Re: OldWorld ROM Macintoshes

Hi Stan,

This is an excellent guide how to setup sysvinit as replacement for 
systemd. I applied it to Trixie and it works. It might make your Pismo 
and Wallstreet collector items a lot faster.

https://ianlecorbeau.com/blog/debian-bookworm-sysvinit.html

Best regards,
Jeroen


Stan Johnson schreef op 2025-09-09 10:15:
> On 9/8/25 6:45 PM, Cedar Maxwell wrote:
>> On Sun, 2025-09-07 at 13:16 -0600, Stan Johnson wrote:
>>> On 9/5/25 6:27 PM, Cedar Maxwell wrote:
>>>> ...
>>>> 
>>>> Would you send your xorg.conf, etc., please?  I can only seem to
>>>> get
>>>> Xorg to launch by passing in video=ofonly.  I can't get it to work
>>>> with
>>>> fbdev either.
>>>> ...
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I've been testing kernels on my Wallstreet using a current Gentoo
>>> distribution.
>>> 
>>> I noticed this morning that mainline kernel v6.1, compiled using the
>>> attached .config file, works in Gentoo, but not in Debian SID.
>>> 
>>> In Debian, I can see the X11 login screen, but the keyboard and mouse
>>> don't respond. In Gentoo, everything works as expected.
>>> 
>>> In Debian SID, I'm using Xfce, sysvinit-core instead of systemd, and
>>> wdm
>>> instead of lightdm.
>>> 
>>> In Gentoo, I noticed elogind was installed; elogind was not installed
>>> in
>>> Debian. Using "apt-get install elogind" to install elogind, systemd
>>> was
>>> removed, as well as xserver-org and some X11-related files, so of
>>> course
>>> X11 doesn't work at all now, and I'll need to restore from a backup.
>>> Interestingly, I'm not having similar issues with PB Lombard or
>>> Pismo.
>>> 
>>> My BootX configuration is as follows (working X11 in 6.1.0 in
>>> Gentoo):
>>>       Kernel: vmlinux-6.1.0-pmac (custom kernel, no modules)
>>>       Boot Device: /dev/sda13 (Gentoo partition)
>>>       More kernel arguments: video=atyfb:vmode:14,cmode:32,mclk:71
>>>       No video driver: checked
>>>       Options:
>>>         Force SCSI ON: checked
>>>         Force video settings: checked
>>>         Use specified RAM disk: not checked
>> 
>> Checking "No video driver" appears to pass in video=ofonly.  How is
>> your performance with this configuration?  Mine is borderline 
>> unusable.
>> mclk:71 makes everything green.
> 
> As a test, I installed the latest Debian SID on a Pismo, so I get 
> systemd and all of the badness that it has for slow, memory-constrained 
> systems (my Pismo has 512 MiB memory).
> 
> Interestingly, I don't pass "video=aty128fs:1024x768" to the kernel 
> (via yaboot) as I have in the past, yet it still works, though about 
> twice as slowly as using sysvinit (or rcinit in Gentoo). So I guess it 
> must be using "video=ofonly".
> 
> My intention is to copy my Debian SID and Gentoo root filesystems from 
> my Pismo to my Wallstreet, but to do this I need to have at least dump 
> version 0.4b49 to reliably dump and restore filesystems on powerpc. So 
> I'm having to update Gentoo now on Pismo to update dump.
> 
> # dump --version
> ...
> dump 0.4b47 ...
> 
> I think checking "No video driver" but also specifying "video=atyfb..." 
> will pass "video=atyfb..." to the kernel. Unfortunately, a kernel 
> regression seems to have broken previously working X11 on the 
> Wallstreet (I haven't heard back from the developer yet). I tried 
> installing Debian SID 08/29/2025 directly on the Wallstreet by booting 
> into the installtion vmlinux and initrd.gz, but I couldn't get it to 
> work, even using a serial console. If my tests are accurate, the 
> Wallstreet should eventually work with the Debian rootfs that I 
> installed on my Pismo (except for X11).
> 
> On the Pismo, I had to install wdm and specify it as my display manager 
> instead of lightdm in Debian SID 08/29/2025, otherwise I would only get 
> a text login. It also took me a while to install everything that's 
> useful that Debian doesn't include, such as telnet, telnetd, ftp, 
> vsftpd, ifconfig, netstat, dump, etc. For now I'm leaving systemd 
> installed in Debian on the Pismo and running Debian's default kernel 
> and initrd (vmlinux-6.16.3+deb14-powerpc and 
> initrd.img-6.16.3+deb14-powerpc). I'll replace systemd with sysvinit 
> and try a custom kernel after I copy the Debian rootfs to the 
> Wallstreet.
> 
> On the Pismo, X11 in Gentoo (with just a clock and two xterms running) 
> is mostly usable and about twice as fast as using Xfce in Debian SID. 
> The same setup is also usable (but just barely) in Gentoo on the 
> Wallstreet, with kernel 6.1.
> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> I'll probably end up using whatever .config file the developer who
>>> investigates the possible kernel regressions recommends.
>>> 
>>> I'm not using an xorg.conf file in either Debian SID or Gentoo (I
>>> haven't needed to use an xorg.conf file since Debian 7.8 in Sparc64).
>>> 
>>> For now I'll be sticking with Gentoo for these particular kernel
>>> regression tests.