10.04 PPC on iMac G4

[ejacobi]

I tried upgrading my iMac G4 700mhz to 10.04 LTS, but after the upgrade I got a blank colored screen, and I had to reinstall Karmic. Please help!

[linuxopjemac]

Probably you need a different xorg.conf. You need the nouveau driver. Post your xorg.conf file.

You can also set one yourself:

sudo Xorg -configure

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/.../x-config.html

[ejacobi]

Alright, slightly new to this. Since I have reverted back to Karmic (9.10) should I modify the xorg file before I upgrade to 10.04 LTS? The colored screen pops up before any terminal appears, so how do I modify it after I upgrade to LTS?

[linuxopjemac]

Tricky. There is no way to get into a tty shell in Ubuntu anymore. They switched that off Very annoying. Your only bet is to open up an installer cd and get into a shell from there. Then chroot into your system and adapt xorg.conf. Not easy.

[Frobber]

Using 10.4 on an iMac G5, I've discovered that during the initial load you should select auto login.
When starting up, after hearing the intro sound wait a few seconds. Key 'control-alt-f (1 through 6) ' like you are attempting to enter tty. You should observe a black screen with scrambled white hashes. Now key 'control-alt-f7' to exit tty. The desktop should appear. From this point the display should work. until the next restart.

[jim_24601]

Tricky. There is no way to get into a tty shell in Ubuntu anymore. They switched that off.

Er, are you sure about that? I'm running an up-to-date (as of yesterday) 10.04 on my PPC Powerbook and I can get a tty shell no problem. You aren't using a hack to get a graphical boot splash, are you? I believe some of those can disable the text consoles.

[linuxopjemac]

good news that you can get into a tty. I thought it was diabled, my mistake.

if that is the case, then you can always fiddle arounf in your xorg.conf file.

[psko]

I installed 10.04 PPC on my 12" PowerBook. It worked just fine until I did a few updates. I am having the same problem. I have tried the tip to get into tty with limited success.

Can someone please clarify a few things for me?

First, is it the xorg.conf file causing the problem here? I can boot to the 10.04 PPC Live CD just fine, and when I look for the file in /etc/x11/, it is not there (on the installed and live systems). Is there a place where I can find a usable xorg.conf file for my specific PowerBook model?

Secondly, I would like some clarification on the tty procedure listed in this thread. I am not getting consistent results, as I have only been able to get it to work three times out of the many times I have tried.

Many thanks in advance for your expertise!

[linuxopjemac]

you definitely need a working xorg.conf

My experience is that you need to have the modelines for each resolution you want to have working.

Read a bit about cvt, it can provide the modelines:
http://mac.linux.be/content/setting-...anually-xrandr

If you need help, tell me. I am in a hurry now.

[psko]

I also found this in the meantime (from this post):

To avoid booting into darkness, at the boot prompt type:
Linux video=ofonly

then enter your username and password, I then followed what i read in the 'howto' section of the following folder. "file:///usr/share/doc/yaboot/yaboot-howto.html/ch7.en.html" which said the following...

"There are currently three utilities provided to save your boot configuration changes to the boot partition: ybin, mkofboot, and yabootconfig. Ybin copies yaboot, yaboot.conf, and the CHRP script to the boot partition, and then performs the necessary blessing. Mkofboot initializes the bootstrap partition, then runs ybin. And yabootconfig creates a working yaboot.conf and then runs mkofboot. For details and options of these utilities, see the associated man pages or type the utility name followed by --help on the command line."

so i ran 'ybin' and then 'yabootconfig' and restarted my powerbook and all is well... cheers, i hope i helped someone and also that i may have found a simple fix. Tim

I gave it a try, but it didn't seem to work for me. Perhaps I did something incorrectly, but I tried it a few times.