Testers needed for PowerPC 12.04

[rsavage]

@farinet What happens when you follow the advice of the FAQ https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ#H...rnel_module.3F & https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ#P....2BAC8-suspend ? A lot of your other problems are not specific to PowerPC - they are problems with lubuntu 12.04 at the moment.

[Farinet]

@rsavage: Thanks a lot for answering!

1) I'm a bit afraid to tweak around the graphic card settings (i'm happy that apparently it works fine; just for your info, Systemprofile says:

`Vga compatbile controller: AdvancedMicroDevices [AMD] nee ATI RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])`

I'm not sure what i'd have to do . . .

2) Typing in a terminal `gnome-power-preferences` gives no result (or better: `command not found`)

I tried to tweak pbbuttonsd / Powerprefs but it seems to *NOT* have the control over the powermanagement (with the xfce-powermanagement which is installed by default with lubuntu, suspend to ram seems to be disactivated. I tried to substitute it by gnome-power-management but obviously i missed something there. Otherwise the command above should work, i presume).

Powernowd is installed and i also tweaked /etc/modules adding 2 lines (`pmu_battery` and `i2c-dev` ). And i changed `/sys/devices/temperatures/limit_adjust` from 0 to 5 (which bettered the situation with fan a bit; but in the end, in lubuntu the fan is running nevertheless all the time while it does not in debian).

Please consider, i'm a simple user without any programming skills (save some *VERY* remote experience with Hypercard on Mac and IIGS ).

[rsavage]

You need to look at the first link I gave about loading the radeon framebuffer module. In Ubuntus 11.04 -12.04 it is not built into the kernel, but complied as a module. This is different to say debian. That is why you haven't got suspend. When you do that suspend (and probably your consoles) will just work. There is no need to install powerprefs, gnome-powermanagement etc.

radeonfb was not built in because it breaks Kernel Mode Setting. The problem is Kernel Mode Setting doesn't work very well with radeon PowerPC. This is going to be a problem from now on because you can't get hardware 3d graphics acceleration without it. See bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...sa/+bug/946677 that I raised.

There is no ideal answer, but I think there is an argument to build radeonfb back in just so more things work out-of-the-box. A bug has been raised although it is not worded very well - so that is probably why it has not been acted upon.

[Farinet]

Ok, i think i've a vague idea of what's the problem. Now, if i'm not stressing your patience:

In the 1st link you gave me, is said:

and add the name of your framebuffer on a new line. You can also pass parameters in this file, for example: radeonfb mode_option=1024x768-24@60

Now, what would be *MY* framebuffer? How, can i find that out?

TIA

[rsavage]

You have a radeon card so radeonfb is your framebuffer. You'll probably have to turn off the openfirmware framebuffer too with the video=offb:off yaboot parameter.

Btw, I did look into the possibility of detecting the battery automatically for you http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1931393 . Nobody replied. No testers = no patch I'm afraid.

[Farinet]

. . . You'll probably have to turn off the openfirmware framebuffer too with the video=offb:off yaboot parameter. . .

Where should i set that? In the `/etc/yaboot.conf`? And if so, where exactly? My yaboot.conf (for the lubuntu drive) looks like this:

## yaboot.conf generated by the Ubuntu installer
##
## run: "man yaboot.conf" for details. Do not make changes until you have!!
## see also: /usr/share/doc/yaboot/examples for example configurations.
##
## For a dual-boot menu, add one or more of:
## bsd=/dev/hdaX, macos=/dev/hdaY, macosx=/dev/hdaZ

boot="/dev/disk/by-id/ieee1394-0001a300000586c7:000428:0000-part2"
device=/pci@f4000000/firewire@e/node@0001a300000586c7/sbp-2/@0
partition=3
root="UUID=3c8f5c71-4086-4fdf-8d24-a1d07eb5ca38"
timeout=100
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot
enablecdboot

image=/boot/vmlinux
    label=Linux
    read-only
    initrd=/boot/initrd.img
    append="quiet splash"

image=/boot/vmlinux.old
    label=old
    read-only
    initrd=/boot/initrd.img.old
    append="quiet splash"

# This entry automatically added by the Ubuntu installer for an existing
# Linux installation on /dev/sda3.
image=/pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/@0:3,/boot/vmlinux
    label=Debian-Linux
    root="UUID=efab8653-bda2-4a7f-8fdd-56a78e96a6dd"
    append=" ro"
    initrd=/pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/@0:3,/boot/initrd.img

[rsavage]

Now, if i'm not stressing your patience

Please read the FAQ. I wrote it so I wouldn't have to keep repeating myself. It is incredibly annoying that people don't. I left the lubuntu-qa list because of this.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ#W...cs_problems.3F
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ#H...r_permanent.3F

[Farinet]

Please read the FAQ. I wrote it so I wouldn't have to keep repeating myself. It is incredibly annoying that people don't. I left the lubuntu-qa list because of this.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ#W...cs_problems.3F
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ#H...r_permanent.3F

I understand your feelings but for people like me, who are not really familiar with linux things often are so terribly "indented" one to another that's really difficult to understand how and what are the dependencies.

To be frank: i'd like to have more than one option for a working and effective powerpc linux setup, so, i' m willed to give some effort to it. But it's hard to me to understand, why on the ubuntu side things seem to be so complicated - compared to Debian; should be the other way around . . .

Anyway i'll give that a try and i thank you for your patience.

[Farinet]

@rsavage

You were right. Following your instructions effectively the messed up screen went away, the consoles 1 -6 become usable and closing the lid suspends to ram.

The login screen (of Lubuntu 12.04 beta 1 ppc) now is no longer dark, but light blu, and the 4 dots under 12.04 work like a progress bar.

So far very fine. Thanks again. Just a question regard the append line: should i substitute the `append="quiet splash"`statement there with

append="video=offb:off"

(

video=offb:off

in double quotes?). And then a subsequent question re ybin:

`sudo ybin -v` will point to the yaboot.conf file on the boostrap partition where i booted from, /dev/sdb2 in my case? Or the first one in the entire setup (which would be /dev/sda2, on the internal drive where on my debian setup is)? I'm afraid to mess that up, so i'm a bit fearful

[rsavage]

I would set it up like this

image=/boot/vmlinux
    label=Linux
    read-only
    initrd=/boot/initrd.img
    append="quiet splash video=offb:off"

If you've done an auto install then the bootstrap partition on sdb should be updated. Whether that updates nvram too depends on a few things. I'm not familiar with firewire. You can always pass the --nonvram option if you don't want it to automatically boot from the firewire drive. e.g.:

sudo ybin -v --nonvram

Regarding the complicated-ness of Ubuntu - probably best to judge when 12.04 is released. If people don't report bugs/issues on launchpad (forums/message boards don't count 'cos the important people don't read them) then they don't get fixed. If people don't submit testcases on the tracker then the isos don't get released. It's all in the hands of the user - i.e. PowerPC is community supported.