Gentoo Archives: gentoo-ppc-user

From: Darren Kirby <bulliver@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-ppc-user@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-ppc-user] RE: Installing Gentoo on a Powermac G5
Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 23:13:51
Message-Id: d416abde0610031613y28937c5dif435703dbd65cc71@mail.gmail.com
1 Note: Sorry if this shows up twice, but both my responses (to David
2 and Joseph) seem to have been lost in a black hole...(Resending from
3 gmail).
4
5 quoth the Joseph Jezak:
6
7 > > 1. OS X is on the first sata drive, Gentoo will be on the second. Is it
8 > > still necessary to create the 'apple_bootstrap' partition if Gentoo will
9 > > be on its own complete disk?
10 >
11 > Yes. Open Firmware looks for a HFS blessed partition to boot from,
12 > which is all the apple_bootstrap partition actually is. It contains
13 > a copy of yaboot as well. When ybin runs, it will tell OpenFirmware
14 > to boot from this device (well, that what the nvram write is for.
15 > If your kernel doesn't have nvram support, you'll have to set this
16 > manually). Note that it doesn't really matter which disk this
17 > partition is on, but it's preferred to have it before the OSX
18 > partition so that if OSX resets the nvram, it will be the first
19 > blessed HFS partition found and still boot as normal.
20
21 Ok. I suppose I should have explained better. OS X is already installed, so I
22 imagine the bootstrap partition is already on the OS X disk right? Sorry to
23 be thick, but you say 'it doesn't matter which disk' it is on, so as long as
24 it is on one of them that's OK?
25
26 I should say here, my SATA drive just arrived an hour ago, and I installed it
27 and booted OS X, and it seems the drives were reversed, that is, the old disk
28 is disk 1, and the new one is disk 0. Does this make a difference...
29
30 I guess I'll just make the partition anyway, as I don't believe it takes a
31 whole lot of space.
32
33 > > 2. If I follow the PPC64 guide does this give me the 64bit userland? If
34 > > so, is there enough (hard) unmasked software to use this as a general
35 > > desktop machine? Is all software in the package database marked stable
36 > > under PPC64 64bit userland software? Can I mix and match PPC32 and PPC64
37 > > software? Any and all information on this issue would be most helpful, as
38 > > I don't think I completely understand it (I don't have an x86-64 machine
39 > > so I am mostly ignorant of 64bit issues).
40 >
41 > I can't speak too much for ppc64 (I only have ppc32 machines), but
42 > you have a few options. A pure ppc64 machine won't work with
43 > everything. For instance, there are issues with Mozilla based
44 > applications and ppc64, but KDE (and konqueror) should work great.
45 > You can also run a 32bit UL very easily and for desktop usage this
46 > is the recommended configuration afaik. I'm not sure about a mixed
47 > environment.
48
49 Ok, I see on the mirrors there are PPC64 32 bit UL and 64 bit UL tarballs. To
50 tell the truth I am planning on using KDE anyway (and I can live without
51 firefox) , so I think I will give the 64bit a shot. If it doesn't work out
52 for me I will just do a reinstall. No big whoop. Just playing around for now
53 anyway.
54
55 Just to confirm, the packages in the database that are under PPC64 arch are
56 the 64 bit userland apps right? I have already checked and everything I
57 want/need is stable for PPC64...
58
59 > > 3. I have the 23 inch Cinema display and a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro vidcard.
60 > > Are there drivers that can make this setup work? I ask because I booted
61 > > the machine with a Kubuntu PPC livecd to play around and while the cli
62 > > worked, when it came time for X to start the screen went black and I was
63 > > forced to do a hard reset. I am not sure if this was just a problem with
64 > > Kubuntu, or some other reason. I am not too concerned with hardware
65 > > acceleration or anything, at most I just want to be able to watch DVDs.
66 >
67 > This should work just fine with DRI as well. I have a Radeon 9600
68 > in my PB and it works very nicely with OpenGL acceleration, etc. :)
69
70 Sounds good!
71
72 I responded to David's post but it seems to not have made it to the list. In
73 that post I asked if all I needed to do was add:
74
75 VIDEO_CARDS="radeon"
76
77 to make.conf to get the drivers I need (assuming xorg 7.0). Is this right?
78
79 >
80 > Hope that helped,
81 > -Joe
82
83 Sure did, thanks a lot,
84 -d
85
86 --
87 http://badcomputer.org
88 --
89 gentoo-ppc-user@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-ppc-user] RE: Installing Gentoo on a Powermac G5 David Gurvich <david.gurvich@×××××××.net>
Re: [gentoo-ppc-user] RE: Installing Gentoo on a Powermac G5 Joseph Jezak <josejx@g.o>