Last updated: 12.01.2005
Carsten Brandhorst cb@qapla.org
This howto describes the installation of Debian on a Apple Powerbook Titanium.
The machine used as an example was a Powerbook G4 Titanium, newer models (and maybe also the older G3 ones) should work similar exept for little details. Even newer Powermac G4 may be handled likely (exept for the notebook-specific parts). Anyway, this does not count for the new Powermac G5 because of its 64bit architecture.
We need a bootable CD for the PPC architecture for installation, either CD1 (for
packages that should not be installed over the net also further CDs) of the
full Debian CD Set, or
a Netinstall CD (which only contains a base system while the rest of the
packages will be installed over the net) - e.g. available here.
Important: The CD image (or the CD images) must contain the label
PPC!
For a dualboot system you also need a Mac OS X CD/DVD.
Little hint: Use Ctrl-Apple-Powerbutton instead of Ctrl-Alt-Del ;)
If you want to use a dualboot system, you should install Mac OS X first. Press [c] after inserting the CD/DVD to boot from it instead of booting from harddisk. You need to do a manual partitioning, and keep in mind that you need enough free diskspace for later linux partitions. The rest of the Mac OS X installation can be done like you are used to.
After that we boot the Debian CD in the same way. If this does not work you need to copy the files (as root)
images/root.bin, yaboot, yaboot.conf, linux.bin
in the running Mac OS X to your root directory ("/"). The first three files are available here, the fourth is a kernel image with ATA100 support from here (simply extract and rename to linux.bin). After that you need to reboot and press [Apple-alt-o-f] immediatly to get into the Open Firmware Bios. Once you got there type boot hd:X,yaboot to boot the Debian installer (X must be replaced with your Mac OS X Partition which is "9" for the most cases. "mount" in a terminal under Mac OS X gives you information about that).
The base installation of Debian on a PPC architecture is almost the same as on a x86 compatible system, so i will not describe it further. Maybe i will add a detailed discription of this process later.
If you still need more Information have a look at the Debian GNU/Linux PowerPC PowerMac Page, there is a detailed view on the particular parts of the Debian installer.
The classic mac keyboard layout is similar to a pc keyboard, but some keys are missing (like braces, brackets, pipe). Some other keys are only usable while pressing "Fn" (also needed for F1-F12). To get the missing keys, you need to change the keymaps for console and X11. An example for a X11 .Xmodmap that activates some keys on the familiar positions can be found here.
The trackpad is used via /dev/input/mice and works with gpm and X11. If the kernel uses
CONFIG_MAC_EMUMOUSEBTN
(the standard debian kernel doesnt use it), you are able to emulate a second and third mousebutton by mapping them to a key on the keyboard.
echo "1" >/dev/mac_hid/mouse_button_emulation echo "87" >/dev/mac_hid/mouse_button2_keycode echo "88" >/dev/mac_hid/mouse_button3_keycode
The example above activates the emulation and mapps the second mousebutton to F11, the third button to F12. "showkey" is a console application that shows the keycode of any key you press.
The special keys like mute, volume and eject can be used with pbuttonsd. The disply brightness can be changed without that tool by pressing F1 and F2 (without Fn),
If you want to use an usb mouse anyhow you wont experience any problems - just plug it in and it works via the same device.
The default framebuffer seems to work without problems, it worked after the installation without any further changes.
The X11 support is also very well - the ATI onboard chip works without problems, but the display resolution is set to 1024x768 which gives an ugly black stripe on the right side of the display. If you want to use the full resolution of 1152x768, you need to add a modeline for that resolution to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 because this is no standard resolution of the xserver. Here is a list of modelines for some apple displays.
The newer Powerbooks that use a Nvidia chipset need binary drivers from Nvidia - if someone got experience with them, please tell me and i will add these information.
I wasn't able to test the tv-out yet, but i heared that it is not supported yet. The vga output is disabled by default, but a new ati module for X11 can enable it with
Option "Display" "Crt"
Anyway, as you need to compile the whole xserver, i dont like this way. So i use this tool to enable or disable LCD or CRT as i like.
m3mirror lcd:0 crt:1
e.g. disables the LCD and enables the VGA output.
I don't have information about tv-out or vga output with Nvidia chipsets, too.
Works. The only thing to do is to load the modules
soundcore, dmasound_pmac, dmasound_core
It is a good idea to create a file named sound in /etc/modutils/ with the following content:
alias char-major-14 soundcore alias sound-slot-0 dmasound_pmac alias char-major-14-3 dmasound_pmac alias /dev/dsp dmasound_pmac alias sound-service-0-0 i2c-keywest alias char-major-14-0 i2c-keywest alias /dev/mixer i2c-keywest
The onboard ethernet device works great with the standard debian kernel.
The internal Airport extension works great with
hermes, orinoco, orinoco_cs, airport
The new wireless device will be eth1.
APM and ACPI are not supported. Power Management is used with pmud and works great. The battery condition, available power supply and so on can be displayed (e.g. with (wm)batppc). Suspend-to-ram works with apm -s (apm is not supported, but pmud emulates apm so that the default apm tool can handle that) and even control via open/closed lid is possible. Suspend-to-disk is not supported by hardware (Apple doesn't provide it in Mac OS X either), but the 2.6 kernel-tree provides software-based suspend-to-disk which actually works good.
Working (tested with several wireless cards and a cf-adapter). The module
yenta_socket
and the modules for the appropriate cards are used.
The internal modem is supported by this driver. The driver needs awk>=3.1.0 (e.g. gawk 3.1.2).
Infrared support was not tested as i have no infrared devices.
USB 1.1 works by default, the modules are loaded while booting without further configuration. A logitech mouse and an aiptek tablet worked great.
The firewire (iLink) port works well. An external IEEE1394 harddisk worked after loading this modules:
ieee1394, ohci1394, raw1394, sbp2
Nothing right now.
Debian for PowerPC
PenguinPPC
Ben's Linux/PPC page
eLinux - Run Linux on
the Mac
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Debian on a Apple Powerbook Last updated: 12.01.2005 Carsten Brandhorst cb@qapla.org |
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