iMac G5 installation troubles with FreeBSD 8 & 9

S

swirling_vortex

Hello everyone,

I have an iMac G5 (I believe it's the revision B one) that I can't seem to get FreeBSD installed on. I didn't see a point in paying $150 for OS X 10.5, so dual-booting is not a a concern here.

When I load the powerpc ISO of FreeBSD 8, the ISO boots fine into the installer. However, when I get to the disklabel portion, it doesn't see any disks. The editor is blank. I know the hard drive still works because I'm able to successfully install Debian and OpenBSD onto it (although OpenBSD doesn't boot afterwards). If I try to create a partition, it won't let me. If I try to create a filesystem in the void, the installer catches a Signal 11 and promptly reboots. Enabling boot -v didn't seem to reveal anything else.

For the powerpc64 ISO of FreeBSD 9, the CD boots until it hits this line:
Code: 
run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 60 seconds for xpt_config
run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 120 seconds for xpt_config
run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 180 seconds for xpt_config
This continues onward for eternity. I looked up what can cause this and some people say that it's the firewire device that FreeBSD has trouble with. But seeing as how iMacs don't use a BIOS, I don't know of a straightforward way to disable it. I'm assuming I could do something with OpenFirmware, but Apple's documentation doesn't seem to reveal anything.

If anyone had dealt with FreeBSD on PPC, what are some things I could try?

Thanks!
 
You need to bring this to the mailing list where Nathan, Justin, Tingo, and others can help you.
 
Oops, I kind of forgot about this. Sorry for anyone else who ran into the same problem.

I'm not sure about the state of hardware on this since it was pretty much kept running all the time. The CD drive sounds like it's eating the disc instead of reading the disc, but it still seems to work. I did try to boot OpenBSD 5.3 on it, but that no longer seems to work. Coincidentally, the kernel seems to panic right after probing the firewire device, just as with the FreeBSD 9 CD.

In some ways though, it was good that I forgot because the FreeBSD 9.1 powerpc64 ISO works! It was able to see the hard drive and it also configured the ethernet card, which the previous Linux install didn't detect for some reason. Another nice bonus was that it enabled power management right on boot, so I didn't have to listen to a jet engine while it was running through the installer.

The only other thing I have to do is configure the wireless card. I forgot the exact chipset, but I think it's a Broadcom card.
 
Perhaps I spoke too soon. Now it's coming up with the infamous
Code: 
invalid memory access at srr0
error at boot. I suspect this is because I created a loader.conf file for enabling the bwi driver, which probably threw off a position in memory. The man page didn't specify anything different for the PowerPC architecture.

Oh well. I'll see if I can boot from the LiveCD and delete the file.
 
Hibbits was working on the PowerPC Broadcom drivers some time back. If using the LiveCD doesn't work, get on the mailing list and ask what to do next.
 
May not work like a charm, but I tried on a G4 (PPC e7450 if I'm not wrong) with 8 and 9 both having similar troubles (you can watch my first and second posts in this forum regarding that problem) including KERNEL PANIC, both problems overrided when used 9.1RC available at that moment.

8 also didn't recognized my disc, after some time, like 4 or 5 tries, it did recognize it, BUT DIDN'T COMMIT THE DISK CHANGES, it even said that the system was installed (using entire disc). Rebooted. MAC OS X LOGIN SCREEN. The disc remained untouched.

So, maybe you could give 9.1 a try? It worked for me. Again, for G4, not G5. But may be worth trying.

I hope it helps.
 
If you get the image to boot, a RELEASE/10.0 image may be the way to go. I'm trying this currently on PPC32 for a PowerMac QuickSilver. The 04282013 release- +500MB- image had a mount root error. I am currently downloading the 05052013 image in hopes that it will boot.

Now, it is possible to extract the files to the drive after doing a base install. Some directories such as /var/empty and /usr/obj will not empty or be removed by common means.
Grehan, Whitehorn, and Danfe work with the architecture. The iMac G5 was known to have problems in certain models.
 
MauroEldritch said:
May not work like a charm, but I tried on a G4 (PPC e7450 if I'm not wrong) with 8 and 9 both having similar troubles (you can watch my first and second posts in this forum regarding that problem) including KERNEL PANIC, both problems overrided when used 9.1RC available at that moment.

8 also didn't recognized my disc, after some time, like 4 or 5 tries, it did recognize it, BUT DIDN'T COMMIT THE DISK CHANGES, it even said that the system was installed (using entire disc). Rebooted. MAC OS X LOGIN SCREEN. The disc remained untouched.

So, maybe you could give 9.1 a try? It worked for me. Again, for G4, not G5. But may be worth trying.

I hope it helps.
Click to expand...
I am running 9.1 and it does work as is. I did do some testing and it seems creating the loader.conf file is what causes the error. If I don't do anything else, it runs fine.
sossego said:
If you get the image to boot, a RELEASE/10.0 image may be the way to go. I'm trying this currently on PPC32 for a PowerMac QuickSilver. The 04282013 release- +500MB- image had a mount root error. I am currently downloading the 05052013 image in hopes that it will boot.

Now, it is possible to extract the files to the drive after doing a base install. Some directories such as /var/empty and /usr/obj will not empty or be removed by common means.
Grehan, Whitehorn, and Danfe work with the architecture. The iMac G5 was known to have problems in certain models.
Click to expand...
I am using the 64-bit image. I'll give the 32-bit image a go before doing anything else. If that still causes an issue, I'll try a snapshot and post something on the mailing list.
 
IMO, do as you said, try a snapshot and head to the mail list. A guy called Andreas helped me a lot in setting up my old PPC, and at the same time troubleshooting some other little things all this in the mailing list.

Also, if you allow me to give you a recommendation, search (dig a lot, really) in the mailing list, I just found some of my "very-specific" problems beign reported years ago and on the very same hardware (The G4 I mentioned).
 
I just installed a 10-CURRENT snapshot and so far it seems to be working. I'm going to do a little more testing on it, but it looks promising. It also looks like 10-CURRENT has better fan speed control as well, as the fans don't seem to be acting up as much. For reference, the ISO snapshot I used is: FreeBSD-10.0-CURRENT-powerpc64-20130505-r250260-bootonly.iso

One interesting thing I've noticed is that it is printing a KDB: Stack backtrace whenever stuff is being written to the hard disk. It appeared when I set up the partitions and when I fetched the snapshot of the ports tree. I'm starting to wonder if the hard disk is going bad.
 
Rebuild kernel and world before you go any further. Be sure that you inquire as to whether or not clang is the default compiler and if it has had any troubles.

Besides that.....


Congratulations.
 
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