Mac PowerBook G4

[Bill Chatfield]

OK don't dump on me please. :-) What is the best place to find instructions for how I
would go about building an install CD for Fedora 20/21 for ppc32? I almost had Fedora 17
PPC working on it but I gave up because it wasn't really supported. I have run Debian
Wheezy and Lubuntu 14.04 on this PowerBook G4 machine, but I would really like to have it
running Fedora. I'm an experience Linux admin and developer but I have never build a
full distribution from source. I know you don't officially support this, but if you
could give me some pointers about how I could go about it, I will go away and leave you
alone. :-) Thanks.

[Dan Horák]

Hi Bill,

On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 12:36:17 -0700
Bill Chatfield <bill_chatfield(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote:

>  OK don't dump on me please. :-) What is the best place to find
>  instructions for how I would go about building an install CD for
>  Fedora 20/21 for ppc32? I almost had Fedora 17 PPC working on it but
>  I gave up because it wasn't really supported. I have run Debian
>  Wheezy and Lubuntu 14.04 on this PowerBook G4 machine, but I would
>  really like to have it running Fedora. I'm an experience Linux admin
>  and developer but I have never build a full distribution from source.
>  I know you don't officially support this, but if you could give me
>  some pointers about how I could go about it, I will go away and leave
>  you alone. :-) Thanks. 
for F-21 we dropped 32-bit completely, so it is out of scope. F-20 has
the 32-bit variant for (almost) all packages built, but as for creating
a working installation CD one needs working anaconda (the installer
application) and other tools, I'm very sceptical, because no-one tested
them whether they don't blow up in 32-bit mode. But you can look at the
pungi tool (creates the installation tree and media) and lorax
(called by pungi, creates the installer initrd/liveos images). Not sure
if it is worth the efforts. What might be doable is to transfer a
preinstalled F-20 root filesystem (eg. via mock chroot) to the G4 disk.


		Dan

[Al Dunsmuir]

On Friday, October 3, 2014, 5:02:10 AM, Dan Horák wrote:
>  On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 12:36:17 -0700
>  Bill Chatfield <bill_chatfield(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote: 
> > OK don't dump on me please. :-) What is the best place to
> find
> > instructions for how I would go about building an install CD for
> > Fedora 20/21 for ppc32? I almost had Fedora 17 PPC working on it but
> > I gave up because it wasn't really supported. I have run Debian
> > Wheezy and Lubuntu 14.04 on this PowerBook G4 machine, but I would
> > really like to have it running Fedora. I'm an experience Linux admin
> > and developer but I have never build a full distribution from source.
> > I know you don't officially support this, but if you could give me
> > some pointers about how I could go about it, I will go away and leave
> > you alone. :-) Thanks. 
>  for F-21 we dropped 32-bit completely, so it is out of scope. F-20
> has
>  the 32-bit variant for (almost) all packages built, but as for creating
>  a working installation CD one needs working anaconda (the installer
>  application) and other tools, I'm very sceptical, because no-one tested
>  them whether they don't blow up in 32-bit mode. But you can look at the
>  pungi tool (creates the installation tree and media) and lorax
>  (called by pungi, creates the installer initrd/liveos images). Not sure
>  if it is worth the efforts. What might be doable is to transfer a
>  preinstalled F-20 root filesystem (eg. via mock chroot) to the G4 disk. 
For  right  now, I suspect that Bill will need to start with F16 (last
ppc32 release with install) and update his userspace up through F20.

I'm  still  planning  on  working  up a remix for ppc32 (and have been
accumulating  a lot of hardware to test it on), but am first trying to
focus  on  getting  up to speed on ppc64 (for Mac G5s). I'd especially
like  to  the the Live CD/DVD builds running again, as that would make
installs and testing of boot & graphics _much_ easier. My latest G5 is
a 2.5GHz quad with 10GB of storage (bump to 16 in the mail). My intent
is  to  use  this  and  the  other G5s as build machines for ppc64 and
ppc32.

I've  been  stalled  in my progress to packager status by a crazy work
schedule  the  last  month (1 more week and that should settle a bit),
and  my sponsor-to-be (masta) discovering he needs to progress himself
before  he  can  be  a  sponsor. He's suggested that I get his sponsor
(Peter Robinson) to sponsor me).

Both  grub2  and  yaboot  are always built in 32-bit mode, and support
booting  either  32-bit  or  64-bit  kernels.  There  are  differences
required  in  the  boot  setup  installed  by Anaconda but most of the
actual Anaconda code should be the same.

The  F18/F19/F20  ppc64 install is not in good shape, so I expect that
the same problems will persist when built for ppc32. The lorax utility
was  missing  support to "bless" the boot files so that the Macs would
recognize  them,  but  Eric  Larsson provided a patched F20 Alpha ISO.
Anaconda  installs  grub2  as the first stage bootstrap, yaboot as the
2nd  stage bootstrap, but the yaboot config is incomplete and requires
manual fixup.

The  F21 Alpha TC4 is not working AT ALL on my G5s. It appears to have
a  totally  truncated grub2 setup (looks like intel), with NONE of the
infratructure  required  to  boot  on Mac. I'm hoping that somehow the
ppc64le grub2 setup accidently was used on the BE build, and that this
can be corrected for the beta. I'll open BZs to track this if required
- will ask on IRC what was expected, and if known issues.

The ironic thing is that the RHEL7 ppc64 builds appear to have a fully
functional  grub  +  yaboot setup. Unfortunately, RHEL7 ppc64 has gone
POWER6+  only,  and  the kernel won't boot on a POWER5 box (such as my
Mac G5s).

Part  of  the  reason  I want to contribute to Fedora is to make it so
that we can keep the ppc64 POWER5+, so that hobbyist types like myself
can  continue to use vintage hardware. Anyone seriously using ppc64 in
production  where  performance  counts  would be doing so in RHEL7 and
Centos and get the boost from the new instructions.

Al

[Bill Chatfield]

Thanks for the info Dan and Al.

Right, I'm interested in ppc32 from a hobbyist perspective. Red Hat/CentOS would be
for production. The difference between running MacOS X and Linux on this machine is like
night and day, with Linux being the "day". I think the effort to make things
work on older hardware forces one to think more about efficiency versus waste, which is a
good thing to consider.

I have a Fedora 17 PPC install disk. And now I know, by experimenting with Lubuntu PPC,
which kernel parameters are required to get X to start up on my machine, so I can probably
start with Fedora 17. But, it looks like I'll need to upgrade through to F20.


--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 10/3/14, Al Dunsmuir <al.dunsmuir(a)sympatico.ca&gt; wrote:

 Subject: Re: Mac PowerBook G4
 To: ppc(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
 Cc: bill_chatfield(a)yahoo.com, "Dan Horák" <dan(a)danny.cz&gt;
 Date: Friday, October 3, 2014, 6:05 AM
 
 On Friday, October 3, 2014, 5:02:10
 AM, Dan Horák wrote:
>  On Wed, 1 Oct 2014 12:36:17 -0700
>  Bill Chatfield <bill_chatfield(a)yahoo.com&gt; 
 wrote:
 
> > OK don't dump on me please. :-) What is the best 
 place
to find
> > instructions for how I would go about building an 
 install
CD for
> > Fedora 20/21 for ppc32? I almost had Fedora 17 PPC 
 working
on it but
> > I gave up because it wasn't really supported. I 
 have
run Debian
> > Wheezy and Lubuntu 14.04 on this PowerBook G4 
 machine, but
I would
> > really like to have it running Fedora. I'm an 
experience Linux admin
> > and developer but I have never build a full 
 distribution
from source.
> > I know you don't officially support this, but if 
 you
could give me
> > some pointers about how I could go about it, I will 
 go
away and leave
> > you alone. :-) Thanks. 
 
>  for F-21 we dropped 32-bit completely, so it is out of 
 scope.
F-20 has
>  the 32-bit variant for (almost) all packages built, but 
 as for
creating
>  a working installation CD one needs working anaconda 
 (the
installer
>  application) and other tools, I'm very sceptical, 
 because
no-one tested
>  them whether they don't blow up in 32-bit mode. But you 
can look at the
>  pungi tool (creates the installation tree and media) 
 and
lorax
>  (called by pungi, creates the installer initrd/liveos 
 images).
Not sure
>  if it is worth the efforts. What might be doable is to 
transfer a
>  preinstalled F-20 root filesystem (eg. via mock chroot) 
 to the
G4 disk.
 
 For  right  now, I suspect that Bill will need to
 start with F16 (last
 ppc32 release with install) and update his userspace up
 through F20.
 
 I'm  still  planning  on  working 
 up a remix for ppc32 (and have been
 accumulating  a lot of hardware to test it on), but am
 first trying to
 focus  on  getting  up to speed on ppc64 (for
 Mac G5s). I'd especially
 like  to  the the Live CD/DVD builds running
 again, as that would make
 installs and testing of boot & graphics _much_ easier.
 My latest G5 is
 a 2.5GHz quad with 10GB of storage (bump to 16 in the mail).
 My intent
 is  to  use  this  and  the 
 other G5s as build machines for ppc64 and
 ppc32.
 
 I've  been  stalled  in my progress to
 packager status by a crazy work
 schedule  the  last  month (1 more week and
 that should settle a bit),
 and  my sponsor-to-be (masta) discovering he needs to
 progress himself
 before  he  can  be  a  sponsor.
 He's suggested that I get his sponsor
 (Peter Robinson) to sponsor me).
 
 Both  grub2  and  yaboot  are always
 built in 32-bit mode, and support
 booting  either  32-bit  or 
 64-bit  kernels.  There  are 
 differences
 required  in  the  boot  setup 
 installed  by Anaconda but most of the
 actual Anaconda code should be the same.
 
 The  F18/F19/F20  ppc64 install is not in good
 shape, so I expect that
 the same problems will persist when built for ppc32. The
 lorax utility
 was  missing  support to "bless" the boot files so
 that the Macs would
 recognize  them,  but  Eric  Larsson
 provided a patched F20 Alpha ISO.
 Anaconda  installs  grub2  as the first stage
 bootstrap, yaboot as the
 2nd  stage bootstrap, but the yaboot config is
 incomplete and requires
 manual fixup.
 
 The  F21 Alpha TC4 is not working AT ALL on my G5s. It
 appears to have
 a  totally  truncated grub2 setup (looks like
 intel), with NONE of the
 infratructure  required  to  boot  on
 Mac. I'm hoping that somehow the
 ppc64le grub2 setup accidently was used on the BE build, and
 that this
 can be corrected for the beta. I'll open BZs to track this
 if required
 - will ask on IRC what was expected, and if known issues.
 
 The ironic thing is that the RHEL7 ppc64 builds appear to
 have a fully
 functional  grub  +  yaboot setup.
 Unfortunately, RHEL7 ppc64 has gone
 POWER6+  only,  and  the kernel won't boot on
 a POWER5 box (such as my
 Mac G5s).
 
 Part  of  the  reason  I want to
 contribute to Fedora is to make it so
 that we can keep the ppc64 POWER5+, so that hobbyist types
 like myself
 can  continue to use vintage hardware. Anyone seriously
 using ppc64 in
 production  where  performance  counts 
 would be doing so in RHEL7 and
 Centos and get the boost from the new instructions.
 
 Al

[Al Dunsmuir]

On Friday, October 3, 2014, 1:51:37 PM, Bill Chatfield wrote:
>  Thanks for the info Dan and Al. 
>  Right, I'm interested in ppc32 from a hobbyist perspective. Red
>  Hat/CentOS would be for production. The difference between running
>  MacOS X and Linux on this machine is like night and day, with Linux
>  being the "day". I think the effort to make things work on older
>  hardware forces one to think more about efficiency versus waste,
>  which is a good thing to consider. 
Aside  from  my  G5s,  I have a number of G4 and G3 Macs (plus two IBM
7046-B50  CHRP  32-bit machines currently running AIX 5.1). I've got a
number  of different video cards for the PowerMacs, as that (older ATI
on Intel) is what drew me into the Macs in the first place.

The  only  one  that  has  cost  that  much is the G5 Quad, but that's
because  I've  added a 4TB drive and am maxing out the RAM (16 GB when
I'm done) so it will be a useful Koji builder for ppc64 and ppc32.

>  I have a Fedora 17 PPC install disk. And now I know, by
>  experimenting with Lubuntu PPC, which kernel parameters are required
>  to get X to start up on my machine, so I can probably start with
>  Fedora 17. But, it looks like I'll need to upgrade through to F20. 
It  would  be  helpful  should  you  find  a spare moment if you could
briefly post your notes (or useful URLs) with those kernel parameters.

Al

[Bill Chatfield]

Below is my yaboot.conf file which contains the parameters and my comments. Most of my
problems have to do with the fact that I have a Radeon card:

0000:00:10.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV350/M10
[Mobility Radeon 9600 PRO Turbo]


bill@powerbook:~$ cat /etc/yaboot.conf
## yaboot.conf generated by the Ubuntu installer
##
## run: "man yaboot.conf" for details. Do not make changes until you have!!
## see also: /usr/share/doc/yaboot/examples for example configurations.
##
## For a dual-boot menu, add one or more of:
## bsd=/dev/hdaX, macos=/dev/hdaY, macosx=/dev/hdaZ

boot="/dev/disk/by-id/ata-FUJITSU_MHT2080AT_NN4CT4718GM5-part2"
device=/pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/@0
partition=3
root="UUID=1a7f3c8f-1907-4349-81c9-538cef6fbd16"
timeout=50
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot
enablecdboot

# radeonfb is the old driver. It works but it cannot do hardware 
# accelleration. It must be turned off if the new radeon driver is to be
# turned on. The latest versions of the new radeon driver require that KMS
# is turned on with radeon.modeset=1. This causes crashes/hangs unless
# AGP mode is turned down or off. I'm turning it off with radeon.agpmode=-1,
# even though my card is mode 4.
#
# Setting radeon.agpmode=-1 is a necessary workaround according to the
# Ubuntu PPC FAQ and the Fedora 16 PPC page.
#
# Sometimes you get a blank screen but it is just because the brightness
# got set to zero. Turn up the brightness (screen backlight) to fix it: Fn-F?.
#
# This also requires 16-bit color. OpenGL fails in 32/24-bit color. See the 
# /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
image=/boot/vmlinux
	label=testing
	read-only
	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
	append="quiet splash video=radeonfb:off video=radeon:1280x854-32@60 radeon.modeset=1
radeon.agpmode=-1"

# This is the default config for Lubuntu, which works, but without hardware
# accelleration. It uses the old radeonfb kernel driver.
image=/boot/vmlinux
	label=Linux
	read-only
	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
	append="quiet splash video=radeonfb:1280x854-32@60 nomodeset"

image=/boot/vmlinux.old
	label=old
	read-only
	initrd=/boot/initrd.img.old
	append="quiet splash video=radeonfb:1280x854-32@60 nomodeset"

# I thought this setup failed, but it might have worked. It resulted in a
# blank screen, but that may have been because the brightness automatically
# got set to zero. This happens in my above working configuration too.
image=/boot/vmlinux
	label=failed
	read-only
	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
	append="quiet splash radeon.modeset=1 video=offb:off video=radeonfb:off
video=1280x854-32@60 radeon.agpmode=-1"


bill@powerbook:~$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Card0"
    Driver      "radeon"
    Option      "AccelMethod"   "EXA"
    Option      "AccelDFS"      "off"

# Reducing AGPMode helps stop hangs/crashes. My card is a 4 but 1 works better.
    Option      "AGPMode"       "1"
    Option      "AGPFastWrite"  "1"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0"

    # With this I'm attempting to avoid glxinfo from failing to load r300.
    DefaultDepth 16

    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     16
    EndSubSection
EndSection

--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 10/3/14, Al Dunsmuir <al.dunsmuir(a)sympatico.ca&gt; wrote:

 Subject: Re: Mac PowerBook G4
 To: "Bill Chatfield" <bill_chatfield(a)yahoo.com&gt;
 Cc: "Dan Horák" <dan(a)danny.cz&gt;, ppc(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
 Date: Friday, October 3, 2014, 7:12 PM
 
 On Friday, October 3,
 2014, 1:51:37 PM, Bill Chatfield wrote:
>  
 Thanks for the info Dan and Al.
 
>  Right, I'm interested in ppc32 from a 
 hobbyist
perspective. Red
>  Hat/CentOS 
 would be for production. The difference between
running
>  MacOS X and Linux on this machine is like 
 night and day, with
Linux
>  being the 
 "day". I think the effort to make things
work on
 older
>  hardware forces one to think more 
 about efficiency versus
waste,
>  which is 
 a good thing to consider.
 
 Aside  from  my  G5s,  I have a number of
 G4 and G3 Macs (plus two IBM
 7046-B50 
 CHRP  32-bit machines currently running AIX 5.1). I've
 got a
 number  of different video cards for
 the PowerMacs, as that (older ATI
 on Intel)
 is what drew me into the Macs in the first place.
 
 The  only  one  that 
 has  cost  that  much is the G5 Quad, but that's
 because  I've  added a 4TB drive and am
 maxing out the RAM (16 GB when
 I'm done)
 so it will be a useful Koji builder for ppc64 and ppc32.
 
>  I have a Fedora 17 PPC 
 install disk. And now I know, by
>  
 experimenting with Lubuntu PPC, which kernel parameters are
 required
>  to get X to start up on my 
 machine, so I can probably start
with
>  
 Fedora 17. But, it looks like I'll need to upgrade
 through to F20.
 
 It 
 would  be  helpful  should  you  find  a spare moment
 if you could
 briefly post your notes (or
 useful URLs) with those kernel parameters.
 
 Al
 
 
 
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 ppc mailing list
 ppc(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
 https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/ppc

[Ingvar Hagelund]

Den 04. okt. 2014 01:12, skrev Al Dunsmuir:
>  It  would  be  helpful  should  you  find  a spare moment if you
> could
>  briefly post your notes (or useful URLs) with those kernel parameters. 
The most difficult hoop to jump through on my old iBook, was to get 
dracut recognize my pata controller, as neither it, nor the old pmac 
driver are automatically using libata. So I had to force load the 
driver, by adding to the boot command line: rd.driver.post=pata_macio 
(and of course, make sure that the driver is included in the initramfs).

Except from Radeon woes, the rest is quite smooth (though slow) sailing. 
The Fedora kernels support most of the hardware.

Ingvar

[Ingvar Hagelund]

Den 03. okt. 2014 11:02, skrev Dan Horák:
>  for F-21 we dropped 32-bit completely, so it is out of scope. 
Oh noooooo, what am I going to do with my old 32bit ppc crap now? Do I 
really have to get a real life?

Ingvar

[Ingvar Hagelund]

Den 01. okt. 2014 21:36, skrev Bill Chatfield:
>  OK don't dump on me please. :-) What is the best place to find
> instructions for how I would go about building an install CD for Fedora 20/21 for ppc32? I
> almost had Fedora 17 PPC working on it but I gave up because it wasn't really
> supported. I have run Debian Wheezy and Lubuntu 14.04 on this PowerBook G4 machine, but I
> would really like to have it running Fedora. I'm an experience Linux admin and
> developer but I have never build a full distribution from source. I know you don't
> officially support this, but if you could give me some pointers about how I could go about
> it, I will go away and leave you alone. :-) Thanks. 
I did such an install on my iBook a couple of years ago. It's still 
alive on Fedora 20 today. I Installed Fedora 12 (the last supported 
32bit ppc version) on one LV, then populated another LV with Fedora 16 
via yum, booted into it, and have yum updated  through Fedora 20 from 
there. I would presume this way should still work, though finally 
getting a bootable, well-working system will take a LOT of time.

I wrote a small bit about it here: 
http://ingvar.blog.redpill-linpro.com/2011/09/28/running-fedora-16-on-old...

Ingvar