PowerPC bugs

[o jordan]

> 
> On Thu, Oct 04, 2012 at 01:53:32PM +0100, o jordan wrote:
> > Is it too late to get some PowerPC changes into the yaboot options on
> > the live/desktop ISOs?
> >  
> > I have an idea to build back in the legacy nvidia framebuffers into
> > the PowerPC kernel.  Whilst this is a backwards step in many respects,
> > it is the only way (I can think of) to get over the 16 colour
> > limitation of the openfirmware framebuffer.  Currently if you turn off
> > kernel modesetting with nouveau (and this it seems is a necessity now
> > for many cards of some vintage) you are thrown into a desktop with
> > only 16 colours on PowerPC and this is a largely unusuable desktop.
> >  
> > As this kernel change will disable KMS (which we don't want to do for
> > every nvidia card) the boot options need updating so that the legacy
> > framebuffers are turned off by default:
> >  
> > video=radeonfb:off video=rivafb:off video=nvidiafb:off  
> > Since you cannot easily remove default yaboot parameters a new
> > 'failsafe' option would need to be created on the desktop ISO without
> > these parameters.  This could replace the 'nosplash' option.  The new
> > yaboot parameters would be: nomodeset vt.handoff=7 I know you don't
> > think vt.handoff=7 makes any sense with yaboot, but it does actually
> > boot you into a higher colour depth than you would without it.  This
> > solves the problem of the installer windows not appearing in 8 bit
> > pseudo colour. I think I can create a patch for yaboot-installer (to
> > also introduce a failsafe option on an installed system), but I have
> > no clue what files are involved in the creation of the ISOs.  If you
> > can point me in the right direction then I can take (a rather
> > uneducated) look at them and see if I can come up with the necessary
> > changes myself. Of course this all depends on getting the PowerPC
> > kernel changed, something that I have struggled to do in the past.
> > Like yourself they are very cautious about changes.  I would need help
> > from somebody within Canonical to support the kernel change. These
> > changes would not improve the out-of-the box everything working 100%
> > on the first boot support of the PowerPC port (that can only come from
> > the kernel/radeon/nouveau developers), but the creation of a failsafe
> > mode would make the radeon and nvidia user experience much better.
> 
> To be honest, as I think I said before: I'm not going to touch these
> options at all without review from the kernel and X teams (CCed).  If
> they say it's necessary, then sure; but I would rather that somebody
> first checked whether this is a consequence of a bug we can fix, because
> it's always better for the software to work by default than to require
> boot parameters.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> -- 
> Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com] Thinking about this some more, the KMS option shouldn't be the default option on the live/desktop ISOs.  The crashes/freezes with radeon can take some time to appear.  It is quite conceivable that they could occur in the middle of re-partitioning, which would be bad. The more you think about, the more appealing the Debian way of doing things is: Just rely on the user to add video=ofonly if they want KMS.  This is basically what the boot message says to do at the moment anyway, although it doesn't explicitly mention KMS. Adam
 		 	   		  
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