; with AND without a compositor running. GRUB argument was radeon.agpmode=-1, but I removed it and retested it. Still stutters.

Note that this happens with EVERY linux distro, not just sid.

I could type out a loooooong list of things that I've tried to stop this, but nothing has worked. I just moved my keyboard and mouse off the cinema display's USB and unplugged the USB and firewire plugs from the monitor to the tower. Still stutters. Tried a different video card, moved around/removed RAM, used different hard drives, plugged in a second drive to the lower slot in case running with one drive is causing the problem, swapped monitors, unplugged the optical drive, swapped keyboard and mouse... even switched OUTLETS.... still stutters.

I have officially given up on this machine ever running linux...
 

z970

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Jun 2, 2017
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I have officially given up on this machine ever running linux...

Why not OpenBSD? PowerPC hardware support is said to be much better than Linux.

I've been meaning to look at that one of these days, too.
 
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swamprock

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Why not BSD? PowerPC hardware support is said to be much better than Linux.

I've been meaning to look at one of those one of these days, too.

Well... heh heh...

I figured out the issue.

On a whim, I swapped the keyboard with a newer aluminum USB keyboard, and the stuttering disappeared. Turns out that it hated the old Pro keyboards for some reason, and I've swapped out three different Pro keyboards in the past with no success.

Mind blown, but hey... it works now...
 

galgot

macrumors 6502
May 28, 2015
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Btw, anyone tried upgrading a Jessie ppc install to sid ppc already ?
Just to know if someone else's Mac ppc has been the Guinea pig for this before i try ... :D
 

z970

macrumors 68040
Jun 2, 2017
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Btw, anyone tried upgrading a Jessie ppc install to sid ppc already ?
Just to know if someone else's Mac ppc has been the Guinea pig for this before i try ... :D

Before the newer images rolled in January, I exclusively used Jessie to install Sid on everything. All I did was change the repos, sudo apt update, sudo apt full-upgrade.

It would have been very helpful if someone like me came in and told me I didn't have to do that, and that it was easily possible to install at least the standard system utilities with the existing 05-2018 images we had. :D

You've gotta be the change you want to see, you know? Now we've got a whole thread dedicated to the subject so people don't have to struggle.
 
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sparty411

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Nov 13, 2018
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So, if GRUB won't Install, will yaboot install by default in it's place?

Edit - I just realized this was covered in the old thread. D'oh.
 
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z970

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So, if GRUB won't Install, will yaboot install by default in it's place?

Not automatically.

Although you could argue it to be semi-automatic because there's a walkthrough detailing each step as easily to understand as possible. :D

For what it's worth, all the older installers I've tried install Yaboot flawlessly. So because of this reason and others, I've been trying to get the most out of the older releases, and one advantage to this is that nothing is constantly changing (and breaking), so everything can be refined, and reliably improved upon. And everything is documented, or at the very least, going to be.
 
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z970

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Jun 2, 2017
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Instructions for adding the PowerProgress repository have been added.

Now if only yabootconfig would stop telling me it needs the /proc filesystem...
 
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juancarlosonetti

macrumors member
May 5, 2019
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Spain
I can't, for the life of me, boot into yaboot with my iBook G3 Snow. I burned the netinstall image to a USB drive, and followed the exact instructions of the video, typing "boot usb1/disk@1:2,\\yaboot". What the prompt returns with this command is:

MAC-PARTS: specified partition is not valid

I realized that the debian image has only one partition, so I ran "boot usb1/disk@1,\\yaboot" instead, and it seems to be the correct parameter. However, it seems like yaboot does not want to work on my machine. This is the only output I get from this:

load-size=0 adler32=1
LOAD-SIZE is too small

And the same happens if, instead of yaboot, I try grub.

This is the first time I am using Open Firmware, so I have no idea of what this means. A Google search does not return anything useful (maybe it's my fault). Any ideas?

Unfortunately, my optical drive does not work, so booting from USB is my only option.
 
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z970

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Jun 2, 2017
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Try this image from the 4-20 rollout.

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/2019-04-20/debian-10.0-powerpc-NETINST-1.iso

Failing that, and you have another Mac, just make a new partition (APM, 500mb), restore the netinstall image to said new partition, and have the iBook boot off the Mac with the netinstall partition via Target Disk Mode. Then, you don't have to bother with Open Firmware or intricate USB restorations.
 
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juancarlosonetti

macrumors member
May 5, 2019
61
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Spain
Try this image from the 4-20 rollout.

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/2019-04-20/debian-10.0-powerpc-NETINST-1.iso

Failing that, and you have another Mac, just make a new partition (APM, 500mb), restore the netinstall image to said new partition, and have the iBook boot off the Mac with the netinstall partition via Target Disk Mode. Then, you don't have to bother with Open Firmware or intricate USB restorations.
Thanks for your response. Unfortunately, it does not work. It still gives me the same error. I don't have another Mac, so I might try painstakingly downloading and burning every possible image of Debian to see if any of them works.
 
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