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z970

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 2, 2017
3,589
4,543
Thanks. I've tried with the CD, and it's been stuck here for more than 20 minutes now.

Not sure what the issue is.

I've had that happen. Apparently, your drive is failing and OpenBSD is usually the first one to pick up on it.
[automerge]1571328956[/automerge]
OpenBSD 6.6 has been released! Now is a good time to try for anyone on the fence.
 

breakgimme

macrumors newbie
Oct 18, 2019
1
0
OpenBSD 6.6 has been released! Now is a good time to try for anyone on the fence.
Downloaded and installed. There's no powerpc folder in official openbsd package repository lol. Changing to 6.5 package repository didn't help i just got library errors.
 

Lastic

macrumors 6502a
Mar 19, 2016
879
757
North of the HellHole
After MorphOS on my iBook which is fast but not free, I might give OpenBSD a try again.
Only thing lacking in my previous OpenBSD endeavours was smooth 360p video playback and decent web browsing.

Package Repositories still haven't arrived.
As 556fmjoe stated , they take a while, will have to wait a bit longer.

Currently installing Windows XP on a Thinkpad R40 (needed a system with an IDE floppy for my Ataris)
and dual-boot OpenBSD 6.6
 

Imixmuan

Suspended
Dec 18, 2010
526
426
After MorphOS on my iBook which is fast but not free, I might give OpenBSD a try again.
Only thing lacking in my previous OpenBSD endeavours was smooth 360p video playback and decent web browsing.

Package Repositories still haven't arrived.
As 556fmjoe stated , they take a while, will have to wait a bit longer.

Currently installing Windows XP on a Thinkpad R40 (needed a system with an IDE floppy for my Ataris)
and dual-boot OpenBSD 6.6

Hey Lastic you need to try out roytam1's Arctic Fox build and also his K-melenon goanna based browser on XP. I put them on an old PC I had lying about and holy crapitola, felt like I had a brand new machine!
 

MoerBoer

macrumors regular
Jan 27, 2018
216
150
I've had that happen. Apparently, your drive is failing and OpenBSD is usually the first one to pick up on it.
[automerge]1571328956[/automerge]
OpenBSD 6.6 has been released! Now is a good time to try for anyone on the fence.

I strongly doubt it's the drive.

I've tried so many OS's on that machine and after trying OpenBSD, I installed MorphOS via CD and then again Lubuntu 16 and then the latest Mint PPC ( all via CD )

I tried the 6.6 and it gets stuck at exactly the same place.
 

galgot

macrumors 6502
May 28, 2015
487
899
Very impressed by OpenBSD 6.6 :

2020-01-23-212120_1440x900_scrot.png

was super fast to install on a 1.33Ghz 17" PB, easy to configure, sound works , even French PowerBook keyboard works once correctly configured (keyboard.encoding=fr in /etc/wsconsctl.conf).
As far as browsers, Midori 9.0 installs and launch fine, but refuses to connect, have to find why...
Netsurf works perfect.
 

z970

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 2, 2017
3,589
4,543
@galgot How did you get the calendar docklet? I've been using Window Maker for a while and the time / date has always been an issue for me.
 

2984839

Cancelled
Apr 19, 2014
2,114
2,241
Very impressed by OpenBSD 6.6 :

View attachment 890223

was super fast to install on a 1.33Ghz 17" PB, easy to configure, sound works , even French PowerBook keyboard works once correctly configured (keyboard.encoding=fr in /etc/wsconsctl.conf).
As far as browsers, Midori 9.0 installs and launch fine, but refuses to connect, have to find why...
Netsurf works perfect.

I never had success with Midori on any architecture. Try otter-browser instead if you want a webkit based, javascript-capable browser. I use it and like it.
 
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z970

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 2, 2017
3,589
4,543
I never had success with Midori on any architecture. Try otter-browser instead if you want a webkit based, javascript-capable browser. I use it and like it.

Are there any other fully-featured browsers available?

Firefox on i686 segfaults, and I can't find any NM / AF builds for OBSD.

@galgot, I've just noticed you were logged in as a non-root user. Did you log in via XenoDM or startx?

Every time I try startx, it complains that X cannot be started due to a lack of root privileges. Thus, I (annoyingly) always had to be in X as root.
 

wicknix

macrumors 68030
Jun 4, 2017
2,624
5,310
Wisconsin, USA
Firefox on i686 segfaults, and I can't find any NM / AF builds for OBSD.
Slightly off topic, but AF is known to build on freebsd and netbsd. I've seen 2 people try on openbsd with no success. Not sure why. Never tried it myself. 1 guy came close. It built, but failed when linking (at the very end). However I think it was because he lacked enough ram (his 1gb wasn't enough with no swap) when I looked over his log. AF needs 2gb minimum to build and link. I'm sure if someone gave it a shot on openbsd with a 2gb swap file it may just build. FYI my original Linux builds on my mac mini g4 w/1gb ram + 1.5gb swap file took roughly 7.5 hours to complete.

Cheers

Edit: also note AF will only build with gcc 4, 5 or 6. It doesn't support anything higher yet.
 
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galgot

macrumors 6502
May 28, 2015
487
899
I never had success with Midori on any architecture. Try otter-browser instead if you want a webkit based, javascript-capable browser. I use it and like it.

Yes thanks, found that one. Work quite well.

Are there any other fully-featured browsers available?

Firefox on i686 segfaults, and I can't find any NM / AF builds for OBSD.

@galgot, I've just noticed you were logged in as a non-root user. Did you log in via XenoDM or startx?

Every time I try startx, it complains that X cannot be started due to a lack of root privileges. Thus, I (annoyingly) always had to be in X as root.

I used Xenodm, which is default on 6.6 now it seems, selected to start it at boot during the install. But the daemon is easy to kill or restart with the followings as root:
#rcctl disable xenodm
#rcctl enable xenodm
#rcctl stop xenodm
#rcctl start xenodm

I tried installing GNUstep, cause I do whenever I install WindowMaker, but found out it's only for intel in OpenBSD 6.6 :/ Seems some dependencies are missing too (libobjc) if I want to build it...
But I'll have to investigate further.
I do hope they will include it for PPC eventually.
 
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2984839

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Apr 19, 2014
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Are there any other fully-featured browsers available?

Firefox on i686 segfaults, and I can't find any NM / AF builds for OBSD.

@galgot, I've just noticed you were logged in as a non-root user. Did you log in via XenoDM or startx?

Every time I try startx, it complains that X cannot be started due to a lack of root privileges. Thus, I (annoyingly) always had to be in X as root.

Besides Firefox (and the Tor Browser that's built on it), there's Chromium and Iridium, though only for i386 and amd64 and they will not work well on RAM-limited computers. For webkit-based browsers, there's surf, Midori, and otter-browser. Otter and surf have worked well for me, while Midori has not (even on Linux).

xenodm is the correct way to start Xorg now; startx is obsolete. You can control it with rcctl
 
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2984839

Cancelled
Apr 19, 2014
2,114
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Still getting real work done on my PPC Macs. I just finished typing a proposal for a customer on my 12" PowerBook via wordgrinder. I highly, highly recommend it as a word processor, even on faster machines. It's console only, so you don't even need to run X if you don't want to.

# pkg_add wordgrinder
 
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z970

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 2, 2017
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How is wordgrinder in comparison to Abiword or LibreOffice Writer?
 

2984839

Cancelled
Apr 19, 2014
2,114
2,241
How is wordgrinder in comparison to Abiword or LibreOffice Writer?

It's a brutally simple, console only word processor as opposed to the more fully fledged Abiword and LibreOffice. It takes virtually no resources and can export to .odf files, as well as other formats.
 

z970

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 2, 2017
3,589
4,543
It's a brutally simple, console only word processor as opposed to the more fully fledged Abiword and LibreOffice. It takes virtually no resources and can export to .odf files, as well as other formats.

In that case, how does it similarly compare to Nano? I'm guessing it's a lot closer to that instead of the aforementioned suites?
 

2984839

Cancelled
Apr 19, 2014
2,114
2,241
In that case, how does it similarly compare to Nano? I'm guessing it's a lot closer to that instead of the aforementioned suites?

In the way you use it, yes it’s quite similar to nano. But it’s a word processor, not a raw text editor like vi or nano. Think of it like a minimalist, CLI version of LibreOffice Writer
 
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salamanderjuice

macrumors 6502a
Feb 28, 2020
580
613
Anybody know how to decrease the text size for the CLI interface on an iBook G4 with OpenBSD 6.6? The OpenBSD FAQ gives how to do it for devices using VGA, but the iBook is using radeondrm... I found an ancient page from 2003 that has you recompiling the kernel to do it but I don't think those instructions exactly apply anymore.

I'd kind of like to use the iBook as distraction free device and not using X11 is one way to limiting those but I'd rather not work at like 18 point font.

I'm also having trouble getting Wifi to automatically connect at boot.

I can do

Bash:
ifconfig bwi0 up
ifconfig bwi0 join myssid wpakey mypassphrase
dhclient

and get a working net connection after boot but having my hostfile.bwi0 as

Bash:
join myssid wpakey mypassphrase
dhcp
up

seems to get a lease at boot but doesn't actually seem to let me connect anywhere. Not sure what's wrong there.

Overall I'm pretty impressed that OpenBSD 6.6 works so well on a device so old.
 

2984839

Cancelled
Apr 19, 2014
2,114
2,241
Anybody know how to decrease the text size for the CLI interface on an iBook G4 with OpenBSD 6.6? The OpenBSD FAQ gives how to do it for devices using VGA, but the iBook is using radeondrm... I found an ancient page from 2003 that has you recompiling the kernel to do it but I don't think those instructions exactly apply anymore.

I'd kind of like to use the iBook as distraction free device and not using X11 is one way to limiting those but I'd rather not work at like 18 point font.

I'm also having trouble getting Wifi to automatically connect at boot.

I can do

Bash:
ifconfig bwi0 up
ifconfig bwi0 join myssid wpakey mypassphrase
dhclient

and get a working net connection after boot but having my hostfile.bwi0 as

Bash:
join myssid wpakey mypassphrase
dhcp
up

seems to get a lease at boot but doesn't actually seem to let me connect anywhere. Not sure what's wrong there.

Overall I'm pretty impressed that OpenBSD 6.6 works so well on a device so old.

if you have a DHCP lease but can't send or receive traffic, try reloading the firewall rules.

Code:
# pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf

Sometimes on slow hardware and/or with very slow-responding NICs I think the firewall is loaded before they have a chance to get a lease, which puts the firewall in a default deny state. Not sure if this is the exact cause, but reloading it usually fixes it for me.
 
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mortlocli

macrumors 6502a
Feb 23, 2020
729
665
probs with setting up a desktop environment...on an G4 iBook.

On my first install I had Xfce4 working (and openbox) though it was rather badly.
Had delayed touchpad action with lots of screen flashes.

I installed OpenBSD a second time and thought Id try JWM as it seems more light weight.

Prob is if I dont have xenodm it wont work and if I do ie '#rcctl start xenodm' the default desktop environment takes over and wont permit JWM to work..seemingly..?
 

2984839

Cancelled
Apr 19, 2014
2,114
2,241
probs with setting up a desktop environment...on an G4 iBook.

On my first install I had Xfce4 working (and openbox) though it was rather badly.
Had delayed touchpad action with lots of screen flashes.

I installed OpenBSD a second time and thought Id try JWM as it seems more light weight.

Prob is if I dont have xenodm it wont work and if I do ie '#rcctl start xenodm' the default desktop environment takes over and wont permit JWM to work..seemingly..?

xenodm will use the ~/.xsession file to look for its commands to execute. If you were previously using ~/.xinitrc and startx, that process is now obsolete.

Put something like "exec jwm" (and any other commands you want for your session) in your ~/.xsession file and you should be good. Make sure that file is executable.
 
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