Sid Install on PowerMac G5

[m***@gmail.com]

Hello,

I am trying to revive a PowerMac G5 Quad CPU system but currently have no Apple GPU at this time.

As such I am trying to install Debian Sid to a 1.8 DP G5 with a Radeon 9600 AGP card and swap the drive over, but I have hit an impassable barrier with the Sid installer ISO.

I can start it from CD or USB just fine, and get to GRUB, select an install option (I tried Default and Expert) but, after loading for a while it seems to load the kernel okay, but then hangs.

I can see a white screen behind that shows it quiescing from OFW and it seems like it booted the kernel, and the fans quiet down, then overtop that I get black background and white text that seems to point to CPU or SMP initialisation as follows:

smp_core99_probe
smp_core99_kick_cpu
smp_core99_kick_cpu_done
smp_core99_bringup_done

And at that point it seems to stop. Nothing else happens. No install media access, nothing.

Can someone give me some guidance as to what might be going wrong?

Thanks,

—

Mark Benson

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hi Mark,

Post by m***@gmail.com
smp_core99_probe
smp_core99_kick_cpu
smp_core99_kick_cpu_done
smp_core99_bringup_done

This is a known, but yet unresolved regression, see [1].

Try using an older installer image, the last known to work image
is the one from June, 18th 2023 [2].

The issue has been reported to the PowerPC kernel maintainers, but
so far there has been no success in figuring out what's wrong.

Adrian

Post by m***@gmail.com
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2024/02/msg00019.html
[2] https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/2023-06-18/debian-12.0.0-ppc64-NETINST-1.iso