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Thread: Live Ubuntu for a Powerbook G4 1.33GHz 12"

  1. #1
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    Live Ubuntu for a Powerbook G4 1.33GHz 12"

    Hi all,

    the question pretty much in the topic title.

    I have a 2004 Powerbook Alu with 1.33GHz PowerPC G4 processor and 768MB of RAM (the model in left column here : http://support.apple.com/kb/SP83 ), whose hard drive is in the process of dying (gives SMART errors). Instead of trying to replace it with a new drive (not for the faint of heart on this model ^^) I'd like to use a Live CD/USB Linux distro, iow one that boots from CD/USB and uses the RAM as a "disk" to operate from (ideally it would use the usb thumbdrive to even save data e.g. config file during a session, but I'm not there yet).

    Initially I had to burn CD's to boot from, slow and painful (CD/DVD drive issue I think), but now I'm able to "burn" (on my desktop PC) a thumbdrive with any ISO image containing a Linux distro and boot from it on my Powerbook ( usb drive even recognized as bootable with ALT/OPTION key at boot time, don't have to fiddle with O/F, nice ! )

    (for those interested, I'm using this command in a Win7 terminal to do it : >dd if=Ubuntu_distro.iso of=\\.\j: bs=1M )

    With that I can boot my PB with Ubuntu and Lubuntu distro's, however never able to get thru to a normal GUI situation :

    - Ubuntu 12.04 -> boot freezes, I have to add "nouveau.modeset=0" to the boot command to get thru to the GUI, however colours are totally messed up it's a psychedelic pixel soup, just unusable

    - Lubuntu 12.10 -> I get the Lubuntu splash screen, but at some point boot freezes; went to single user, added "single snd-powermac.blacklist=yes nouveau.modeset=0" as suggested in the PowerPC FAQ/KnownIssues, this gets me a little further in the boot process but still not up to the GUI, I'm getting an error message with "b43-open/ucode5.fw not found" in it...

    Any suggestion on how to get thru a complete Live install of whatever version or flavour of Linux on my Powerbook would be more than welcome.

    TIA.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 2011
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    3,037
    Distro
    Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

    Re: Live Ubuntu for a Powerbook G4 1.33GHz 12"

    The firmware for your wireless hardware is missing:

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2055717

  3. #3
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    33

    Re: Live Ubuntu for a Powerbook G4 1.33GHz 12"

    Thanxx, I looked into the link you provided and added b43.blacklist=yes to the boot command line, but still freezing on the splash screen, so got to reboot in single user mode and see what the next problem is.

    Looks like patience and perseverance is going to be key here.

    Esp. because I don't have a US EN kbd and it's quite a pain in the neck to enter command lines with special characters...

    EDIT : so rebooted in single user mode, but not going anywhere... got a bunch of cryptic error messages, like Exception 300 at tumbler_detect headphone etc... at some point got "Instruction dump:" followed by a couple of lines of hex numbers, last line being : "Fixing recursive fault but reboot is needed!". Yeah, whatever... it's stuck there, don't listen to kbd so can't type reboot so have to reboot manually which will get me back to the same freeze.

    Isn't there a simple way to boot Lubuntu with ZERO h/w detection/firmware install (no audio, no bluetooth, no wifi, no firewire, no ...) so as to has at least one chance to get thru all this...?
    Last edited by peezee13; November 24th, 2012 at 06:06 PM.

  4. #4
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    Re: Live Ubuntu for a Powerbook G4 1.33GHz 12"

    I switched to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin), booted from CD, used following command line at boot prompt :

    boot: live-powerpc single snd-powermac.blacklist=yes b43.blacklist=yes

    howeverI got for both sound and b43 the same error message : Unknown parameter 'blacklist'

    it then stopped at the b43 error message and from there I couldn't do anything other than shut down the Powerbook.

    I'm lost here, these blacklist instructions are the ones provided in the 12.04 known issues section ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCKnown...ecise_Pangolin ), so what's wrong here...?

    Aside from this, I rebooted without providing any specific instruction at boot, and well the thing does boot and gets into the GUI, except that most of the screen is blank/white, with just the top menu bar visible (with time, settings icon, bluetooth icon, ...) and a purple vertical stripe maybe 50 pixels wide on the left. Tried to Shutdown from the menu there but just go the CD spinning continuously which at some point trigerred the fan to spin like crazy, at some point I had to shut it down manually, looked like entered in an endless loop...
    Last edited by peezee13; November 24th, 2012 at 11:33 PM.

  5. #5
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    Re: Live Ubuntu for a Powerbook G4 1.33GHz 12"


  6. #6
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    Re: Live Ubuntu for a Powerbook G4 1.33GHz 12"

    Thanxx abtabt, I will try this, see how good I am at typing "blind" with a non US-EN keyboard...

    Actually I just found out the CD I have is for Ubuntu 12.04, not Lubuntu. The Lubuntu distro does not fit on the CD, I also have a DVD+RW I could use except the PowerBook drive is unable to read those.

    Also, for some reason I can't boot from the usb flash drive anymore dunno why, what I mean is that the flash drive does appear as a bootable device after rebooting the Powerbook (and holding down the Option key), however when I select it it seems to start booting but stops after a few seconds, the mouse pointer turns into a bizarre round black thing (I can still move it with the trackpad), and essentially it's back to the boot selection screen (which in fact it doesn't leave anyway). So right now I can't boot from Lubuntu 12.04 anymore, stuck to Ubuntu 12.04... Oh well... :-/

  7. #7
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    Re: Live Ubuntu for a Powerbook G4 1.33GHz 12"

    Ok, so I have scrupulously followed the instructions there, and it did get me further, I can see the Ubuntu desktop now with all GUI elements.

    There's still on slight problem though, I guess a picture is worth a thousand words :



    So next step : get the colour bitmap right.

    After that I'll obviously have to resolve the wifi and audio driver/firmware issues, but one step at a time.

  8. #8
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    Re: Live Ubuntu for a Powerbook G4 1.33GHz 12"

    Forgot to mention but my Powerbook has an NVidia graphics chipset. And btw just realized both the network AND the audio do work, since I can listen to a web radio, that's cool. Also, I can access a 8GB usb flash drive I just plugged, wayyyyy nicer than being in single mode, not to mention Open Firmware.

    Also, I changed the desktop background to a fixed colour, I chose green which obviously shows... a perfect black ^^, but at least now I'm not bothered by the psychedelic background

    I've tried browsing the internal hard drive, which like I said is about to fail terminally, want to recoup a bunch of files, but I'm having problems accessing certain folders, get a message saying I don't have the "permissions necessary to view the contents of" the folder, eg my Desktop folder... any idea why that is ?

  9. #9
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    Re: Live Ubuntu for a Powerbook G4 1.33GHz 12"

    Ok, well I'm beginning to realize that, despite my setup starting to operate - somehow, my initial objective won't be attainable.

    The objective is (was ?) to be able to continue to use my 2004 G4 Alu Powerbook - despite the internal hard drive being almost dead - by installing a "Live CD/USB" distro of Linux/*Ubuntu, which (in my dreams I'm afraid) would then allow me to browse the web (via tethered or Wifi connection), listen to music, and view movies or youtube type stuff (therefore also requiring flash player/plugin).

    It's obvious now after the research I've done, that unless I find a way to have data persisting from one boot to next, I would have to reinstall at each boot specific drivers/firmware (eg wifi, graphics ?, ...) and things like Flash plugin for Firefox, etc...

    I need to find a way to boot from a USB flash drive AND have the Live distro write to it in order to save config data, driver updates and stuff, iow I would use internal RAM and usb drive as a replacement for the (dying) HDD.

    Or maybe if I can tweak the distro and add to it all the required software such that once booted the Powerbook is fully ready to be used... (no idea if it's possible and how to do this)

    I have found distro that can fully boot and operate from usb stick (or even 100% from RAM after booting from usb) - however they are all targeted at Intel/AMD processors, not the PowerPC processor running my Powerbook. ( http://lifehacker.com/5069054/battle...-linux-systems )


    So, instead of continuing to spend hours on trying to have this work, I would like to ask the experts here : is this a reasonable goal, or should I rather give up ?

    Thanxx a lot in advance for your help trying to decide.
    Last edited by peezee13; November 27th, 2012 at 12:01 PM.

  10. #10
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    Re: Live Ubuntu for a Powerbook G4 1.33GHz 12"

    Quote Originally Posted by peezee13 View Post
    Ok, so I have scrupulously followed the instructions there, and it did get me further, I can see the Ubuntu desktop now with all GUI elements.

    There's still on slight problem though, I guess a picture is worth a thousand words :



    So next step : get the colour bitmap right.

    After that I'll obviously have to resolve the wifi and audio driver/firmware issues, but one step at a time.
    yes you need too try this to bitmap


    modprobe nvidiafb mode_option=1024x768-16

    if we lucky then is looking good (maybe -24 can be ok )

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