Anyone have instructions on how to install Fenix on a G5?

I have tried some distributions, no way to get pcie x1900 to work with linux

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^^^^ anyone...anyone... Bueller...Bueller... lmao

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What problems did you have, eg. not booting at all, freezing as soon as drm loads, freezing as soon as X starts? Most part of the problem is which version of the kernel and mesa the distro does run.

On the PCIe G5 (11,2) I had problems with kernel versions 4.10.x - 4.17.x. Since 4.18.x (or on 4.9.x) the PCIe Radeon HD 5450 and the Geforce 6600 run just fine in my G5 11,2.

[ Editiert durch ernsteiswuerfel 16.12.2018 - 15:57 ]

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The problem is the openfirmware rom on the video board. I not found any linux distro if the bug is fixed! All distribution assume you have a x86 bios on the board. But the x1900 mac edition not have a x86 bios....

In practice if you use a frame buffer you have the colors corrupted (little endian vs big endian), if you use the radeon driver the screen remain black.

The only option is: "radeon.modeset=0" and text console.

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Ok, so it's the kernels drm driver which is not working. I suggest you download a recent 4.19.x kernel and build from source. And it would be a good thing if your distribution uses gcc 6.4/6.5.

I don't think the problem is the card having a Mac-BIOS. All my AGP-Cards and the NVIDIA in the G5 11,2 run just fine with Mac-BIOS.

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Yes, the nvidia work good. The problem is the Radeon x1900....

Code:

> Void Linux has been ported to PPC
> https://forum.voidlinux.org/t/porting-void-to-powerpc/6228

Progress:

https://github.com/void-ppc64 (project site)
https://void-ppc64.octaforge.org (repository)

Interesting!

Though only the musl little/big-endian variant would be of interest to the G5 and the majority of 'our' PPC machines. ppc64le is >=POWER8.

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Ok, you were right! It looks like the r400 driver really does not like a non-x86 BIOS. What kernel is this distro running? uname -a from a shell tells you that.

Only chance would be to run/build a more recent kernel. If that does not work out you can file a bug at that xorg bug tracker for "Driver/Radeon" (klick). Sometimes even PPC bugs get some care.

> only the musl little/big-endian variant would be of interest to the G5
> and the majority of 'our' PPC machines. ppc64le is >=POWER8.

Little-endian musl is also ppc64le and thus requires POWER8 or later. The only variant running on 'our' machines is the big-endian musl one, and requiring 64-bit it only runs on PowerMac G5 (and would run on Cyrus / AmigaOne X5000 if its packages weren't compiled for AltiVec/VMX). The majority of 'our' machines is 32-bit so Void Linux for PPC64 is void for them ;-)

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True. AFAIK only Adelie, Gentoo and Debian Ports remain then.

Lately I've grown quite fond of Adelie. Installing packages is easy and very fast, the software stack is modern, several desktop options available (Xfce4. lxqt, KDE). Downsides: not very well documented besides basic installation (packages necessary to reach the desktop), no properly working display manager available yet. Also yaboot is not available - and GRUB is not able to boot the MorphOS kernel (I would be gladly proven wrong here). But you can work around these glitches and installing it is a lot faster than Gentoo/Debian.

Update:

> The only variant running on 'our' machines is the big-endian musl one

Now also big-endian glibc variant:
https://twitter.com/octaforge/status/1121945675267289088

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Interesting! Thanks for pointing out. Though they only do seem to support 64bit PPC, not the 32bit ones?

> they only do seem to support 64bit PPC, not the 32bit ones?

This particular effort is 64-bit only, yes. There's also a separate 32-bit effort even predating the 64-bit one, see comment #14 for the link to the respective thread in the Void Linux forum (which is still down, unfortunately).

More links:
https://twitter.com/FoxletFox/status/1022365071320772608
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/void-linux-for-powerpc.2129245/

@octaforge here; I was made aware of this thread, so if you have any questions, go ahead

Yes, my effort is only 64bit, but there are other people (seems to be a collective work of foxlet and stenstorp, with the latter having picked it up in recent time) doing the 32bit work. It is also upstream, but has no binary packages.

My 64bit work has unofficial binary packages made by me. I'm doing both little endian and big endian, and for each of those now both glibc and musl libcs. The big endian stuff works on anything starting with PowerPC 970 aka G5 (as long as it has altivec, which means sadly y'all's X5000s are out, sorry, couldn't make that sacrifice - you could still compile it yourself, xbps-src makes it easy to build the entire OS from scratch, even cross-compile it from an x86_64 or ppc64le or ppc64 machine, all you have to do is change the cflags; Adélie has the same restriction, it too requires altivec, OTOH X1000 could work, i think I think the PWRfficient SoCs do have altivec), the little endian stuff works on the usual machines starting with POWER8 or equivalent (NXP e6500 should still work, that's full ISA 2.07 i believe).

The glibc libc port for big endian is unusual because it uses the new ELFv2 ABI. Every other big endian ppc64 distro that still has support typically sticks with ELFv1, but Void is legacy-free in this regard (we're early adopters of ELFv2 in BE glibc, I don't think it even worked properly until fairly recently). That means older binaries won't work as they are, but of course you can always make like a Debian chroot/container to run your older binaries in. The kernel is ABI agnostic.

I have a powerful 18-core POWER9 server here, which will be in the future used for official builds (as long as it works out) and before that for the unofficial builds. I plan to lend it to doing the 32bit builds as well later, as long as there is enough disk space and so on. The 32bit stuff don't require altivec, they run on the G3s.

hopefully that clears it up

> X1000 could work, i think I think the PWRfficient SoCs do have altivec

Indeed it has. Unfortunately, with regard to this forum's target audience, it isn't supported by MorphOS.

> NXP e6500 should still work, that's full ISA 2.07 i believe

In big-endian mode, yes. Regarding little-endian mode, see:

https://forum.powerpc-notebook.org/index.php?topic=13.msg72#msg72
https://community.nxp.com/thread/439239
https://community.nxp.com/thread/512336


Edit: added another link

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 10.09.2019 - 14:57 ]

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Okay, well, that's a bit of a shame, I guess. I prefer to run little endian on my machines, big endian brings in unnecessary overhead when it comes to GPUs... that said, the big endian Void port is here to stay, only the more reason to have it...

q66,
Thanks for taking the time to register here and provide info.

Update:

> https://github.com/void-ppc64 (project site)
> https://void-ppc64.octaforge.org (repository)

Now for both 64-bit and 32-bit:

https://github.com/void-ppc (project site)
https://voidlinux-ppc.org (repository)


Edit: updated URLs

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 20.09.2019 - 12:07 ]

> Fienix looks pretty good.

Now forked as Fienix Lite.


Edit: updated URL from old one

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 22.11.2019 - 11:48 ]

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Ah nice - they plan to release DVDs for 32bit PPC Macs! Finally a distribution with a decent webbrowser around.

> Another one: [Fienix]

MintPPC is back: http://www.mintppc.nl
...as is CRUX-PPC: https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=8240&forum=55&start=8


Edit: added CRUX-PPC

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 06.02.2021 - 14:02 ]

4zlqxXOLnWb7.png
Meanwhile, Firefox 68 ESR running well on a PowerMac G5 (Gentoo Linux, MATE desktop).

If you don't like the hassles of a Gentoo install & building stuff yourself just use Void Linux (klick).

[ Editiert durch ernsteiswuerfel 26.10.2019 - 21:11 ]

> The glibc libc port for big endian is unusual because it uses the new ELFv2 ABI.
> Every other big endian ppc64 distro that still has support typically sticks with
> ELFv1, but Void is legacy-free in this regard (we're early adopters of ELFv2
> in BE glibc, I don't think it even worked properly until fairly recently).

Just to let people know that there's been a recent debate whether this ABI on PPC64BE is proper ELFv2, a subset of ELFv2 or no ELFv2 at all:

https://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linuxppc-dev/2020-June/thread.html#211731