Re: [gentoo-ppc-user] RE: Installing Gentoo on a Powermac G5

[Joseph Jezak]

Darren Kirby wrote:
> Note: Sorry if this shows up twice, but both my responses (to David
> and Joseph) seem to have been lost in a black hole...(Resending from
> gmail).
>
> quoth the Joseph Jezak:
>
>> > 1. OS X is on the first sata drive, Gentoo will be on the second. Is it
>> > still necessary to create the 'apple_bootstrap' partition if Gentoo
>> will
>> > be on its own complete disk?
>>
>> Yes.  Open Firmware looks for a HFS blessed partition to boot from,
>> which is all the apple_bootstrap partition actually is.  It contains
>> a copy of yaboot as well.  When ybin runs, it will tell OpenFirmware
>> to boot from this device (well, that what the nvram write is for.
>> If your kernel doesn't have nvram support, you'll have to set this
>> manually).  Note that it doesn't really matter which disk this
>> partition is on, but it's preferred to have it before the OSX
>> partition so that if OSX resets the nvram, it will be the first
>> blessed HFS partition found and still boot as normal.
>
> Ok. I suppose I should have explained better. OS X is already installed,
> so I
> imagine the bootstrap partition is already on the OS X disk right? Sorry to
> be thick, but you say 'it doesn't matter which disk' it is on, so as
> long as
> it is on one of them that's OK?
>
> I should say here, my SATA drive just arrived an hour ago, and I
> installed it
> and booted OS X, and it seems the drives were reversed, that is, the old
> disk
> is disk 1, and the new one is disk 0. Does this make a difference...
>
> I guess I'll just make the partition anyway, as I don't believe it takes a
> whole lot of space.

While you could use your OSX partition as a bootstrap partition,
it's really not a good idea.  The bootstrap is for Linux only.  As I
said before, it's an HFS formatted partition that holds the yaboot
binary that OpenFirmware loads.  That's why it's so small. :)

>> > 2. If I follow the PPC64 guide does this give me the 64bit userland? If
>> > so, is there enough (hard) unmasked software to use this as a general
>> > desktop machine? Is all software in the package database marked stable
>> > under PPC64 64bit userland software? Can I mix and match PPC32 and
>> PPC64
>> > software? Any and all information on this issue would be most
>> helpful, as
>> > I don't think I completely understand it (I don't have an x86-64
>> machine
>> > so I am mostly ignorant of 64bit issues).
>>
>> I can't speak too much for ppc64 (I only have ppc32 machines), but
>> you have a few options.  A pure ppc64 machine won't work with
>> everything.  For instance, there are issues with Mozilla based
>> applications and ppc64, but KDE (and konqueror) should work great.
>> You can also run a 32bit UL very easily and for desktop usage this
>> is the recommended configuration afaik.  I'm not sure about a mixed
>> environment.
>
> Ok, I see on the mirrors there are PPC64 32 bit UL and 64 bit UL
> tarballs. To
> tell the truth I am planning on using KDE anyway (and I can live without
> firefox) , so I think I will give the 64bit a shot. If it doesn't work out
> for me I will just do a reinstall. No big whoop. Just playing around for
> now
> anyway.
>
> Just to confirm, the packages in the database that are under PPC64 arch are
> the 64 bit userland apps right? I have already checked and everything I
> want/need is stable for PPC64...

If it's marked ppc64, it'll work on ppc64, the 32 bit UL uses the
ppc keyword, just like the PPC32.

>> > 3. I have the 23 inch Cinema display and a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro vidcard.
>> > Are there drivers that can make this setup work? I ask because I booted
>> > the machine with a Kubuntu PPC livecd to play around and while the cli
>> > worked, when it came time for X to start the screen went black and I
>> was
>> > forced to do a hard reset. I am not sure if this was just a problem
>> with
>> > Kubuntu, or some other reason. I am not too concerned with hardware
>> > acceleration or anything, at most I just want to be able to watch DVDs.
>>
>> This should work just fine with DRI as well.  I have a Radeon 9600
>> in my PB and it works very nicely with OpenGL acceleration, etc. :)
>
> Sounds good!
>
> I responded to David's post but it seems to not have made it to the
> list. In
> that post I asked if all I needed to do was add:
>
> VIDEO_CARDS="radeon"
>
> to make.conf to get the drivers I need (assuming xorg 7.0). Is this right?

Yes, that should do it.  The PPC FAQ has more detailed directions
for configuring your kernel as well.

-Joe
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