Re: PB G4 Installation
On 5/20/20 10:12 PM, userm57@yahoo.com wrote:
> I installed Debian SID from the 4/19/2020 installation CD to a PowerBook
> G4, 1.5 GHz, 1.25 GB memory. It seems to have installed well -- thanks
> to everyone who is working to maintain Debian for PowerPC!
Great to hear!
> This system has valid installations of Mac OS X Tiger and Mac OS X
> Leopard. During installation, these operating systems were detected:
> Mac OS X (32-bit) (on /dev/sda3) <-- This should be Mac OS X Tiger
> Mac OS X (64-bit) (on /dev/sda3)
> Mac OS X (32-bit) (on /dev/sda4) <-- This should be Mac OS X Leopard
> Mac OS X (64-bit) (on /dev/sda4)
>
> After installation, if I select either the first or third choice, I see:
> error: can't find command `xnu_kernel'.
> error: can't find command `xnu_mkext'.
> Press any key to continue...
>
> I'm not sure why the second and fourth choices exist at all on this system.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix the GRUB configuration to
> allow booting of Mac OS X partitions? I'll study the man pages, but if
> I can't get it to work, I'll need to install yaboot instead.
Someone on this mailing list explained how to fix that. I think that was
last month or so. Or maybe the mailing list member in question will read
your mail.
> And I have these additional comments and suggestions (some of these may
> be out of scope of the Debian PPC unsupported port):
>
> 1) I know Debian has opted to use systemd instead of sysvinit; however,
> there are valid reasons (mostly resource related) to opt for sysvinit on
> some systems. For example, on a PowerBook G3 Wallstreet, 266 MHz, 384
> MB memory, sysvinit runs better than systemd. This is not an invitation
> to re-open (or start a new) systemd discussion, it is a request to allow
> installation of packages that shouldn't require systemd, such as
> synaptic, to be installed without also installing systemd. Fortunately,
> Xfce can still be installed without systemd.
This isn't really something I can change, sorry. You can just install sysvinit
and it will work. Whether certain desktops work without systemd is basically
a decision that has been made upstream.
> 2) Is there a way to change the Ethernet interface from "enP2p32s15f0"
> back to "eth0"? I'm sure there are many very good reasons to have the
> longer names on modern systems, but on the PB G4 I'm not likely to
> change out the Ethernet interface, and it would be easier to manage it
> as "eth0". Again, I'm not inviting discussion about why the choice of
> the longer names is better, I'm just trying to determine whether there
> is a user-configurable option for switching it back to "eth0" (as it was
> in Debian 7.8).
See: https://wiki.debian.org/NetworkInterfaceNames#How_to_get_it_back
Apparently, it's enough to pass "net.ifnames=0" on the kernel command line.
> 3) The trackpad on the PB G4 is a little slow and unpredictable in
> Debian SID, especially when the system is doing other things (like an
> apt-get update or apt-get upgrade). The problems go away if I use a USB
> mouse, but I'm wondering if there is any way to tune the trackpad
> performance (or if not to just disable it altogether).
Did you try asking on the corresponding Linux kernel mailing list?
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
Reply to: