Installing snapshot 2021-01-03 on a PowerMac G5
Johannes Brakensiek
Hello everyone,
and a happy new year to you. Thanks to Covid19-based restrictions I returned to a Mac PPC (PowerMac 11,2) the last days to rejoin the Apple hardware party of my youth and do happy compiling on PPC64.
My attempts were not that lucky at all because each turn of trying to install the snapshot mentioned failed.
I’m listing my observations here. Please tell me if and where to post logs and/or bug reports. Thank you.
The issues I observed:
- partman did not create a boot/HFS partition the
/usr/lib/os-probestests could recognize. It seems these scripts utilizeblkid, butblkidwould only recognize my boot partition (2MB) as HFS after I manually formatted it usinghformat. - Selecting KDE as environment in tasksel did not work (seems not all dependencies could be resolved, but I did not dig deeper into this), I chose Xfce, using that installation worked.
- But whatever I did (even after fixing first issue), I did not manage to install grub. I even tried the „ugly hack“, mentioned at https://www.u58733p55594.web0093.zxcs-klant.nl/installation/grub-problem/ to replace hfsprogs with an older snapshot within the target chroot. The result stayed the same:
grub-installer: info: Running chroot /target grub-install --force "dummy"
grub-installer: Installing for powerpc-ieee1275 platform.
grub-installer: grub-install: error:
grub-installer:
grub-installer: cannot find a GRUB drive for dummy. Check your device.map
grub-installer: .
grub-installer: error: Running 'grub-install --force "dummy"' failed.
If you need the full syslog, partman log and so on, just tell me where to upload/store it.
Last question in advance: I saw sid PPC64 ships kernel version 5.10. Is the following issue already patched or am I going to run into that one as well and should wait until kernel has been updated to at least 5.10.2 (my PowerMac G5 still runs a GeForce 6600 currently)?
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=210517
Thanks for your support in advance
Johannes
John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
On 1/8/21 9:08 PM, Johannes Brakensiek wrote:
> and a happy new year to you. Thanks to Covid19-based restrictions I returned to a
> Mac PPC (PowerMac 11,2) the last days to rejoin the Apple hardware party of my youth
> and do happy compiling on PPC64.
> My attempts were not that lucky at all because each turn of trying to install the
> snapshot mentioned failed.
>
> I’m listing my observations here. Please tell me if and where to post logs and/or
> bug reports. Thank you.
- libparted crashes on 32-bit PowerPC causing the partitioner to hang forever when starting up
- grub-installer is currently not properly setting up the HFS partition for installing GRUB
Both issues are known and being worked on. However, since my primary debug machine is an
iBook G4 which is a 32-bit machine, I cannot work on the grub-installer issue until I have
resolved the libparted issue.
The partioner issue turned out to be rather difficult to debug but I have already localized
it to a problem in libparted.
> The issues I observed:
>
> 1. partman did not create a boot/HFS partition the `/usr/lib/os-probes` tests could recognize.
> It seems these scripts utilize `blkid`, but `blkid` would only recognize my boot partition (2MB)
> as HFS after I manually formatted it using `hformat`.
> 2. Selecting KDE as environment in tasksel did not work (seems not all dependencies could be resolved,
Debian unstable and they are usually transient. They usually occur when a new version of KDE
(or any other larger package set) gets updated and the buildds haven't churned through all
updated packages yet or the package archives have not synced yet.
> 3. But whatever I did (even after fixing first issue), I did not manage to install grub. I even
> grub-problem/ to replace hfsprogs with an older snapshot within the target chroot. The result
> stayed the same:
>
> ```
> grub-installer: info: Running chroot /target grub-install --force "dummy"
> grub-installer: Installing for powerpc-ieee1275 platform.
> grub-installer: grub-install: error:
> grub-installer:
> grub-installer: cannot find a GRUB drive for dummy. Check your device.map
> grub-installer: .
> grub-installer: error: Running 'grub-install --force "dummy"' failed.
> ```
>
> If you need the full syslog, partman log and so on, just tell me where to upload/store it.
PowerMac support. I will fix that later.
Try installing GRUB manually:
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB_on_Open_Firmware_(PowerPC)
> Last question in advance: I saw sid PPC64 ships kernel version 5.10. Is the following issue already
> patched or am I going to run into that one as well and should wait until kernel has been updated to
> at least 5.10.2 (my PowerMac G5 still runs a GeForce 6600 currently)?
>
> https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=210517
Adrian
> [1] https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=linux&suite=sid
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glau...@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glau...@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
Johannes Brakensiek
thank you for your reply!
On 9 Jan 2021, at 13:30, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> On 1/8/21 9:08 PM, Johannes Brakensiek wrote:
>> and a happy new year to you. Thanks to Covid19-based restrictions I
>> returned to a
>> Mac PPC (PowerMac 11,2) the last days to rejoin the Apple hardware
>> party of my youth
>> and do happy compiling on PPC64.
>
> Great. Maybe you're interested in helping to improve the Debian
> PowerPC ports?
I’d do some further QA after fixing and report issues if I find some
time to do that.
Once I manage installation an aim of mine would be to install SUSE’s
Open Build Service on that machine. Because the PowerPC architecture is
missing at their public service for building Debian packages. So if
I’d ever manage to get that running, then further more packages could
be built using that machine. But that’s just a uncertain glimpse into
the future. In addition to this I’d have to mention I would not want
to run that machine 24/7 as that would suck half the power delivered by
the coal-fired power plant next door. I’d be already seeing myself
travelling down the Rhine river on a cargo ship, delivering the coal
required to keep that thing running. ;)
> debian-installer is currently broken on PowerMacs due to two issues:
>
> - libparted crashes on 32-bit PowerPC causing the partitioner to hang
> forever when starting up
> - grub-installer is currently not properly setting up the HFS
> partition for installing GRUB
>
> Both issues are known and being worked on. However, since my primary
> debug machine is an
> iBook G4 which is a 32-bit machine, I cannot work on the
> grub-installer issue until I have
> resolved the libparted issue.
>
> The partioner issue turned out to be rather difficult to debug but I
> have already localized
> it to a problem in libparted.
[…]
> been patched for
> PowerMac support. I will fix that later.
>
> Try installing GRUB manually:
>
>> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB_on_Open_Firmware_(PowerPC)
>
>> Last question in advance: I saw sid PPC64 ships kernel version 5.10.
>> Is the following issue already
>> patched or am I going to run into that one as well and should wait
>> until kernel has been updated to
>> at least 5.10.2 (my PowerMac G5 still runs a GeForce 6600 currently)?
>>
>> https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=210517
>
> Debian unstable has already kernel 5.10.4 [1] which - according to
> this bug report - contains the fix.
sounds promising!
Regarding the manual installation of GRUB I took some time to study that
tutorial (and try some first steps), but it looks like that is for those
knowing the powerful way of the boot path warrior. I am showing great
respect for these honourable men and women and their way to higher
levels of achievements. But for me I decide to stay a simple man and
wait for the fixes to come. ;)
Thank you for your work. Once some fixes arrive I’d be eager to test
them.
Best
Johannes
Johannes Brakensiek
Hello everyone,
On 10 Jan 2021, at 23:48, Johannes Brakensiek wrote:
Regarding the manual installation of GRUB I took some time to study that tutorial (and try some first steps), but it looks like that is for those knowing the powerful way of the boot path warrior. I am showing great respect for these honourable men and women and their way to higher levels of achievements. But for me I decide to stay a simple man and wait for the fixes to come. ;)
Thank you for your work. Once some fixes arrive I’d be eager to test them.
just for the record. I managed to finish installation using the script mentioned over there (thanks to Bertrand for the hint!):
I booted from a USB stick using:
boot ud:\boot\grub\powerpc.elf
I used a recent iso to flash the stick. I modified the script from powerprogress a little (to be run in the rescue system after installation). I had to use the ofpathname bin as there was not ofpath binary using that installation (may be the reason setting up nvram failed). I also removed the line setting up fstab as that one made booting fail (partition could not be mounted).
I also used a NewWorld boot partition a little bigger (2MB should be enough, took 64MB just to be sure).
In rescue mode I installed some drivers from powerprogress using the script and as well the nouveau driver for the NVidia GeForce 6600. Installing the windfarm driver was not necessary anymore. Fans behaved well.
Setting nvram using the rescue system/script also did not work for me as well. I had to do so manually using Open Firmware:
setenv boot-device ’hd:2,\grub’
After booting the installed system graphics showed up, but were very distorted (MATE) or kept crashing (Xfce and Lxqt) with segfaults. Graphics worked perfectly fine using Enlightenment (very blingbling using OpenGL) and WindowMaker (no blingbling at all as we know it).
So far. Thanks for all the hints
Johannes