Debian Sid Installation Guide (PowerPC)

[z970]

or someone else can fix it. It’s a wiki post.

Hmmm...

1. Edited the netinstall download location to display the newest builds, and added additional required installation instructions to accompany this.

2. Added the Incoming repo for a more complete sources.list (less install errors).

3. Updated the archive keyring link to the latest version.

4. Updated the b43 .debs to the -3 release.

5. Adjusted terminology and capitalization for accuracy.

6. Added instructions for G3 / G4 / G5 booting.

7. Made other small adjustments.

8. Added brief summary for each desktop environment.

Swamprock, please edit the title to better reflect on these changes, and to more clearly communicate the thread's purpose. (Debian Sid Installation Guide (PowerPC))

I might include an extra instruction on partitioning for efficiency and reliability, on here or a new, future thread...

 

[swamprock]

1. Edited the netinstall download location to display the newest builds, and added additional required installation instructions to accompany this.

2. Added the Incoming repo for a more complete sources.list (less install errors).

3. Updated the archive keyring link to the latest version.

4. Updated the b43 .debs to the -3 release.

5. Adjusted terminology and capitalization for accuracy.

6. Added instructions for G3 / G4 / G5 booting.

7. Made other small adjustments.

8. Added brief summary for each desktop environment.

Swamprock, please edit the title to better reflect on these changes, and to more clearly communicate the thread's purpose. (Debian Sid Installation Guide (PowerPC))

I might include an extra instruction on partitioning for speed and reliability, on here or a new, future thread...

Done. Lots of new, good info there. I've been unable to keep up lately, although I scan the emails I get from the Ports mailing list in the brief moments I have free time. Maybe I'll learn how to get an actual working USB key to try out Fienix (gparted and dd are impossible for me. I can never get them to work properly, and linux's file system is still a nightmare to me).

In any event, thanks for filling this out.

 

[Steve newcomb]

Try installing these together, with "sudo dpkg -i *.deb" in the same directory.

hiip://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20170531T212258Z/pool/contrib/b/b43-fwcutter/firmware-b43-installer_019-2_all.deb

hiip://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20170531T212258Z/pool/contrib/b/b43-fwcutter/b43-fwcutter_019-2_powerpc.deb

Worked on an iBook G4.

Many thanks for this suggestion. I started to reply to you that your helpful links were obscured by MacRumors, which substituted very long and phony links in their place. E.g.: hiip://email.macrumors.com/wf/click?upn=Vk75-2FownPalYg76AKqtveVZLBJKDaWkvOEXlBG4gzgKmWVOrhZDMl540bOllXwGbssjIKV0H-2BlTwNwE3lwGNc2-2FRG9HEAuc0vYIxFlUi4ErFnzo-2BT-2FtupUq13zXJGtjwGKO1drXcJxqHUqM7QuMEa1Npz5r2Zy9YKe8PaVXp-2BESA6d3aZNxdvPdDydVH3VJV_IARiv0jT4XdI-2B2LrcPTMM0e8mz1SIq44FpxWlpl0jzXdNvh-2F86jp9zwfDfYljumGuW9MNLW-2BILLwXtTI6BjegjmqNY0UkYXbMEsB-2BZY1VX2fvC5l80ibuW43VNdQPTtWY7OwKG6vK-2BLhOb-2FLl-2FfJrIA2BhIZsEQURpIVpN7ENF9sTvLYY9fFJFbCZOpY0uAwg3iaV8Xi7Ao84OXXwiKFBA-3D-3D (I hid the foregoing link from the busybodies by changing "http:" to "hiip:" (a nonexistent URL scheme).

So I started this reply, asking you to figure out a way to bypass the busybody business model of MacRumors, there, within the quote markup, were your original links to snapshot.debian.org! So I felt relatively safe in downloading and installing from them directly.

And evidently it worked! Thanks again.

 

[swamprock]

New installation images have been created that fix the partitioner issue from 4/6/2019-

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/2019-04-09/

 

[z970]

In any event, thanks for filling this out.

It's a pleasure, swamp.

Many thanks for this suggestion. I started to reply to you that your helpful links were obscured by MacRumors, which substituted very long and phony links in their place. E.g.: hiip://email.macrumors.com/wf/click?upn=Vk75-2FownPalYg76AKqtveVZLBJKDaWkvOEXlBG4gzgKmWVOrhZDMl540bOllXwGbssjIKV0H-2BlTwNwE3lwGNc2-2FRG9HEAuc0vYIxFlUi4ErFnzo-2BT-2FtupUq13zXJGtjwGKO1drXcJxqHUqM7QuMEa1Npz5r2Zy9YKe8PaVXp-2BESA6d3aZNxdvPdDydVH3VJV_IARiv0jT4XdI-2B2LrcPTMM0e8mz1SIq44FpxWlpl0jzXdNvh-2F86jp9zwfDfYljumGuW9MNLW-2BILLwXtTI6BjegjmqNY0UkYXbMEsB-2BZY1VX2fvC5l80ibuW43VNdQPTtWY7OwKG6vK-2BLhOb-2FLl-2FfJrIA2BhIZsEQURpIVpN7ENF9sTvLYY9fFJFbCZOpY0uAwg3iaV8Xi7Ao84OXXwiKFBA-3D-3D (I hid the foregoing link from the busybodies by changing "http:" to "hiip:" (a nonexistent URL scheme).

So I started this reply, asking you to figure out a way to bypass the busybody business model of MacRumors, there, within the quote markup, were your original links to snapshot.debian.org! So I felt relatively safe in downloading and installing from them directly.

And evidently it worked! Thanks again.

I don't know how they came across as that. They currently look fine to me. Even the phony link takes you to the downloads.

In any case, I was referring to what worked for me. The exact same packages have -3 updates, featured in my edited post and in the main wikipost, so I recommend you download and install those the same way. Snapshot.debian.org is completely safe, just as much as ftp.us.debian.org. Its purpose is to save the repositories' states at specific points in time, so you can download old packages if newer ones aren't working, exactly like this situation. It's very useful.

New installation images have been created that fix the partitioner issue from 4/6/2019-

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/2019-04-09/

Excellent! I'll try them out and refine the installation guide, hopefully over the weekend. If I recall correctly from the mailing list, this should have replaced the NewWorld Boot (HFS) format in the partitioner, and GRUB *should* be working now as well, thanks to that additional grub-installer fix.

 

[swamprock]

It's a pleasure, swamp.



I don't know how they came across as that. They currently look fine to me. Even the phony link takes you to the downloads.

In any case, I was referring to what worked for me. The exact same packages have -3 updates, featured in my edited post and in the main wikipost, so I recommend you download and install those the same way. Snapshot.debian.org is completely safe, just as much as ftp.us.debian.org. Its purpose is to save the repositories' states at specific points in time, so you can download old packages if newer ones aren't working, exactly like this situation. It's very useful.



Excellent! I'll try them out and refine the installation guide, hopefully over the weekend. If I recall correctly from the mailing list, this should have replaced the NewWorld Boot (HFS) format in the partitioner, and GRUB *should* be working now as well, thanks to that additional grub-installer fix.

I've run into that old Apple partition madness with partitioning again. I can't seem to get rid of the damn thing, nor can I get sid to boot when its there ("corrupt file system"). I zeroed the drive out with dd (both beginning and end blocks) and it still persists. Any advice on how I should partition the drive to avoid this?

I only want to install linux on the drive, with no other operating systems.

 

[z970]

I've run into that old Apple partition madness with partitioning again. I can't seem to get rid of the damn thing, nor can I get sid to boot when its there ("corrupt file system"). I zeroed the drive out with dd (both beginning and end blocks) and it still persists. Any advice on how I should partition the drive to avoid this?

I only want to install linux on the drive, with no other operating systems.

What is the Apple partition? Is it the 32kb Apple Partition Map partition (sda1)? That's required to boot a PowerPC-based Mac.

How are you partitioning Sid, and when does it tell you 'corrupt file system'?

 

[swamprock]

What is the Apple partition? Is it the 32kb Apple Partition Map partition (sda1)?

How are you partitioning Sid, and when does it tell you 'corrupt file system'?

This is a 160 GB drive.
Yes, it's the 32kb partition. The rest of the partitions follows:

1. NewWorld Boot Rom Partition (1 MB)
2. Debian rootfs / [ext4] (152 GB)
3. Swap (7 GB)

yaboot reports "unknown or corrupt filesystem" upon booting.


I just had a thought. Since GRUB still fails to install and I had to install yaboot via chroot, maybe I selected the wrong device to boot from (I selected /sda rather than where the boot partition resides, i.e. /sda2 or whatever).

 

[z970]

This is a 160 GB drive.
Yes, it's the 32kb partition. The rest of the partitions follows:

1. NewWorld Boot Rom Partition (1 MB)
2. Debian rootfs / [ext4] (152 GB)
3. Swap (7 GB)

yaboot reports "unknown or corrupt filesystem" upon booting.


I just had a thought. Since GRUB still fails to install and I had to install yaboot via chroot, maybe I selected the wrong device to boot from (I selected /sda rather than where the boot partition resides, i.e. /sda2 or whatever).

Yeah, unless you're trying to install on a secondary drive and need to amend to '/sdb2' instead, I don't recommend changing those values in the yaboot install instruction. You're going to have to reinstall, to the best of my knowledge.

Just remember that APM will always reside at 'sda1', and the bootstrap partition should always reside at 'sda2', which is where you want to install your bootloader.

Did you try the 04-09 images? GRUB is still a no-go?

 

[swamprock]

Yeah, unless you're trying to install on a secondary drive and need to amend to '/sdb2' instead, I don't recommend changing those values in the yaboot install instruction. You're going to have to reinstall, to the best of my knowledge.

Just remember that APM will always reside at 'sda1', and the bootstrap partition should always reside at 'sda2', which is where you want to install your bootloader.

Did you try the 04-09 images? GRUB is still a no-go?

Yeah... no luck with GRUB. Same old error message. Adrian mentions that the ppc/ppc64 installer still defaults to yaboot.

Another thought I had was that yaboot and ext4 don't play well together. That's probably the issue here...

 

[z970]

Yeah... no luck with GRUB. Same old error message.

Another thought I had was that yaboot and ext4 don't play well together. That's probably the issue here...

Just to confirm, in the yabootconfig prompt, did you press 'y' and Enter, or did you manually adjust to '/sda'?

And to make sure, the 04-0x images reinstated the ability to manually format a partition as NewWorld, right?

They don't, but you don't need to change to Ext3.

 

[swamprock]

Just to confirm, in the yabootconfig prompt, did you press 'y' and Enter, or did you manually adjust to '/sda'?

And to make sure, the 04-0x images reinstated the ability to manually format a partition as NewWorld, right?

They don't, but you don't need to change to Ext3.

My bad... I did use /sda2. I think that the original partitioning scheme on the drive, before I defined my linux partitions, was what caused all of the problems.

Yep... the ability to format the NewWorld partition is there.

I'm currently reinstalling, after zeroing the entire drive. I've had no issues with partitions so far, and the install is proceeding with no more incidents, so we'll see what happens.

EDIT: aaaand it worked. Looks like the drive was just weird.

 

[z970]

My bad... I did use /sda2. I think that the original partitioning scheme on the drive, before I defined my linux partitions, was what caused all of the problems.

Yep... the ability to format the NewWorld partition is there.

I'm currently reinstalling, after zeroing the entire drive. I've had no issues with partitions so far, and the install is proceeding with no more incidents, so we'll see what happens.

EDIT: aaaand it worked. Looks like the drive was just weird.

What did you change?

 

[swamprock]

What did you change?

Nothing. I just zeroed out the drive completely. I also zeroed out the beginning and end blocks separately afterwards. Somewhat redundant, but I wanted to be sure that the drive was completely erased. Then I just set up the partitions as they should have been and installed yaboot to /sda2. Voila.

Thanks for the help.

 

[z970]

Thanks for the help.

I was asking questions for most of the time...

 

[z970]

Just made a random discovery...

This was from the i386 version, which means it has nothing to do with the PowerPC Port.

G5 lives on!

 

[galgot]

Thanks for this very helpful tutorial.
Finished installing Sid on 15" A1138. Triple boot, Sid/Leo/Tiger.
I used the 04/09/2019 image. Grub won't install, but yaboot is fine for me.
Playing with XFCE for now.
Things I've noticed :
- Sleep is broken, but that was already the case for G4s with Jessie (on my installs anyways...if someone as a solution).
- This machine I've installed on is in superb shape (almost new like), but in Tiger or Leo, screen
displays artifacts after some time running (hot?), so I suppose the GPU is slowly agonizing... I have
a spare main board if I need. BUT, surprisingly, when running Sid even a long time, no artifacts, no graphic problems ! just fine ...
- One of the apt sources is unreachable for me, that is http://ftp.incoming.ports.debian.org/buildd . Dunno if that happen to others ?
Trying to reach that address via Arcticfox fails too , "server not found".

Other than these small things , all cool

 

[z970]

- One of the apt sources is unreachable for me, that is http://ftp.incoming.ports.debian.org/buildd . Dunno if that happen to others ?
Trying to reach that address via Arcticfox fails too , "server not found".

Remove the "ftp.", and make sure it ends with "/buildd/ unstable main".

 

[galgot]

Remove the "ftp.", and make sure it ends with "/buildd/ unstable main".

Thank you Sir

 

[z970]

I'm installing the ppc64 04-12 image later today. I hear GRUB is finally finished and is working without issue.

Expect an updated (and massively simplified) guide soon.

EDIT: Soon-ish.

 

[swamprock]

We've got GRUB on PowerPC-

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.

 

[z970]

We've got GRUB on PowerPC-

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

I did something to that degree, too.

It's all coming in the updated guide. Since newer images have fixed a lot of problems that previously had to be worked around and dealt with after installation, we can take out a whole bunch of steps in the wikipost.

Now if only I could find some time...

 

[swamprock]

I manually partitioned my install and GRUB is working fine. Of course it took a few bouts of trial and error, but all is well now.

It's all coming in the updated guide. Since newer images have fixed a lot of problems that previously had to be worked around and dealt with after installation, we can take out a whole bunch of steps in the wikipost.

Now if only I could find some time...

I followed the advice of Adrian and did the guided partitioning first, so that /boot/grub would be set as the mount point in the NewWorld boot partition. I then resized my other partitions and all worked fine. It's setting the NW boot partition mount point to /boot/grub that cannot be done manually.

Now to figure out why my DP 2.0 G5 can boot all flavors of linux, but my DC 2.0 G5 chokes on all of them with a "corrupt file system" error...

 

[z970]

Now to figure out why my DP 2.0 G5 can boot all flavors of linux, but my DC 2.0 G5 chokes on all of them with a "corrupt file system" error...

Did it mention anything about VFS? I wouldn't have ended up getting a Mac Pro if I could have wrapped my head around that stupid error.

In any case, it has since been defeated. This should give you a couple of ideas...

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-solution-within.2067997/page-3#post-27071334

Wikipost has been partially updated. It is currently under active construction.

 

[swamprock]

Speaking purely from personal experience, the 20mb NewWorld partition does not give you an option to set a mount point, and besides, there will be another partition to mount at /boot. The only reason an HFS partition is there in the first place is so that Open Firmware can recognize and pass down control to GRUB (or yaboot), which then forwards you into Linux.



Did it mention anything about VFS? I wouldn't have ended up getting a Mac Pro if I could have wrapped my head around that stupid error.

In any case, it has since been defeated. This should give you a couple of ideas...

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-solution-within.2067997/page-3#post-27071334

Wikipost has been partially updated. It is currently under active construction.

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.