PowerPup! A project to port Puppy to PPC macs!

[PowerPup]

Glad to hear of your success brymway! I'm not sure why you had to go through failsafe to get it working though. Looking at apple-history.com Your Emac uses a Nvidia GeForce2 MX chip. and the only macs I have to test with use ATI. So maybe there's something in the kernel for that. (I know I enabled Nvidia.)

As for getting programs off of Puppy 3, I can't do it that easily. The all the programs are compiled for intel cpus. I have to recompile everything from source to PPC. Don't know why the cp wasn't working for you, tested that myself earlier... Maybe I forgot something.

The next thing is getting the guess_fstype and the probepart_init script working properly. This script is for finding out which drives have partitions that it can look for puppy files on.

If you have other kinds of macs it would help to test them too. That way we have a good idea of compatibility. I don't think you would want to use a bunch of your CDs on the semi-working beta though.

[brymway]

I can go pick up a RW cd to try. Just to confirm, I tried running "linux" at the boot again and it crashed. Then I rebooted and ran "linux-failsafe" and it booted into the command line.

As far as compiling to ppc, are you downloading a devx file to your mac and compiling that way?

I downloaded MP editor tar package. It works on 301 with no dependencies. And it doesn't need an x server.

I only have one mac but my sister in law has an imac and a ppc laptop. I'm pretty sure I could use those every once in a while.

[Lobster]

Thought I'd now share what I currently have so far. Very Happy
PowerPup_beta.iso

I am nowhere near a Mac for the next few days
Hope you get some feedback.

Been planting seeds today: Dill - oh yum with fish, Basil for those Italian tomato flavours, chives for everything and thyme (for thyme travellers).

Anyway part of Kennel is to share resources, get more people testing
starting a Powerpup page for you
Maybe a logo

. . . any offers of help . . . guys . . .?

[brymway]

I have a domain with a dormant forum on it. I have 250 megs of space that I pay for each month. I'd be glad to have it used by Powerpup. I don't know how to do anything with my web space. The company installed the forum software for me and I maintained it. But now it just sits there. Anything I can do I will.

[PowerPup]

Hope I don't disappoint you brymway, I had been planning to make a PowerPup home page (Using free hosts) and have it set up now.
http://powerpup.yi.org/
I plan to work on the PowerPup home page more.

As for a logo I know someone who might be willing to make one for me.

Now when you say "share resources" Lobster, do you mean like source codes and such? Because everything I'm using comes from either slackware/slackintosh, puppy sources, or from the author's website.

anyway, fix the cp command and still working on the init scripts, I'll post when I've updated the online iso.

-PowerPup.

[brymway]

Hope I don't disappoint you brymway,

Absolutely not! More power to you! I'm just offering help if you need it. The page looks good. I'll throw the iso disc in the laptop tomorrow and ensure it works as well.

[PowerPup]

Cool. Anyway, after using bootinit.log to help debug. (Gotta love them log files. ) I have finally gotten PowerPup to detect the pup_301.sfs file on the CD and Hard Disk! I even used my ext3 partition with a ubuntu sfs file renamed to pup_301.sfs and ran PowerPup. It copied the whole 640MB file into ram and booted it. Although X11 didn't work because it was missing stuff from the ubuntu initrd. This mean I have pretty much three thing left to do, as far as I know.

Create the PPC pup_301.sfs file.
Get the initscripts to properly mount hfsplus to save and load pup_saves.
trim the kernel and initrd.

Updated the home page, and added link to new PowerPup_beta.iso there and previous post above. (This is why I recommend using a CD-RW, because I'm am constantly at work updating it. )

[ecomoney]

Good luck with this project PowerPup. Old macs are a major blindspot when it comes to recycling software, but they are very sought after items for their "cool" factor. The only really viable alternative was xubuntu for ppc, which isnt very well maintained and tricky to install.

you may want to think about compiling gnash for this too, as currently I believe there is no flash plugin produced by adobe for linux on ppc.

[brymway]

Powerpup iso.2

emac=boots to menu, crashes with "linux" command, runs with "linux-failsafe"
made three directories again and moved them all around. Cp still doesn't work. When the cp command is given, the response is the file specified is "omitted", but it isn't, and the file isn't moved to the target directory. Rm and rmdir work.

ibook G4=boots to menu, works fine with "linux" command. Everything else is the same as above.

Any more extensive tests you would like me to try?

[Lobster]

Now when you say "share resources" Lobster, do you mean like source codes and such? Because everything I'm using comes from either slackware/slackintosh, puppy sources, or from the author's website.

We are still very much on the 4.2 to 4.2.1 (4.3) development.
As Kennel develops with more users available, help may be offered in terms of logo, a wiki page, testing etc.
Kennel is a question of sharing our most valuable resource. Keen Puppy users.

[PowerPup]

Now when you say "share resources" Lobster, do you mean like source codes and such? Because everything I'm using comes from either slackware/slackintosh, puppy sources, or from the author's website.

We are still very much on the 4.2 to 4.2.1 (4.3) development.
As Kennel develops with more users available, help may be offered in terms of logo, a wiki page, testing etc.
Kennel is a question of sharing our most valuable resource. Keen Puppy users.

Ah, so when you say "logo" you mean a logo for Puppy Linux and not PowerPup? Because that's what I thought you meant and what I asked my brother to do. lol.

brymway, your problem with the CP command is so puzzling. I've tried it myself copying a text file from the CD to ram and it worked fine. it worked fine when copying the sfs file to ram. but anyway your Emac will probably always need to boot in failsafe for Open Firmware issues is my guess. Probably nothing we can do. that's probably why the failsafe option is there, to make it work. (Or its the the kernel and the nvidia card. dunno.)

I agree totally with you ecomoney, so many times I've seen a "cool" mac on craigslist but don't have the money or necessarily the need for it.
Actually I found slackintosh very easy to install, after finding out how to partition the hard drive. I found the book "Running Linux" from O'Reilly Publications. It had a small section about Linux PPC and partitioning the hard disk. I've found this book helpful considering I'm still somewhat new to Linux. If anyone is interested I can make a small guide on installing slackintosh. And thanks for the info on gnash, I'll keep that in consideration.

Well at the moment I am at a small standstill for PowerPup. I now need to figure out how to create the SFS file that will be on the CD to boot. Woof seems like the best and easiest route to go. Since Slackware's and Slackintosh's are exactly the same, (one for Intel, the other PPC,) it should be theoretically possible and somewhat easy to do. Although since my slackintosh DVD has all the binary packages on them it be nice to make the scripts use them instead of downloading them again. I can probably just copy them onto the hard disk. The question is will it work the way it is or does it need to be made slackintosh compatible? Maybe I can get some help or info from BarryK on this.

Until I get this figured out I'm going to try to slow it down and take it easy for a bit. After all, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I'm not too far from a usable PPC Puppy Linux. Just need some time and patience.

[Lobster]

Ah, so when you say "logo" you mean a logo for Puppy Linux and not PowerPup?

We have a logo for Puppy. There is still work being done on 4.2 and Kennel will only be active and fully supported after this process. For now good luck with your brothers logo. In the future I hope a Kennel support artist will provide a Logo combining Kennel + PowerPup - as well as offering an independent logo. They could even have a go now with the PowerPup logo

[Aitch]

Well, Lobster, Powerpup

Since Powerpup is for Mac, perhaps the logo should be a 'kilted' Puppy... [tossing a caber]?

OK, tell me to shut up.....I'm still on medication....

Aitch

[PowerPup]

Ah, okay. Thanks for explaining to me Lobster.

Well, that's not a bad idea Aitch. It'd be nice to put a little of my heritage into the logo. How you guessed that I have no clue.

[Aitch]

Best I can find....no caber, though.....maybe someone with gimp skills?



Aitch

[8-bit]

Your links to download PowerPup Beta on both the forum and your site download a 0 length iso file!
So it seems there is something wrong there.
Thought you should know.
Also, I have a PowerBook 1400 that I am willing to try things on.

[PowerPup]

Yeah, I kinda worried about that. It appears Skydrive changes the direct link address every few hours or so. If you want to try it click here.

Unfortunately The PowerBook 1400 doesn't have OpenFirmware. So it can't boot from the CD. It would require BootX and a kernel supporting the PowerBook 1400.

But the Linux/PPC for Nubus project doesn't have a stable 2.6 kernel yet. So until there is one, PowerPup won't work on those kind of macs. (Not unless I figured out a way for puppy to work on a 2.4 kernel, who knows. )

You can go to http://www.netbsd.org/ports/macppc/models.html to see a list of what will work and what won't. Even though it's for NetBSD. It applies to almost any PPC Linux OS really.

Anyway, I found out that I might be required to recompile most of Puppy Linux's sources in order to make sure PowerPup stays "Puppy sized." I'm not sure if I can just use the binaries from Slackintosh. I'm still somewhat new to Linux and don't know which packages are needed to build a barebones OS and build up from it. So I'm going to do a little research on that probably from LFS and other sources.

Happy Puppying! (btw, great pic Aitch! )

-PowerPup.

Edit: I'm moving the powerpup website to a new host so I can have the site and iso files all in one place, powerpup.yi.org might not work for a day or so, until the domain name fixes itself the powerpup website can be accessed here.

[Aitch]

Hi Powerpup

HFS+

Don't know if this is any use to you, as it seems to have 'died' at 2.4 support

http://sourceforge.net/projects/linux-hfsplus

Also found this

http://penguinppc.org/bootloaders/yaboo ... sics.shtml

and was reminded that many old PPC boxes had scsi drives in, and I'm a fan of getting scsi booting in Puppy, hence interest in big_bass's slackpup, which is still in evolution, and maybe useful for you?

for the very first time
puppy 4.12 running live cd
booted from kernel 2.6.27.7 !! (thats what slackware 12.2 is using )
thats not a puppy kernel or a puppy kernel config
or a puppy initrd.gz!
the initrd.gz was a puppy initrd template but
kernel modules from 2.6.27.7

[ I've also posted for scsi boot support in Barry's Blog ]

Hope things are well?, and when I get some time/space to blow the dust of the ppc, I'm going to try your ISO, beta experimental or not

Aitch

[PowerPup]

Thanks for the info Aitch. I'm didn't know about that for the 2.4 kernel.
And the mac-fdisk would be a good idea to include on the CD.

Aww... If I would have known no one else had used a non-puppy kernel to boot up puppy before I could have claimed the award. That's pretty much what I did, took slackintosh's 12.1 kernel (2.6.24.5) and used puppy's inird.gz to create the template for PowerPup's since I had to recompile the programs for it. Ah well.

Things are going well, I still need to work on recompiling puppy's programs to create the SFS file. But for a test I want to create a different SFS file first that will just be a barebones version. that way I can at least make sure unionfs and squashfs are working properly. Today I'll be moving my slackintosh installation to a larger hard drive, the current one is filling up quick from all the source codes I'm working with and if I'm going to recomile puppy, well you get the idea.

Hope you have success when you test your mac!

-PowerPup

[PowerPup]

Small update, I decided not to bother trying to moved my slackintosh installation to the other hard drive because it wouldn't work right. So I found a spot to place it under the CD Rom drive bay.

Also found a needed step in order for Linux (And PowerPup) to have write support on HFS Plus format. Linux does not yet support writing on journaled HFS Plus format, (sometimes known as HFSJ.) So it needs to be disabled in order for PowerPup is be able to save changes.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2355 shows how to disable journaling in all Mac OS X versions, (near the bottom of the page.) However if all you have is Mac OS 9 or older, then you don't have to worry about turning off journaling. Because it wasn't introduced until Mac OS X.