Various missing packages

[Ristridin]

With help from the Arch Forum, I've manage to get Arch PPC installed on a G3 iBook, however when I try to install Xorg, CUPS ALSA and other packages, it turns out that various packages are not present in the repos.

It seems that pretty much all proto packages (renderproto, kbproto, xproto, xcb-proto etc.) are missing. In fact, I get the impression that the problem is with packages in the 'any' architecture.

As a result, it is currently impossible to get a working desktop up and running.

I know that Arch PPC is being worked on, but can we expect the missing packages to appear anytime soon or is it best to give up on Arch PPC for the time being and use a different PPC distro?

[Enric Caussa Morales]

Ristridin,
We are actively working on getting the repos back up and running. As of
now, a great part of the required any packages are on the repos (i
pushed a lot of the xorg- and -proto packages in testing). Please enable
the testing repository, as you will there also find several rebuilds
related to a recent lib{png,tiff} upgrade.
If you need any help make sure to drop by #archlinuxppc on Freenode so
we can assist you.
You are more than welcome to stick with Arch/PPC :).
Cheers,

--
Enric Caussa Morales
<m...@enric.me>

[Ristridin]

Hi Enric,

Thanks for that. Glad to hear you're actively working on this!

I'll enable the testing repo and see how far I get.

I'd rather stick with Arch as it's lightweight and modular and it's running on all my own PCs, as well as in an organisation I help with IT stuff.

They have mostly old equipment - including the iBook - cos they can't afford modern hardware.

Cheers

[Enric Caussa Morales]

I'm happy to hear you want to support us. Please report any further
missing packages. Due to a server scripts malfunction all of our 'any'
packages were gone. I am now rebulding them and also rebuilding some
libraries due to the upgrade mentioned in earlier messages, so please be
patient while we get everything back up and running.
I expect to have rebuilt xfce4 tonight so you can use it meanwhile. If
you don't like it, then next week i'll try some gnome3 rebuilds.
Have a nice weekend.
Enric

[cyberic]

Thank you and good luck for your work!

Does anyone knows if there is a new release of the livecd planned?
The current one has some problems, and I think many users may go 'elsewhere' or install another distro in this case...

[Ristridin]

Hi Eric,

I've finally had some time to go back to the iBook. With the testing repo enabled, I have now managed to install Xorg, however xorg-utils still fails. It's trying to install it from extra, so it appears it is not available in testing,

Thanks

Emile

[Enric Morales]

Hi Emile,
Was quite short on time this week, i'll take a look at this as soon as
I get home (I should have some time today). Thanks for helping!
Do you have an iBook G4? Is ati-dri and xf86-video-ati working for
you? I had to patch lots of xorg-related stuff.
Cheers,
Enric

--

[Enric Morales]

Emile,
I have already pushed the updates to [testing]. Feel free to try them and report if they don't work for you. I have issues on the iBook when using the xorg ati driver, haven't tried the vesa one yet, so I'll look into it.

[Ristridin]

Thanks for that, and for doing it so quickly! I will try them next week when I'm back at the organisation who owns the iBook (I'm only there once a week to help them with IT stuff).

In answer to your question, it's a clamshell G3 iBook, with an ATI Rage Mobility M3 AGP 2x GPU. It's loaded the aty128fb module, so I installed the xf86-video-r128 driver but Xorg won't start and produces a 'No screen' message. I've tried the ati driver as well, but that gives the same problem. when I next have access to the machine I will open a new topic for this particular problem, and will post more details of the errors etc.

I'd be interested in your findings with the ATI card and X in the G4.

Thanks

Emile

[Ristridin]

Right, finally got to look at the iBook again.

xorg-utils now installs fine, so thanks :-)

I'm stilll having trouble getting X up and running though due to problems with the ati drivers

I've tried both xf86-video-vesa and xf96-video-fbdev but all I get is No Screen errors.

xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-r128 on their own also produce No Screen errors, however when both are installed  X seems to start but then the iBook locks up with only a static white cursor in the top left corner and I have to remove the power supply to turn the machine off.

The Xorg log file is available here http://pastebin.com/UzUJyFnQ

Perhaps it's worth noting that on bootup, aty128fb produces an error message "cannot reserve frame buffer memory".

Have you made any progress with your iBook? You mentioned you had to patch lots of X stuff - what did you have to patch?

Cheers

Emile

[Enric Caussa Morales]

Hey Emile,
Please do a pacman -Syu and try again.
You need the 'ati' driver, not the ati-128 if you have an iBook G4 with
an ATi 9200 card.
Here's the Xorg config I am using (and that is working just fine as of
now).
Hope it helps.

Section "Device"
Identifier "Builtin Default ati Device 0"
Driver "ati"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Builtin Default fbdev Device 0"
Driver "ati"
Option "DynamicClocks" "true"
Option "DRI" "on"
Option "DynamicPM" "on" # Dynamic powersaving.
Option "ClockGating" "on" # Assisting option for powersaving.
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA" # EXA should fit most cases.
Option "EXAVSync" "on" # EXAVSync is explained above.
Option "DMAForXv" "on" # Forced option in order to enable Xv overlay.
Option "ScalerWidth" "2048" # That should fix some very rare bugs.
Option "EnablePageFlip" "on" # It will not be enabled on R5xx cards.
Option "RenderAccel" "on" # Optional. It should be enabled by default.
Option "AccelDFS" "on" #Optional. See the man page.
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Builtin Default fbdev Screen 0"
Device "Builtin Default fbdev Device 0"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Builtin Default Layout"
Screen "Builtin Default ati Screen 0"
Option "StandbyTime" "0"
Option "SuspendTime" "0"
Option "OffTime" "3"
EndSection

On 04 Apr 2012 10:58, Ristridin wrote:
> Right, finally got to look at the iBook again.
>
> xorg-utils now installs fine, so thanks :-)
>
> I'm stilll having trouble getting X up and running though due to problems
> with the ati drivers
>
> I've tried both xf86-video-vesa and xf96-video-fbdev but all I get is No
> Screen errors.
> xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-r128 on their own also produce No Screen

> errors, however when *both* are installed X seems to start but then the

--
Enric Caussa Morales
<m...@enric.me>