[ydl-gen] Some YDL/Mac questions

Mon Jan 5 12:40:49 MST 2009

After unsubscribing multiple times.....I keep getting YDL emails. 

________________________________
From: Derick Centeno <dcenteno at ydl.net>
To: Discussion List for Yellow Dog Linux User Topics <yellowdog-general at lists.fixstars.com>
Sent: Monday, January 5, 2009 1:35:22 PM
Subject: Re: [ydl-gen] Some YDL/Mac questions

Hi Matt: 

I'm going to focus on trying to get you to save time, ok?

First, always make a habit of consulting the hardware pages first:

http://us.fixstars.com/support/hardware/
http://us.fixstars.com/support/hardware/apple-powermac-g5.shtml

Kernel level device support is also listed here:
http://us.fixstars.com/support/hardware/devices.shtml

Although going through them is tedious there are references to video cards and the like.

Matt, the Unix/Linux universe is challenging even for people who love, live and breath it everyday.  Drivers, just like other programs, must be compiled so that YDL can use them meaning that there must exist a binary executable which will run within PowePC/Cell systems.  You probably know that, and perhaps figure that a particular card should have such a driver available.  Reasonable assumption except that the ever since Apple left the PowerPC universe, there is almost no money or investment in developing or supporting such drivers for old cards on these old systems.  That's assuming these drivers ever existed at all for the PowerPC.

Next difficulty.  There could possibly be, if you chose to look hard enough somewhere on the web, a research or other GPL based project which has a driver for that card in source which you could acquire.  However, now the problem is that you'd have to include that source such that it would be accessible to the YDL kernel such that as the kernel compiles it can link to that source containing that driver - assuming you choose the right menu option so that as the kernel compiles the modification you wanted will be built.  The result of course will be a unique kernel built just for this purpose.

There's no guarantee that the above will work as PowerPC development, including driver support, stopped sometime ago.  However as you are a programmer, you'll have little difficulty correcting any errors which can pop up such as linking errors, syntax errors, etc.

When it starts to dawn on you all the coding from all kinds of open source projects and communities which are involved I'm sure that you'll see a bit more of how vast a challenge bringing what you want to do into fruition may be.

Another nuance to consider, if you went ahead and followed this path, you'd have to make sure that whatever version of YDL you do use remains stable as the open source driver you choose to include or design yourself could make that YDL kernel you compile unstable.  I believe you'd have to post somewhere what you did and how identifying a new kernel tree.

Of course, I could be wrong.  The above is a lot for anyone even if they are a company.  An individual would need a great deal of focus and time.

Good luck...

On Dec 14, 2008, at 5:11 PM, Matt Smith wrote:

Relatively new to the Linux and Mac worlds, but I’ve been a C++ programmer for 20 some odd years now, so hopefully I’ll pick up things pretty quickly.

# uname -a
Linux mrsmith-ydl 2.6.22-0.ydl.rc4 #1 SMP Tue Jun 12 22:17:48 MDT 2007 ppc64 ppc64 ppc64 GNU/Linux

# more cpuinfo
processor       : 0
cpu             : PPC970, altivec supported
clock           : 2000.000000MHz
revision        : 2.2 (pvr 0039 0202)

processor       : 1
cpu             : PPC970, altivec supported
clock           : 2000.000000MHz
revision        : 2.2 (pvr 0039 0202)

This box is a G5.  It was one of the original Xbox 360 alpha development kits, so as such the video card is custom ATI card for which there are no Linux drivers for, so I have been running command line only.  The command line only has been working ok for me, but it seems like with me not knowing Linux inside and out, it might be nice to have the graphical interface for wrapping more of the complex configuration functions.  As such, I have finally gotten around to purchasing a real video card for this guy.  I’m looking at the ATI Radeon 9200 Pro since I don’t plan on using it for much other than a central server for my home network.  If someone has another suggestion for a cheaper video card (eBay brand would be nice), I’m all ears.  I don’t need performance, just support for the GUI interface.

So, the crux of my question is this: once I get my video card home, what are the steps I need to perform to upgrade all of the drivers and install Gnome or E17?  How do I get YDL to recognize and use the drivers for this video card?  Do I somehow update the drivers first, the swap the card?  

Second, is there is any support for a RAID card?  I’d like to install 2 1TB drives and mirror them as part of my central server.  

Thanks for any pointers you can give me.  I’m not used to the one asking the questions, so please be gentle.  ;)

- Matt

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