Re: Best way too install Debian Jessie on powerpc/powerpc64 ?

[Matti Palmström]

On Fri, Apr 5, 2019 at 7:53 PM John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <
glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:

> Rebuilding the images takes quite some efforts and I would like to focus
> rather on the
> new stuff. FWIW, Frank Scheiner has now patches ready to fix the GRUB
> issue with our
> new installation images. We just have to wait for the current Debian
> Buster freeze to
> be over.
>

Arrgh! The downside of the Debian release cycle. Would it be possible to
make an inofficial inofficial build with just the GRUB part changed? It
would make it easier for people to install for now, and would let more
people test the GRUB changes.

/M

PowerPC inside logo for fun

[Matti Palmström]

https://imgur.com/5Y53yLI

I made a PowerPC inside logo a while ago that I thought my fellow geeks
might find interesting. Print this on a paper and slap it on your computers
or whatever. Contact me in case you want a printed sticker.

Regards
/M

Re: nvram / boing startup sound / mac mini g4

[Matti Palmström]

On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 12:09 PM Mathieu Malaterre  wrote:

> Has anyone tried to remove the annoying boing startup ound on a Mac
> Mini G4 system. I have deleted the macosx partition on this machine.
>
pmac-utils (or powerpc-utils from Jessie) has the tool nvsetvol to
change the volume of the chime.

Regards
/M

Re: What's the status of hfsprogs?

[Matti Palmström]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2018 at 12:55 PM Frank Scheiner 
wrote:

> Maybe not on amd64, but GRUB **boots** from HFS on NewWorld PowerMacs
> (G4 and G5 and IIRC also tested successfully on G3 Blue & White).
>
> Anyhow, from what you described earlier I assume it's more like the used
> x86 firmware provided by VirtualBox can't load GRUB from a HFS
> partition, which is pretty much expected. GRUB itself has ro support for
> a lot of file systems (check for example [1]).
>
> [1]: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grub.git/tree/grub-core/fs
>

Now I feel a bit stupid, I googled but didn't think of checking the source
:-P

But that should make it possible to have the slightly "hacky" solution to
put /boot on a HFS partition, which should be bootable from Open Firmware.
Is the solution with only having grub.img more secure, or is it just to
make it easier to change for those who already have systems up and running
with yaboot today?

Regards
/M

Re: What's the status of hfsprogs?

[Matti Palmström]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 10:12 PM Frank Scheiner 
wrote:

> Hei,
>
> On 11/21/18 21:36, Matti Palmström wrote:
> > Heya
> >
> > I'm toying around a bit with hfsprogs in a virtual machine and I wonder
> > if anyone else has any experience with it? Is it terribly buggy or is it
> > just me having bad luck?
> >
> > Mounting a HFS partition and writing to it seems to work alright but
> > when I try to unmount the partition it hangs. I've also tried to sync
> > the disk cache before I unmount it but it also hangs. Or locks.
>
> Can't say that I ever recognized your described behaviour on real
> hardware (G4 and G5). Mounting and unmounting so far always worked as
> long as the FS wasn't tempered with.
>
> Can you please also give some more details about used OS release and
> package version?


Virtualbox 5.2.22
Buster alpha3 amd64 (just to see if a thing works at all)
hfsprogs 332.25-11+b2

Weird, now it works.

And it seems like I got my answer, grub can't boot from a HFS partition :-P

Regards
/M

What's the status of hfsprogs?

[Matti Palmström]

Heya

I'm toying around a bit with hfsprogs in a virtual machine and I wonder if
anyone else has any experience with it? Is it terribly buggy or is it just
me having bad luck?

Mounting a HFS partition and writing to it seems to work alright but when I
try to unmount the partition it hangs. I've also tried to sync the disk
cache before I unmount it but it also hangs. Or locks.

Regards
/M

Midori 6

[Matti Palmström]

I don't have my ppc64 up and running at the moment, have anyone tried
compiling Midori 6 and checked how it runs for us?

https://www.midori-browser.org/2018/10/31/all-for-one-one-for-all/

Where did pmac-utils go?

[Matti Palmström]

Might have been called powerpc-utils in Jessie but since stretch that has
just been a metapackage for powerpc-ibm-utils and that package lacks some
of the utils I'm looking for, nvsetvol among things.

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/powerpc-utils
https://packages.debian.org/sid/powerpc-utils

/M

Re: How to read CPU temp from TAU?

[Matti Palmström]

On Sun, May 27, 2018 at 4:28 AM, Dennis Clarke 
wrote:

>
> Don't know what TAU is but do you have windfarm ?
>
> root@nix:~# cat /sys/devices/platform/windfarm.0/cpu-temp-[0-4]
> 43.593
> 45.578
> 40.546
> 42.015


Thermal Management Support, was on the G3 and G4 cpus. Think windfarm is
G5. Might come in handy when I get around to get my powerpc iMac up and
running though :-)

Re: How to read CPU temp from TAU?

[Matti Palmström]

On Sun, May 27, 2018 at 7:59 AM, Mathieu Malaterre  wrote:
> What's the output of
> $ cat /proc/cpuinfo
> ?

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor   : 0
cpu : 7447A, altivec supported
clock   : 1499.94MHz
revision: 1.5 (pvr 8003 0105)
bogomips: 83.20

timebase: 41600571
platform: PowerMac
model   : PowerMac10,2
machine : PowerMac10,2
motherboard : PowerMac10,2 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh
detected as : 287 (Mac mini (Late 2005))
pmac flags  : 0010
L2 cache: 512K unified
pmac-generation : NewWorld
Memory  : 1024 MB

How to read CPU temp from TAU?

[Matti Palmström]

Hi

How do you read the cpu temperature from TAU on an iMac mini G4 (MPC7447a)?

According to /boot/config-4.16.0-1-powerpc it is compiled with TAU on
CONFIG_TAU=y
but I can't find a way to read it. I've tried with lm-sensors but no go
there.

Regards
/M

Re: Removal of POWER4 support, (was: [GIT PULL] Please pull powerpc/linux.git powerpc-4.17-1 tag)

[Matti Palmström]

On 2018-04-08 10:07, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

 From what I have gained now, PPC970 is apparently maintained in a separate
directory, so PowerPC Macintoshes should be fine. Not sure about the
Freescale stuff at the moment.


Reading on github 
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/powerpc/kernel/cputable.c 
support for POWER4 and POWER4+ was removed, but PPC970, PPC970FX et al. 
is still left. Support for the 64-bit Freescale cpus e5500 and e6500 is 
also still there.


To answer my question from earlier today, support for 32-bit powerpc 
seems to be unchanged.


Regards
/M

Re: Removal of POWER4 support, (was: [GIT PULL] Please pull powerpc/linux.git powerpc-4.17-1 tag)

[Matti Palmström]

On 2018-04-08 10:07, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

 From what I have gained now, PPC970 is apparently maintained in a separate
directory, so PowerPC Macintoshes should be fine. Not sure about the
Freescale stuff at the moment.

We need to wait for the reply from Michael Ellermann.


Are the 74xx/G4 POWER4 or are those too a special case?

Regards
/M

Re: Fail to install stretch to iMac G5

[Matti Palmström]

> This image will not work on your Macintosh G5, unfortunately. ppc64el is
a new
ppc64 port by IBM which is incompatible with old hardware.

Ooh... I guess was confused because
https://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/#ppc64el says "Here you can find
information about the 64-bit PowerPC Little Endian architecture" and links
to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ppc64 which made it look like PowerPC 970*
was little endian too.

Thanks for the help, now I have the installer going.

Regards
/M

On Sun, Jun 18, 2017 at 12:02 AM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <
glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:

> Hi Matti!
>
> On 06/17/2017 11:54 PM, Matti Palmström wrote:
> > I have an iMac G5 iSight with a 64-bit PowerPC 970fx that I try to
> install Stretch to. I have
> > downloaded debian-stretch-DI-rc5-ppc64el-netinst.iso and burned it to a
> cd and dd'ed it to a usb stick.
>
> This image will not work on your Macintosh G5, unfortunately. ppc64el is a
> new
> ppc64 port by IBM which is incompatible with old hardware.
>
> Luckily, there is still a way to install Debian on your machine. You can
> download
> a CD image for Debian sid by following the link below:
>
> > http://jenkins.kfreebsd.eu/jenkins/view/cd/job/debian-cd_
> sid_powerpc/ws/*zip*/workspace.zip
>
> Unzipping this file should give you an ISO image which you can burn to a
> CD and use
> to install your G5 with Debian for powerpc. This will give you a 64-bit
> kernel (ppc64)
> and a 32-bit userland (powerpc).
>
> We will be providing full 64-bit ppc64 installation media in the future
> which will
> have both a 64-bit kernel and a 64-bit userland but work on that hasn't
> finished
> yet, unfortunately.
>
> Cheers,
> Adrian
>
> --
>  .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
> : :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
> `. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
>   `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
>

Fail to install stretch to iMac G5

[Matti Palmström]

I have an iMac G5 iSight with a 64-bit PowerPC 970fx that I try to install
Stretch to. I have downloaded debian-stretch-DI-rc5-ppc64el-netinst.iso and
burned it to a cd and dd'ed it to a usb stick.

Neither is detected by the mac boot thingie when boot with with option key
pressed.

I've tried booting through open firmware. By the look of the install media
I assume it uses grub these days so I've tried with just

0 > boot usb0,\install

a screen saying "loading XCOFF" flickers by and then I get the circle with
the slash. I've also tried \install\vmlinux and many other variants. Anyone
know what I've missed?

Regards
/M

Re: Where is powerpc now?

[Matti Palmström]

On 2016-11-15 21:27, Herminio Hernandez, Jr. wrote:
> is there even a sid iso?

The Stretch alpha 8 installer is removed but alpha 7 is still there 
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/stretch_di_alpha7/powerpc/ If they 
remove that too you'll have to install stable and upgrade or build them 
as John Paul Adrian Glaubitz mentioned in 
https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2016/11/msg00087.html


/M

Where is powerpc now?

[Matti Palmström]

Since the other day I get

N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'main/binary-powerpc/Packages' as 
repository 'http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stretch InRelease' doesn't 
support architecture 'powerpc'


Is this just a temporary glitch or are we moving to debian-ports?

Regards
/M