Is Ubuntu giving up on the PPC platform?

[Brian Durant]

On 12. feb 2006, at 16.06, Larry Grover wrote:

> Brian Durant wrote:
>> On 12. feb 2006, at 3.54, Vincent Trouilliez wrote:
>>> On Sat, 2006-02-11 at 17:21 -0500, Eric Dunbar wrote:
>>>> I imagine there never will be an official kernel update for Breezy
>>>> since the kernel is a pretty major thing to change (though, there
>>>> likely will be unofficial kernel updates ;-) in a post-production
>>>> operating system.
>>>
>>> Sorry if I am missing something here, but Breezy was released with a
>>> 2.6.12-9 kernel, which was then updated to 2.6.12-10. That's for  
>>> i386,
>>> but if they had the balls to do it for i386, why wouldn't they do  
>>> it for
>>> PPC if need be ?
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Vince, a little confused...
>> Yeah, I'm not sure if Ubuntu numbers their kernels exactly the  
>> same as Debian or...? The Debian PPC list is a buzz with the news  
>> that the debian/etch beta2 installer, which will have 2.6.15  
>> kernel from the start, is out very, very soon. Sooooo why not  
>> issue the 2.6.15 PPC kernel at the same time as an upgrade for  
>> Breezy and freeze the same kernel into Dapper PPC from the start?  
>> That would hopefully solve issues for relatively new G5 towers. As  
>> of now, Breezy AND Dapper are both basically just betaware on my  
>> box :-( Oh, wait, Dapper IS betaware at this point ;-)
>> Brian
>
>
> Here's how I understand the Ubuntu package updating policy:
> Once a stable release is made (eg, Breezy), package updates,  
> including the kernel, are for security reasons only.  Packages are  
> not updated for non-security bug fixes or new features.
>
> The difference between kernel 2.6.12-9 and 2.6.12-10 is at the  
> patch level, they are both from the same kernel release (2.6.12).
>
> So if the Breezy kernel does not support all your hardware now, it  
> never will (unless you patch and compile a new kernel yourself),  
> but Dapper or Dapper+1 might.
>
> This policy is shared with may, though not all, distros.  RedHat  
> and Debian-stable used to be this way, and I assume they still are.
>
> If you read about a kernel patch to support your hardware on the  
> debian-ppc list, then you can get that patch, apply it to the  
> ubuntu kernel source and compile your own kernel.
>
> This is what I and other G3 iBook owners have had to do to fix a  
> suspend-resume bug that has been in the 2.6.x kernels for a long  
> time, which was present in Warty, Hoary and Breezy, and for which a  
> patch has been available for months.  That patch will not be  
> included in an update to the Breezy kernel.  iBook G3 owner either  
> have to wait for Dapper (or a later Ubuntu release) or patch/ 
> compile their own kernel.
>
> You can read about the bug here:
> https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.15/ 
> +bug/8675
>
> It's not hard to patch & compile your own kernel, and it should be  
> pretty fast on a G5 tower.  So if you want to stick with Ubuntu and  
> support for your hardware isn't included, but is available as a  
> patch, why don't you give it a try?
>
> You can read a short how-to that I wrote for patching, compiling  
> and installing a custom kernel on powerpc here:
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2368&page=3
>
> Regards,
> Larry

Hi Larry,

Nice to hear from you again. I have the yaboot.conf issue solved,  
Here was the solution for that:

ofpath /dev/sda
/ht at 0,f2000000/pci at 3/k2-sata-root at c/k2-sata at 0/disk at 0:

ofpath /dev/sdb
/k2-sata at 0/disk at 0:

sudo mv /usr/sbin/ofpath /usr/sbin/ofpath.orig

cd /usr/sbin

sudo wget -P . http://people.redhat.com/pnasrat/ofpath

chmod 755 ofpath

sudo ofpath /dev/sda
/ht at 0,f2000000/pci at 3/k2-sata-root at c/k2-sata at 0/disk at 0:

sudo ofpath /dev/sdb
/ht at 0,f2000000/pci at 3/k2-sata-root at c/k2-sata at 1/disk at 0:

sudo ybin -v

Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to get yaboot to boot  
default into OS X yet. I tried "default=macosx", but no luck.

With regards to the kernel issue, I see two possibilities as I  
believe we have talked about before:

1) The patch that you are talking about. I don't know what the patch  
would be called. Maybe something with windfarm_9.1.
2) Installing the latest build of the stable (2.6) using  
pmac_defconfig, i.e. latest build 2.6.15.4. This can be found at:

http://www.ppckernel.org/kernel.php?id=74

Unfortunately, as a newbie to Linux, I don't have the overview to  
really know which is the easiest and simplest way to do this. What do  
you suggest?

Cheers,

Brian