[gentooppc-user] Re: Gentoo-ppc Newbie Questions

[Marcio Luis Teixeira]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the really thorough replies to my questions. This is great! :) 
I'm working through each of the solutions one by one and things are going 
well so far.

Rather than doing individual replies, I'll reply here once to the major 
points. Thank you once again for all the help!

Marcio Luis Teixeira

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On Monday 07 October 2002 10:46 am, Kevin Geiss wrote:
> I can only help you with number 5. On my webpage I describe exactly
> how to get scsi emulation working for the cd drive.
>
> http://www.desertsol.com/~kevin/ppc

Wow! Great page! Thanks!
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On Monday 07 October 2002 06:49 am, Todd Heim wrote:

> alsa-utils is apparently not keyworded "PPC"
> you could:
> `emerge /usr/portage/media-sound/alsa-utils/alsa-utils-0.9.0_rc3.ebuild`
> then, if it works, submit a not back to this list so it can get keyworded.

I actually emerged 'alsa-utils-0.9.0_rc2.ebuild' for consistency with the 
version of alsa-libs I had installed. This worked great (actually, I'm still 
having some issues with the Kmix controls having scrambled lables, but I'll 
post about that one later -- maybe it's one for the ALSA mailing list :) The 
good news is that sound works now :)

Anyhow, a clarification on the CD-ROM issue. The SCSI emulation isn't really 
necessary, as Todd hinted to in his message.

The reason I thought it was necessary was that 1) I wasn't used to seeing 
those error messages at startup 2) for some odd reason a CD-ROM icon does not 
appear under KDE. But the truth is, 1) and 2) happen whether or not 
SCSI-emulation is enabled and in either case, I am able to mount the CD-ROM 
using "mount".

I do know, however, that using the Gentoo 1.2 ISO, I was unable to mount the 
CD-ROM at all (I had to wget the tarballs). I'm not sure whether this is 
relevant or not to the KDE icon issue (it doesn't really matter. As long as I 
can "mount").

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On Tuesday 08 October 2002 03:56 am, Calum Selkirk wrote:
> The whole concept of
> echoing digits into proc is depreciated in favor of sysctl (see:
> /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sysctl/README).

The docs were a little sparse. I would have expected more of a description of 
what the values did, but the docs just say that a "knowledge of what all 
those values mean" is required (huh? I thought that's what the docs were for 
in the first place). Anyhow, minor quibble :)

I like the new system a lot better than the echos. An idea: How about having 
those line in "/etc/sysctl.conf" as a comment, along with a note about what 
it does? Something like:

# To enable mouse button emulation on PowerBooks, uncomment the following
# lines. This will set the 2nd mouse button to F11 and the third mouse buttons
# to F12:
#dev.mac_hid.mouse_button_emulation = 1
#dev.mac_hid.mouse_button2_keycode = 87
#dev.mac_hid.mouse_button3_keycode = 88

Even though this adds to config file bloat, I think newbies will appreciate 
it. I don't like typing new stuff into config files and it always get a warm 
and fuzzy feeling when I see that all I have to do is uncomment some lines in 
a file. So far I've been quite happy with Gentoo because most of the critical 
config files (such as networking) have really good self-documenting templates 
like that.

> The presence of two ports in the PCMCIA-HOWTO suggest a 3500 or Wallstreet
> (whereas the defaults seem to be targeting more recent models).

Yes. Could those be included as comments as well? It's the warm and fuzzy 
factor thing again :)

> Something for the doc's? .. maybe .. but we can
> not cover every piece of legacy code out there, and IMO it's best we
> move on.

Well, I see that point. But, on the other hand, there aren't very many Mac 
models and they are quite consistent. Unlike in the PC world, there is hope 
in PPC-land in providing docs for all the legacy Macintosh models. Perhaps 
the docs should included a section on notes for specific machines? Hell, a 
WikiWeb would be perfect for this sort of thing. Do we have a Gentoo wiki 
anywhere?

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On Tuesday 08 October 2002 03:56 am, you wrote:

> this would be the pll, mclk, issue (with older kernels not establishing the
> correct values for the ATI card). This hit other Powerbook models also
> (though much less than it hit the 3500).

I'm not sure what the 3500 is like -- I have a 3400c. I'm pretty sure I don't 
have an ATI card. When I do a "cat /proc/pci" I get:

  Bus  0, device  17, function  0:
    VGA compatible controller: Chips and Technologies F65550 (rev 69).
      IRQ 24.
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0x81000000 [0x81ffffff].

Anyhow, whatever the reason, I've had sleep problems with SuSE 7.3 and Gentoo 
seems to handle it a lot more gracefully.

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On Monday 07 October 2002 11:28 am, Joe McMahon wrote:

> I've gotten the best "login experience" with gdm. xdm and kdm both act
> weird.

On Tuesday 08 October 2002 03:56 am, Calum Selkirk wrote:

> ALT-E? (maybe you mean ALT-c?) .. no idea about this, i avoid {k,g,x)dm
> like the plague ;)

Yes, it's Alt-E is a shortcut for "Restart X Server" under my version of KDM. 
Anyhow, I guess the general concensus is that "kdm" is krummy. Ok, I'll 
consider switching :)