User:Tonyr/Journal/Mar07

02Mar07

Where have I been for a week? Working on Disk Replication, memory testing and disk test/wipe, mainly. The inflow was relatively low during that time. I did a little with the smartmontools package, which I think should probably become a standard part of disk testing. I use it when wiping/testing the hard drives in the Mac Build area.

Script genMacDisk.sh works, creating a Ubuntu Edgy bootable hard drive that looks pretty much like the one created by the Ubuntu installer. I don't think it covers all of the PowerMac tower boot-device configurations. It might bebetter to leave that for a post-creation step. I'll have to think about that somemore.

G4 Powerbook
Audio does not seem to be configuring during installation on the G4/700 flat-panel and the G4 Powerbook. This forum article suggests a fix.

The 800MHz G4 Powerbook battery seems to be pretty much shot. Tests showed battery life to be about 6 minutes. I asked Dave to leave it plugged in overnight in the Black Hole to see if prolonged charging would have any effect.

The CD drive may actually be a SuperDrive, or CD-RW. If it's using SCSI emulation, cdrecord --scanbus might find it. I got the model number from /proc/ide/hd?, which could be googled.

nVidia
Here is a forum article with a suggestion about installing 6.10(Edgy) on systems with nVidia video controllers. It is based on booting the LiveCD and changing xorg.conf. I'm not sure I ever pursued the LiveCD install far enough to try this. This is coming up again because Loren is working on the G4/700 Flat Panel machines with 7.04(Feisty), which has problems of its own, and there are a couple of G4 PowerMac Quicksilver 733MHz machines that came in with nVidia contollers. I may have commented earlier that there were no nVidia drivers for PPC. That would have been a misinterpretation of things I read. It seems that nVidia (and ATI, too, reportedly) have not released the 3D driver versions for PPC, but the 2D versions work fine. It's just a matter of convincing a PPC installation to use the driver correctly (hence the link mentioned above).

03mar07

Many of the later G4 towers have nVidia video controllers. The expected donation evolution described by RFS (systems coming into FreeGeek will have ever 'increasing' specs) predicts that we will be seeing more of these as time goes by. Loren and I talked about the variety of G4 tower configurations, and I said I would make a chart of the G4 models that showed specs for the various models. I'm working on that. It sure would be nice to solve the nVidia on Dapper/Edgy problem. (Mac Models page created 05mar07)

Some G4 towers have a DVD-RAM drive. This kind of drive was an early DVD-RW format that apparently did not catch on. The literature says that it was more popular in camcorders. You don't hear much about them in the consumer computer market these days. MacBuild should swap these out for DVD/CD-RW, if possible, or DVD-ROM, and sell them separately in the store.

I replicated a ppc linux hard drive from a G3 (or G4?) tower drive, and tried it on an iMac. It didn't work. X failed to start and I couldn't convince it to reconfigure xserver-xorg. The point of the exercise is to produce a replicated hard drive that 'just works', so I abandoned that attempt. I installed a new Edgy in the iMac using the alternate CD, and used that drive to capture the linux directory and boot directory, and save them on the hard drive of the replicator machine. The script genMacDisk will have to be modified to take into account the different installation directories. The nVidia solution, if there is one, will probably need to be captured, too. How many more, I wonder?

I had a false epiphany about replication. Ubuntu has what it terms an OEM installation on the alternate CD, and I thought this might be exploited to do the replication. What I discovered is that the OEM installation does not address the case at hand, and there is relatively little documentation that I can find. The closest stated application is to replicate identical hard drives for volume system sales. That does not apply here, since the case is replicating to a different size hard drive.

06mar07

nVidia
Will wonders never cease! The Edgy LiveCD actually boots on a G4/733 Quicksilver with an nVidia GeForce2 video card. A replicated hard drive also boots, but I had to replace /etc/X11/xorg.conf with a copy from the other G4/733 Quicksilver. This implies that /etc/X11/xorg.conf might have to be a selectable config file based on the video card of the target platform (and specified with a command line argument or an environmant variable?). There is curious thing that I do not understand, however. The alternate CLI ttys are not working. CTL+ALT+F1 should switch to a cli console. What actually happens is that the display turns grey-white and doesn't show anything else. There is no display reaction to keyboard events. huh?

Upon reflection, the FreeGeek build standard says that video should support a generic VGA display with 1024x768 resolution. /etc/X11/xorg.conf should reflect that. Any displays bundled with systems should support that. Displays that do not should be sold separately, or the sytem configuration modified if the display is required for any reason (only one that can be connected, e.g. to a cube, or grant request). A standard /etc/X11/xorg.conf should be injected into the linux replication images.

Hard drive replication
The python version of the replicator is partially tested. There was a bug in the yaboot config file name during the last test run this afternoon. I think I repaired, but another test round must needs be done. The current code is in Mac Build Scripts: Python.

Matteo suggested that the /dev and /proc directories should not be copied with rsync during the replication. I inspected the /proc directory in the host drive linux root directory, and it appears to be empty, so I guess my use of rsync in this instance is doing the right thing. The /dev issue is a little more interesting. I think that so far luck has held, in that the device configuration of various towers is so similar that a generic /dev directory will cover most cases. There may be issues with SCSI configured systems. We shall see. The only imac test run didn't work, and I don't know whether it was a script failure or a severe mismatch between imac and tower configurations. More experimentation needs to be done in that regard.

Mac Grant request
There was a Grant request today for three Mac systems. The grant specified that OS 10 should be installed. Freegeek cannot do that. What can be provided is machines with Ubuntu, or machines on which Mac OS 10 has been shown to work. Elizabeth(?) said that the grant requestor would be contacted for more discussion.

07mar07

nVidia
Tried to test a 17" Apple Studio Display (ADC) today, on the G4/733 with nVidia video controller. X never started on it, although there was some small evidence that linux did boot. I think that the problem is an incorrect xorg.conf, but I couldn't find a combination of things that were correct. I think primarily the horiz and vertical rates wer never correct. A good spec is at http://support.apple.com/specs/displays/Apple_Studio_Display_17_ADC.html, and says horiz: 60-160Hz, vert: 80kHz. In addition, only the nv version of the nVidia driver is available for ppc, not the nvidia version. This is what I was referring to earlier in the comment about no nVidia 3D driver for ppc. Note that the previously mentioned success with the video was with a 15" flat panel Apple Studio display, and the copied xorg.conf may have actually been from the successful LiveCD boot. Also note that reconfiguring Xorg is hard to do since the console terminals (CTL+ALT+F1 et. al.) do not seem to be available when X doesn't start using this 17" ADC monitor. FWIW, the configuration program for xorg is the X server, Xorg -configure, but it must be run from a non-X console, i.e., Xorg cannot already be running.

The console terminals do not seem to be available at all with the nVidia card. They are not there with the Blue VGA studio display. There may be video boot parameters that can be added to yaboot.conf or other options in the driver section of xorg.conf. More research and experimentation is need here.

Hard drive replication
Python script debug and successful disk replication. There are still issues about standard display vs. special display and nVidia contoller vs. ATI controller to resolve.

12mar07

DVD Use
Freegeek does not include anything beyond reading DVD data in its Ubuntu installation. Dave advises that we can, however, explain to anyone how to go about installing DVD playback support, and should include in that explanation the legal issues. There are a couple of articles in the Ubuntu Wiki that have this information:

Missing Splash
Some Macs seem to have lost the startup splash with the progress bar. There is an article here that says, essentially,

   reset xres, yres to 1024,768 in /etc/usplash.conf and then do
   sudo update-initramfs -u
   change kernel line from quiet to verbose in yaboot.conf, then ybin -v

The 1024,768 resolution spec seems to be the key. It apparently needs to match the default resolution of the attached display. The iMacs may use 1024x768 by default. The 15" ADC flat panel displays, and the CRT displays that default to 1024x768 seem to display the splash/progress bar just fine. This needs a little more investigation.

Holy Jumpin' Up and Down Martha! The 1024x768 resolution spec in /etc/usplash.conf works on my G3 iMac at home. The xres,yres definitions were 800,600, and when I changed them to 1024,768, the splash appeared at next boot. This should probably go into the replication process as a config modification (scripts.py).

G4 Powerbook This use to be on my ToDo list, but last week BlackHole:Laptops gave it to the specialist to make or break.

13mar07

Missing splash
The xres,yres fix is incorporated into the rsync linux images, for both g3/g4 towers and imacs.

Desktop replication anomalies
The replicated hard drives seem to be lacking what I consider to be necessary minimal panel applets: clock, trash, audio volume, window lister, window hider, workspaces. I have added those by hand to the G4 tower I was working on today. I was under the impression that these were provided by default, but perhaps not. I should probably replace the oem home directory in the linux replication images with the one containing the panel modifications (assuming that the modifications are local to the oem account.

How did I spend 4 hours today? I could probably be more efficient.

Convinced myself that a G4 tower recurring occasional crash was a combination of bad memory and other unspecified motherboard problems.
Led the noon tour
Moved components from the 'bad' G4 Tower to the 'next' G4 Tower
Discussed Mac security with a volunteer looking to improve his understanding
Tested two more 17" Apple CRT displays (recycled one).

Some things are left hanging out of this:

One display was marked as having faint raster line failures. Those failures showed up on more than one display, so the problem is probably in the video card. That needs to be checked.
The G4 with the suspected bad motherboard can have a replacement motherboard, since there is at least one 'parts' G4 box on the shelf.

14mar07

Pi day (3.14, doncha know). Pete brough by some old versions of Linux/PPC that he had told Loren about a few months ago. He would also like to talk later about dual booting Linux and Mac OS. His machine is a Powerbook that he got at Freegeek a while back. Jeff had installed Ubuntu with the Kubuntu and Edubuntu desktops. I told him I would find some references.

These essentially say:

Install OSX, but invoke the partitioner as first step. 
Create a separate partition for linux. 
Finish the installation.
Install linux, delete the spare partition and let the linux partitioner use all free space.  
After linux boot, modify yaboot.conf to use macosx as default boot.  
Booting holding option key will present a boot selection menu.

This sounds pretty straightforward, but giving it a trial run wouldn't hurt.

15mar07

Jeff suggested using the OEM install process on the alternate CD to allow users to create their own login at first power on. That should be incorporated into the Mac Rebuild process. In order to capture that for the disk replication process, the root directory should be captured (rsync) before the first boot after a normal install from the CD. It occurs to me that the admin login oem might be accepted anyway. I've never done an oem installation on a powerpc. That needs to be explored.

A PowerMac G4/533 (Digital Audio) came in a couple of days ago. Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy was installed, but sound does not work. Jeff worked on it a little, installing the snd_powermac module and adding it to the list of modules to install at startup (/etc/modules), but it still didn't work. I found some references that might be useful:

16mar07

G4/533 Sound
There are three separate audio output issues here.

The audio device is not detected during installation and startup. This is solved by adding the module name snd-powermac to the startup module list in /etc/modules. Jeff had already tried this, but reported that sound was still not produced. Loren re-installed Ubuntu, so removing Jeff's modifications.
No sound comes out of the internal speaker, even with the audio device detected after the snd-powermac module is installed.
External speakers must be of the Apple Pro Speakers variety, the same ones that come with the iMac G4/700 Flat Panel machine. These speakers draw power from the speaker jack with a special mini-jack connector.

The sound device on this machine is called Tumbler. In alsamixer it will show up as Powermac Tumbler. To get it to show up, invoke modprobe snd-powermac; then aplay -l will show that the device is detected, as will alsamixer. The onboard circuitry is apparently provided by a TI tas3004 chip(?).

One of the previous references mentioned that plugging in headphones had an effect on the problem. I plugged in my ipod headphones, an lo and behold the front speaker started working. Unplug the headphones and the sound goes away.

Problems with the Tumbler device (and its cousin Snapper) are well documented in Ubuntu bugs (the reference above is the main one) and several forum articles. As far as I can see there is no solution in Edgy (6.10). Some references claim that this problem does not occur in Dapper (6.04). What about Feisty (7.04), which should be in Beta release about now? Another of the references suggested that the ugly gstreamer-plugins were required to make sound work with Totem.

So all of this suggests some things to try.

Install the snd-powermac module, attach an appropriate set of external speakers, try several sound applications, including the system sound test.
Install Dapper and/or Feisty(latest) and test sound.
Install the gstreamer plugins if they are not already there and try using Totem to play sound.

Oem installation
I did an oem installation from the alternate CD on a 500MHz iMac. The installation seemed to succeed. The only noticeable difference in the process is that the username oem is provided automatically (it still prompted for a password to be created). The closing message about rebooting says that the oem account has sudo privileges, that the installer may use that to make necessary post-installation modifications, and that the installer may then run the script oem-config-prepare to remove the oem account so that on the next boot, a new account with sudo privileges can be created by the owner/user.

When I rebooted the machine and tried to log in as oem, the login and X startup process took a really, really long time, several minutes in fact. The mouse cursor would disappear and reappear and not respond to mouse motion for a long time. It makes me wonder about the integrity of the installation. I did manage to get to a virtual console (CTL+ALT+F1), halt gdm, and run the oem-config-prepare script from there. It remains to be seen what happens on the next boot of that machine.

note 17mar07: It has more to do with the machine itself. The same behavior is present with a regular install 
on this particular machine.  Virtual console CLI works fine, implying that video/X might be involved.

I also wonder of the oem-config-prepare script is present in the normal install that we do, and if it would have the same effect.

note 17mar07: no, it's not.

20mar07

Oem installation, G3/500
There are two of them. They came in together. I'm inclined to believe they are both something called iMac DVSE. One of them has a flower pattern on the inside on the plastic case; I believe this one is called Flower Power. I think the other one is called Snow. Neither of them perform very well after installation; graphics seem extremely slow, as reported in #15mar05. This appears to be a known problem in bugs and forums. Here are some solutions.

They suggest various xorg.conf modifications. One suggests using the r128 driver instead of the ati driver.

21mar07

G4/533
See #15mar07 and #16mar07.

Solution found. I read the referenced articles, decided to play with amixer to modify the contents of /var/lib/alsa/asound.state. and discovered the working combination of changes. So here is the deal.

After installation, add the line snd-powermac to /etc/modules
Run two amixer commands as root to modify mixer controls

sudo amixer sset 'Auto Mute' off
sudo amixer sset 'PC Speaker' on

note(27apr07): and, of course, to make this permanent,  put the two amixer commands in /etc/rc.local

G3/500
The solution described in the first reference mentioned in #20mar07 works, so I stopped experimenting. Basically it says comment out some of the modules, and in the ati device section, turn off the FB option and add SWCursor and ForcePCIMode options.

30mar07

Playing catchup.

Loren found that installing gnome package Ogle (kde equivalent: oKle) allows the playing of DVDs. Not all DVDs, mind you. All that restricted codec stuff still applies. Loren got his downloaded/burned DVD of TV shows to work. This should become a standard part of the install on machines with DVD drives.

Installation on 'Flower Power' machines (CPU class 750CXe) may be missing some of the panel applets. I've had to add them by hand in a couple of instances. I'm not sure why this is happening, if it's a quirk of 750CXe architectures or a quirk of our process.

Jason showed me how to run the modem detection test. This should be a part of the Build instructions. Adding the Terminal icon and Modem icon to the top panel manually should also be a part of the Build instructions.

There is a keyboard testing program xkeycaps that can be installed on the test station. The 'white' keyboards are notoriously bad. They have 13 F keys across the top instead of 12, which made me think that the layout might be significantly different in terms of keycodes (probably not true). Anyway, this program will help in testing keyboards conventionally (as opposed to during build).

note: xkeycaps installed on the replication station.  I haven't yet found an exact match for the
Apple keyboards in the supplied keyboard list - tr

Jason is actively working in the Mac area. We have been able to get a lot of machines out to the store. I worry that it may be too many. Overflow store machines maybe should go back to the warehouse until there is room in the store. Macs seem to sell well, but I have no idea about how to compare to sales of PCs.

note: two G3/400 imacs went back to the warehouse shelves today.  One G3/500 Snow went to the store
and was sold almost immediately.

Over the past couple of weeks, two G4 Cubes have gone missing from the warehouse. Loren noticed the first one; Jason noticed the second one. Both went missing over the weekend. I am hoping that Lorraine from NextStep Recycling (MacRenewal project) in Eugene has been taking them. I asked Dave to ask her about it the next time he speaks with her.

31mar07

I added a desktop launcher for the disk replication process to the test station. It ran, but mkofboot aborted after the write confirmation query. I wasn't paying attention, so I don't know if it was natural or a timeout or an inadvertent key hit. There is a -f option to mkofboot that supresses confirmation questions. I'll add that.

A new Mac voluteer, Fynn, started today. There is not a lot in the way of new machines to work on since Jason has pretty much caught us up. I need to propagate the sound check and usplash steps into the build list, or get the replication process finalized.