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MintPPC project

@Jeroen Diederen
Smooth installation on my G5 dual 2.3GHz, 6GB Ram and GF6600LE from USB stick. After first boot everything works as it should. But when I switch to the Radeon HD 6450 it runs much faster and has 3D support. Thanks Jeroen for your hard work. More tests coming soon.
 

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@eastone Nice. Just an FYI on SeaLion… Right click on the “stop” icon and choose customize. You can drag your extension icons to the lower bottom left (next to the globe) of the component bar for a cleaner look. See screenshots on its git repo for reference if needed. You can also right click on the “stop” icon and choose “icons only” if you don't like the text next to the icons on the toolbar.

Cheers
 
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wicknix said:
@eastone Nice. Just an FYI on SeaLion… Right click on the “stop” icon and choose customize. You can drag your extension icons to the lower bottom left (next to the globe) of the component bar for a cleaner look. See screenshots on its git repo for reference if needed. You can also right click on the “stop” icon and choose “icons only” if you don't like the text next to the icons on the toolbar.

Cheers
Click to expand...
You can also use the gtk-theme to make it look nicer. See
 
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eastone said:
@Jeroen Diederen
Smooth installation on my G5 dual 2.3GHz, 6GB Ram and GF6600LE from USB stick. After first boot everything works as it should. But when I switch to the Radeon HD 6450 it runs much faster and has 3D support. Thanks Jeroen for your hard work. More tests coming soon.
Click to expand...
Hi. So you boot mint directly with 6450 not flashed? Tnx for your attention
 
Raveneau de Lussan said:
Hi. So you boot mint directly with 6450 not flashed? Tnx for your attention
Click to expand...
I have 2 graphics cards installed: original g5's gf6600le in pci-ex16 (slot 1) and Radeon HD 6450 in pci-e x8 (slot 3). After a fresh installation, the system starts on GF, but then I turn it off in the xorg.conf file and set the default card to Radeon. Yes, Radeon is in the PC version.

PS
My /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AutoAddGPU" "false"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Radeon HD"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:6@1:0:0"
EndSection
 
Last edited:
eastone said:
I have 2 graphics cards installed: original g5's gf6600le and Radeon HD 6450. After a fresh installation, the system starts on GF, but then I turn it off in the xorg.conf file and set the default card to Radeon. Yes, Radeon is in the PC version.
Click to expand...
Tnx. Have a nice day
 
Hi there,

I'm having trouble with a Titanium Powerbook G4, specifically the internal monitor after the initial blue screen install and the external monitor under LXDE environment after manually installing MintPPC manual installation steps. The internal monitor has been black after the initial open firmware boot after it turns white. Initially, when I hadn't installed the packages in MintPPC it was XFCE and I could see a login screen and get up a terminal using Alt/Opt + Ctrl + T and managed to get some pastebinit message before I decided to do a reinstall.

After several installs including mistyping the preseed file, installing without the preseed file showing XFCE, attempting a preseed install and then doing a default install and mistakenly selecting XFCE as the initial desktop environment using Enter instead a space to select lxde.

I have manually added Jereon's sources as detailed here: https://www.u58733p55594.web0093.zxcs-klant.nl/installation/manual-installation-mintppc/

And installed packages and removed XFCE using tasksel.

I'm getting two black or maybe slate gray screens as the external monitor is displaying a black triangle cursor.

I believe LXDE has had some impact as the cursor is more a triangle but I have a black screen and can no longer get up the terminal using Opt/Alt + Ctrl + T what I was able to do using XFCE. Hence, I have temporarily modified GRUB on boot using e and adding systemd.unit=multi-user.target on the linux .... line which I found using chatGPT after it erroneously initially suggested text instead. I have also manually tried starting lxdm using sudo systemctl start lxdm and it's got up the same black screen with cursor from the cli.

Here are some links
dmesg https://paste.debian.net/hidden/9bf248a5
cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log https://paste.debian.net/hidden/14497cfa
updated cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log https://paste.debian.net/hidden/abe461c0/

apt list --installed https://paste.debian.net/hidden/8c87735c

Thanks
Please let me know if you need any more logs or any clarification in case my writing is a bit confusing...
 
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I don't get into a visible login screen or mouse so I don't know if X is booting without the monitor attached. However, I have setup a ssh server so I can get info from another computer if that would be helpful in this configuration.

I ran
Code: 
ps aux
https://paste.debian.net/hidden/b27c2ed6/ to check if X was running and there is a Xorg entry and lxdm-greeter-gtk entry

Code: 
/usr/lib/xorg/Xorg -background none :0 vt07 -nolisten troot

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-931920-start-0.html

Earlier on a previous install I did try various grub options such agp or modeset options so maybe I need to try again that might have been before I installed mint PPC firmware...

from
Rich (BB code): 
lshw

Code: 
     *-pci:0
          description: Host bridge
          product: UniNorth 1.5 AGP
          vendor: Apple Inc.
          physical id: 100
          bus info: pci@0000:00:0b.0
          version: 00
          width: 32 bits
          clock: 66MHz
          configuration: driver=agpgart-uninorth latency=16
          resources: irq:0
        *-display
             description: VGA compatible controller
             product: RV100/M6 [Rage/Radeon Mobility Series]
             vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
             physical id: 10
             bus info: pci@0000:00:10.0
             logical name: /dev/fb0
             version: 00
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 66MHz
             capabilities: agp agp-2.0 pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom fb
             configuration: depth=32 driver=radeon latency=255 mingnt=8 resolution=1152,768
             resources: irq:48 memory:b8000000-bfffffff ioport:400(size=256) memory:b0000000-b000ffff memory:b0020000-b003ffff

Reading this now https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver
https://linux-hardware.org/index.php?id=pci:1002-4c59-1014-052f

Side Issue though, it wouldn't allow me to upload a file using scp. Permission Denied was the error so I uploaded a tiny hello world binary to github and wget-ted it...
 
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I have no /usr/lib/powerpc-linux-gnu/dri/radeon_dri.so and that's an error in a previous Xorg log I shared... So where can I find it to install it? or solve the problem
 
There are more errors in dmesg
https://paste.debian.net/hidden/3bce0301

And looking up things, I might need to specify a grub option
Might need to disable a mode in driver
Might need to force the colours to be greater than 16x16 or whatever
Might need to change login manager
Or specify Xorg alternative options

Dmesg is showing lightdm, I was sure I disabled it for lxdm....

Or I can try to revert to XFCE and get one external monitor with a gui
 
Last edited:
CW29 said:
I have no /usr/lib/powerpc-linux-gnu/dri/radeon_dri.so and that's an error in a previous Xorg log I shared... So where can I find it to install it? or solve the problem
Click to expand...
What happens if you boot your PowerBook without the monitor attached? Do your get into X ?
 
results of

sudo modinfo radeon | tail -n 50 | pastebinit

And with radeon.modeset=0 with no external monitor attached, I'm stuck on a white screen for open firmware.

radeon.agpmode=-1, I got a black screen with no external monitor attached,
radeon.agpmode=-1 radeon.deep_color=1, I got a black screen with no external monitor attached,
radeon.agpmode=-1 radeon.modeset=0, I got a white screen with no external monitor attached,

I need to try backlight support next I think
 
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Trying just radeon.backlight=1 and getting a black screen on internal display without external monitor attached.

ps aux gives this /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg -background none :0 vt07 -nolisten tcp -novtswitch -auth /var/run/lxdm/lxdm-:0.auth

Anyway, I can get Xorg another color like pink or blue to see if it is working???
 
Jeroen Diederen said:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm
Then ok and choose lightdm, then reboot.
Click to expand...
Have to go off and do something
Before I forget, I think you need to change the

service lightdm stop
service lxdm start

to

sudo systemctl start lightdm
sudo systemctl stop lxdm

as it didn't like the service in the manual installation instructions
 
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lightdm activated is making the external monitor working...

Thanks for all your help - if anyone doesn't have any more suggestions off the top of their head, then I should accept it is unlikely to get the internal display and just practice cross-compiling and trying to make a mult-arch makefile etc re C... etc
 
Last edited:
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mortlocli said:
On the second try from the starts the install appeared to go through smoothly without any probs.but on reboot get this screen below.

If left alone it goes thru a process but ends with a black dead screen..so obviously something went wrong.

I can pick the second option and have a menu with two recovery choices but they all lead to a black dead screen.

Ive always been meaning to try a net install..so this was a good opportunity..but my next attempt will be trying an install from a usb stick.
Click to expand...
You might like to try to connect your machine to an external monitor. @CW29 found out that her black internal screen Ti G4 PowerBook with ATI Radeon Mobility M6 videocard got a working gui on an external monitor.
 
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Jeroen Diederen said:
You might like to try to connect your machine to an external monitor. @CW29 found out that her black internal screen Ti G4 PowerBook with ATI Radeon Mobility M6 videocard got a working gui on an external monitor.
Click to expand...
Also I had to manually install mint packages and I had to revert to lightdm not use lxdm to get login screen.
 
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I have a question for you guys here. Is there interest in a recent image of MintPPC, either 32- or 64-bits. I have two images on my Google drive to download but they become old now (2019). If there is interest I can make a new one from an existing qcow2 file I created in QEMU. I need however volunteers to try this out, as I never used such formats before. I can convert these qcow2 images to a raw .img file, which can then be dd-ed onto a hard drive as explained on the page Installation of MintPPC with live USB.
 
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