Sorbet Leopard on G5 Quad?

[barracuda156]

I don't want to start a "religious war" here, but I honestly don't see the point of SL_PPC.

It is in fact straightforward and does not need to rely on poorly measurable stuff like “speed”. Anything which uses libdispatch cannot build on Leopard, but can build and work on Snow Leopard (including PowerPC). More or less that means every relatively modern app using ObjC and a decent number of C/C++ apps.

The only reason, for example, why OneTBB still works (I hope) on Leopard is because I have fixed it, adding a fallback for dispatchless systems OneTBB is a dependency for a lot of software.
For the same reason WoflSSL will probably still work on your “Sorbet” – I changed the logic of picking backends to the effect that old systems use POSIX one, FWIW (may not work reliably, have known issues).
I stopped doing that ever since. So unless you fix it for yourself, chances are that everything will be broken.

10.5 has inferior CoreAudio framework, so most of multimedia apps won’t build, unless you add a fallback.

Some apps using blocks can be built on 10.6 ppc, despite broken clang, since gcc-4.2 in 10.6 has basic support for blocks. So you get Cocoa GUI in Qt4 etc.

In my experience, it won't run SL apps, which are all Intel

It probably makes sense not to try running apps with foreign architecture. I don’t know what is “SL apps” though. Old Apple software? It is largely Intel-only, but not all of it. So you get some newer apps. However that’s not the point of course; why use archaic software when newer and better alternatives are available. For open-source “SL apps” is a meaningless designation – hardly anyone developed specifically for 10.6.

 

[mac57mac57]

Thanks @barracuda156, I appreciate the calm, reasoned response. I was hoping not to start a "flame war". Your points seem reasonable and correct.

It seems that the Sorbet/SL_PPC delta between us is that you are focused on building open source apps (for SL_PPC) while I am focused on finding and using pre-existing "native" apps.

I ran Snow Leopard for a very long time, until I could no longer accomplish my day to day computing needs with it, and as a result, I have a large set of pre-existing Snow Leopard native apps that work well. In general, I don't want to build my apps; I want to download them and use them "out of the box". You seem focused on building the best of the open source world for SL_PPC.

I applaud your efforts, but our objectives are different. I want my OS and its apps to be the solid, stable platform I use to enable the work I do on it. I don't want the OS and its apps to become the work itself.

I loved Snow Leopard, and was as crushed as everyone else when Apple did not release it for PPC, hence I truly encourage the SL_PPC project. If we ever get to a truly stable SL_PPC that supports all of Snow Leopard, I will be there in a flash. Sorbet isn't a religion for me; it is simply the best I can find right now for release quality Mac OS X software for my G5s.

 

[z970]

Evening. Just logged back in after taking five for a few months. There's a couple things I'd like to say.

I have the single Dual-Core 2GHz 970MP / final variant from 2005 (PCIe version), and have never been able to get Sorbet working. I believe it boots to a blue screen, and had posted about it on the main Sorbet 1.5 threat, but no one was able to figure it out. I have the Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT, but it's one of the CTO cards that came with this model, so I don't think that's the issue. I tried both a fresh restore of a working image, as well as pulled the working drive out of my PoweRMaC G4, nothing worked.

Has anyone had a similar issue, or had a luck on this model?

This is rather strange because that's the system and configuration that Sorbet was developed on. Have you tried booting into single user / verbose mode to pinpoint where the system is hanging but stock 10.5 isn't? It might offer a few clues as to what's going on.

There have been a number of reports that something is broken in 10.5.8 “Sorbet” mod, which works perfectly fine in a standard 10.5.8. The general problem seems to be that a) nothing was tested for anything beyond a few popular apps, especially building anything; b) at least some “optimizations” had in mind to tweak how system looks at the expense of how it performs (breaking system versions query APIs is insane, for example).
It would be fine if it was clearly communicated to an end-user that this is an experimental build with this-and-that goals in mind. Unfortunately, it is marketed as an upgrade of 10.5.8 – sorry, it is not.

In hindsight, I agree that Sorbet went a little too far with the modifications and tried to do too much all at once. There was plenty of ambition, but not enough reality in a few of its objectives.

Just as the original UNIX philosophy teaches, I've since then realized that the more moving parts any piece of software has, the more variables are involved, and therefore the more things can potentially go wrong. This is why Shuriken took a slightly more conservative approach and was offered as a modular downloadable package rather than an entire system (blame the Raspberry Pi Foundation for the latter idea), and also didn't alter as much as its predecessor.

Still, I think it did relatively well for what it set out to do (which was not building software), and minus a few shortcomings, the overall user experience succeeded for the most part considering what the end product actually was—essentially a one-man passion project started for fun for a long since commercially abandoned platform offered completely free of charge.

There's no need to be antagonistic if you take this into consideration, and remember that... well, Cameron Kaiser put it best:

If you aren't paying for the software, then please don't be a jerk. There is a human at the other end of those complaints and unless you have a support contract, that person owes you exactly nothing. Whining is exhausting to read and "doesn't work" reports are unavoidably depressing, disparaging or jokey comments are unkind, and making reports nastier or more insistent doesn't make your request more important. This is true whether or not your request is reasonable or achievable, but it's certainly more so when it isn't.

 

[barracuda156]

Thanks @barracuda156, I appreciate the calm, reasoned response. I was hoping not to start a "flame war". Your points seem reasonable and correct.

It seems that the Sorbet/SL_PPC delta between us is that you are focused on building open source apps (for SL_PPC) while I am focused on finding and using pre-existing "native" apps.

I ran Snow Leopard for a very long time, until I could no longer accomplish my day to day computing needs with it, and as a result, I have a large set of pre-existing Snow Leopard native apps that work well. In general, I don't want to build my apps; I want to download them and use them "out of the box". You seem focused on building the best of the open source world for SL_PPC.

I applaud your efforts, but our objectives are different. I want my OS and its apps to be the solid, stable platform I use to enable the work I do on it. I don't want the OS and its apps to become the work itself.

I loved Snow Leopard, and was as crushed as everyone else when Apple did not release it for PPC, hence I truly encourage the SL_PPC project. If we ever get to a truly stable SL_PPC that supports all of Snow Leopard, I will be there in a flash. Sorbet isn't a religion for me; it is simply the best I can find right now for release quality Mac OS X software for my G5s.

As a random illustration to what I mean – these just popped up now while I am trying to build some ports on 10.5, which compile and work fine on 10.6.

On the left is the code from Xquartz: that stuff cannot compile on 10.5. It does on 10.6, as is.
On the right some failure with SDL3, from looks of things related to the SDK. Should be easily fixable, but anyway, I did not need to fix it on 10.6.

And these are not some obscure niche apps, they are relevant to an average end-user experience.

 

[barracuda156]

There's no need to be antagonistic if you take this into consideration, and remember that... well, Cameron Kaiser

I don’t mind (or care, to be honest) which OS or software someone uses. Also, more options do not make us worse off.

It kinda became a relevant issue when someone reported a problem with my port, and after spending time to figure out what could possibly go wrong, since it was tested earlier and expected to work, turned out that the reason why it failed was running the build on “Sorbet”. Switching to 10.5.8 fixed the problem.
IMO, the root cause of such situation is that “Sorbet” is either promoted as “production-ready” OS, or users misunderstand it to be such.

(Yes, I know that I can simply refuse to debug anything on a non-standard OS, and state it upfront, to avoid similar situations in a future.)

 

[z970]

It kinda became a relevant issue when someone reported a problem with my port, and after spending time to figure out what could possibly go wrong, since it was tested earlier and expected to work, turned out that the reason why it failed was running the build on “Sorbet”. Switching to 10.5.8 fixed the problem.

I see. I can understand how this could cause some frustration for you.

Out of curiosity, what was this port and what did it do, did they by any chance provide some relevant log information from the Console app, and has something like this happened on multiple occasions? If so, because Sorbet is based on 10.5.8, perhaps there is a common denominator to blame within it that has been causing these issues besides the "they were running on Sorbet" generalization.

Maybe it's an easy fix.

 

[barracuda156]

I see. I can understand how this could cause some frustration for you.

Out of curiosity, what was this port and what did it do, did they by any chance provide some relevant log information from the Console app, and has something like this happened on multiple occasions? If so, because Sorbet is based on 10.5.8, perhaps there is a common denominator to blame within it that has been causing these issues besides the "they were running on Sorbet" generalization.

Maybe it's an easy fix.

I don’t think there would be anything complex, it should be more or less trivial. And it would be perfectly okay for a developer build. (10.6.8 has more issues, after all.)
I think what I was remembering was this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ns.2433567/page-4?post=33366221#post-33366221
Save me from digging into comments. I don’t think there were any logs showing issues which would be proven to be due to the OS. It is all anecdotal evidence, which could be dismissed, if it was a single instance; however it seems that some strange breakages tend to occur with this OS, and do not on standard 10.5.8.

 

[Edgecrusherr]

This is rather strange because that's the system and configuration that Sorbet was developed on. Have you tried booting into single user / verbose mode to pinpoint where the system is hanging but stock 10.5 isn't? It might offer a few clues as to what's going on.

Thanks for the reply, glad to see you back online!

I believe I did verbose, but this was last year, so I don't remember if I narrowed it down to anything. It's encouraging that you developed this on the same system, so I'll have to get back into this when I get time.

Which GPU were you using? I have an Nvidia 7800 GT, and had wondered if that's the problem. I have my full specs below, in case anything stand out.

CPU: PowerPC G5 970MP Dual-Core 2GHz
RAM: 10GB PC2-4200 (533MHz) non-ECC
GPU: Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT 256MB DDR3
Drives: SATA A: PNY SSD7CS900 240GB SSD (Leopard)
SATA B: PNY SSD7CS900 240GB SSD (Tiger)
16x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Slots: 4) PCIe 4x: USB 2.0 Card
3) PCIe 8x: OWC Accelsior S
2) PCIe 4x: FireWire 400/800 card
1) PCIe 16x: Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT 256MB
OS Used: 10.5.8 Leopard, 10.4 Tiger.


PS: Thank you for the work you put in on modding 10.4 and 10.5!

 

[Edgecrusherr]

I do want to say, to anyone working on updating and modding older OSes—whether that 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, or anything else:

I think this is a very worthwhile and admirable effort. These OS mods can give new life to older hardware, allow bug fixes that were left unfixed by Apple, allow these older OSes to work with some or most of the modern internet (which is critical for using them in may cases), and many other things I'm sure I'm not thinking of. Even if for nothing else, it's just plain fun to get these up and running. I literally took a photo of 10.6.8 running on my PowerBook Pismo and sent it to people with the caption "Finally, my all time favorite OS running on my all time favorite laptop".

These kinds of works can take a long time, may never be perfect, and that's ok. Not only that, any efforts now can, and likely will be, built on by others in the future. It's all part of a greater effort for preservation, and just simply a fun challenge. When I see these projects I think "Awesome, let's see how far I can push it!". And one day, if they're stable, then even better!

Thank you to everyone who work on these OS modes, help people use them, and help test them.

 

[jktwice]

I do want to say, to anyone working on updating and modding older OSes—whether that 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, or anything else:

I think this is a very worthwhile and admirable effort. These OS mods can give new life to older hardware, allow bug fixes that were left unfixed by Apple, allow these older OSes to work with some or most of the modern internet (which is critical for using them in may cases), and many other things I'm sure I'm not thinking of. Even if for nothing else, it's just plain fun to get these up and running. I literally took a photo of 10.6.8 running on my PowerBook Pismo and sent it to people with the caption "Finally, my all time favorite OS running on my all time favorite laptop".

These kinds of works can take a long time, may never be perfect, and that's ok. Not only that, any efforts now can, and likely will be, built on by others in the future. It's all part of a greater effort for preservation, and just simply a fun challenge. When I see these projects I think "Awesome, let's see how far I can push it!". And one day, if they're stable, then even better!

Thank you to everyone who work on these OS modes, help people use them, and help test them.

You can't just say you took a picture of your G4 upgraded Pismo running Snow Leopard and not show us lol. Let's see it! So long as it doesn't have any compromising information of course.

Also just got Snow Leopard running on my iBook G4. It's not a bad experience I will admit especially thanks to its 9550 which can handle all the fancy Core Image graphics that Leopard introduced.

 

[z970]

I think what I was remembering was this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ns.2433567/page-4?post=33366221#post-33366221
Save me from digging into comments.

I'll take a look. Much obliged.

EDIT: If I am interpreting @saxfun's post correctly, I know exactly what's causing the build failure. I'm sick of hearing about the same exact mod causing most of these problems for years on end at this point. When I get some time hopefully over the next week, I'm releasing an update to resolve it for good.

I will need a volunteer with a stock 10.5.8 install to provide a file for me. Now hiring...

Which GPU were you using? I have an Nvidia 7800 GT, and had wondered if that's the problem. I have my full specs below, in case anything stand out.

CPU: PowerPC G5 970MP Dual-Core 2GHz
RAM: 10GB PC2-4200 (533MHz) non-ECC
GPU: Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT 256MB DDR3
Drives: SATA A: PNY SSD7CS900 240GB SSD (Leopard)
SATA B: PNY SSD7CS900 240GB SSD (Tiger)
16x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Slots: 4) PCIe 4x: USB 2.0 Card
3) PCIe 8x: OWC Accelsior S
2) PCIe 4x: FireWire 400/800 card
1) PCIe 16x: Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT 256MB
OS Used: 10.5.8 Leopard, 10.4 Tiger.

At the time of the imaging, I believe the system actually had the stock GeForce 6600 equipped, but it was upgraded later to the 7800 GT without the OS raising any apparent issues or complaints, so that can't be it.

I must say though that it did not have a separate USB 2.0 card installed, the OWC Accelsior S, or the FireWire Combo card. I'm jumping the gun a little bit here, but if one of those ends up being the culprit, then it's most likely because a relevant kext file was removed in Sorbet to save a few MB, which I recall has caused a few other issues in the past, especially when it first released. This is what I mean when I say it went too far.

While unlikely, it is also possible that the hanging could be caused by attached peripherals. I remember learning somewhere years ago that someone was encountering some strange unpredictability from their system, only to find that their keyboard of all things was the culprit and the behavior went away when they swapped it for another. Anecdotally, I have also personally seen failing mice and optical drives cause crashing and kernel panics that were all resolved when they were replaced.

 

[jktwice]

I'll take a look. Much obliged.

EDIT: If I am interpreting @saxfun's post correctly, I know exactly what's causing the build failure. I'm sick of hearing about the same exact mod causing most of these problems for years on end at this point. When I get some time hopefully over the next week, I'm releasing an update to resolve it for good.

I will need a volunteer with a stock 10.5.8 install to provide a file for me. Now hiring...



At the time of the imaging, I believe the system actually had the stock GeForce 6600 equipped, but it was upgraded later to the 7800 GT without the OS raising any apparent issues or complaints, so that can't be it.

I must say though that it did not have a separate USB 2.0 card installed, the OWC Accelsior S, or the FireWire Combo card. I'm jumping the gun a little bit here, but if one of those ends up being the culprit, then it's most likely because a relevant kext file was removed in Sorbet to save a few MB, which I recall has caused a few other issues in the past, especially when it first released. This is what I mean when I say it went too far.

While unlikely, it is also possible that the hanging could be caused by attached peripherals. I remember learning somewhere years ago that someone was encountering some strange unpredictability from their system, only to find that their keyboard of all things was the culprit and the behavior went away when they swapped it for another. Anecdotally, I have also personally seen failing mice and optical drives cause crashing and kernel panics that were all resolved when they were replaced.

I have endlessly complained about my audio interface being unusable on Leopard and my iBook G4 literally has 50% cpu usage with it plugged in which is pretty funny tbh. It very well could be a peripheral causing issues.

Would bet on it being an issue with the SATA card. Just a hunch but if some kext got removed it would probably be something relating to mounting drives via SATA which usually has issues on these Macs. But most of the time its usually the included SATA controller being really bad.

Not an expert so don't trust me.

 

[Doq]

I will need a volunteer with a stock 10.5.8 install to provide a file for me. Now hiring...

stock 10.5.8 user here, yo wuddup

 

[z970]

stock 10.5.8 user here, yo wuddup

I'd like /usr/lib/libsqlite3.0.dylib please, and perhaps /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Frameworks as well, if possible.

 

[jktwice]

Gonna take another moment to complain because this is definitely a big bug with Sorbet. I'll also report it on the Sorbet thread. Probably a simple fix.

When using Sorbet Leopard, and iTunes 10.6.3, my iPod Touch 1st Gen refuses to connect or even try to sync. It will actually throw an error (-9363) instead. Tiger with the latest version of iTunes 9 does not encounter this issue. Snow Leopard with 10.6.3 does not encounter this issue. I have a FireWire drive on the way and I will test on vanilla Leopard and report back my findings.

 

[z970]

Gonna take another moment to complain because this is definitely a big bug with Sorbet. I'll also report it on the Sorbet thread.

When using Sorbet Leopard, and iTunes 10.6.3, my iPod Touch 1st Gen refuses to connect or even try to sync. It will actually throw an error (-9363) instead. Tiger with the latest version of iTunes 9 does not encounter this issue. Snow Leopard with 10.6.3 does not encounter this issue. I don't rlly feel like nuking my Sorbet install yet, but after this I think I might just run SL/Tiger because 90% of what I do on my G5 I can do in Tiger anyways and Snow Leopard is where I do all of my MacPorts stuff. I have a FireWire drive on the way and I will test on vanilla Leopard and report back my findings.

It's not a bug, it's a feature... Because the daemon responsible consumed 2 CPU threads and 5 MB of RAM while idling...

Applications > Sorbet Tools > Peripherals > iOS Device Communication Toggle Scripts > Toggle iOS Device Communication

Had to look up the directory path for this script (and the previous file); I've forgotten at least 60% of this project.

 

[jktwice]

It's not a bug, it's a feature... Because the daemon responsible consumed 2 CPU threads and 5 MB of RAM while idling...

Applications > Sorbet Tools > Peripherals > iOS Device Communication Toggle Scripts > Toggle iOS Device Communication

Had to look up the directory path for this script (and the previous file); I've forgotten at least 60% of this project.

Wow what! That’s insane… my Quad definitely doesn’t benefit from this kind of optimization. The slower G4s do though

Anyways thank you for the tip. I forgot about that feature entirely. I’ve only just started getting into iOS devices. Good that it is a toggle though.

 

[Doq]

I'd like /usr/lib/libsqlite3.0.dylib please, and perhaps /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Frameworks as well, if possible.

No such /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Frameworks exists, but here's libsqlite3.0.dylib

 

[z970]

Wow what! That’s insane… my Quad definitely doesn’t benefit from this kind of optimization. The slower G4s do though

Anyways thank you for the tip. I forgot about that feature entirely. I’ve only just started getting into iOS devices. Good that it is a toggle though.

Slower G4s should just stay on Tiger or earlier. Neither regular or optimized Leopard has ever brought out their best, in my opinion.

No such /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Frameworks exists, but here's libsqlite3.0.dylib

Hm. Maybe Frameworks only gets added after it's relinked to WebKit... Either way, I'll see what I can do with this. Thanks again.

 

[z970]

Just to offer some news on this, while testing the update script that would have finally resolved most of the MacPorts-related issues on Sorbet, I accidentally broke the only system I had available with it installed and now the OS won't boot. While I could spend an afternoon repairing the install and try again, frankly the demand for this addition is already quite niche, and I just don't have the bandwidth to focus on this project like I could years ago, at least at this time.

We'll see if the situation changes in the future, but if anyone wants to take a whack at the script as-is and try to get it working properly for themselves, then let me know, otherwise I'm afraid this update will need to be put on hold for now.