Debian Sid Installation Guide (PowerPC)

[galgot]

I find a solution, in console instead of yaboot config you should follow this steps

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the lines of the step 10 of this wikipost

Ctrl+x and later Y

Write apt update

And then you can install yaboot with apt install yaboot

And then now you can run the

Yabootconfig with your parameters

Worked , booted ! many thanks

 

[sparty411]

I find a solution, in console instead of yaboot config you should follow this steps

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the lines of the step 10 of this wikipost

Ctrl+x and later Y

Write apt update

And then you can install yaboot with apt install yaboot

And then now you can run the

Yabootconfig with your parameters

Yup, I was about to reply with this lol.

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

I am trying with a guy who is responsible for Debian-ports to get the installer to work. I know the problem now. Did you get the June image to boot from USB? I think it’s impossible as the newer images don’t have yaboot anymore.

 

[galgot]

I am trying with a guy who is responsible for Debian-ports to get the installer to work. I know the problem now. Did you get the June image to boot from USB? I think it’s impossible as the newer images don’t have yaboot anymore.

Yes, got img 2019-06-26 to boot from USB. it boots in grub, and yet installation of grub itself fails...
Maybe would be good to keep yaboot as a fallback option.

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

Interesting that it boots into Grub, didn't try that out myself.

Installation of Grub failing is a known problem.

There is no way to keep yaboot as upstream they decided to ditch yaboot. The installer mediums will no longer contain yaboot, they will always install Grub instead. I am confident that instalaltion of Grub will one day work for us PowerPC users.

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

I am also able to boot the latest July image from USB using yaboot now. Just add yaboot to the installer image, do some configurations and respin the iso.

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

Major breaktrough: my installer works!!!

 

[sparty411]

Major breaktrough: my installer works!!!

Whoa, that is a pretty exciting! Can’t wait to test it

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

Whoa, that is a pretty exciting! Can’t wait to test it

I am not there yet for folks to test. Installation of one of my packages breaks the system. I need to find out a solution for this. I also, like the Debian installer which I use, suffer from Grub installation failure. I am trying to find a way to invoke the yaboot-installer.

 

[swamprock]

I am not there yet for folks to test. Installation of one of my packages breaks the system. I need to find out a solution for this. I also, like the Debian installer which I use, suffer from Grub installation failure. I am trying to find a way to invoke the yaboot-installer.

The problem stems from all of the different ofpathnames that each PPC machine has. These need to be accounted for and tested before grub will work on every machine.

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

This will be your desktop soon....

 

[dbdjre0143]

This will be your desktop soon....

Very excited to see a full installer come from this project! Obviously, idc if you continue posting here, as I'm sure others don't either, but I really feel like your project deserves its own thread. Could also help garner attention as the thread title here doesn't indicate that we can watch for daily progress on the MintPPC rebirth. Just a thought.

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

Very excited to see a full installer come from this project! Obviously, idc if you continue posting here, as I'm sure others don't either, but I really feel like your project deserves its own thread. Could also help garner attention as the thread title here doesn't indicate that we can watch for daily progress on the MintPPC rebirth. Just a thought.

People can go to http://mintppc.nl

I will start a new thread soon to be more visible.

 

[Jürgen Brunk (Jay)]

Managed after some tries to install Debian Sid on my half Dome iMac G4 with Nvidia GeForce 2 MX 400 graphic card, but run into hassle with the Nouveau Driver in Kernel 5.4:

w/o aka blacklisting it I'm getting a working text console, w/ it I'm just getting a fading out screen. Xorg didn't start in auto detection mode (w/o xorg.conf) or forced to nouveau, fbdev etc etc.

Tried also to load a Firmware image to the driver during start, but w/o luck. The driver always blame about an incorrect firmware image.

Any further tipps? 🤞

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau

restart

 

[Jürgen Brunk (Jay)]

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau

restart

Ehm, no. It's the Linux kernel nouveau driver I'm speaking about, not the Xorg driver with the same name. And w/o working kernel driver the Xorg driver won't work. And yes I have the Xorg video driver installed ...

 

[MikV]

GRUB IS FINALLY WORKING!
Just tested the 2020-04-19 img and finally get my Powerbook G4 12" 1.5 Ghz 1,25 Gb of ram working with Debian (with his environment and xfce) and Grub!!!

THANK YOU VERY MUCH for this super useful wiki and all the contributes also than the developer of this release.

Till few weeks ago my powerbook was simply "dead" now I'm trying to give him a new life.

Would like to ask you few question since I'm a newbie:

1) I have downloaded Arctic Fox thru his webpage and I can use it very well but doesn't understand how to install it in to the sistem?

2) the actual web browser of the
2020-04-19 give me error and doesn't open

3) the system is very very light but seems that a lot of things have to be installed, perhaps I can't find users panel, software download and update etc, there is a guide I can refer other than this super wiki?


Thank you very very much again guys!

 

[z970]

Woo! And so the year-and-a-half long booting issue has finally come to an end!

However, I would still like to see GRUB actually tested on a G5. And kernel 5.x is still another matter, unfortunately.

1) Let me see if I understand you... You downloaded Arctic Fox and can use it very well, but you cannot figure out how to install it? This sounds like you've got the bzip2 version. Arctic Fox started distributing in .debs a release or two ago, and can now simply be installed with sudo dpkg -i *.deb. I would suggest getting another one from its GitHub page.

2) Would the 2020-04-19 Web browser happen to be Firefox 75? Currently, new versions of Firefox still has several endianess-related issues on PowerPC. Alternatively, it may just be a segmentation fault, which to my knowledge means it was compiled wrong. You can check this by trying to launch it from the terminal.

3) Again, let me see if I understand you. You have gotten Xfce installed, but you do not have access to any kind of panel, or a package manager application, among other things?

 

[swamprock]

Woo! And so the year-and-a-half long booting issue has finally come to an end!

However, I would still like to see GRUB actually tested on a G5. And kernel 5.x is still another matter, unfortunately

I wonder if the problem of ofpathname has been completely solved in all versions of OpenFirmware. I haven't been on the sid mailing list for a while now, so I haven't been keeping up.

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

I can confirm that booting with GRUB on an iBook G4 now works finally with the 19.4.2020 image.

 

[mortlocli]

Ta - for the heads up, Jeroen..must take another look at that.

 

[dreadone]

Hello, thanks for your hard work!
I have debian-sid10-ppc64 installed on a g5/2,3ghz/8gb/hd5770. All works ok.
Today i upgraded the system (new kernel etc) and got this error (see pic.)
Maybe i have only to restart the system? Or do i have to remove the new kernel?
Thanks for answer.
Heiner

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

try

sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-powerpc64

 

[dreadone]

Ok, but now i see this:
Linux image is broken or not complete installed.

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

Ok, but now i see this:
Linux image is broken or not complete installed.

try

 sudo dpkg --purge linux-image-powerpc64
 sudo apt install linux-image-powerpc64
 sudo dpkg --configure -a