Re: OldWorld ROM Macintoshes
Hi Jeroen,
Thanks, that's good information. The reason I kept systemd for these
tests in Debian is that an increasing number of Debian packages are
being compiled to require systemd. For example, as far as I know, Xfce
is the last desktop environment (other than twm) that doesn't require
systemd in Debian. Even the lightdm display manager seems to require
systemd, though it appears that wdm and xdm do not. I wanted to confirm
that X11 still breaks on the Wallstreet even when systemd is being used.
Anyway, systemd is great for large systems with gigabytes of memory, but
not so much for small systems that are memory-constrained (such as m68k
and most powerpc, certainly all m68 and G3/G4 PowerBooks). I've used
systemd successfully on a two-processor PowerMac G5 with 8 GiB memory,
but even there sysvinit is noticeably faster.
Not being an expert in systemd, I wish there were some tools to convert
systemd services to sysvinit scripts (perhaps there are and I just don't
know about them).
Anyway, I'll keep using Debian distributions as long as they offer a
choice of init programs. Gentoo is also a good option, though X11 there
is more of a hassle to set up. I got it working in Gentoo by using twm;
performance is mostly comparable to modern systems, except for the
limited features of twm.
I would also add that it's a good idea for every system to have a rescue
partition (I use Debian and Gentoo, so they can rescue each other if
needed). And a working copy of dump/restore to copy filesystems between
systems is helpful. Yes, I know there are issues using the same SSH
setup on multiple systems, but I've mostly given up on SSH anyway at
this point, especially on old hardware. Not only is it slow, but the SSH
developers keep making new versions incompatible with old versions. So I
mostly use telnet and ftp. Of course, cleartext passwords are a bad idea
and shouldn't be used on any Internet-facing systems.
-Stan
On 9/8/25 10:05 PM, Jeroen Diederen wrote:
> Hi Stan,
>
> This is an excellent guide how to setup sysvinit as replacement for
> systemd. I applied it to Trixie and it works. It might make your Pismo
> and Wallstreet collector items a lot faster.
>
> https://ianlecorbeau.com/blog/debian-bookworm-sysvinit.html
>
> Best regards,
> Jeroen
>
>
> Stan Johnson schreef op 2025-09-09 10:15:
>> On 9/8/25 6:45 PM, Cedar Maxwell wrote:
>>> On Sun, 2025-09-07 at 13:16 -0600, Stan Johnson wrote:
>>>> On 9/5/25 6:27 PM, Cedar Maxwell wrote:
>>>>> ...
>>>>>
>>>>> Would you send your xorg.conf, etc., please? I can only seem to
>>>>> get
>>>>> Xorg to launch by passing in video=ofonly. I can't get it to work
>>>>> with
>>>>> fbdev either.
>>>>> ...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I've been testing kernels on my Wallstreet using a current Gentoo
>>>> distribution.
>>>>
>>>> I noticed this morning that mainline kernel v6.1, compiled using the
>>>> attached .config file, works in Gentoo, but not in Debian SID.
>>>>
>>>> In Debian, I can see the X11 login screen, but the keyboard and mouse
>>>> don't respond. In Gentoo, everything works as expected.
>>>>
>>>> In Debian SID, I'm using Xfce, sysvinit-core instead of systemd, and
>>>> wdm
>>>> instead of lightdm.
>>>>
>>>> In Gentoo, I noticed elogind was installed; elogind was not installed
>>>> in
>>>> Debian. Using "apt-get install elogind" to install elogind, systemd
>>>> was
>>>> removed, as well as xserver-org and some X11-related files, so of
>>>> course
>>>> X11 doesn't work at all now, and I'll need to restore from a backup.
>>>> Interestingly, I'm not having similar issues with PB Lombard or
>>>> Pismo.
>>>>
>>>> My BootX configuration is as follows (working X11 in 6.1.0 in
>>>> Gentoo):
>>>> Kernel: vmlinux-6.1.0-pmac (custom kernel, no modules)
>>>> Boot Device: /dev/sda13 (Gentoo partition)
>>>> More kernel arguments: video=atyfb:vmode:14,cmode:32,mclk:71
>>>> No video driver: checked
>>>> Options:
>>>> Force SCSI ON: checked
>>>> Force video settings: checked
>>>> Use specified RAM disk: not checked
>>>
>>> Checking "No video driver" appears to pass in video=ofonly. How is
>>> your performance with this configuration? Mine is borderline unusable.
>>> mclk:71 makes everything green.
>>
>> As a test, I installed the latest Debian SID on a Pismo, so I get
>> systemd and all of the badness that it has for slow,
>> memory-constrained systems (my Pismo has 512 MiB memory).
>>
>> Interestingly, I don't pass "video=aty128fs:1024x768" to the kernel
>> (via yaboot) as I have in the past, yet it still works, though about
>> twice as slowly as using sysvinit (or rcinit in Gentoo). So I guess it
>> must be using "video=ofonly".
>>
>> My intention is to copy my Debian SID and Gentoo root filesystems from
>> my Pismo to my Wallstreet, but to do this I need to have at least dump
>> version 0.4b49 to reliably dump and restore filesystems on powerpc. So
>> I'm having to update Gentoo now on Pismo to update dump.
>>
>> # dump --version
>> ...
>> dump 0.4b47 ...
>>
>> I think checking "No video driver" but also specifying
>> "video=atyfb..." will pass "video=atyfb..." to the kernel.
>> Unfortunately, a kernel regression seems to have broken previously
>> working X11 on the Wallstreet (I haven't heard back from the developer
>> yet). I tried installing Debian SID 08/29/2025 directly on the
>> Wallstreet by booting into the installtion vmlinux and initrd.gz, but
>> I couldn't get it to work, even using a serial console. If my tests
>> are accurate, the Wallstreet should eventually work with the Debian
>> rootfs that I installed on my Pismo (except for X11).
>>
>> On the Pismo, I had to install wdm and specify it as my display
>> manager instead of lightdm in Debian SID 08/29/2025, otherwise I would
>> only get a text login. It also took me a while to install everything
>> that's useful that Debian doesn't include, such as telnet, telnetd,
>> ftp, vsftpd, ifconfig, netstat, dump, etc. For now I'm leaving systemd
>> installed in Debian on the Pismo and running Debian's default kernel
>> and initrd (vmlinux-6.16.3+deb14-powerpc and
>> initrd.img-6.16.3+deb14-powerpc). I'll replace systemd with sysvinit
>> and try a custom kernel after I copy the Debian rootfs to the Wallstreet.
>>
>> On the Pismo, X11 in Gentoo (with just a clock and two xterms running)
>> is mostly usable and about twice as fast as using Xfce in Debian SID.
>> The same setup is also usable (but just barely) in Gentoo on the
>> Wallstreet, with kernel 6.1.
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'll probably end up using whatever .config file the developer who
>>>> investigates the possible kernel regressions recommends.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not using an xorg.conf file in either Debian SID or Gentoo (I
>>>> haven't needed to use an xorg.conf file since Debian 7.8 in Sparc64).
>>>>
>>>> For now I'll be sticking with Gentoo for these particular kernel
>>>> regression tests.
>
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