Hi Cedar, On 8/25/25 7:09 PM, Cedar Maxwell wrote:
Adrian: Thanks for your reply. According to that article in my previous email, those instructions should still work with kernel 6.1 or earlier. Are there any offline installer ISOs at https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/ which contain kernel <=6.1? It appears they're all 'net installs, which will download the latest kernel from the repository. Correct me if I'm wrong. P.S. Does anyone know why this article would claim kernel >6.1 won't work?
There were issues with kernels around 5.10 not booting correctly on PowerBook 3400c and Wallstreet systems (please refer to the link that Adrian sent). Kernel 6.1 and later work fine on Wallstreet; I'm running a custom 6.16.2 kernel on my Wallstreet now.
I don't recommend using Debian's default powerpc kernels. Instead, I suggest creating custom kernels depending on your specific hardware as determined by looking at the System Profiler output in Mac OS. I try to avoid using modules whenever possible. I use the same custom kernel on my Wallstreet, Lombard and Pismo systems. On Lombard and Pismo, I boot using yaboot; on Wallstreet, I boot using BootX.
On Sat, 2025-08-23 at 12:55 +0200, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:Hello, On Fri, 2025-08-22 at 20:12 -0500, Cedar Maxwell wrote:Can anyone provide any guidance on how to install Debian onto an OldWorld ROM Macintosh? I followed this gentleman's guide to the tee (before it was changed to read "OUTDATED") on my PDQ, but as soon as I selected "Linux" from the BootX prompt, I received a black screen, and was unable to progress further. https://distrosprojects.blogspot.com/2023/09/modern-debian-on-1998-powerbook-g3.html I have struggled to find solid evidence to back the partitioning choices, and nothing to explain my actual issue.Last time I tried a recent kernel on an OldWorld PowerMac, the kernel crashed quite early and I didn't get to see any usable boot messages. There was a discussion on the topic on this list, see [1]. While I have an OldWorld PowerBook somewhere in my storage, I don't really have the time to look into this issue now so that someone else interested needs to do that. It's not unusual for the kernel not to work on hardware on which it hasn't been tested on for a long time. Adrian[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2021/07/msg00050.html
Wallstreet systems can only boot from BootX in Mac OS. I believe it's also possible to use an install ISO by copying the kernel and initrd from the ISO to your local disk and then use BootX to boot that kernel and initrd. Neither GRUB nor yaboot will work for booting, since the Wallstreet is an OldWorld system. (Note that GRUB also fails on the Lombard, even though it is NewWorld, though yaboot works fine there).
If you have another, perhaps faster, G3 system that has SCSI (such as a Lombard or a Beige G3 Desktop), I suggest installing there to an external SCSI drive, then boot the Wallstreet from that SCSI drive and optionally copy the installation (using dump/restore or equivalent) to your Wallstreet disk.
To run Debian SID on a Wallstreet, you should have at least 6 GB of available disk space and 128 MiB memory (512 MiB, the maximum memory for Wallstreet, is of course better). I use pdisk to partition disks from Mac OS, or mac-fdisk (or parted) to partition disks from Debian SID or Gentoo.
There seems to be an issue right now getting X-Windows to work on the Wallstreet with the current Debian SID. My Wallstreet has ATY 3D RAGE LT PRO graphics, but wdm and startx tell me that no screens are found. My Pismo works; it has ATY Rage128 graphics, so I suspect an upstream issue with some version of xorg-xserver. To confirm this, I first need to go back to a version of Debian SID that worked, then boot kernel 6.16.2. If that works, then I'll see if I can figure out which version of xorg-xserver may have caused a regression.
-Stan