Hi Stan,
This is an excellent guide how to setup sysvinit as replacement for
systemd. I applied it to Trixie and it works. It might make your Pismo
and Wallstreet collector items a lot faster.
https://ianlecorbeau.com/blog/debian-bookworm-sysvinit.html
Best regards,
Jeroen
Stan Johnson schreef op 2025-09-09 10:15:
On 9/8/25 6:45 PM, Cedar Maxwell wrote:
On Sun, 2025-09-07 at 13:16 -0600, Stan Johnson wrote:
On 9/5/25 6:27 PM, Cedar Maxwell wrote:
...
Would you send your xorg.conf, etc., please? I can only seem to
get
Xorg to launch by passing in video=ofonly. I can't get it to work
with
fbdev either.
...
I've been testing kernels on my Wallstreet using a current Gentoo
distribution.
I noticed this morning that mainline kernel v6.1, compiled using the
attached .config file, works in Gentoo, but not in Debian SID.
In Debian, I can see the X11 login screen, but the keyboard and mouse
don't respond. In Gentoo, everything works as expected.
In Debian SID, I'm using Xfce, sysvinit-core instead of systemd, and
wdm
instead of lightdm.
In Gentoo, I noticed elogind was installed; elogind was not installed
in
Debian. Using "apt-get install elogind" to install elogind, systemd
was
removed, as well as xserver-org and some X11-related files, so of
course
X11 doesn't work at all now, and I'll need to restore from a backup.
Interestingly, I'm not having similar issues with PB Lombard or
Pismo.
My BootX configuration is as follows (working X11 in 6.1.0 in
Gentoo):
Kernel: vmlinux-6.1.0-pmac (custom kernel, no modules)
Boot Device: /dev/sda13 (Gentoo partition)
More kernel arguments: video=atyfb:vmode:14,cmode:32,mclk:71
No video driver: checked
Options:
Force SCSI ON: checked
Force video settings: checked
Use specified RAM disk: not checked
Checking "No video driver" appears to pass in video=ofonly. How is
your performance with this configuration? Mine is borderline
unusable.
mclk:71 makes everything green.
As a test, I installed the latest Debian SID on a Pismo, so I get
systemd and all of the badness that it has for slow, memory-constrained
systems (my Pismo has 512 MiB memory).
Interestingly, I don't pass "video=aty128fs:1024x768" to the kernel
(via yaboot) as I have in the past, yet it still works, though about
twice as slowly as using sysvinit (or rcinit in Gentoo). So I guess it
must be using "video=ofonly".
My intention is to copy my Debian SID and Gentoo root filesystems from
my Pismo to my Wallstreet, but to do this I need to have at least dump
version 0.4b49 to reliably dump and restore filesystems on powerpc. So
I'm having to update Gentoo now on Pismo to update dump.
# dump --version
...
dump 0.4b47 ...
I think checking "No video driver" but also specifying "video=atyfb..."
will pass "video=atyfb..." to the kernel. Unfortunately, a kernel
regression seems to have broken previously working X11 on the
Wallstreet (I haven't heard back from the developer yet). I tried
installing Debian SID 08/29/2025 directly on the Wallstreet by booting
into the installtion vmlinux and initrd.gz, but I couldn't get it to
work, even using a serial console. If my tests are accurate, the
Wallstreet should eventually work with the Debian rootfs that I
installed on my Pismo (except for X11).
On the Pismo, I had to install wdm and specify it as my display manager
instead of lightdm in Debian SID 08/29/2025, otherwise I would only get
a text login. It also took me a while to install everything that's
useful that Debian doesn't include, such as telnet, telnetd, ftp,
vsftpd, ifconfig, netstat, dump, etc. For now I'm leaving systemd
installed in Debian on the Pismo and running Debian's default kernel
and initrd (vmlinux-6.16.3+deb14-powerpc and
initrd.img-6.16.3+deb14-powerpc). I'll replace systemd with sysvinit
and try a custom kernel after I copy the Debian rootfs to the
Wallstreet.
On the Pismo, X11 in Gentoo (with just a clock and two xterms running)
is mostly usable and about twice as fast as using Xfce in Debian SID.
The same setup is also usable (but just barely) in Gentoo on the
Wallstreet, with kernel 6.1.
I'll probably end up using whatever .config file the developer who
investigates the possible kernel regressions recommends.
I'm not using an xorg.conf file in either Debian SID or Gentoo (I
haven't needed to use an xorg.conf file since Debian 7.8 in Sparc64).
For now I'll be sticking with Gentoo for these particular kernel
regression tests.
