Linux on ppc64 (G5) - distro support
Hey - so I picked up a couple of very pretty but backbreakingly-heavy Apple G5s - one dual-core, the other dual-processor single core. I know these are old machines (2005) and vastly inefficient compared to modern machines: there are faster ARM SBCs. G5s make amazing room heaters when they are busy. Distro support seems to have completely dropped away for these machines. ppc64el is alive and well on IBM servers, but PowerMacs are big-endian. Anyone using ppc64 here? What distro would you recommend? Debian used to have ppc64 support, but its last release is in LTS with no future releases planned. Cheers Stewart
I have a similar boat-anchor Mac G5. Lubuntu PPC works quite well on it. I can't upgrade from 16 to 18 yet, doesn't seem to be supported or the distro isn't ripe yet. You pick up one from Masterfile too? Cheers, William On Thu, 6 Dec 2018 at 10:33, Stewart Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Hey - so I picked up a couple of very pretty but backbreakingly-heavy Apple G5s - one dual-core, the other dual-processor single core. I know these are old machines (2005) and vastly inefficient compared to modern machines: there are faster ARM SBCs. G5s make amazing room heaters when they are busy.
Distro support seems to have completely dropped away for these machines. ppc64el is alive and well on IBM servers, but PowerMacs are big-endian.
Anyone using ppc64 here? What distro would you recommend? Debian used to have ppc64 support, but its last release is in LTS with no future releases planned.
Cheers Stewart --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:william@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov)
On 2018-12-06 10:35 a.m., William Porquet wrote:
I have a similar boat-anchor Mac G5. Lubuntu PPC works quite well on it. I can't upgrade from 16 to 18 yet, doesn't seem to be supported or the distro isn't ripe yet.
Good to know, thanks. I've installed Lubuntu 16.04 as powerpc64, but I can't get past yaboot. I hold Option (⌥) when powering up to get to the boot selection screen, choose the Linux HD (it even has a tiny penguin!), pick 'l' from yaboot … and I'm back at the boot selection screen again. Continue until patience runs out. Do you use the OpenFirmware boot? Did you stick with 32 bit? 16.04 was the last PPC (big-endian) Ubuntu distro, so we won't be seeing 18. ppc64el is supported as a server OS, but won't run on our Apple hardware.
You pick up one from Masterfile too?
Yeah, a couple. Plus an Oki 9-pin printer that will likely outlive me. Lev tells me he's getting most of the servers ready soon. He got rid of a bunch of desktops to a movie prop company, too. … On 2018-12-07 10:15 a.m., Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:> On Thu, Dec 06, 2018 at 01:19:33PM -0500, Mike via talk wrote:
There is no powermac that can come close to the sound of an IBM pSeries server for making fan noise
I'd believe that. What remarkable about the G5 boxes is the sheer volume of air they move through the CPU cooler before you notice the noise. They've got two big 3-blade ducted fans either side of the CPU. On full roar, all the noise is from turbulence fluctuating around the cooler fins. But the box does produce a fierce amount of heat: I left it running the Lubuntu live CD for a couple of hours last night, and the room was very toasty when I went back in. One the opposite end of the fan scale, Sunon make a 10 × 10 x 3 mm micro cooler fan. 17000 rpm at 3 V. Can't think what would need that. cheers, Stewart
On 12/10/18, Stewart C. Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 2018-12-06 10:35 a.m., William Porquet wrote:
I have a similar boat-anchor Mac G5. Lubuntu PPC works quite well on it. I can't upgrade from 16 to 18 yet, doesn't seem to be supported or the distro isn't ripe yet.
Good to know, thanks. I've installed Lubuntu 16.04 as powerpc64, but I can't get past yaboot. I hold Option (⌥) when powering up to get to the boot selection screen, choose the Linux HD (it even has a tiny penguin!), pick 'l' from yaboot … and I'm back at the boot selection screen again. Continue until patience runs out.
Do you use the OpenFirmware boot? Did you stick with 32 bit?
I spent some quality time with OpenFirmware (a.k.a. OF) / yaboot / debian on the G5. Here are a few hopefully useful tidbits. Generally, - /etc/yaboot.conf contains instructions to *both* linux "yabin" and to yaboot itself. - ybin is run under linux and takes *some* of the config items from yaboot.conf and generates a script that OF runs, called ofboot.b. It also creates and populates a boot partition on the target disk. - The rest of yaboot.conf, including kernel "image" specs, is used by yaboot itself during boot. - yaboot is executed *by* OF. The approach I've taken is to allow the debian jessie installation to generate a half-assed (= almost, but not totally broken) yaboot.conf, but also useful Apple_Bootstrap partition containing ofboot.b, yaboot.conf, and yaboot. I then experimented with modifying ofboot.b and yaboot.conf *directly* on the HFS partition. For example, this is a typical sequence of update events: # hmount /dev/sda2 # hls -l # hcopy ./yaboot.conf bootstrap:yaboot.conf # hattrib -t conf bootstrap:yaboot.conf # hcopy ./ofboot.b bootstrap:ofboot.b # hattrib -t tbxi bootstrap:ofboot.b # hls -l # humount /dev/sda2 Here are some salient fragments of the configurations I needed to poke to make my setup work. My original OSX is on /dev/sda3, and my Linux distro is on /dev/sdb3. In ofboot.b: <BOOT-SCRIPT> : .printf fb8-write drop ; : bootyaboot " Loading second stage bootstrap..." .printf 100 ms load-base release-load-area " /ht@0,f2000000/pci@9/k2-sata-root@c/@ffffffffffffffff/@0:2,\\yaboot" $boot ; : bootmacosx " Booting MacOSX..." .printf 100 ms load-base release-load-area " /ht@0,f2000000/pci@9/k2-sata-root@c/@ffffffffffffffff/@0:3,\\:tbxi" $boot ; " screen" output Note the horrible "/ht@0,f2000000/pci@9/k2-sata-root@c/@ffffffffffffffff/@0:2,\\yaboot" specification. This is OF for "/dev/sda2", which is where my config and yaboot reside. This script, run by OF, tells OF that yaboot can be booted from /dev/sda2, and that OSX can be booted directly from /dev/sda3. Next, yaboot.conf: boot="/dev/sda2" # The device spec of the second hard disk (B, or the bottom slot) device=/ht@0,f2000000/pci@9/k2-sata-root@c/k2-sata@1/disk@0 partition=3 root="UUID=uuid of your root partition" timeout=300 install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot image=/boot/vmlinux-4.9.0-0.bpo.6-powerpc64 label=LinuxBpo read-only initrd=/boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-0.bpo.6-powerpc64 initrd-size=8192 image=/boot/vmlinux-3.16.0-6-powerpc64 label=Linux3 read-only initrd=/boot/initrd.img-3.16.0-6-powerpc64 initrd-size=8192 Note that if your linux partition is on the first hard disk, your device spec would be: device=/ht@0,f2000000/pci@9/k2-sata-root@c/k2-sata@0/disk@0 partition=<your linux root fs partition number> I hope this isn't too scattered - Take a look at your own installation (mac-fdisk -l /dev/sda etc.) and your installed ofboot.b and yaboot.conf in light of the above. Ping back if you get stuck. Cheers, Mike
To clarify, at a high level, what happens is that: - OpenFirmware finds the first available bootable partition, of Apple_Bootstrap type, in partition 2 of the first disk - *before* the OSX partition. - It runs the ofboot.b script, which presents a menu, to hit 'l' to select yaboot, or 'x' to run osx. - Hitting 'l' runs yaboot from the location specified in ofboot.b, and refers to yaboot.conf in the same partition. - yaboot allows you to make further selection of images configured in yaboot.conf. - Bob's yer uncle.
On 12/10/18 16:40, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 08:47:13AM -0500, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:
One the opposite end of the fan scale, Sunon make a 10 × 10 x 3 mm micro cooler fan. 17000 rpm at 3 V. Can't think what would need that.
Raspberry Pi? :)
Yes, I have been looking at those. I'm sampling temperature/humidity in my home using DHT22's but I have always suspected that the readings are a bit off because of a lack of airflow across the sensor. One of these would work just fine to get that flow. Boy, are they pricey though. You would think that with a 25mm fan running you $5-6, that would bound the cost, but these fans are north of $20. -- Michael Galea
On 2018-12-10 7:50 p.m., Michael Galea via talk wrote:
Yes, I have been looking at those. I'm sampling temperature/humidity in my home using DHT22's but I have always suspected that the readings are a bit off because of a lack of airflow across the sensor.
DHT22s can give really interesting readings sometimes, no matter what you do with them. cheers, Stewart
On Thu, Dec 06, 2018 at 10:33:11AM -0500, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
Hey - so I picked up a couple of very pretty but backbreakingly-heavy Apple G5s - one dual-core, the other dual-processor single core. I know these are old machines (2005) and vastly inefficient compared to modern machines: there are faster ARM SBCs. G5s make amazing room heaters when they are busy.
Distro support seems to have completely dropped away for these machines. ppc64el is alive and well on IBM servers, but PowerMacs are big-endian.
Anyone using ppc64 here? What distro would you recommend? Debian used to have ppc64 support, but its last release is in LTS with no future releases planned.
Debian had powerpc (32 bit user space but had 64 bit kernels). ppc64 (64 bit user space) has never been released as far as I remember. Debian still has it on ports.debian.org though and there are still people working on maintaining it. Both powerpc and ppc64 are on ports.debian.org. -- Len Sorensen
On 12/6/18, Stewart Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Hey - so I picked up a couple of very pretty but backbreakingly-heavy Apple G5s - one dual-core, the other dual-processor single core. I know these are old machines (2005) and vastly inefficient compared to modern machines: there are faster ARM SBCs. G5s make amazing room heaters when they are busy.
I do appreciate well-built heavy metal. I picked up a couple as well.
Distro support seems to have completely dropped away for these machines. ppc64el is alive and well on IBM servers, but PowerMacs are big-endian.
Anyone using ppc64 here? What distro would you recommend? Debian used to have ppc64 support, but its last release is in LTS with no future releases planned.
I got Debian Jessie installed OK. I had some graphics hassles by virtue of a kernel upgrade to the 4.9 backport, but got that sorted out by rebuilding the kernel with slight config redecoration. It might just boot X fine with the native Jessie (3.14?) kernel - I didn't try. Jessie even manages power and those prodigious fans just nicely. When it's all running properly it's even fairly quiet. With my not-quite-properly configured kernel, it's gale-force shortly after boot. Sounds a lot like a multi-POWER server that I remember a certain TLUG member working on :-) Cheers, Mike
On Thu, Dec 6, 2018, 13:19 Mike <el.fontanero@gmail.com wrote:
Jessie even manages power and those prodigious fans just nicely.
That's good to know. Both my G5s needed PRAM resets (Option-Command-P-R, which is quite special to manage with one hand), SMU resets (the tiny tact switch below the SIMMs) and a battery check. Just as well the older G5 didn't need a new PRAM battery: they use those infernal 1/2 AA 3.6 V cells that Macs since the Classic have used. Hard to find and expensive (Sayal has em for $10). Before all this, I got no display, no boot and cleared-for-takeoff fan noise. Stewart
On Thu, Dec 06, 2018 at 01:19:33PM -0500, Mike via talk wrote:
I got Debian Jessie installed OK. I had some graphics hassles by virtue of a kernel upgrade to the 4.9 backport, but got that sorted out by rebuilding the kernel with slight config redecoration. It might just boot X fine with the native Jessie (3.14?) kernel - I didn't try.
Jessie even manages power and those prodigious fans just nicely. When it's all running properly it's even fairly quiet. With my not-quite-properly configured kernel, it's gale-force shortly after boot. Sounds a lot like a multi-POWER server that I remember a certain TLUG member working on :-)
There is no powermac that can come close to the sound of an IBM pSeries server for making fan noise no matter how badly you manage (or don't manage) the fans. :) Those IBM boxes like the run the fans a bit even when turned off if they are plugged in. I guess the board management processor is running and wants cooling and the power supplies want cooling, and I guess the way to test that the system is ready for power on requires spinning the fans a little to check that they are working. You can't turn it on unless the board tests pass first. Weird machines. Makes me wonder if they a behaving a bit like IBM's mainframes. -- Len Sorensen
participants (6)
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lsorense＠csclub.uwaterloo.ca -
Michael Galea -
Mike -
Stewart C. Russell -
Stewart Russell
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William Porquet