X-Windows on PPC in Debian SID

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hello Stan,

Please see the last paragrraph of the message; it may provide a clue for
ppc (and probably ppc64).
Mr. Simon McVittie seems to be saying that debian-devel isn't the right
place for these kinds of issues, since Debian 8 was the last supported
version of Debian for ppc. Perhaps the bug report he submitted will
address the problem.

It’s not a powerpc-specific problem as he admits himself. The whole discussion about the powerpc port being unofficial is therefore moot.

Trying this on amd64, it appears that the problem you encountering is
probably that libelogind, elogind's partial replacement for libsystemd,
does not appear to provide all of the functions required by the current
versions of important packages like procps: procps currently requires
libsystemd0 (>= 254), and libelogind only provides a replacement for
version 252. I've reported this libelogind limitation as a bug in
elogind.

Which proves my point.

Adrian

[Mike]

Remember to regenerate the crypto keys so these aren't the same. Cheers.

Just FYI to close this thread.
In an attempt to duplicate the problem on a G4 Cube, I noticed that
there were no issues with "apt-get upgrade" followed by "apt-get
dist-upgrade". So I just copied the Cube's rootfs to the G4 PowerMac
MDD, configured the hostname and network, restored the correct SMP
kernel and modules, and everything is working.
-Stan
-----

Hi Adrian,
Please see the last paragrraph of the message; it may provide a clue for
ppc (and probably ppc64).
Mr. Simon McVittie seems to be saying that debian-devel isn't the right
place for these kinds of issues, since Debian 8 was the last supported
version of Debian for ppc. Perhaps the bug report he submitted will
address the problem.
-Stan
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: X-Windows on PPC in Debian SID
Resent-Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2024 10:49:25 +0000 (UTC)
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2024 10:49:01 +0000

The bottom line is that there appears to be a dependency issue in Debian
SID at the moment

You can't *necessarily* draw this conclusion from a failure to
upgrade. You are using powerpc, which is a "ports" architecture that is
The last supported release for 32-bit PowerPC is Debian 8 ("jessie").
— https://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/
For reference, Debian 8 "jessie" reached end-of-life in 2018.
powerpc enthusiasts continue to compile packages from the unstable (sid)
rolling release on powerpc, but "ports" architectures are not supported

by

the Debian project as a whole. The mailing list for the big-endian

powerpc

and ppc64 ports (and the little-endian ppc64el architecture, which *is*
supported) is debian-powerpc.
It is common for potentially large categories of packages to be

temporarily

uninstallable in unstable, particularly in "ports" architectures, and you
cannot expect upgrades to go smoothly at all times. I would personally
suggest using an interactive apt user interface like aptitude to get a
better idea of what depends on what and why.

that makes wdm (and other X-Windows packages such as
the Xorg server) dependent on systemd, even if systemd is already
installed, regardless of whether systemd is being used as the init

systemd is the default init system in Debian, and also provides the
default implementation of several other important systemd services
like logind. If you have chosen not to use systemd, you can expect
that you will have to take steps to select other non-default packages
(for example dbus-x11 instead of dbus-user-session, and libpam-elogind
instead of libpam-systemd). apt will not necessarily be able to do this
automatically.
Trying this on amd64, it appears that the problem you encountering is
probably that libelogind, elogind's partial replacement for libsystemd,
does not appear to provide all of the functions required by the current
versions of important packages like procps: procps currently requires
libsystemd0 (>= 254), and libelogind only provides a replacement for
version 252. I've reported this libelogind limitation as a bug in
elogind.
smcv