2015-06-21 Jessie

I upgraded my old Apple iBook G4 (PowerPC architecture!) from Debian Wheezy to Jessie. And I was greeted with a black screen. I rebooted and watched the text scrolling by. Something failed about Load Kernel Modules. Something else failed about LSB. Nothing serious? The text console login prompt, and then a black screen and the ventilator blowing.

I had never figured out how to switch from X11 to the consoles on my iBook. But now I was determined to figure it out! I had seen the prompt, after all. It turns out that I need to press fn + ctrl + alt + cmd + F1.

OK. Looks like no GDM3? I’m going to install the display manager slim and hope that this is enough. Time passes. Wow, I am greeted by a display that looks like a CGA display with four colors? Maybe six colors? It’s terrible. But I see a Debian logo, and a user name prompt. I’m logging in!

And... All the colors are wrong. I feel like my entire desktop has been resampled. Ough! My eyes! I’m going to install xdm... Rebooting... And the graphics are unchanged. Damn!

When I switch to the console, run Emacs, and call M-x list-colors-display I see the colors just fine even if the entire screen is terribly dark. Answering Linux nouveau.noaccel=1 to the second boot prompt also didn’t solve my problem.

For the moment I uninstalled all display managers (no xdm, no gdm3) and so the system just shows the console login prompts when I boot. Too bad the damn stuff is so dark I can’t use the laptop during the daylight.

​#Debian ​#Administration ​#Software

Comments

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Claudia is using her laptop and so I’m rebooting the old iBook G4. Upgrading the system. Who knows, perhaps something has been fixed?

Also, I’m using lxde.

=> lxde

This is what fixed my color problem: enable KMS in /etc/yaboot.conf. It really works. I am amazed. I had given up on this machine.

=> enable KMS

image=/boot/vmlinux
label=Linux
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="quiet splash radeon.modeset=1 video=radeonfb:off video=offb:off video=1024x768-32 radeon.agpmode=-1"

...

Don’t forget to run sudo ybin -v when you’re done.

I found a solution to the super dark console on SuperUser: Zapping the PRAM.

=> on SuperUser

1. Restart the Mac and before the grey screen appears, hold down Command + Option + P + R

2. Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.

3. Release the keys.

• • Alex Schroeder 2015-10-01 13:02 UTC
• —

Uh, today I returned to this laptop and it didn’t work. During the boot process the screen turns black and stays black. Time for some experiments:

+--------------------------------+---------+-------+------------------------------+
|         Boot Parameter         | Console |  X11  |            Notes             |
+--------------------------------+---------+-------+------------------------------+
| none                           | ok      | 8bit  |                              |
| none                           | ok      | 8bit  |                              |
| video=1024x768-32              | ok      | 8bit  |                              |
| radeon.modeset=1               | ok      | good  | locks up after a few moments |
| ...                            | ?       | ?     |                              |
| quiet splash radeon.modeset=1  | black   | black |                              |
| video=radeonfb:off             |         |       |                              |
| video=offb:off                 |         |       |                              |
| video=1024x768-32              |         |       |                              |
| radeon.agpmode=-1              |         |       |                              |
+--------------------------------+---------+-------+------------------------------+

– Alex Schroeder 2015-10-09 12:09 UTC

I’ve been looking at the systemctl status reports. I’ve got systemd-modules-load: Failed to find module 'apm_emu' and pommed: Failed to start LSB: Apple laptops hotkeys event handler. I’m guessing these two are not related to X11 freezing.

– Alex Schroeder 2015-10-09 12:53 UTC