Xorg bug lands in testing

One month and eight days, that is how long it took before an update to Stretch brought in a nasty bug. Here is a little background, back in the early part of the year a lot of people were excited about Ubuntu-MATE announcing plans to support PowerPC. The guys involved in the project did a great job with the distro. A lot of us were testing the 15.04 release while it was in beta. Then an upgrade in beta brought in a lot of trouble.

The main issue was the change to version 1.17 of Xorg. There is a bug in this release that serisouly distorts the colors and graphics of the DE in PowerPC. You can read about it here in the Ubuntu forums. So now it has reached Debian Stretch(testing). I have placed a bug report to Debain (#787965) and also notified the Debian PowerPC mailing list of the issue. The brightside is that it landed early so I am hoping this will give the developers plenty of time to work on it and find a solution.

I will keep you all updated.

UPDATE: It looks like the Xorg bug has been fixed! The latest version (1.17.2-1) has resolved the graphics issue. Good times are back again :) 

Jessie meets BigMac

UPDATE 7/5/2015 - I referenced the improper SMP kernel for G5 machines.  This has been corrected.

UPDATE 2 7/18/2015 - Added section for resolving high RPMs from the G5's fans.

As almost all of us know, Debian's latest stable release, Jessie, went live this past month.  I debated whether I would do an in place upgrade using apt-get or if I would just start from scratch with a fresh new install on my dual-core G5.  The latter option won for a couple of reasons, the biggest being that I wanted to see what worked and didn't work right out of the gate with this latest release.

The install was straightforward and almost identical to the installer for Wheezy with one major noticeable difference. The Jessie installer will give you the option to select your preferred desktop environment you would like installed. Of course, the ability to add in the necessary yaboot parameters for indicating your preferred desktop environment when running the installer have existed previously and still do, but it is a nice change for those not quite as technically minded.  Personally, I prefer LXDE, so I went with that.  If you like to live on the edge, go ahead and select more than one. Otherwise, everything else again, is almost identical.

One other thing to keep in mind if installing this on a G5 PowerMac is that you will want to make sure you are installing the 64-bit version of Jessie as well as installing the SMP (symmetric multi-processor) kernel so that it can take advantage of either your multiple CPUs or cores.  Just to put your mind at ease if you are still unsure, every model of G5 is 64-bit capable. Jessie would run on the non-SMP kernel, but only one core/CPU would be utilized. However, if you just load the installer up with the defaults you shouldn't really even need to worry about these two things.  If you've already installed Jessie and want to make sure you are running the system with both of these features run the following command:

uname -a

You should get something similar to the following with both SMP and ppc64 included in the results:

Linux BigMac 3.16.0-4-powerpc64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt9-3~deb8u1 (2015-04-24) ppc64 GNU/Linux

If for some reason, the SMP kernel was not installed, you can still install and enable it by installing the linux-image-3.16.0-4-powerpc-smp linux-image-3.16.0-4-powerpc64 package along with its headers and other dependencies.  You can substitute the appropriate image version for your system if different from what I have above.

While on the topic of installation, if you are new to Debian/Linux and/or Debian on PPC, I would encourage you to read through the install guide found here. I consider myself very well versed and experienced when it comes to working with Linux, but this guide taught me many things I previously did not know or never really fully understood.   The guide is available in several formats, so feel free to use your preferred choice. There are still many hyper-links I'd like to follow within that guide to further my knowledge and understanding of Debian/Linux and running it on the PPC architecture.

Once the install was complete, I rebooted to the login screen and was greeted with screwy looking and unusable results.  In regards to graphics, keep in mind that I have a flashed nVidia Quadro 4500 FX card so I'm free from the Radeon/KMS madness, but that's not to say noveau has several issues of its own. After just a tiny bit of reading on the PowerPCKnownIssues page, I learned I would likely have to disable hardware acceleration for things to work. By the way, I would definitely check out that page as well regardless as it covers many if not all issues affecting PowerPC users and most of it pertains to Debian installs as well.

So in my yaboot.conf I added the following line after the initrd line of my main Linux image and ran sudo ybin -v afterwards:

append="nouveau.noaccel=1"

I was then able to reboot in a working desktop environment. Despite the lack of 3D acceleration, the software rasterized graphics felt incredibly fluid (especially after installing and running compton) with still plenty of CPU cycles still leftover for a plethora of other tasks. Running glxgears givings me on average only about 116 FPS, which I know the nVidia card could crush if it could be put to use with 3D acceleration.

On the same graphics front, I have not yet been able to enable both of my 20" Apple Cinema displays so right now they are mirroring each other (the default behavior). I went ahead and installed arandr (a GUI-wrapper to xrandr) to try and enable both monitors, but each time I try to apply the changes after positioning the displays in the desired fashion, I'm logged out of my desktop session. So at this point, that aspect is still ongoing project.

Of course, I still had to install the necessary firmware for the G5's Airport card, but info on installing it can be found on the Ubuntu PowerPC FAQ page.  Another piece of hardware that was not working off the bat was sound, but running alsamixer and hitting the 'M' key to un-mute the Master Volume took care of that.  My 5 USB port Sonnet PCI card worked from the get go, but I have not yet tested connectivity with the Sonnet E4i card and G5 Jive, but will post results once I have done so.

Lastly, in regards to any issues up front with installation, a few have reported uncontrollable fans revving up to max RPMs.  If you happen to be one of these unlucky few, run the following command to load the necessary module that controls fan speed.

sudo modprobe i2c-powermac

If that resolves the issue, be sure to add these modules to /etc/modules so it is loaded at startup.

Other than that, I'm still in the process of customization, but for the most part have not ran into anything else unusual or come across any other unknown and unreported bugs.  Overall, apart from the no 3D acceleration, I'm quite impressed and look forward to using it daily on as one my main workhorses. In regards to graphics, I have not lost faith that some day in the future I will once again have 3D acceleration.  I was reading it possible get 3D acceleration back by compiling and installing an updated version of the nouveau driver.  I see that as quite a hill to climb, but at the same time I view this as another opportunity to learn and expand my knowledge of computing.  As has been said here and on many Linux forum posts all over the web, Linux is not for the faint of heart.

Here is a screen shot showing a few running applications. Notice the video I somehow randomly stumbled upon while putting together this post.

If you have a G5 you've recently installed Jessie on, feel free to share your experiences, bugs, or fixes in the comments below. If I discover anything else that could be useful or helpful when doing an install on a G5 I'll update this post unless the fix and/or info warrants an individual post.  Also, just know I'd be glad to help anybody who runs into any other issues with Jessie on their G5.

Oh Radeon..to patch or not to patch

As it has been well documented if you are using a radeon video card while running Linux on your PowerPC then you are in for a few hurdles. Things now are a lot more complicated with the changes from Wheezy to Jessie. In the past you really did not need KMS or accelerated hardware graphics to have a good, working, stable machine. Now with Jessie you at the least need KMS enabled if you want to have a usable desktop. If you are running a G4 following the boot parameters I laid out previously should get you going. However if you running a G3, Dan has a great walk through over here. Now that you have KMS enabled the next question is do you want accelerated graphics. It may not be important to most but there are some open source games in repositories that you can still play as long as you have 3D graphics enabled. You could set your default depth to 16 in xorg.conf, or you can install an already patched mesa package, or you could be more adventurous and try to patch the source and recompile yourself. I chose to patch and recompile the source. I wanted to see if I could do it and also I did not want to wait on others to produce a new patch version every time there is a new version on mesa. There are no plans to produce a final fix for this on PowerPC anytime soon. The current patch available is not suitable for final inclusion into upstream but it does get 3D working. So here is what you do.

First there are two resources you should read closely to understand patching and compiling deb build in Debian. The first is a great walk though on building packages which can be found in the Debian Forums. The second is a tutorial on apply patches in Linux, which can be found here. The next thing to obtain the patch files. These files can be found here. Jessie uses mesa version 10.3.2, which requires an additional patch to prevent the build from crashing during compile time. Now you will need to install the following packages that will allow you to compile into .deb packages:

sudo apt-get install build-essential fakeroot devscripts

The next step is to install the dependencies needed to build mesa and the source code of mesa itself. This is done by running the following commands (note from the install of the build dependencies till the time the .deb file are to be installed all the commands need to be done as regular user and not root):

sudo apt-get build-dep mesa
apt-get source mesa

Now to proceed to applying the patches. The patch file 08_packed_RGB_formats.diff patches the following, dri_drawable.c and dri2.c. You will need to be in the directory where the files to be patch are located. See below:

cd mesa-10.4.2/src/gallium/state_trackers/dri/
patch -p6 --dry-run < ~/Public/08_packed_RGB_formats.diff
checking file dri_drawable.c
checking file dri2.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 163 (offset 34 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 289 (offset -114 lines).
Hunk #3 succeeded at 699 (offset 150 lines).
Hunk #4 succeeded at 820 (offset 150 lines).


patch -p6 < ~/Public/08_packed_RGB_formats.diff
patching file dri_drawable.c
patching file dri2.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 163 (offset 34 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 289 (offset -114 lines).
Hunk #3 succeeded at 699 (offset 150 lines).
Hunk #4 succeeded at 820 (offset 150 lines).

The first time I ran the patch command I used the --dry-run option. This verifies the patch is good before actually applying it. This is a good habit to get into since messing up patch means deleting the source code and starting over. If you do not get the output shown above and instead are asked for the location of the file needing then patch, then this usually means you have the incorrect -p option. Please read the tutorial linked about for more detail on how to properly use it. The next patch file 09_r300g_big_endian_fixes.diff patches the following, r300_blit.c, r300_texture,c, r300_texture.h, r300_transfer.c, r300_context.h, r300_state.c, r300_state_dervied.c. This is how I applied this patch:

patch -p5 --dry-run < ~/Public/09_r300g_big_endian_fixes.diff
checking file r300_blit.c
checking file r300_context.h
checking file r300_state.c
Hunk #4 succeeded at 1659 (offset -7 lines).
Hunk #5 succeeded at 1675 (offset -7 lines).
checking file r300_state_derived.c
checking file r300_texture.c
checking file r300_texture.h
checking file r300_transfer.c


patch -p5 < ~/Public/09_r300g_big_endian_fixes.diff
patching file r300_blit.c
patching file r300_context.h
patching file r300_state.c
Hunk #4 succeeded at 1659 (offset -7 lines).
Hunk #5 succeeded at 1675 (offset -7 lines).
patching file r300_state_derived.c
patching file r300_texture.c
patching file r300_texture.h
patching file r300_transfer.c

If you are running Jessie then you are using mesa 10.3.2 with requires an additional patch to keep the compiler from crashing during build. Below are the commands:

cd mesa-10.3.2/src/mesa/main
patch -p4 --dry-run < ~/Public/dbc2d81d2ba12354876eb67c79e8a71e57e97f3c..cfeb394224f2daeb2139cf4ec489a4dd8297a44d.patch
patch -p4 < ~/Public/dbc2d81d2ba12354876eb67c79e8a71e57e97f3c..cfeb394224f2daeb2139cf4ec489a4dd8297a44d.patch

Now that the patches are applied the next was to change the version number of mesa to preserve the upgrade path. Since the current version of mesa for Stretch is 10.4.2-2, this how I changed it:

debchange -b -v 10.4.2-2a~patch1

The takes you to the changelog in a nano session. There edit the log if you want then save and exit. Now you are ready to compile your .deb packages! Just run the following:

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc

This will take a few hours to complete. So go have a drink and watch a movie while the packages are building. Then when it is completed you will see in the directory above all the .deb files. The build make the install, dev, and debug packages. I normal move them to a separate directory then segregate them into separate folders. So I then just install the packages like this:

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Finally reboot and test! You should run the command LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo |grep render and see this output "OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV350". If you do then congrats you just successfully installed a patch!

UPDATE I: It looks like starting with Mesa 10.5.5 the patches above are starting to fail. I am seeing this on Stretch. This should be expected since these patches are just really 'workarounds' and were never going to implemented upstream. You could still set the DefaultDisplay to 16 in xorg.conf to get 3D if you run into this.

These are exciting times

The title says it all friends. We are living in very exciting times.

The first reason for my excitement is the wildly talented team I have the honor and pleasure to work with. We truly have a phenomenal team of writers here. I have learned and am learning so much from all of you.

My second reason for excitement is that Jessie has gone stable (I know I'm late to the party) and has presented some challenges. Sure, installing wheezy and having sound just work on my PowerBook was nice. Challenges are good, they are opportunities to learn. They make you a better power user or driver. If you are never challenged you do not grow. I have also learned that, in the face of a challenge, things are rarely hopeless. The PowerBook sound issue is no exception. I have been given two patches to test on my PowerBook. At the time of writing this I do not know how to patch or compile a kernel. That's whats exciting, I get to learn how. In addition to learning some new skills, I get to actually help in the development process.

I know this post is rather abstract, I just wanted to drop in and share my excitement. Now I'm off to go dive into manuals and or Google.

Debian Testing for my iBook G4

I was thinking about which OS to install on iBook yesterday. I just got over a pretty frustrating experience in that department and was looking for something not too easy but more enjoyable. So Jessie is now stable and since my iBook is my "testing" machine why not install Stretch on it? The freeze is probably lifted for testing so I want to see how long I can ride before my sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade results in me getting hit with a serious bug. This is what a "testing" machine is for right? ;-) So I went and got the netinst iso from Debian and began the install. When the cd boots it asks how you want to install and I chose the options install desktop=xfce. I really like XFCE, it is not as lightweight as LXDE but it has some more features that I prefer on my DE. The rest is pretty much what you would expect on a Debian install. It just worked. Once your system reboots remember you need to enable KMS if you have any desire for a good DE experience. I use the following setting on my iBook:

Linux radeon.modeset=1 video=offb:off video=1024x768-32 video=radeonfb:off radeon.agpmode=-1

Then when your login to the desktop you will need to make the changes permanent. Sudo does not come installed you can su to root and install it or you could just run nano -w /etc/yaboot.conf as root and add those parameters like below:

image=/boot/vmlinux
label=Linux
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="quiet splash radeon.modeset=1 video=radeonfb:off video=offb:off video=1024x768-32 radeon.agpmode=-1"

image=/boot/vmlinux.old
label=old
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd.img.old
append="quiet splash radeon.modeset=1 video=radeonfb:off video=offb:off video=1024x768-32 radeon.agpmode=-1"

If you want to find out what screen resolution you need to set for your machine it can be fount at the everymac website. Remember to run this command after you finish editing to apply your changes sudo ybin -v. Setting up wireless was pretty straight forward. You will need to add contrib and non-free to the /etc/apt/sources.list file and run sudo apt-get update. Since I have Broadcom BCM4318 chip I just need to install the firmware-b43-installer package and reload the b43 module. On G4 iBooks and PowerBooks to get sound to work you will need to manually load the snd-aoa-i2sbus module and add it to the /etc/modules file. Then run the command alsamixer to set the PCM channel to 80. You need to install the pauvcontrol package as well. I also added the pmu_battery module so I can have a working battery indicator. This basically what I did to get a working system. The only issue I ran across was the xfdesktop4 service was consuming 100% cpu when I would right click on the desktop. There was already a related bug that I added my comments. I spent the rest of the evening theming my desktop. I am huge fan of Numix themes and icons so below are some screenshots. BTW does anyone want to take a guess as to how long I can ride in testing before an upgrade really hurts me?

Hello from Texas!

Thanks zen for the intro. Here is a brief summary about me and how I got here.

I am a network engineer in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. I have been doing networking since about 2008 mostly on Cisco routers, switches, and firewall appliances. I have ventured to other network/security platforms since my start. I administer Big-IP F5 appliances, Check Point and  Juniper firewalls. I really love being a network engineer. I find the whole field fascinating.

I really got into working with PowerPC just because I wanted to get PowerBook G4 working again. It was my first computer I bought in 2006. I just loved it, then Apple moved on to Intel and you saw support for it just go away. I bought a MacBook Pro in 2009 but I never could get rid of my PowerBook. So fast forward to 2014, I pulled it out again and decided to try to see what could I use it for. Leopard was unsupported so I wanted a modern OS hence Linux. I got Xubuntu installed and working pretty easy, but there were still some issues I was working through. The biggest was video playback. Then someone on the Ubuntu forms recommended Dan's site PPC Luddite. I was blown away with what I found there. Talk about a wealth of information! Then I discovered that there was a whole community of people out there keeping this platform (which contrary to Apple is NOT dead) going. Through Dan I found PowerPC Liberation where I came accross Zen's post,  "Claim your computing freedom". It is probably one of my favorite posts on what Linux offers, freedom on your computer! So this is where how I got to where I am on PowerPC.

My blog  covers my exploring other distros and how they work on PowerPC. I do not really consider myself an expert, I like to say I am an adventurous noob :-) So far I have dealt with Debian, the Ubuntu flavors, and just recently Gentoo. I plan to cover OpenSUSE and the BSDs as well in the future. I will also eventually cover networking and security related issues as well since that what I mostly do at my job.

My main machine was a PowerBook G4 1.67Ghz running Debian, but it just died this morning. So time to look for another. I have an iBook G4 that i use for testing and a PowerMac G4 that needs some work to get going, I hoping in time to get a G5 and possibly a mac mini to add to my collection.

I am looking forward to contributing and learning from everyone here.

Yet another author, and a new view on images

As I have said before...  we will always be adding new authors here.  The author of IT musings on Linux, PowerPC, Networking, and Security, rican-linux, is the latest to join the fold, so please help me welcome him.

He is a Network Engineer, and has been a very fast learner with Linux.  Seems like the type that just gets Linux from the start.  He recently successfully installed Gentoo on his iBook, which if you've tried that you know is no small feat.

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.

The Humble Luddite

Dan DeVoto is the greatest thing that ever happened to the post-Apple PowerPC user base, and this post will explain why - both to Dan and the readers who may not understand the full extent of how committed, selfless, inclusive and balanced this guy is.  Because Dan is so humble, I want to apologize to him up front if this causes any embarrassment, but the people need to know the true extent of your greatness.

Firstly, the obvious...  he writes for two PowerPC blogs and is a science fiction author on top of that.  I mean...  come on; it's as if he's the chosen one.  Since PowerPC hardware goes to space in real life it's only fitting.  In my personal opinion, PPC Luddite is the greatest PowerPC resource out there.  Why?  Because he never has an agenda, is inclusive with all users (even the fanboys), and he's just an all-round gentlemanly good guy.  Most importantly though, is that he is beyond competent in experience and foresight.  The thing is, I don't think he has any clue about all this, which makes him even more likable.

I offered to buy him a G5...  he politely declined.  I offered to give him more RAM for his Sawtooth..  he again politely declined.  If that doesn't show commitment to the cause of helping PowerPC users, I don't know what does.  He has no interest in free things or accolades - only helping people and writing about his love of PowerPC.

Many in the remaining PowerPC user base might think of Cameron Kaiser as the greatest thing that ever happened to our old Macs, and while I acknowledge his contribution with respect, he doesn't touch Dan DeVoto's vast, dynamic and all-encompassing arsenal of assistance to users.

Anyway Dan, I've embarrassed you enough, but I have been left with a big void of not being able to give back to you, and this was the only way I could think of.  To tell the entire PowerPC community that you are the the greatest resource we have.

New author arrives, and a shout-out to Michigan

B-rock, the author of Power of PowerPC, has joined the PowerPC Liberation author team, so please help me welcome him.  As a G4 and G5 user, he will be able to provide both a similar and unique perspective compared to the preexisting G3/G4 authors here.

He's a computer science grad and has a big passion for Linux, software development, and PowerPC of course.  I don't mean to sound cocky...  but this is now the most well-armed PowerPC blog out there author-wise.  It will only grow from here.  Remember - PowerPC is only dead at Apple.  We shall live on as long as there are users to write for.


Lastly, I want to give a friendly hello to the people of the US state of Michigan.  Not only are Americans the largest audience here, but the state of Michigan is responsible for at least 20-30% of all hits from the USA.  There are at least 100 there who are regular visitors here, and from every corner of the state.  So to the people of Michigan I say thanks for the loyalty and sheer number of you still interested in PowerPC.  They must put something PowerPC-friendly in the water there.

Are you a driver or a passenger?

There are really only two types of computer users in the world, and some good analogies to explain these two types are drivers and passengers.  Some insist on driving their hardware, while others are content to just be along for the ride.  This post is made with the intent of helping us all understand how and why we individually ended up being one or the other, or maybe you share some traits with both.  Think of this post as a computer culture research venture, but one that will also have a strong intent to inspire others by sharing personal stories.


My definition of the two types:


Drivers

These are people who aren't content with the Apple and Microsoft abilities/limitations, and desire more control and capability from their hardware.  These are people who don't settle for what the mainstream industry spoon-feeds them, and demand more from themselves and the people they share knowledge and helpfulness with.  People who refuse to stagnate or devolve their computing education and journey as they continue computing throughout their life.


Passengers

People who are content with pretty much any solution that just works, regardless of limitations.  They will happily sacrifice ability and skill evolution by always choosing the path of least effort.  Many of them also like to encourage others not to bother evolving; without realizing that no one needs help to not learn something.  Basically...  people who don't like to combine computing with too much thinking.  This is not to say they are dumb - certainly not - but rather that they have been conditioned to believe the two (computing and genuine thinking) don't go together.



What I need from you:

I want to know which you consider yourself to be and why, along with a brief history of how you arrived there.  This will also help guide us here to a better understanding of what type of new content to write in the future.  I personally have not made a truly meaty post in a while, and would like to have a better understanding concerning the current state of the audience here.


My (zen's) story:

I consider myself a driver, and I arrived there naturally by UNIX/BSD being the first OS I ever used, and continue using today, both personally and professionally. I started in the mid-80's on UNIX and didn't use another OS (full-time) until the early 90's.  So I started as a driver and stayed that way.


Please share your user type and story in comments.  I look forward to reading them.

viva PowerPC gets a new URL

This is just a brief post to help spread the word of viva PowerPC's new address.  Logout has switched from .tk to .eu, and posted the explanation here.

So if you link to his site, you need to update the URL.

Here is the new link for the clickophiles (I made that word up).


Also, a guy who has commented here a few times (B-rock) has a blog that I recently discovered called Power of PowerPC, which I encourage you to check out.  He has always seemed like a very bright and knowledgeable guy, and I didn't realize his computer science education, along with his interest in Linux and software development.

Mobile version re-enabled

After about a year or so with the mobile version of this blog disabled, I have decided to enable it again.  The reason I disabled it in the first place is that Blogger gives you very little control over it.  After getting requests, from both readers and Google, to make the blog more mobile-friendly, I have decided to do so.

While Blogger has now greatly improved the control the admin can have over the mobile version; it still leaves a lot to be desired.  I simply just don't have the time to write all the HTML myself, but do use some CSS of my own here.  The main issue with the mobile version, for me at least, is that it doesn't show the CC license at the bottom.  Maybe one day I can re-write all the HTML here and overcome that, but for now I am just using as simple a mobile template as I can.  This will hopefully encourage more mobile users to browse the standard version.  It's just short summaries and a link to the standard/web version.

Even though the mobile users here only make up about 2% (all mobile OS combined) of the visitors; I don't want to leave them out.  The main reason mobile users bring up to me is they desire larger text, and you get that with the mobile version.

This place will always be best viewed on a proper computer with at least a 1024x768 display, but now the mobile people who visit here can have it their way also; while still having the option to view the standard version.

I would like the mobile users who visit here to share any thoughts they might have to make their experience better.

Non-mobile users can view that version of the blog here.

Is Your Mozilla Browser Displaying the Right Colors?

I don't know how this happened, but somehow I stumbled on all these pages on color management in Firefox and I found out something interesting, unlike when I usually get lost surfing. It turns out my TenFourFox wasn't quite getting color management right with its stock settings. In fact, most of my browsers were failing the test (the exception being Iceweasel). Unlike the others, however, Firefox has the ability to ensure accurate color management with a little about:config tweak.

First, perform the aforementioned test. Go to BEST FIREFOX TEST PAGE and see if colors are correctly displayed. If they're slightly off, it's because the browser isn't converting untagged images to your monitor's profile. For me, WebKit (on OS X) and QupZilla (on Linux) failed as well as TenFourFox. So to bring full color management to TenFourFox, or any Mozilla browser, go into about:config, then type "gfx.color" in the filter bar to see the color management preferences. Change "gfx.color_management.mode" to 1 (from the default 2). After a restart, TenFourFox will apply color management not just to tagged images, but untagged ones as well.

I'm not sure why Iceweasel passed the test even though it had only partial color management with the default "2" setting, but I'll take it. I'm also not sure why full color management isn't the default. If it's because there's a performance hit, I haven't noticed it. I've been running TenFourFox with full color management enabled and haven't had any problems.

For further reading, check out these links:

Color Management on the Web

How To Enable Color Management in Firefox

This is not "zen's blog" anymore

I notice that in a large number of places that link to this blog, many still refer to this place as "zen's blog", but I'm only part of the machine these days, and its been that way for quite a while when you go back to Dr. Dave.  Mark (fiftysixk) has been here for almost a year now, and Dan from PPC Luddite has been here for at least a few months.

To refer to this place as mine is disrespectful to them.  I am the founder and admin, but in terms of content (writing) I am only 1/3 of the brains here.  Mark, the creator of Rated Win, is a very qualified and capable guy that works in the Houston space industry for a company owned by NASA, and Dan is the all-knowing Debian chef who created the greatest PowerPC blog ever, PPC Luddite.  These are two very capable and competent people which I respect a great deal, and they shouldn't be left out when referring to this place.  If you want to refer to it by author like that, then call it zen, Mark and Dan's blog, or maybe just PowerPC Liberation.  They deserve as much acknowledgment as I do, and maybe more.  Please read the author page for more info on the writing team here.

So please...  stop referring to this place as "zen's blog", because it isn't.  It's named PowerPC Liberation, and has three authors; not one.  There are three different perspectives to read here (four with the dr.dave content); not just mine.  I also plan on adding more authors in the future.  Logout from viva PowerPC has expressed interest in writing here at some point after his child is born.  Best wishes to him and his family.

 I only allow truly qualified people to write here, so you can take their words as gospel with confidence.  The one downfall is that qualified people are often very busy people also, so we don't have as much free time to write as some other sites.  This is why I will always be adding more authors as time goes on.  More authors means more perspectives and content.

Lastly...  I want to give another heartfelt thanks to both Mark and Dan for making this place more dynamic and fresh.  You've both been nothing but amazing with everything you've done, along with the pleasure I have knowing your great minds are working together with me here. 

Dropped Box

Dropbox announced in the recent past that they are dropping support for PowerPC.  I'm late to the table posting about this, but have been as busy as ever, and fellow author here Dan wrote about it on his blog.

I'm not a Dropbox user at all personally, but since my friend Logout from viva PowerPC was concerned enough to write an open letter to them, which I will include below, I thought this was well worth informing the readers here about.

Here is his open letter to Dropbox:

Dear members of Dropbox team,

Today I received your e-mail about ending support for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5. and I want to say something about that.

I am member of small but not-dead-yet worldwide community of users of Mac computers equipped with PowerPC microprocessors. Since 2005, when Apple announced switch to Intel CPUs, support for our computers vanished from almost all kinds of applications. Dropbox was one of the last still supporting us and I want to thank you for that effort. Let me just ask you not to cut us off.

You advise us to upgrade to OS X 10.6, which will still be supported after May 18th. This makes little sense to me, since there are just seven Mac models from 2006, for which 10.6 is the final version, all newer can upgrade to 10.7. On the other hand, Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5 is the final version for much more computers, all Apple computers from summer 2000 to the end of 2005 to be exact. There are even some 1999 Mac models that can run 10.4 and many older can be upgraded to do so - with proper CPU upgrade it's possible to use Dropbox from Mac made in 1995. So with this one step you will cut off the whole decade of computers, but you will still support seven models from 2006, some of which have less CPU power than final PowerPC models from 2005.

I started with Dropbox five years ago on my on PowerMac G5 and now I still use it on that very same PowerMac G5 with OS X 10.5 as well as on PowerBook G4 with OS X 10.4, Lenovo T400 with Linux, HP desktop with Windows 7, iPad and BlackBerry Z10. You can probably say, that removing two computers from this list will do a little harm, but the opposite is true: I have Dropbox installed on all my computers to get my data to the PowerMac G5 on which I do all my typing, programming, photo editing, etc. Two months ago I even bought Samsung camera with Dropbox support to get pictures to this desktop without wires, now my complete ecosystem will be broken with demise of its central element.

Without my PowerMac, it has no sense for me to use Dropbox on other machines and devices. Even after you stop supporting 10.4/10.5 there will probably be some ways how to sync on these systems, like installing qemu (or other x86 PC emulator) with Linux and sync Dropbox via shared folder from this emulation. But I don't want to do things this ridiculous just to have my favorite cloud service on my favorite computer. So please, reconsider support for 10.4/10.5, you still support Windows XP (2001) and our systems are no older than this one.

Thank you.

Martin Kukač, Dropbox AND PowerMac user

So if you're a concerned Dropbox + Mac OS + PowerPC user like Martin/Logout; please add your voice to the ether here to let the developers know.

This is a trend that has been going on for a while with virtually all apps that still or once supported PowerPC, and it will keep happening until Cameron Kaiser is the last Mac OS/PowerPC developer.  It's inevitable.  All the more reason to add Linux into your computing cocktail.

Comments and HTML

This post is simply to explain to all the commenters here that Blogger's comment system fully supports HTML.  This will allow you to make URL's clickable and such.  Once I have spare time to write more CSS code here, I want to try and make it so URL's in comments will be made clickable automatically, but until then (and I'm not even sure how successful that will be), you can use HTML.


Here is the code required to make URL's clickable within comments:

<b><a href="www.url.com">URL Title</a></b>

I added code to make the link bold, because otherwise it will not stand out, and will blend in with the rest of the text.  As I'm sure you all know already; bold is the language of clickable links here.

So there you go... you can all now use this and other code to make your comment links clickable. I'm not exactly sure what, if any, limits Blogger put on the extent of supported HTML, but I know that url code works perfectly.

Happy HTMLing!

Debian Bug Reporting Party!

This is my second post title in a row that ends in an exclamation point. But before I get voted off the island, I thought it would be a good idea to have a post dedicated to the reporting of Debian bugs great and small. I could kick it off by whining reporting my findings and linking to various bug reports I've left, and then you the reader can confirm and augment my bug report with your own additions. Then in the comments section, you can tell us about bugs you've run into and we can confirm and resolve to file a report to the ever-responsive bug squashing gods.

I've been switching over to Debian Jessie and I've run into several bugs that seem to be PowerPC issues. There are of course KMS issues with Xorg's radeon driver (black screen, system freezes, broken suspend), but I'm not sure there's much point in leaving bug reports since Xorg developers have basically said they don't have the hardware or inclination to debug our issues. This is a bit of a conundrum since KMS will now be required to use the radeon driver, and those of us who can't switch because of the above bugs are stuck with the fbdev driver and an unaccelerated desktop.

That said, maybe we can find a more receptive audience with sound bugs. The one I'm most interested in is this Clementine bug. It crashes whenever I try to play a music file, and it happens on all three systems I've used it on. I've never seen anyone else report a similar bug, so my question is, can anyone on PowerPC get Clementine to play files? Or is it just me?

Another bug I found is tangentially related to Clementine. Clementine pulls in gstreamer1.0-alsa as a recommended dependency, but with that package installed, all other GStreamer players crash. After I uninstalled gstreamer1.0-alsa, GStreamer apps like Rhythmbox and Banshee could once again play files. Again, I haven't seen this reported elsewhere, so maybe it's a PowerPC thing.

Definitely a PowerPC thing is this soundcard-detect issue, also reported and commented on in many other places. Hopefully somebody's working on it behind the scenes, or maybe the next bug report will be the magic one?

Finally, two other audio bugs: Quod Libet's equalizer plugin failed, and I can't get an audio server with jackd2.

In kernel bug news, I found a couple. First, hibernate isn't working for me, and second, when DPMS powers off the screen after 10 minutes of inactivity, the backlight won't come on after I wake it. The only way to turn the backlight back on is to toggle the brightness keys. This is on my iBook using the fbdev driver; I haven't tested it with KMS on my Powerbook as I've not upgraded that to Jessie yet.

As for GUI bugs, I found a massive one — as in it makes your icons massively oversized. This only happens in GTK3 applications when using an SVG icon theme, so an easy workaround is to ditch SVG icons or GTK3 apps.

In terribly sad news, xfburn appears to crash whenever I add files in preparation for a data burn. The package maintainer had nothing to say, but another developer with an interest seemed to think this was a PowerPC, or at least a 32-bit, issue.

This brings up something else. In the bug reports I've filed, package maintainers haven't been exactly jumping off their stools to respond. In a lot of these reports I left backtraces and everything, but there appears to be precious little debugging. Maybe if more PowerPC users chime in, we can get a better response. Or at least make developers feel really really guilty inside when they don't do anything.

Any bugs you've come across that really bug you? Leave them in the comments, and me and hopefully others can try to confirm them and organize a party of pitchfork and torch bearers to show up at a developer's doorstep.

Wanted: G5 Author

Have a G5?  Run Linux, Mac OS and other OS?  Have a legitimate background in technology, and would enjoy writing about it?  PowerPC Liberation needs you.

The G5 chip has always been very under-represented here, and not because of intent, but because the stance of this blog has always been to write from direct experience, not conjecture.  So since none of us who write here own a G5-powered machine, we can't really write from that perspective.

Logout from viva PowerPC has an open invite to be an author here, and that offer will always be there if he wants it.  He is about the only truly qualified G5 user I know of.

Anyone else, please send your details, and perhaps some sample writings, to powerpcliberation at gmail dot com.  In your details, please explain why you want to write here, along with how you're qualified to do so.  Only serious and qualified applicants will be considered.

The number one thing we need here is a G5-based Linux/Debian user; with some Mac OS and other operating systems peppered in.  So if you're a strict Mac OS only fanboy-type user; don't waste your time or ours.

Grab a Qup ;) of QupZilla!

Admit it, you laughed.

A reader and starter of this Ubuntu forum thread alerted me to the existence of a (relatively) new browser with the pun-proliferating name QupZilla. Since it's a good idea to have at least two web browsers on your system, and since Midori seems to be having difficulties lately, I'm on the lookout for a second browser to complement Iceweasel. And being a webkit browser, QupZilla seems to fit the bill.

So is it any good? Upon first opening it, it looks familiar, very much like Firefox from the pre-Australis days. This isn't the eccentric interface of Midori which was developed to the interests and needs of its author rather than a general audience. With QupZilla there are no surprises, but there are many features. This isn't one of those minimalist webkit browsers, either. Besides the usual bookmark, password, and cookie management, there are also built-in features that are rather like some popular Firefox and Chrome extensions. So it comes with AdBlock, FlashBlock, and Greasemonkey as well as Speed-Dial, an RSS reader, and Videoner, which opens video links in an external program.

Its performance on Linux is practically indistinguishable from Iceweasel. They use almost identical amounts of memory and I didn't perceive any differences in page loading times.

Additional features let you link to an external download manager if you want more than the built-in one, and enable user agent management either globally or on a site-by-site basis. There's also a web inspector, so this is a mature browser even though it's relatively new on the block.

Overall, I have to say I'm really impressed. The only downside for me is the lack of a NoScript-like feature, but maybe if we cross our fingers and email the developer they'll make our wish come true.

QupZilla is in the Debian Jessie repository with a newer version in Sid, so go give it a look!

Taking a Walk With Debian Jessie

It's about that time in Debian's release cycle again where Testing enters a feature-freeze and all of Debian's worker bees hunker down and concentrate on bug squashing for their next stable release (yes, my metaphors are terrible). Also, they've recently come out with Jessie Installer Beta 2, so what better time to check out how Jessie's coming along and see if it'll crush our dreams or not?

In order to do this, I wanted to do a clean install instead of upgrading from Wheezy and having the safety valve of falling back on the old kernel. No safety nets here! Also, it's on a testing machine. I'm not gonna risk my stable install for you people. So onto the exercise. How does Jessie measure up?

The installer itself remains very familiar. It's only toward the end where it throws in something new: fresh choices for the desktop environment. In addition to the usual Gnome, KDE, LXDE, and XFCE, they also have options for Cinnamon and Mate. Good to know, but I was in a hurry and deferred installing a desktop environment for later.

To get a GUI up and running quick, I installed Openbox over the base system along with Xorg and LightDM and rebooted. It didn't take long for things to go wrong. For some reason LightDM didn't want to start up, so I replaced it with Slim, which is what I should've done in the beginning since it's much faster, and tried again. This time I got past the login screen but quickly found there's an issue with the radeon driver. This G3 iBook has an ATI card in it, so I need the radeon driver to give me at least 2D desktop acceleration, but I'm getting kicked back to the fbdev driver instead. Either the radeon driver is broken or it stopped supporting another slew of cards. I'm not sure which.

So to get an acceptable picture, i.e. without psychedelic colors, with the fbdev driver, I had to enter the yaboot parameter "Linux video=radeonfb:1024x768-32@60" at boot. This gives me a usable desktop, though video playback is unacceptably slow. So there's showstopper number one.

Showstopper number two is sound. As in, I have no sound. This bug has been around and reported on for over a year now and still isn't fixed. Basically, in many iBook models and some Powerbooks and perhaps others, the machine ID isn't read correctly so the sound card isn't seen. Patches have been proposed, but still no fix. Worrying.

At this point, do I have to say suspend is broken? Didn't think so.

As for new and exciting things Jessie offers, one is Mpv, an Mplayer fork that supports https streaming. Also there's Compton, a compositor that expands on xcompmgr, adding window and menu transparency and many bug fixes. Also, I saw Abiword is now at version 3.0, so just for laughs I decided to install it and see if it was any less awful than my previous experiences with it. And it was not quite as awful. I would put it around 80% as awful, so keep up the good work!

If you used Wheezy when it was in testing and were impressed by its stability and lack of bugs, Jessie is sure to be a letdown. There are major problems with video and sound, even this late in the development cycle. Some people can get around the radeon issue by disabling the radeon framebuffer and enabling KMS, but KMS for me is too unstable so it's not an option. Downgrading the radeon driver to the Wheezy version drags you into dependency hell and is probably unwise, so of course that's what I'm gonna do. I still don't know what I'll do about sound, though. Compile a new kernel? Or to be more accurate: learn how to compile a new kernel and then compile a new kernel? Or maybe I can try my "ignore it until it goes away" approach to problems. It doesn't always work, but when it does it's a thing of beauty.

The Liberating Luddite

Dan, the renowned founder and author of PPC Luddite, has joined the PowerPC Liberation writing team.  Please join me in welcoming him.

I feel truly honoured and privileged to have someone like Dan be part of this blog.  In my opinion this will bring an already close PowerPC community even closer.

For at least the next couple months, I will be taking a total break from active blog activity, like posting and commenting etc.  I will still be handling the administrative side of things, and commenting where I really feel a need on occasion, but the over two years of running this place has left me in dire need of a total break from the active side.

This doesn't mean Dan will no longer be a writer when I return; far from it.  He will be an author here for as long as he desires.  He isn't here as a temporary replacement, but rather just arriving at the time I needed help.

Don't think I'm tired of blogging, because I'm not, and I plan on this blog being around for many years to come.  I have a chance now to spend more time with my girlfriend over the next couple months, which is something we rarely do more than a couple hours in the evening before bed, as we both have very busy lives.  I just need some real life time away from all tech that isn't directly work related.  I shall return refreshed by early next year.

For now it's the Mark (fiftysixk) and Dan show here, and I know you will enjoy it, so just sit back and take it all in.

So again, welcome to the Liberation family, Dan!

Power Mac G4 cooling project: Phase 3 - Orientation swap

Hello and welcome to the third installment of the Power Mac G4 cooling project. If you missed the last two installments here are the links...

Power Mac G4 cooling project: Phase 2 - The baseline
Power Mac G4 cooling project: Phase 1 - The plan

In this installment I will be changing the orientation of my 120mm side panel fan and my 60mm CPU fan. Originally the CPU fan was oriented to draw external air into the case and onto the CPU heatsink. The Apple OEM heatsink for my Quicksilver did not have a fan on it; however, my third party CPU has two 40mm fans on top of it. With that in mind, I will orient the 60mm fan to expel the internal case air out of the case. The Quicksilver's CPU, RAM and GPU all live very close together. I suspect that expelling all of that hot air may bring the temperatures down. The results will answer that for us. The 120mm side panel fan is originally oriented to draw air out of the case. I will be changing it's orientation to draw external air into the case. I suspect that using the 120mm fan to draw air into the case may help the GPU temperatures; again, the results will answer that for us.

At the end of phase 2, I came to the conclusion that, on my Quicksilver, nap mode was enabled by default under OS X. With that being said I will not be performing an idle test without nap mode enabled.

I will note the difference in temperature taken, from the baseline temperature taken in phase two.

With all that said, onto the tests!

Ten minutes of idle. OS X 10.4.11:
CPU: 39°C, -3°C
GPU: 43°C, +1°C
RAM: 36°C, -3°C
Exhaust air: 33°C
Intake air: 36°C, +2°C

Ten minutes of idle. Debian Wheezy:
CPU: 38°C, -4°C
GPU: 43°C, +1°C
RAM: 36°C, -6°C
Exhaust air: 33°C, +1°C
Intake air: 38°C, -4°C

This very interesting already. Swapping the orientation did benefit the CPU and the RAM temperatures. There is a catch though; the benefit comes at the expense of the GPU temperature. A one degree increase is not large but this is just at idle. Once I actually start taxing the GPU with something like Quake III; I suspect that the increase in GPU temperature will grow larger.

I will start with the web browsing test. I am curious to see how the GPU temperature increase trends. I will have three tabs open, PowerPC Liberation, FrozenCPU.com and Newegg. I will bounce between FrozenCPU.com and Newegg just as I did in phase two.

Surfing under TenFourFox 31. OS X 10.4.11:
CPU: 48°C, -3°C
GPU: 46°C, +3°C
RAM: 39°C, -4°C
Exhaust air: 36°C, +2°C
Intake air: 38°C

Surfing under Ice Weasel 24.7.0. Debian Wheezy:
CPU: 51°C
GPU: 46°C, +3°C
RAM: 39°C, -4°C
Exhaust air: 36°C, +2°C
i Intake air: 39°C, +1°C

This keeps getting more and more interesting! The GPU temperature did slightly increase, going from a one degree increase to a three degree increase on both platforms. The RAM temperature also maintained it's decrease under both platforms. This is where it gets interesting, I managed to completely loose my CPU temperature decrease under Debian. This makes me start to question the benefit of this orientation swap. It looks as if, when pushed hard enough and long enough, the CPU temperature rises to the baseline temperature. So far I have gained ground on the RAM temperatures and CPU idle temperatures; while loosing ground on the GPU temperature and possibly the CPU temperature under higher usage.

Now lets see if I can erase the drop in the CPU temperature again by pegging the CPU at 100%. To do this I will perform the DVD rip test again. This is the same DVD rip test from phase 2 using using Handbrake 0.9.1. under Mac OS X.

The DVD rip results are...
CPU: 57°C, -4°C
GPU: 43°C, -3°C
RAM: 39°C -9°C
Exhaust air: 36°C
Intake air: 38°C, -4°C

Just when I thought this could not get any more interesting, it did. For the DVD rip we have a drop in the CPU and GPU temperature. We have a sizable nine degree drop in the RAM temperature. My theory on this is as follows. The CPU, RAM and GPU are very close to each other on the Quicksilver motherboard. The DVD rip is very taxing on the CPU. Out of all the tests I run this test is the hardest on the CPU. The CPU being taxed like that will obviously generate more heat. I suspect that the generated heat stays in that area. The RAM is next door to the CPU and the back of the GPU is right next door to the RAM. Now that I am immediately expelling the hot air with the 60mm fan I do not believe that the CPU heat is staying in that area as much as it did prior to the orientation swap. With that being said, the DVD rip is not very taxing on the GPU at all. The AVI playback tests and the Quake III tests will be more GPU intensive. Let us see what happens when I get the GPU to put out some heat.

The third test will be the playback of the resulting AVI file. I will use VLC under OS X and Debian. In addition to VLC, I will test mplayer in Debian.

OS X 10.4.11 VLC 0.9.10 full screen playback:
CPU: 43°C
GPU: 43°C, +4°C
RAM: 38°C, -1°C
Exhaust air: 33°C
Intake air: 38°C, +4°C

OS X 10.4.11 VLC 0.9.10 windowed playback:
CPU: 43°C
GPU: 43°C, +1°C
RAM: 38°C, +3°C
Exhaust air: 34°C
Intake air: 38°C, +5°C

Debian Wheezy VLC 2.0.3 full screen playback:
CPU: 43°C, -3°C
GPU: 46°C, +3°C
RAM: 38°C, +4°C
Exhaust air: 34°C, -2°C
Intake air: 39°C, +5°C

Debian Wheezy VLC 2.0.3 windowed playback:
CPU: 43°C, -3°C
GPU: 43°C
RAM: 38°C, -4°C
Exhaust air: 34°C
Intake air: 38°C

Debian Wheezy mplayer svn34540 full screen playback:
CPU: 43°C, -3°C
GPU: 43°C
RAM: 38°C, -4°C
Exhaust air: 34°C
Intake air: 39°C, +3°C

Debian Wheezy mplayer svn34540 windowed playback:
CPU: 43°C, -3°C
GPU: 42°C, -1°C
RAM: 37°C, - 5°C
Exhaust air: 34°C
Intake air: 38°C

Quake III Arena OS X 10.4.11:
CPU: 54°C, -3°C
GPU: 44°C, +1°C
RAM: 40°C, -3°C
Exhaust air: 36°C, +2°C
Intake air: 37°C, -1°C

Now it is time for my final thoughts on this experiment. I was honestly convinced that using the 120mm fan to draw air in; combined with using the 60mm fan to expel the CPU and RAM hot air would bring the temperatures down. I did not want to make such a claim without having data to back it up. That is where these tests come in.

I was wrong in regards to the effect of switching the 120mm fan's orientation. The tests, for the most part, had raises in the GPU temperature. Even though I am blowing cooler external air onto the GPU using a 120mm fan, the GPU temperature went up. I believe the reason for this is the fact, that by switching the orientation, I have given up a large form of exhaust. The heat generated by the GPU and the PCI area does not have the immediate exit it had before.

Switching the orientation of the 60mm fan however; did cause drops in the CPU and RAM temperatures. The tests, for the most part, confirm my theory about this area of computer. Immediately expelling the hot CPU and RAM air usually lowered the CPU and RAM temperatures.

The results are mixed. Since this has negatively affected portions of the system; I do not believe I can recommend this orientation swap as an improvement to a Quicksilver's cooling system. The cooling system in it's stock form does not perform poorly; therefore I do not see the sense in raising some temperatures for slight decreases in other temperatures. The mission of this project is to make it as good as I possibly can. I believe that this orientation swap misses that mark.

That brings us to a fork in the road. That is where to go from here. I could add a fan to the top of the airport bracket like Zen has in his Power Macs and test it's impact. I could also opt to replace all of my fans with Noctua or Antec fans, then test the impact.

I look forward to feedback. I hope you all have enjoyed this project so far.

Proposed new PowerPC portables

An entrepreneurial fellow named Roberto has contacted me - and it would appear the Luddite also - about the potential for a new PowerPC-based laptop; which also is intended to run Linux.

I am not yet actually putting my support behind this, but since Roberto seems genuinely motivated about it, I thought it was well worth mentioning here.  I simply don't know enough about the project, and if it has enough resources to turn this into a reality.  He claims to be close on a logic board.

I have mentioned many times before that I'm not much of a laptop/portable user, so this wouldn't be an overly desirable thing for me personally, but Mark (fiftysixk) is a portable user, as are many of the readers here.

It will be interesting to see if this actually becomes a reality, but being a laptop, no matter the architecture, there is a lot more engineering involved.  Almost anyone can make a desktop/tower; hence the Mac-clone days back in the 90's, but a laptop is much more challenging.  We shall see what happens.

I give Roberto my sincere best wishes in this project.

GNU/Linux PowerPC Notebook

Our Digital Future

OpenMedia - an international nonprofit that fights for internet rights and freedoms - is putting together what they summarize as "a crowdsourced agenda for free expression" as an answer to the many lobbyists representing many international corporations, in nations all over the world, trying to restrict net neutrality for their own benefit, but this deals more specifically with copyright.

This isn't a specific protest against anything, but more a way to document people around the earth who want to keep the internet as free and open as possible.  Think of it as a preemptive voice of the people before things can be swayed the way that benefits corporations instead of regular people.  This will positively impact the way we can create and share things, and try to ensure it stays that way.

This is why I love OpenMedia, because they are always thinking a couple steps ahead.  They are truly international in their representation of all internet users on earth.  The fact that Creative Commons backs them in all their causes is big for me also.


They propose three key recommendations to keep things fair for all:


Recommendation 1: Respect Creators

"We believe in respect for artists. Having a fair and flexible copyright system means that artists can make a living off their work, while users have the freedom to share, collaborate and create online."


Recommendation 2: Prioritize Free Expression

"The results of our crowdsourcing project demonstrate that participants value the principle of free expression above all other priorities for copyright."


Recommendation 3: Respect Democratic Processes

"Citizens, particularly young people, are increasingly questioning the legitimacy and effectiveness of traditional models of governance and hierarchical processes of decision-making; a new method befitting the era of participation is sorely needed."


They conclude...

"When it comes to government decisions that will affect all of us, OpenMedia doesn’t just want a seat at the table – instead, we actively work to put citizens at the center of government decision-making, and our own decision-making as an organization. In order to include as broad a community as possible in the conversation about copyright laws, we came up with several online engagement tools and strategies that were as simple and user-friendly as possible."


So please throw your support behind them, no matter where you live on the earth, by adding your voice to the cause and being part of the citizen-powered report.


 Our Digital Future: A Crowdsourced Agenda for Free Expression

Sudo vs Root

There has long been a debate, especially among Linux people, as to whether it is better to do administrator tasks as root or via sudo.  For me the debate is won by personal need and use alone.  If you are the lone user, and all that exists is your user account and root access; all you really need is root.

Sudo is better suited to systems with multiple users, and where each requires different limitations; along with also being able to see the logs of each user, and how they're using the abilities they do have.  It's largely for users that you don't trust with the root password, whether based on their skill (worried that they might mess something up) or based on pure trust; maybe both.

My advice is that if you don't trust the ability or intent of someone, then don't let them use your computer.  It would be better to provide them with their own, but that isn't always an option at companies or schools.

Using sudo also requires you to enter sudo in front of commands, which when you add the space needed after equals five extra characters piggybacked onto virtually every command you ever type to get important things done.

For me the best and most direct way to get restricted privilege tasks done (in Debian), will always be when logged in as a standard user and accessing root from the Root Terminal.

Use sudo when truly needed, but even in many of those cases you could get by with root if you add in some trust and discretion.

The main point is that if you trust in your ability, and the ability of those that also have access to your hardware, you never really need to bother with sudo.  I don't.

Like I said...  use it when you truly feel you need to; otherwise it's just an unneeded extra hurdle IMHO.


My personal method for installing anything in Debian or MintPPC:

1. Login to the GUI with your user account

2. Open the Root Terminal (found in the accessories menu)

3. After entering your root password, type:

apt-get install packagename

You know that old expression that goes "keep it simple stupid"?  In this case it's more appropriate to say keep it simple evolved one; since you're using Debian after all.

Several readers have emailed me about this over time, so now you all know where I stand on the whole sudo vs root thing.  Sudo is safer for the paranoid and/or less capable, but root is the best quick & dirty of all; especially if you have the confidence and ability to backup using it.

If you want to learn about using sudo in Debian, read this.

Power Mac G4 cooling project: Phase 2 - The baseline

It is finally time to kick this project off, so lets go! I will get some preliminary information out of the way first.

The temperature in my room is 80°F/27°C.

My Radeon 9800 Pro has a fresh thermal paste job using Arctic Silver 5.

My Motorola G4 1.33GHz 7455B has a fresh thermal paste job using Cooler Master High Performance Thermal Compound (HTK-002).

My memory sticks have heat spreaders on them.

Before I get creative and start moving fans around and swapping them out I need to get a set of baseline temperatures. I will be using the stock fans in their original locations and orientations. I will use the resulting baseline as a metric to determine the success of all the future cooling modifications during this project. Dan (PPCLuddite) suggested using CHUD in OS X for nap mode and powernowd in Debian for CPU frequency scaling. These should obviously help bring the temperatures down so I would like to test them out. Unfortunately I have hit a snag. I am unable to get powernowd working on my Quicksilver. I fear that my CPU is not compatible with powernowd. When I run powernowd as root I get the following results...

powernowd: PowerNow Daemon v1.00, (c) 2003-2008 John Clemens
powernowd: Found 1 scalable unit: -- 1 'CPU' per scalable unit
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_max_freq: No such file or directory

For grins I ran the same command on my iBook G3 as its CPU does scale with powernowd. Here are it's results...

powernowd: PowerNow Daemon v1.00, (c) 2003-2008 John Clemens
powernowd: Found 1 scalable unit: -- 1 'CPU' per scalable unit
powernowd: cpu0: 400Mhz - 700Mhz (2 steps)

I do not have an original Quicksilver CPU so I am currently unable to test against that fear. After running dmesg I found the following encouraging line.

[ 0.000000] Processor NAP mode on idle enabled.

Even though I cannot currently get my CPU to scale with powernowd on my Quicksilver, at least I have nap mode in both Debian and OSX. I feel like I have talked enough, lets get onto the tests and results, shall we?

Ten minutes of idle. OS X 10.4.11. CHUD nap mode disabled:
CPU: 57°C
GPU: 43°C
RAM: 43°C
Intake air: 38°C
Exhaust air: 33°C

Ten minutes of idle. OS X 10.4.11. CHUD nap mode enabled:
CPU: 42°C
GPU: 42°C
RAM: 39°C
Intake air: 34°C
Exhaust air: 33°C

Ten minutes of idle. Debian Wheezy:
CPU: 42°C
GPU: 42°C
RAM: 42°C
Intake air: 34°C
Exhaust air: 34°C

My first stress test will be web browsing. I will have three tabs open, PowerPC Liberation, FrozenCPU.com and Newegg. During the test I will flip between FrozenCPU and Newegg, browsing both sites for fans.

Surfing under TenFourFox 31. OS X 10.4.11:
CPU: 51°C
GPU: 43°C
RAM: 43°C
Intake air: 38°C
Exhaust air: 34°C

Surfing under Ice Weasel 24.7.0. Debian Wheezy:
CPU: 51°C
GPU: 43°C
RAM: 43°C
Intake air: 38°C
Exhaust air: 34°C

Now for my second test. I will rip a portion of a DVD using handbrake under OS X. I will be using Handbrake 0.9.1. My codec choice will be XviD. My average bitrate choice will be 2000kbps. I will be using 2-pass encoding and the AVI container. These settings came from Zen's excellent XviD guide. I recommend reading it if you haven't already.

The DVD rip results are...
CPU: 61°C
GPU: 46°C
RAM: 48°C
Intake air: 42°C
Exhaust air: 36°C

The third test will be the playback of the resulting AVI file. I will use VLC under OS X and Debian. In addition to VLC, I will test mplayer in Debian.

OS X 10.4.11 VLC 0.9.10 full screen playback:
CPU: 43°C
GPU: 39°C
RAM: 39°C
Intake air: 34°C
Exhaust air: 33°C

OS X 10.4.11 VLC 0.9.10 windowed playback:
CPU: 43°C
GPU: 42°C
RAM: 41°C
Intake air: 34°C
Exhaust air: 33°C

Debian Wheezy VLC 2.0.3 full screen playback:
CPU: 46°C
GPU: 43°C
RAM: 42°C
Intake air: 36°C
Exhaust air: 34°C

Debian Wheezy VLC 2.0.3 windowed playback:
CPU: 46°C
GPU: 43°C
RAM: 42°C
Intake air: 38°C
Exhaust air: 34°C

Debian Wheezy mplayer svn34540 full screen playback:
CPU: 46°C
GPU: 43°C
RAM: 43°C
Intake air: 36°C
Exhaust air: 34°C

Debian Wheezy mplayer svn34540 windowed playback:
CPU: 46°C
GPU: 43°C
RAM: 42°C
Intake air: 38°C
Exhaust air: 34°C

This experiment needs more first person shooters. Time for some Quake III Arena!

Quake III Arena OS X 10.4.11:
CPU: 57°C
GPU: 43°C
RAM: 43°C
Intake air: 38°C
Exhaust air: 34°C

This has been fun. I could have just cheese balled my way through this and used something like geek bench. I opted to use real world tasks instead as they are more important to me than benchmarking software magic numbers.

I did notice something interesting about CHUD and OS X nap mode. I belive that OS X, for my Quicksilver, enables nap mode by default. I can install CHUD, turn off nap mode and watch my temperatures climb. I can then turn it back on and watch them go back down. This is where it gets interesting. If I turn nap mode off using CHUD, then remove CHUD and reboot, my temperatures will go back down to nap mode levels. In the article Dan brought to my attention this is not the case. The MDD owner in the article can monitor his temperatures using software and watch them drop after enabling nap mode with CHUD. Based on my findings and the MDD owner's findings, I believe CHUD's benefits will vary model to model.

Given the period of time the Quicksilver came from, I do not believe these temperatures are bad. The highest temperature I got was 61C during a handbrake rip. I have seen plenty of PCs of similar vintage push out higher temperatures. However, I want the absolute best for my Power Mac. Despite these positive results, I still feel like I can make improvements to the cooling. I will continue to keep pushing onward.

The next phase will be experimenting with the fan orientation. Stay tuned and thank you for reading!

New ARM powered Freescale MCU sets modern example

While this is not a PowerPC chip; it is a RISC chip, and sets a perfect example for the modern predominant path of most RISC chips.  For those that don't know, an MCU (Micro-Controller Unit) is a type of SoC (System-on-Chip); which means it has the CPU, RAM and ROM on-chip to run embedded applications.  These are typically used in jets, cars, power generators and many other industrial based applications.

There are also PowerPC specific MCU development options like this that have been around for a while, and put all the capability directly in the users hands.  Much like Unix and Linux in the software realm; these SoC hardware and embedded development tools are only limited by the ability and imagination of the user.

This is why we should embrace the fact that we are no longer computing within the mainstream (and never really were); because even the current path of RISC steers far away from user friendly.

Solutions like these can literally turn engineering dreams into reality. 

Power Mac G4 cooling project: Phase 1 - The plan

I am excited to report that I am ready to kick off the Power Mac G4 cooling project. I have gathered all of the hardware I need in order to move forward. The goal is to incrementally upgrade the cooling fans and experiment with different intake/exhaust orientations all while monitoring the pertinent temperatures inside the case. All temperatures will be compared against the temperature of the original fans in their original locations. I will start simple by working with the existing fans and their mounting locations. Then I will move onto upgrading the existing fans while maintaining the same mounting locations. Ultimately the goal will be to add additional fans by changing the location of the hard drives and utilizing the liberated floor space of the case. Any case modification will have to absolutely look professional and clean. The ultimate goal is still in the brainstorming stages, the project will build up to that point. I want the project to be incremental so that it will benefit users of all comfort levels. I imagine that cutting up Power Mac cases may not be for everyone.

I have a hardware solution to monitor temperatures. I will be using a NZXT Sentry 2 to monitor the temperatures of 5 locations in my Power Mac G4 Quicksilver. The Sentry 2 was a pleasant surprise. It monitors two more locations than the other product I was looking at. The Sentry 2 also offers fan control in addition to temperature monitoring. The idea was to use this to temporarily monitor the temperatures during this project however I may wind up using it permanently some how. I was also able to buy it locally so I did not have to pay shipping.

I will be monitoring the...

Intake temperature

Exhaust temperature

RAM temperature

GPU temperature

CPU temperature

This will be a fun project. I look forward to sharing it with you all.

Flash is really dead

I know I sound like captain obvious here. I am also sure that 99.9999998% of you reading this blog would never humor the thought of running flash on a PowerPC Mac OS. However I just saw something very serious on the TenFourFox Development blog. Cameron Kaiser wrote about a full blown flash exploit. This vulnerability is as serious as they come. You can read more about it at the link above.

You may see or know people who choose to roll the dice and run flash on a PowerPC Mac OS in 2014. Some even go to lengths as far as tricking websites into thinking they have a later version than what they do, while in reality they have the same old insecure version under the hood. I've heard some arguments for it. "Most of the bad stuff on the web is written for Intel macs, it won't run on my PowerPC." "The chances of me getting hit are so astronomically low." The first claim is simply not true when it comes to this new exploit as it will run on a PowerPC mac. The second argument is simply a gamble. We here at PowerPC Liberation will not gamble with security or advise people to do so, no matter how "good" the odds are.

The good news is that there are plenty of flash alternatives at our disposal. We just need to adapt and implement them. Dan at PPC Luddite has a whole section of his blog dedicated to flash alternatives. When you start up TenFourFox, its start page also gives you links to QuickTime enabler and MacTubes enabler.

We have plenty of good options to get around using flash on our Power Macs. I know you already knew this, but just in case you didn't, it is time to put flash to rest on Power Macs, end of story.

Unexpected inspiration

This is more of a general computing entry than it is a technical one.

A large portion of my job is supporting guest speakers and special events. Every Friday we have an astronaut come in and speak to the public. This past Friday was no different. I was asked to support Colonel Jerry L. Ross during his presentation. My actual task was to simply insure that his microphone and power point worked properly. During these events it can be easy to focus on the technology more than the speakers message to their audience. This event was technically simple, therefore I was able to listen to his message. I am thankful I was able to, I took something away from it that you all may appreciate.

During the middle of his speech Colonel Ross talked about how early he became interested in the US space program. When he was very young he scrap booked about the space program and by the age of ten he decided he was going to be a part of it. This was not just a kid committing the "When I grow up" cliche. You know, the "I want to be a doctor" or "I want to be a scientist". Prior to this point he had daydreamed about it. From this point forward It was a calculated decision. That is rather ambitious for a ten year old if you ask me. He then informed the audience that he was not the best student. That may strike you as odd. Many people, including myself are quick to assume that brilliant people, such as astronauts, must have been good students. What he said next really resonated with me. I wish I had wrote down exactly what he said but I will try to poorly paraphrase it. When you fail you don't quit. Take a step back and look at the situation. See what you can do differently and keep at it. He informed us that he often had to do that academically. It was a real challenge for him that he had to work through.

When I thought about what Colonel Ross had just told us and then paired that with his career, two things stood out to me. He really did practice what he had just said, when he met challenges and failures he did not quit. He kept at it, trying different approaches and solutions until he succeeded. It was also very obvious that the man has incredible resolve. He decided at the age of ten he was going to be an astronaut and he absolutely accomplished that and then some.

You may be wondering what that has to do with us. I know there are plenty of readers here who have already made the switch to a free/open/secure OS. Now I am going to speculate that there may be readers here who are still on the fence about making the switch. Maybe you have one foot in the pool but you often get intimidated or aggravated. I would say that I am still in a journeyman phase myself. I have an x86 Debian Wheezy Machine at work and two PowerPC Debian Wheezy Machines at home, all of which are daily driven. With that being said I am not a master by any stretch of the imagination. Challenges still arise for me. It is easy to get aggravated and maybe even think thoughts such as "This is a lot easier on Windows or OS X" or "I'll never figure this out." This where Colonel Ross's words really apply to me. When you fail you don't quit. Take a step back and look at the situation. See what you can do differently and keep at it. When I heard him say that I thought to myself, "That's a great way to look at challenges." and "If I applied that same resolve to computing could anything really stop me?" I can already tell you from first hand experience, there is nothing like the feeling of meeting a computing challenge head on and coming out on top. The learning and experience you gain as result is priceless.

That is what I really want to impress upon you all. I know taking the plunge from an easy environment like Windows or OS X into the world of free and open source software can be intimidating. I have experienced that first hand, I still hit bumps in the road. When you take the plunge it will be challenging. If you want to make the transition to becoming a more empowered user, start by simply making the decision. Decide that no matter what, you will become an empowered user. If any challenges arise you will meet them head on. Research them and keep attacking them until you overcome them. Not only will you accomplish your goal, but you will have learned and experienced so much along the way.

I really enjoyed the message and figured that you all might enjoy it as well. I hope it as enjoyable for you as it was for me.