Attempts to install Linux in multi-boot on a 2004 12" Alubook

[Doq]

I can't quite confirm for sure, but try to take a look in your /etc/fstab.

Swap space shouldn't have a mount. You don't mount swap, you activate swap, and this is achieved with swapon.

This shouldn't need to be manual-- it would be automatically configured with a correct configuration.

 

[Alubook133]

Shoot, I missed your last mesg, in dark mode the Next button is not very visible.

I'm restarting the thing and will give it another try (without mounting swap obviously), btw I forgot to ask but do you launch Horizon from the GUI (thus non-root typically) or from Konsole as root ?

Btw I now have to reboot 2 ou 3 times to get to the Adélie desktop, it tends to get stuck and just offer a login but no get to the DE when when Starting Bluetooth during boot-up gives a "not Ok" (at least a symptom not necessarily the cause)... not a biggie, just curious to know if you're seeing the same thing.

 

[Alubook133]

So, I did what was needed to be done, the thing went a little further, I had the screen with the list of actions taken to install the OS, last line "Install software" starting with a little arrow type icon with red-ish background (plus "Final configuration" printed right below)... so I let it continue do whatever it was doing... essentially nothing since after a few mns it ended up screenlocking with this on the screen :

Spoiler: screenlock

Needless to say, I'm giving up on this.

Thanks a lot for the help, but I'll wait until a proven working distro is available for PPC32, if that ever materializes. For now and unless someone points me to another "modern" Linux distro, this is it.

- End of thread -

... or not !

I remembered that in one video clip the guy did an install in "Text only" mode instead of the whole DE, so as a very last attempt I tried it, and...

"Adelie Linux Successfully Installed". Yay !! :-/

Obviously 90% of the actual install remains, but at least I got that off my chest and don't need to boot from DVD anymore to get into Adélie. I think.

 

[Alubook133]

Side note : oddly enough the Pbook rebooted to Tiger instead of Sorbet, and Disk Utility now shows this (Volume Scheme) :

to compare with what I posted in prev page :

Spoiler

Anyway Tiger, Sorbet (and Documents) still there and bootable so no harm there apparently, just this odd look in Disk Util.

I'll continue on Adélie tomorrow.

 

[Alubook133]

So... I booted into the newly installed KDE-text Adélie beta5, and was greeted with the following :

Beautiful, isn't it ? 🤡

 

[Doq]

I..... have no idea on this one.

But the first thing to check for "permission denied" would be the permissions on whatever is being accessed; in this case ".?tmpd-socket" files

 

[Alubook133]

Yeah, and then on to the next issue (not sure I could even fix this one)... and I haven't even started installing any package ! 😏

I think I've seen enough, this is not for me. Thing is each time I've searched for answers I realized how much I'd need to learn before even beginning to understand Linux and all its intricacies and various layers. I must have seen 3985 different names of modules/apps/drivers/hardware/whatnots each with its own version or source or RC or... Don't have the time for that nor the energy, so I'll have to pass on that one.
(and to think I'm using Linux (Mint) every day and in the process of moving away from Win11... lol)

Thanxx again for the help getting me thus far, sorry for not being able to push it forward (I was genuinely excited with the idea of running a modern OS on my Alubook). So going to close this thread if it's possible here (or just let it die out). Back to looking into improving the browsing/YT/JS/... experience in Tiger/Leopard.

 

[Doq]

Yeah sorry.

Maybe Debian is more your speed.

 

[Alubook133]

I doubt it. I have underestimated the length and steepness of the learning curve (for me at least, to each his/her own) required to manage the installation of a Linux distro on a very old Mac laptop, when you know very little on one side and about nothing on the other. Simple as that.

Having watched videos here and there I thought this would be feasible without special expertise. Couldn't have been more wrong lol.

I'll still keep an eye on this stuff, I tend to forget about bad experiences/experiments so I might give it another try in the future, as if I never had tried before ^^.

 

[Dronecatcher]

@Alubook133

You could try one of the Lubuntu remixes by @wicknix - these are almost guaranteed to work for you:

Lubuntu 16.04 Remix (updated)

2023 update For anybody still using this (16.04 v2) i created a tutorial with some extra files to extend the life of it. Basically we change the sources.list to Debians (since Ubuntu's repo is dead) and make a few changes to allow packages to be updated and installable again. Download it here...

forums.macrumors.com

Worked on my 1.33 Powerbook:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/lubuntu-16-04-remix-updated.2204742/post-27874169

 

[Alubook133]

@Dronecatcher thanxx for the tip, I had d/l the last release some time ago but reading thru the thread kinda' decided not to try it, didn't look "stable" enough - but maybe I was wrong and it's worth a shot.

I like the fact that there's a persistent live setup which allows for extensive trial before an actual install on SSD, plus it's apparently doable from usb stick not necessarily from DVD which is good (never guaranteed to work on Powerbooks though, they're very picky with usb thumbdrives), in addition the airport chip is supported OOTB which is great too.

Oh well, what the heck, now that I have prepared a volume to receive a Linux distro, I might as well dive in ^^.

 

[Alubook133]

Well... took the plunge, trying the Lubuntu remix as suggested above, been able to boot it from usb (which is near miraculous w/ some Powerbooks, thanxx to hours of looking for a usb thumbdrive the Alubook would kindly accept to boot from, and it appeared to be the very last of the 6 flash drives I have, of course right ?).

Anyway, I could get to the boot: prompt, entered live video=TV-1:d video=offb:off nosplash as required, it started to do its things... until a certain point however : it looks like the boot-up script expects to get something from the CD/DVD drive, not from the usb drive :

Obviously if all it takes to go thru this is burn a DVD with the install, I will (reluctantly since it's a PITA with my setup) do it, but I wouldn't mind if another easier solution was available.


P.S. updated the thread title to better reflect where I'm at.

 

[wicknix]

It’s been years, but those messages are normal IIRC. Do you have a USB stick with an LED in it to verify that it’s still being accessed or not? Booting from USB is SLOW on PPC Macs. It might take quite a bit longer to fully load vs from cd/dvd. If you waited like 5 minutes and nothing more happened, then yeah it probably failed somewhere.

If you are going to burn a cd or dvd, use the actual 12 or 16 live/install iso’s. The persistent USB version isn’t meant to be installed. Good luck.

 

[Alubook133]

Hey @wicknix, glad to read from you !

Yes the usb stick does have a led on it, and IIRC it was still flashing while I was getting these repeated error messages (tens of them). I let it go for a few minutes then decided s'thing was wrong and stopped it, so what I'll do is give it another try and be more patient this time around.

Just to make sure : I have d/l this ISO (from the section "Updated to v2 (03/04/20)")

Download is roughly 1.5gb

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rXUzfipY9M6U-M-n-mZW2A7soMckMdYc/view?usp=sharing

but in fact it doesn't say it's a persistent live, my bad, here's the persistent one you posted:

Bootable 16.04 remix persistent USB: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvgazHau05-HivRRFsohswoPJbJXBQ?e=96x9PF

so probably the one I d/l is only intended for install from a DVD, not an usb stick, which would explain the error messages. Anyway I'll try to figure this out and post an update later.

EDIT : that link doesn't work anymore, I get a "That item might not exist or is no longer available" on 1Drive...

EDIT 2 : the usb drive that was booting fine yesterday doesn't boot anymore... Ok so DVD burning it is.

 

[Alubook133]

So I booted the Lubuntu 12.04 remix from DVD, and though after a while I had a blank screen and thought the thing failed, when I moved the mouse to my surprise the desktop appeared, even got the 2nd monitor to show a copy of the Alubook screen so I could play around using that monitor (though not at native resolution).

Here's a screenshot below (couldn't copy the screendump to usb nor network so had to take a picture), haven't installed it yet just running a live session to see what can be done, but quite happy I'm finally getting something Linux at least working !

 

[wicknix]

I was always a fan of my 12 remix. So lightweight, quick, and more period correct for the hardware. If you do install it, due note the ubuntu 12 repositories are down. You are limited to the software i preinstalled. Having said that, i feel like i loaded that iso up with most everything a person would need (within reason). The browsers (Interweb & Spiderweb) are still newer than TFF/InterWebPPC/AquaFox as they are a mix of FF52.9 & 60.9 and should still serve you well. Good luck, and have fun.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Remix is great It ran well on my iBook g4.

 

[Alubook133]

@wicknix, yeah it looked pretty snappy for the little I tried to do with it. And the collection of s/w you've put in is quite impressive indeed.

Need to determine how to separate the 2 displays/desktops, the Alubook is 1024x768 while my monitor is 1680x1050 but running at 1024x768 (duplicate the main display i/o extending it).
Also couldn't get access to the internet neither via ethernet (connected to a Win11 PC who shares its connection, I've tested it while booted in OS X and it works fine) nor via Wifi, looks like the Broadcom chip is not detected although I've seen the drivers as part of the install ISO, but I may be wrong on this, need to investigate further.
I also couldn't write to an usb flash drive (which otherwise works fine in OS X on the same machine), I think it was set "read-only" IIRC, no idea why.

At some point I'll try the install, in fact I kinda' lied involuntarily in prev message, I was also able to run the Adélie 1.0beta5 desktop from live DVD, things went bad when I tried to install it on the SSD - hopefully will be better off with this promising 12.04 remix. 🤞

 

[Alubook133]

FINALLY !

Got Lubuntu 12.04-remix installed on my machine at just the 2nd trial, first one I was under the shared internet connection from the Win11 PC via ethernet (Wifi not working on the Alubook) and it didn't get anywhere, then after rebooting a few days later it was the opposite, connection to PC not working however Wifi decided to work fine (don't ask me please ^^) and the install completed.



I have a series of issues to look into (2nd monitor resolution, grub vs yaboot, ...) but I'll leave it at that for now.

p.s. Had the pleasant surprise to see a new specific icon (with the usual penguin) added to the boot picker GUI that allows me to choose between Linux remix or Tiger or Sorbet at boot-up, nice ! I'll try to simplify it further by being able to select the next reboot OS (Restart) while logged into OS X or Linux, à la "target disk" in OS X but this one doesn't show the Linux partition as a possible choice (and AFAIK there's nothing like this in Linux).

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

FINALLY !

Got Lubuntu 12.04-remix installed on my machine at just the 2nd trial, first one I was under the shared internet connection from the Win11 PC via ethernet (Wifi not working on the Alubook) and it didn't get anywhere, then after rebooting a few days later it was the opposite, connection to PC not working however Wifi decided to work fine (don't ask me please ^^) and the install completed.

View attachment 2473475

I have a series of issues to look into (2nd monitor resolution, grub vs yaboot, ...) but I'll leave it at that for now.

Woohoo. Great job Last time I tried to install remix on my 12" PB I could not get the gpu to output a picture that was not inverted color wise. Then it promptly died LOL Still have the carcass. Great to see you got it installed

I have an ibookg4 that I used to run remix/macbuntu on it but have since transitioned to a Tiger machine. I'm tempted to stick Remix back on the Ibook. Remix ran very well on that machine.

 

[wicknix]

Cool beans. Don't forget this step to enable sound... Open terminal, type alsamixer, right arrow key until you highlight "pcm", up arrow key to set desired volume level (65 is good), esc key to exit.

Cheers

 

[Alubook133]

@Certificate of Excellence, thanxx, sad to see that your attempt at this resulted in your machine dying... OTOH it hardly made any dent in your impressive collection of machines...

@wicknix, yeah I'll get to the audio issue soon enough and will try the alsa stuff. I'll have plenty of questions notably on networking and display resolution, as well as what you mentioned about not being able to get updates from the Lubuntu ppc repo which is now definitely down (found a solution for the 2nd monitor which involves installing a package but so far no luck with apt-get etc).

 

[Alubook133]

CPU : on high heels while on this page, but pretty calm when in the threads watching page (https://forums.macrumors.com/watched/threads).

Network : now able to browse the web, exchange stuff between Linux and the Win11 PC (via browser, own simple web script) and use gFTP, all this via wifi. Ethernet bridge decidedly not working (I think it stopped working after a Win11 forced update, what a surprise ! :/), in fact I have unplugged the ethernet cable to avoid recurrent error messages.

Audio : fixed - at least can play an mp3 song, a good starting point.

 

[wicknix]

CPU on high heels while on this page

Probably do to the ads. I included a custom hosts file to block ads system-wide. Just do this:
sudo cp /etc/hosts.deny /etc/hosts
Restart the browser. Now enjoy mostly ad free browsing.

Also wouldn't hurt to install these certificates: Updated ca-certificates can be found here. (install with: sudo dpkg -i /path/to/ca-certs.deb)

 

[Alubook133]

Now looking into being able to use an external monitor (Viewsonic 22" 1680x1050, great one and 0 dead pixel after >12 years of daily usage).

The monitor is correctly detected since that resolution is indeed offered among others, however internal and external displays are set to mirror one another (the Alubook 1024x768 display being "king") instead of having the external monitor as an _extension_ of the main one.

I've found this explanation on how to change this behaviour, not sure it's effective though. I've tried this : sudo apt-get install arandr as suggested, but it refuses to install with an error message that I can't paste here for god knows what reason.

Any idea how to do this ?

EDIT : just saw your last message, will try this right away, thanxx !