Snow Leopard on Unsupported PowerPC Macs

[ChrisCharman]

Sorry @vddrnnr, but @ChrisCharman has mixed me with someone else, i haven't said that.
From my point of view, I'm a mediocre OSX user, i can do testing of PPC Snow Leopard on my Quad and DC 2.3. I also have a AirPort Extreme on the Quad, so i can test it if you guys haven't tested it. Maybe it is functional, like the PCIe graphics cards work on the 11.2 models (I use the ethernet, thats why I haven't tested/forgot if the WiFi connects).
Quadro FX4500 & 6600 work on my G5.

I also have a question, can the improvements be patched in the next dmg version, so that we have all the current stuff?


Cheers, Nikola!

Apologies @NikolaPPC i remember seeing someone else in this thread had done it and mistakenly thought it was you - i’ve just checked and it was actually @Project Alice
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Hi all,

I tried restoring the 10A190 image (with 'erase destination' enabled) to a partition on my 17" DLSD PowerBook G4 but it keeps saying "restore failure - input/output error", there's nothing wrong with the drive as it was used for MorphOS, OpenBSD and other OS X installations until recently and formats, verifies/repairs permissions and read/writes data without issue. What could be the problem?

I'd also like to ask if anyone knows if Airport/CoreImage/Quartz works out of the box with either 96 or 190 on my model of PowerBook. And has anyone tested either build on a 20" 2.1GHz iMac G5 with iSight? If so, what's the compatibility like?

The dmg may be corrupted, have you tried re-downloading it?

Regarding CoreImage and Quartz compatibility, there’s a list of tested models on the first post of this thread.

Airport can be made to work on some machines with some hacking, and others (using chipsets already enabled in the dev build) work out of the box. There’s a post a few pages back explaining a method for enabling AirPort.

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi @ChrisCharman,

Did you try to build any of the ports?
Because every time I try it errors out when extracting.

Best regards,
voidRunner
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Hi @JoyBed,

Just to confirm you tried this on one of the betas, right?

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi @ChrisCharman and all,

I'm still not able to get macports going for some reason.
I'm trying to find out why but even installing ports with "DEBUG" flag it still does not
provide any "meaningful" reason for the error.
While doing this I decided to try another approach: Copy files built with macports on Leopard to SL PPC

And it works

I'm not sure if all ports work, there may be some ports which are dependent on system libraries on /usr/lib
but at least for some it works. I've just tried it for Curl and it runs without problems.

So right now I'll try to install Macports on my Leopard Partition in my G6 and then
install all the requirements to build LWK and copy them to the SL PPC partition and see how it
goes.

Since LWK does not use the port system itself to build it may work. Lets keep our fingers crossed.
If I can get this to build on Leopard it may also work at least for the part without the security framework
because that is the webkit build that works in SL by just changing the folder inside the
Frameworks subfolder of LWK form 10.5 t0 10.6.

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[JoyBed]

Hi @ChrisCharman,

Did you try to build any of the ports?
Because every time I try it errors out when extracting.

Best regards,
voidRunner
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Hi @JoyBed,

Just to confirm you tried this on one of the betas, right?

Best regards,
voidRunner

Yes, but I only tried taking things into the beya from the 10.6.8 as I said. Its worth to try taking things from something like 10.6.1 or like that. The framework that caused the unbootable state of the OS X was named OpenDirectory. The 1.6.8 was reporting that it is uni-lib but in reality its not, when system tries to load it, it fails.

 

[ChrisCharman]

Hi @ChrisCharman,

Did you try to build any of the ports?
Because every time I try it errors out when extracting.

Best regards,
voidRunner
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Hi @JoyBed,

Just to confirm you tried this on one of the betas, right?

Best regards,
voidRunner

Hi @vddrnnr,

To be honest I haven’t been using the G5 system for a few weeks now (the one that has macports on) and have been working on my iBook G4 so i can’t remember exactly what’s been done with macports under SL on the other system. It could be that the ports aren’t designed to compile on ppc with 10.6 as the target? I’ll have a look next time i’m on the G5 and see if i changed anything that I’ve forgotten about.

I’ve just finished compiling cups from 10.6.8 on Leopard and replaced the 10.5.8 version with success so now using version 1.4.7- will upload the binaries later. Currently waiting for gcc7 to compile on the iBook which is taking several lifetimes! I’m trying to get cmake compiled so i can use llvm 10.

Hopefully you’ll be able to get LWK up and running - maybe we’ll be able to compile the more recent webkit and security libraries from the apple source on SL?

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi @ChrisCharman,

So I've been able to get everything setup for LWK on 10.5.8 in my G5.
But I've tried to follow Tobias Nettle's build hoot's and the only version
I've been able to start building properly is 537.32.
But unfortunately after several hours building LWK I got this error.

Stripping /Volumes/SHARED1/Developer/WebKit/WebKitBuild/Release/gtest.framework/Versions/A/gtest
cd /Volumes/SHARED1/Developer/WebKit/Source/ThirdParty/gtest/xcode
/Developer/usr/bin/strip -x /Volumes/SHARED1/Developer/WebKit/WebKitBuild/Release/gtest.framework/Versions/A/gtest
/Developer/usr/bin/strip: object: /Volumes/SHARED1/Developer/WebKit/WebKitBuild/Release/gtest.framework/Versions/A/gtest malformed object (unknown load command 7)
** BUILD FAILED **

The following build commands failed:
gtest-framework:
Stripping /Volumes/SHARED1/Developer/WebKit/WebKitBuild/Release/gtest.framework/Versions/A/gtest
(1 failure)

If I go to the WebKitBuild folder there is a lot of stuff built including the main frameworks but no
WebKit app.
Does it mean anything to you?
I'm trying to contact Tobias by source forge message to see if he can help.

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[ChrisCharman]

Hi @ChrisCharman,

So I've been able to get everything setup for LWK on 10.5.8 in my G5.
But I've tried to follow Tobias Nettle's build hoot's and the only version
I've been able to start building properly is 537.32.
But unfortunately after several hours building LWK I got this error.

Stripping /Volumes/SHARED1/Developer/WebKit/WebKitBuild/Release/gtest.framework/Versions/A/gtest
cd /Volumes/SHARED1/Developer/WebKit/Source/ThirdParty/gtest/xcode
/Developer/usr/bin/strip -x /Volumes/SHARED1/Developer/WebKit/WebKitBuild/Release/gtest.framework/Versions/A/gtest
/Developer/usr/bin/strip: object: /Volumes/SHARED1/Developer/WebKit/WebKitBuild/Release/gtest.framework/Versions/A/gtest malformed object (unknown load command 7)
** BUILD FAILED **

The following build commands failed:
gtest-framework:
Stripping /Volumes/SHARED1/Developer/WebKit/WebKitBuild/Release/gtest.framework/Versions/A/gtest
(1 failure)

If I go to the WebKitBuild folder there is a lot of stuff built including the main frameworks but no
WebKit app.
Does it mean anything to you?
I'm trying to contact Tobias by source forge message to see if he can help.

Best regards,
voidRunner

It could be the versions or paths to the tools are incorrect if installed via macports? I’m still pretty much a novice when it comes to this stuff on OS X so can’t really offer much help i’m afraid. Did you set any flags at all? Maybe @Larsvonhier can help here? Would be great to get Tobias on board with this as he knows this webkit stuff better than any of us.

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi @ChrisCharman,

Well I've followed all his build instructions on source forge and they went fine
so I'm at a loss here.
I've just sent the message to Tobias.
Let's hope he's interested ;-)

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[internetzel]

Hi,

quite interesting thread this one!
Actually I once had a patched 10.6 kernel booting to single user mode on a PowerBook G4 (or was it a G4 upgraded PowerBook G3?). Getting to the UI login screen wasn't possible because only the frameworks and libraries had ppc slices. It also didn't boot on an iMac G5 because some 64 bit ppc support had been stripped out of the kernel, maybe because Rosetta was 32 bit ppc only.

Leopard WebKit is another thing - getting the latest version working on 10.6 should definitely be possible. There have been attempts to get it working but the persons trying it lost interest when almost having finished the porting. And only the latest versions make any sense at all in my opinion.
For helping you I'll always need the complete build log attached here. It will take some weeks or even months to get it working - you'd really need to be very patient.
Or maybe someone could send me a usb flash drive that would boot into 10.6 on my late 2005 PowerBook G4? Or upload an image somewhere?

Best regards,
Tobias

 

[ChrisCharman]

Hi,

quite interesting thread this one!
Actually I once had a patched 10.6 kernel booting to single user mode on a PowerBook G4 (or was it a G4 upgraded PowerBook G3?). Getting to the UI login screen wasn't possible because only the frameworks and libraries had ppc slices. It also didn't boot on an iMac G5 because some 64 bit ppc support had been stripped out of the kernel, maybe because Rosetta was 32 bit ppc only.

Leopard WebKit is another thing - getting the latest version working on 10.6 should definitely be possible. There have been attempts to get it working but the persons trying it lost interest when almost having finished the porting. And only the latest versions make any sense at all in my opinion.
For helping you I'll always need the complete build log attached here. It will take some weeks or even months to get it working - you'd really need to be very patient.
Or maybe someone could send me a usb flash drive that would boot into 10.6 on my late 2005 PowerBook G4? Or upload an image somewhere?

Best regards,
Tobias

Hi Tobias!

Great to have you onboard!! @Larsvonhier has provided instructions for the modifications needed to create an installer on the sticky post, on the first page of the thread. If you just want a ready-to-go image, he’s also provided one for 10A190 Here. The seed notes for 10A190 can be found on post #374.

You might find using a custom install of 10A096 a better starting point but both builds have pros and cons.

Various fixes discovered thus far can be found throughout the thread and on the first post.

I think most of us working on this are fully understanding that we’re in it for the long-haul if we want to get this thing fully functional. Excited to see more webkit developments moving forward 😊

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi Tobias,

Thank you for reading my message I suppose ;-)
Meantime I've been able to finish the build building with debug instead of release
but when I try to run the run-safari script it fails to load.
Is there something else that needs to be run in order to get the webkit app itself?

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[Larsvonhier]

Hi Tobias,
also a welcome "Hi" from my side, what a pleasant surprise that you "showed up" here!
If we can help you in any way bringing up a PPC system with 10.6 just say so.
(i.e. if the image I´ve made available with a pre-installed SL does not work for you, I could send that USB stick you mentioned, as we seem both to be in Germany ;-)

Best regards,
Lars

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi all,

So I've managed to build Webkit and the Webkit launcher app on my G5 running
Leopard.
I've also found what needs to be changed in the WebCore framework
source code to get the builds from 537.32+ running on SL PPC.
But now I'm facing a very strange problem every time I start loading a page
it starts displaying but after a few seconds webkit freezes and stays there forever.
This also happens on Leopard so it must be some problem with my builds.

@internetzel can you help. The debug build goes fine without errors
Can it be something or some option that needs to be added to the build-webkit script.
I'm running it like this

Tools/Scripts/build-webkit --debug ARCHS="ppc" ONLY_ACTIVE_ARCH=NO

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi Tobias @internetzel,

I've posted the error report from running my 537 build ( 537.52 ) on source forge.
This also happens with other 537's and it happens the same on SL PPC.
I hope you can help.

Regarding building for Snow Leopard I don't know if that will be
possible because the frameworks we have on these betas predate
even many of the ones inside Leopard 10.5.8 and using the steps
I mentioned before it is possible to replace the SL frameworks with the ones
from Leopard to get Safari 5.0.6 running and also the webkits up to 537.32.
Trying to run the Snow Leopard builds fails with errors about missing stuff in
the SL PPC frameworks.

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[internetzel]

Hi all,

So I've managed to build Webkit and the Webkit launcher app on my G5 running
Leopard.
I've also found what needs to be changed in the WebCore framework
source code to get the builds from 537.32+ running on SL PPC.
But now I'm facing a very strange problem every time I start loading a page
it starts displaying but after a few seconds webkit freezes and stays there forever.
This also happens on Leopard so it must be some problem with my builds.

@internetzel can you help. The debug build goes fine without errors
Can it be something or some option that needs to be added to the build-webkit script.
I'm running it like this

Tools/Scripts/build-webkit --debug ARCHS="ppc" ONLY_ACTIVE_ARCH=NO

Best regards,
voidRunner

Hi voidRunner,

unfortunately freezing was a very common problem in those older leopard-webkit builds, and I had managed to improve that situation in the later builds only.
You can be proud of having made it build, launch and even start to load a web site in fact!
Now you should start preparing for the later builds. Please give me some time to prepare some more instructions! The key to get this working is a lot of patience.

Did those 10.6 beta builds ship with Safari 5.1?

Regards,
Tobias

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi Tobias,

Thank you.
No unfortunately these builds come with 4.0 Developer Preview.
That's why I mentioned that the best we can get right now is by changing some
system frameworks getting 5.0.6 and some of the webkit 537's running is as
far as we can go right now.
Regarding the builds I'm doing these we're an initial test to get a confirmed build
done by you that runs on these sites also running with my build setup.
I've tried the 537.52 on source forge and it does not behave like this on Leopard but
mine fails on Leopard.

I've also tried to build the 538's but inside WebKitLibraries the SQLite components
are not there after checkout and the svn merge step does not bring them back.
And so while applying the patches it fails on those components.

Can it be something in my macports/xcode setup?
I've also tried to interchange frameworks between the two builds ( yours and mine )
and it fails immediately to start.

You don't happen to have a backup of the scripts for building one of these versions
stored somewhere?

Did you do your builds on a G5 or G4?

PS sorry for so many questions ;-)

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi all,

I've found another app that runs well on SL PPC.
It's Teamviewer. For those that do not know it it's a remote connection
software with additional features like chat, file transfer, and more.
The only snag is that the last version that runs without problem is version
6.10370 from around May 2011 ( the last I could find thtough Wayback Machine
that runs. the 6.20.. does not run anymore )
If you need to connect to another machine that is not supported by our available
RDP/VNC clients Cord and Microsoft RDP and Chicken ) be it windows, Mac or Linux you just need to
find the respective version for the OS you need to connect to.
Even on a non QE/CI pbook it runs very fast as as all the options that make Teamviewer
great in my opinion.

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[PowerPlayG5]

Not to be rude or anything but I have an ibook g4 I'm repairing and I'd like to try this out however I must ask, what would be the point of this? What benefits would this bring once this is stable on all possible macs?

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi @PowerPlayG5,

The long term results of this endeavour are yet to be determined.
I think right now we have two scenarios depending on your machine:

1. QE/CI supported which means PowerMacs with one of the cards mentioned in the OP

This scenario is the most "operational" one right now because you get all the software
running as it should

2. Non QE/CI supported machines which means all pbooks

Using some of the "workarounds" mentioned in this thread we can get QuartzGL working
and an almost smooth UI but some software won't work properly for example CorePlayer
and others which depend on QE/CI or OpenGL in hardware.

Looking at the possibilities this SL PPC "betas" gives us they all are mostly related to the possibility
of having available software that need the SL frameworks to run without having
to "back port"/adjust the to Leopard which may also not be possible

I've posted some examples here like the last version of Cord which was only available
for Snow Leopard Intel.
For me personally this is the most interesting part.

From our tests what we also feel is that overall performance of these "betas" is superior to Leopard
and at least the 096 Server/Client is very stable and supports most PPC hardware.
We can also get some software directly from SL 10.6.0 running without changes.

I am using it as a daily driver and every day try to find more software/options to get the most out of it.

All the help we can get trying out / finding new stuff is an important contribution.
Give it a try and see what you think ;-)
Use the pre-built images provided by @Larsvonhier so you can get up and running quickly

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[PowerPlayG5]

Hi @PowerPlayG5,

The long term results of this endeavour are yet to be determined.
I think right now we have two scenarios depending on your machine:

1. QE/CI supported which means PowerMacs with one of the cards mentioned in the OP

This scenario is the most "operational" one right now because you get all the software
running as it should

2. Non QE/CI supported machines which means all pbooks

Using some of the "workarounds" mentioned in this thread we can get QuartzGL working
and an almost smooth UI but some software won't work properly for example CorePlayer
and others which depend on QE/CI or OpenGL in hardware.

Looking at the possibilities this SL PPC "betas" gives us they all are mostly related to the possibility
of having available software that need the SL frameworks to run without having
to "back port"/adjust the to Leopard which may also not be possible

I've posted some examples here like the last version of Cord which was only available
for Snow Leopard Intel.
For me personally this is the most interesting part.

From our tests what we also feel is that overall performance of these "betas" is superior to Leopard
and at least the 096 Server/Client is very stable and supports most PPC hardware.
We can also get some software directly from SL 10.6.0 running without changes.

I am using it as a daily driver and every day try to find more software/options to get the most out of it.

All the help we can get trying out / finding new stuff is an important contribution.
Give it a try and see what you think ;-)
Use the pre-built images provided by @Larsvonhier so you can get up and running quickly

Best regards,
voidRunner

Ok, that clears things up, thanks for the reply!

 

[Project Alice]

Apologies @NikolaPPC i remember seeing someone else in this thread had done it and mistakenly thought it was you - i’ve just checked and it was actually @Project Alice
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The dmg may be corrupted, have you tried re-downloading it?

Regarding CoreImage and Quartz compatibility, there’s a list of tested models on the first post of this thread.

Airport can be made to work on some machines with some hacking, and others (using chipsets already enabled in the dev build) work out of the box. There’s a post a few pages back explaining a method for enabling AirPort.

Yes I installed MacPorts by building it from the source.

Sorry for my absents lately; I have been checking on this thread, my personal life has been hectic lately and I actually haven't been fiddling around with any of my computers... I'm really wanting to get AGP Graphic's acceleration though.

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi @Project Alice,

Good to hear from you again.
I hope everything turns out ok.
Just one quick question after setting up macports are you able
to build stuff?
Because in my case it always fails on the extract step no matter what the port is .
Unfortunately as you know we still haven't found a "workaround" for AGP but we
found some new options for example using PCI graphics cards from Nvidia, ATI's are still a no go.
For a better/ smoother UI take a look at post #381 its not QE/CI but a lot better.

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[Project Alice]

Hi @Project Alice,

Good to hear from you again.
I hope everything turns out ok.
Just one quick question after setting up macports are you able
to build stuff?
Because in my case it always fails on the extract step no matter what the port is .
Unfortunately as you know we still haven't found a "workaround" for AGP but we
found some new options for example using PCI graphics cards from Nvidia, ATI's are still a no go.
For a better/ smoother UI take a look at post #381 its not QE/CI but a lot better.

Best regards,
voidRunner

I installed Neofetch via Macports. I don’t remember if I tried installing anything else, but I know for sure that it installed and ran.

I saw that the Geforce 5200 PCI was listed as working.. super odd since AGP is just an extension of PCI.
I do have a PCI 5200, it is installed in my B&W. I also have a PCI Geforce 6200, installed in an old PC. However I can’t find the PCI mac ROM, only an AGP ROM, which is why I haven’t flashed the 6200.

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi @Project Alice,

Well if you have a PCI 5200 than maybe you can swap and try it ;-)
As far as I understood this only works if it's the only card on your system...

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[internetzel]

Hi Tobias,

Thank you.
No unfortunately these builds come with 4.0 Developer Preview.
That's why I mentioned that the best we can get right now is by changing some
system frameworks getting 5.0.6 and some of the webkit 537's running is as
far as we can go right now.
Regarding the builds I'm doing these we're an initial test to get a confirmed build
done by you that runs on these sites also running with my build setup.
I've tried the 537.52 on source forge and it does not behave like this on Leopard but
mine fails on Leopard.

I've also tried to build the 538's but inside WebKitLibraries the SQLite components
are not there after checkout and the svn merge step does not bring them back.
And so while applying the patches it fails on those components.

Can it be something in my macports/xcode setup?
I've also tried to interchange frameworks between the two builds ( yours and mine )
and it fails immediately to start.

You don't happen to have a backup of the scripts for building one of these versions
stored somewhere?

Did you do your builds on a G5 or G4?

PS sorry for so many questions ;-)

Best regards,
voidRunner

Hi,

I did build on both a G4 and a G5 machine, but mainly on the G4.
Unfortunately for you I'm going on vacation tomorrow so I cannot guide you.
But trust me - you'll be wasting your time if you try to get it working on your own. It took years for me to figure everything out. I'd say there's too much to know about the whole webkit build system and the leopard-webkit patches in particular.
I know that some of the instructions don't work as intended...

Best regards