Debian Jessie becomes the new stable

Yesterday (Apr. 25), Debian released Jessie (version 8) as the new stable edition of their Linux OS.  I have yet to try it as a stable release, but plan on installing soon.

Being that this is a Linux-heavy blog, you can expect a lot of new content about the Jessie stable release from our authors here - when we have time of course - so keep checking back in to catch it.  Once I give it a thorough once over, I will be sure to share my thoughts on it.

For now - try it and share any findings.

By the way...  the new testing release is named "Stretch".  I wonder if that name has a deeper meaning?  As in to really "stretch" the time it spends in testing.

When You Need to Memtest Your RAM

My Powerbook recently suffered a mild health crisis. It started when I woke it from sleep one morning and it immediately gave me a kernel panic. I rebooted and got another immediate kernel panic, at which point I sighed and thought, "Here we go..." I actually thought I fixed the problem by reseating the RAM, since the kernel panic plastered a bunch of helpful text across my screen saying something about "illegal memory instruction." But alas it was only a short-lived fix as the kernel panics returned soon after.

It turned out the lower RAM slot was dying, and in fact it finally died permanently later that day and now the Powerbook was only reading 512 MB of memory (the upper slot). Dead lower memory slots were a common problem in aluminum Powerbooks, though Apple's AppleCare extension program for this model is long past. I could either re-solder the slot joints back in place or replace the entire logic board. Since I don't have soldering skills handy, replacing the logic board it was!

Fortunately I have a spare, identical Powerbook for just such an occasion. For awhile, I've wanted to take apart both Powerbooks and combine the best parts from each, so events provided the impetus. After much surgery (basically moving the hard drive, trackpad case, and LCD display to the spare which had a good bottom case and logic board), the patient came out more-or-less intact. I used these iFixIt tutorials, which I can't recommend enough. If any of you want to do something like this, let me offer a tip. When following the tutorials, always refer back to each step one-by-one, even if you've done it a few times before and think you have the hang of it. Because eventually you'll overlook a step and wonder why the trackpad case won't pull off the left side even though you're bending it out of shape and then you realize you forgot to take that side's screws out. Now, I didn't do this myself, of course. That would make me the stupidest person on the planet. I'm merely writing to enlighten you, dear reader.

Unfortunately this wasn't the end of my adventures. I also ordered a pair of one gig RAM DIMMs to max out my memory. I'm starting a family photo scanning project and I'll be working with some very large picture files. So naturally I installed the new RAM and got a kernel panic. Then I rebooted and the System Profiler's diagnostics showed the bottom slot failed and was only reading 512 MB. At this point I'm thinking this isn't my lucky week. After reseating the RAM, everything seemed to work until more kernel panics returned. At this point it was finally time to test the RAM (when Darth Vader targets me in his cross hairs, he says, "The ennui is strong in this one.").

To test, you need a unix program called memtest. An installer is available for download at Command-Tab, which installs the executable into your /usr/local/bin. Version 4.22 supports both PowerPC and Intel. Once you have it, you can reboot into single user mode (command-s at the chime) and run the command "memtest all 2". Over the next couple of hours you'll see either a bunch of "ok"s or a bunch of failures. I saw failures. The good news is the seller agreed to give me a refund almost instantly after I sent a request.

Memtest is also bundled with Applejack, another troubleshooting utility that runs in single user mode. I saw other sites trying to sell memtest for a fee, but it's freeware so I don't know what that's about.

I'll try my luck with new RAM again, but right now I'm glad to have two functioning slots even if they're housing my old 512 MB DIMMs. Finally on the subject of scanning, check out these posts at Quadras, Cubes, and G5s about digital photography and scanning on a 7300. Very interesting.

Aloha from South Dakota

Thanks to everyone for the warm welcome and the kind introduction from Zen! I really do appreciate it. I'll likely keep this post short and sweet.

A little about myself.  My full-time job is as a network administrator, but I also manage the IT infrastructure of another growing company part-time.  My real passion is with programming, but I leave myself too little time to do it unfortunately.  Using PPC hardware has helped keep that passion alive and strong though.  Other than that, I love virtualization technologies and spend a lot of time learning the ins and outs of them.  I still consider myself very new to PowerPC hardware, so if anything is ever out of line or incorrect, don't be afraid to correct me.  I consider it a valuable part of my learning experience.

When writing for my blog, PowerofPowerPC, I try incredibly hard to stick mostly to the facts and I plan on doing the same here. I'll be focused mostly on G5 content as other hardware is already covered by the other writers. This works out well as I have not done anything G5 related on my own blog up to this point. There, I mostly stick with older PPC portables and G4 desktops and that will likely not change anytime soon.

I currently own 3 G5 Power Macs, all of which have been freely donated to me through various means.  If it wasn't so incredibly expensive to ship these heavy beasts, I'd be more than willing to donate the other two to individuals who would put them to every day use.

My daily G5 is a 2.3 GHz dual core running with 16 GB of RAM.  You can read more about this machine's specs on the hardware page. The machine's hostname is appropriately set to (in my opinion) BigMac.

If you have any post ideas, topics, or issues related to the G5 Power Mac we could try to work through together, please let me or one of the other writers know. I'm looking forward to further expanding and sharing my knowledge of both PPC hardware and software.