PowerPC Liberation

Why I finally ride the SSD train

by zen

For the longest time... I was always against using SSD's, as reliability had been an issue for the first several years they were on the market. Now however, I have discovered the Samsung 850 EVO series of 2.5" SSD's, and damn are they amazing. I have one in my Sawtooth, and one in my late 2009 Mac mini. The performance and reliability is amazing all-round.

As my Sawtooth relies on a PCI-M slot powered SATA 1 controller, I am limited to around 80MB/sec read and write, but the latency is incredibly good. On my Intel mini, with SATA 2, I get sustained speeds of 270MB/sec read and 210MB/sec write. It's also the most reliable boot drive I have ever used. More on all this later.

I know this place has seemed dead in the last year or so, but I can assure you it's not. There is still plenty of hits every day here, and I am starting to use my PowerPC systems more lately. Also, I recently picked up a 1.5GHz 12" PowerBook G4 for next to nothing. What a great machine.

I still have five PowerPC computers, so new content will come, and hopefully me posting will inspire the other authors. *wink wink* *nudge nudge*

Current state of Linux on PowerPC

by rican-linux

I am sure most you have heard that Debian has dropped PowerPC as a release architecture. If anyone is interested in the reading the meeting notes where it was discussed it can be found here. Basically it came down to lack of support. According to the Debian team there were no porters for PowerPC to maintain it as a release architecture. There is also the issue of outstanding bugs. An example is webkit2 is broken under PowerPC and it does not look like it is going to be fixed. The last version of firefox that works under PowerPC is 47. Yaboot has issues as well. In testing and sid you need to create a separate boot partition with ext2 in order for the kernel to load.

PowerPC will still be available in sid. There are some architectures that were once release that are only available there. However this does make the future of bleak. Already this decision is making an impact. The Ubuntu community is already considering dropping PowerPC for Lubuntu and Ubuntu-MATE. If you want to watch the hangout meeting where this is discussed you can see it here.

So where does that leave us who want to keep our PowerPC machines running a modern secure operating system? For G3, G4, and G5 machines there is the option of Gentoo. The learning curve is steep. However I have not heard discussions of dropping PowerPC. If you have a G5 machine then you also have the options of Fedora, and openSUSE. There is still an attempt to save PowerPC in Debain. The powerpc-notebook project is trying to get people together to help in testing and fixing bugs you can them on this email. You can also get involved in the debain-powerpc mailing list and #debian-ppc IRC channel.

Finally there are the BSDs. I prefer OpenBSD. It is pretty straightforward to get installed and it has the most binary packages for PowerPC. The one biggest drawback I have found is browser support. However sound and video playback work really well.

Please share your thoughts.

Ping

by zen

Just a quick note to let you all know we're still alive. Content will come as time allows.

Though we are a team of writers, each of us is also our own satellite - since we each have our own orbits in life. The point is that we write when time allows, which means that when we do post something, you know we mean it.

For the love of Mutt!

by rican-linux

I have been trying to see how much I can get done just using the terminal. I have my Debian partition on my PowerBook G4 running Awesome. It is a very lightweight tiling window manager. It does take some practice getting use to but once you have it set up, navigating around is not hard. One tool that I have just come to love is the mutt email client.

I have found very few lightwieght email clients that are really good. Slypheed comes the closest at least in my experience. Thunderbird can be really resource intensive, especially if you are processing a lot of email. This is where the power of mutt comes in. It is simply fast. I can read, reply, delete, and save messages much faster than a gui mail client. This means less of a load on my PowerBook. It also has gpg support so you can sign and encrypt your messages if needed. It really customizable, all your setting are on a config file. What I would like to do is give a walk through on how I have mutt configured and suggest some additional plugins that will enhance the experience.

Install

If you do not have mutt installed in your system it is fairly simple.

apt-get install mutt mutt-patched

Set up and Configure

The package mutt will install the base application. The package mutt-patched install an add-on that allows you to have a sidebar for your folders. Once these install you will want to create a directory named .mutt. Here is where you will store your config files and directories. You can do most of this in one command.

mkdir -pv .mutt/{cache,certificates}

If you look in the /usr/share/doc/mutt/examples directory you will see some sample configuration files. The only one you really need to copy to .mutt/ is the gpg.rc file.

Now it is time to make our muttrc configuration file. I will be working under the assumption that gmail will be where the email is hosted.

The first thing you will want to do set up your credentials for imap and smtp. The imap credentials is what pulls down your emails and folders, whereas the smtp account allows mail to be sent through your provider's email system. Below is an example.

set realname = 'your name'
set from = 'your email'
set use_from = 'yes'
set envelope_from ='yes'
set imap_user = 'your gmail account'
set imap_pass = 'password'
set editor = vim
#smtp
set smtp_url = 'smtp://your email account'
set smtp_pass = 'your password'
set ssl_starttls = yes
set ssl_force_tls = yes

I would strongly recommend that if you are using gmail to enable 2-step authentication and application specific passwords. The next thing you might want to do is define your remote folders specifically you inbox, drafts, and trash.

# Folders
# REMOTE GMAIL FOLDERS
set folder = 'imaps://imap.gmail.com:993'
set spoolfile = '+INBOX'
set postponed ='+[Gmail]/Drafts'
set trash = '+[Gmail]/Trash'

When you want to save a draft in mutt, it will ask if you want to postpone it. Mutt will then save to where you defined in the code above. Also it would be a good idea to define local cache as well. Below is an example.

# Local cache
set header_cache =~/.mutt/cache/headers
set message_cachedir =~/.mutt/cache/bodies
set certificate_file =~/.mutt/certificates

The next part is opitional and only needed if you want the sidebar and installed the mutt-patched package. If you did not you can still access your gmail folders by hitting 'c' then '?'. Below is what you will need to have the sidebar.

# Mailboxes to show in the sidebar.
mailboxes ="INBOX" ='[Gmail]/Drafts' ='[Gmail]/Sent Mail' ='label'
# Sidebar Patch --------------------------------------
set sidebar_delim = '│'
set sidebar_visible = yes
#set sidebar_width = 24
set sidebar_shortpath = yes
#Shortcuts
bind index CP sidebar-prev
bind index CN sidebar-next
bind index CO sidebar-open
macro index b 'toggle sidebar_visible'
macro pager b 'toggle sidebar_visible'
bind index B bounce-message

The first section defines the folders that will go into the sidebar, which gmail calls labels. Sublabels can also be added by using ='label/sublabel'. The second portion defines the look of the sidebar and the last portion defines the navigation shortcuts. Finally to enable gpg support do the following.

# GNUPG Config
source /home/user/.mutt/gpg.rc
set pgp_autosign = yes
# set pgp_replysignencrypt = yes
# set pgp_veryfy_sig = yes
set pgp_sign_as = gpg pub key

This will give a basic mutt interface with sidebar and gpg enabled. Now I want to share two addons that will really help enhance your experience in mutt.

goobook

Goobook is a simple utility that allows you to manage you gmail contacts from inside mutt. When it is time to compose a message just hit tab in the 'to:' field or just the begining of the name you want and hit tab. Goobook will present you a list of email addresses to choose from. The install of the package is pretty simple.

apt-get install goobook

Then create a .goobookrc file and add the following.

[default]
email: gmail account
password: password

Then run the command goobook authenticate to have gmail verify the tool has rights to manage you contacts. After you have authorized goobook then add the following to the muttrc file.

# Address book using goobook
set query_command="goobook query %s"
macro index,pager a "goobook add" "add sender to google contacts"
bind editor complete-query

urlview

This tool gives you the ability to open urls in messages with an external browser (ie luakit or w3m). The install is the same as the others.

apt-get install urlview

The config file is .urlview. Below is my setup.

#
# Sample urlview(1) configuration file
#

# regular expression to use to match URLs
REGEXP (((http|https|ftp|gopher)|mailto):(//)?[^ <>"\t]*|(www|ftp)[0-9]?\.[-a-z0-9.]+)[^ .,;\t\n\r<">\):]?[^, <>"\t]*[^ .,;\t\n\r<">\):]

# command to invoke for selected URL
# COMMAND /etc/urlview/url_handler.sh
COMMAND luakit %s

# set to yes to enable menu wrapping
#WRAP Yes

The key portion is here COMMAND luakit %s. Luakit can be replaced with any browser desired. Finally just add the following section to the muttrc file.

# View URLs inside Mutt
macro index \cb "|urlview\n"
macro pager \cb "|urlview\n"

When a message is opened hit CTRL+b and you will be given a list of urls to open. Just select one and the browser will open.

I hope this tutorial is helpful. I have my entire muttrc file hosted on github if anyone wants to see what I have set up. If you are for looking a fast flexable email client that will not slow down your PowerPC machine then I would seriously consider giving mutt a try.

Looming on the horizon

by zen

This is likely at least 3-4 years away, but h.264 is on its way out, now that h.265 (HEVC) has been adopted by more and more people. Just as XviD was dropped by most in 2012, the same fate is inevitable for h.264 within a few years.

There are two key issues that keep h.265 off PowerPC:

1. Playback - there are currently no available playback applications capable of playing the h.265 codec that would work on Mac OS PowerPC. VLC started supporting it in version 2.1.12, but this is irrelevant, since most h.265 is 2160p, and out of the range of even a quad G5. There is some 720p h.265 floating around that a quad could likely play if there was a playback option.

2. Encoding - and this is the bigger need, as there are also no Mac OS PowerPC encoding software capable of reading h.265 to transcode it to something else. Since most PowerPC hardware wouldn't be able to play most h.265 anyway, the best need to fill for us is to get an encoding app on PowerPC that can transcode h.265 to h.264 or XviD/DivX.

So we need a Mac developer to port a newer version of Handbrake (or any other equally capable encoder) to Tiger and Leopard PowerPC.

There is no point in wasting time on a player, as I already mentioned, since 90% of these files will not play on even a quad G5.

Even a Linux solution would work, but one for Mac OS would be a much broader brush stroke.

I wanted to bring this up long before it became a dire need.

Thoughts?

CorePlayer details

by lotvai77

I have received numerous questions regarding the method of the CorePlayer crack. Now I would like to briefly describe the process.

PPC Reverse engineering on Mac OS can be an easy process if we know how to do it. There are several debugging and disassembler tools available for Mac OS that can be used for such purposes. In this case I only used OTX v.16b disassembler and a simple hex editor 0xEd.

For me the easiest way is to look into the code itself produced by OTX. It is a simple GUI application and produces a text file of the application that we want to disassemble. The CorePlayer binary itself is only 5 MB but the text output produced by OTX is nearly 21 MB.

A part of the output looks like this:

+188    0006e23c 409e0064    bne        cr7,0x6e2a0
+192    0006e240 813f0000    lwz        r9,0x0(r31)
+196    0006e244 a161003e    lhz        r11,0x3e(r1)
+200    0006e248 80490000    lwz        r2,0x0(r9)
+204    0006e24c a0020074    lhz        r0,0x74(r2)
+208    0006e250 7f8b0000    cmpw    cr7,r11,r0
+212    0006e254 40be004c    bne+        cr7,0x6e2a0
+216    0006e258 a0010040    lhz        r0,0x40(r1)
+220    0006e25c 2f800001     cmpwi    cr7,r0,0x1
+224    0006e260 40be0040    bne+         cr7,0x6e2a0
+228    0006e264 80010044    lwz        r0,0x44(r1)
+232    0006e268 80410038    lwz        r2,0x38(r1)
+236    0006e26c 7f801000     cmpw    cr7,r0,r2
+240    0006e270 419e0030    beq        cr7,0x6e2a0
+244    0006e274 a0010042    lhz        r0,0x42(r1)
+248    0006e278 805f00dc     lwz        r2,0xdc(r31)
+252    0006e27c 5409073e    rlwinm    r9,r0,0,28,31
+256    0006e280 7f824800    cmpw    cr7,r2,r9
+260    0006e284 419e0034    beq        cr7,0x6e2b8
+264    0006e288 3802ffff       addi         r0,r2,0xffff
+268    0006e28c 2b800002    cmplwi    cr7,r0,0x2
+272    0006e290 419d0010    bgt        cr7,0x6e2a0
+276    0006e294 3809ffff       addi         r0,r9,0xffff
+280    0006e298 2b800002    cmplwi    cr7,r0,0x2

Each line is one operation in the code. I do not want to go into details now of assembly coding. There are dozens of good sites dealing with programming.

So a very plain explanation of a line:

+240 0006e270 419e0030 beq cr7,0x6e2a0

+240                               reference line number within a program block
0006e270                        overall line number
419e0030                        machine hex code
beq    cr7,0x6e2a0          assembly code

The registration of CorePlayer is linked to the unique Mac serial number of a particular machine where the player is installed.

In the output of OTX we have to find the appropriate places where the software checks the registration status and decides whether it will run or not. CorePlayer uses a 3 level verification process:

1. is there a valid serial number entered and stored in the Users/user/.CorePlayer/config.xml file,
2. is there a valid user based on the Mac serial number and CorePlayer serial number to run the program and start the GUI,
3. is there a valid user based on the Mac serial number and CorePlayer serial number to start video playback.

As I had the valid CorePlayer serial numbers from the start I only had to find the places in the code where the Mac and CorePlayer serial number checks were executed. This is the hardest part but if someone has some experience in assembly language then it is relatively easy to find these places in the code. In this case for me the starting point was the place where the registration dialog is called:

+1176    000139b0 7f801000    cmpw    cr7,r0,r2
+1180    000139b4 409e0030    bne        cr7,0x139e4
+1184    000139b8 a001005a    lhz        r0,0x5a(r1)
+1188    000139bc 805d00dc    lwz        r2,0xdc(r29)
+1192    000139c0 5409073e    rlwinm    r9,r0,0,28,31
+1196    000139c4 7f824800    cmpw    cr7,r2,r9
+1200    000139c8 419e00c0    beq        cr7,0x13a88
+1204    000139cc 3802ffff       addi    r0,r2,0xffff
+1208    000139d0 2b800002    cmplwi    cr7,r0,0x2
+1212    000139d4 419d0010    bgt        cr7,0x139e4
+1216    000139d8 3809ffff       addi    r0,r9,0xffff
+1220    000139dc 2b800002    cmplwi    cr7,r0,0x2
+1224    000139e0 409d00a8    ble        cr7,0x13a88
+1228    000139e4 807e0044    lwz        r3,0x44(r30)
+1232    000139e8 3ca05549    lis        r5,0x5549
+1236    000139ec 3c80001f     lis        r4,0x1f
+1240    000139f0 38c00000     li        r6,0x0
+1244    000139f4 38845f94     addi    r4,r4,0x5f94    serialdialog
+1248    000139f8 60a54744     ori        r5,r5,0x4744    'UIGD'
+1252    000139fc 481556e5     bl        0x1690e0
+1256    00013a00 7c7f1b79     or.        r31,r3,r3
+1260    00013a04 4082001c    bne        0x13a20
+1264    00013a08 48000068    b        0x13a70
+1268    00013a0c 7fc3f378    or        r3,r30,r30
+1272    00013a10 38800000    li        r4,0x0
+1276    00013a14 38a0020c    li        r5,0x20c
+1280    00013a18 4bfff879    bl        0x13290
+1284    00013a1c 4800006c    b        0x13a88
+1288    00013a20 3c400001    lis        r2,0x1
+1292    00013a24 93c10058    stw        r30,0x58(r1)
+1296    00013a28 38800217    li        r4,0x217
+1300    00013a2c 38a10054    addi    r5,r1,0x54
+1304    00013a30 38423290    addi    r2,r2,0x3290

If we do not want to call the registration dialog then we have to tell the program to jump over the registration call. So the actual place that we have to alter is before the dialog call:

+1180 000139b4 409e0030 bne cr7,0x139e4

I have found 6 places where these or very similar verifications were executed and called. The basic pattern of the code looks like this:

+240    0006e270 409e0030    bne        cr7,0x6e2a0
+244    0006e274 a0010042    lhz        r0,0x42(r1)
+248    0006e278 805f00dc     lwz        r2,0xdc(r31)
+252    0006e27c 5409073e    rlwinm    r9,r0,0,28,31
+256    0006e280 7f824800    cmpw    cr7,r2,r9

The easiest way is to alter the program flow and negate the relevant operations. In this way it skips the appropriate parts and will accept any Mac serial numbers and a valid CorePlayer serial number. In order to negate the operation we have to change the line:

0006e270 409e0030 bne cr7,0x6e2a0

into

0006e270 419e0030 beq cr7,0x6e2a0

We have to use the hex editor to change the code at 6 different places in the binary and save the altered code. After this entering a valid serial will produce a fully working CorePlayer.

If someone wants to dive deeply into this topic I would recommend starting with this site: https://reverse.put.as/