PowerPup! A project to port Puppy to PPC macs!

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PowerPup
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#16 Post by PowerPup »

Well, after some help with the ldd command. I was able to determine that it WAS missing lib file causing disktype and guess_fstype and others not to work. So now I'm going to have to find out how to build them, I think the term is Static. Like using dietlibc to compile them so they don't need the lib files. or just include them in the initrd. I could do the latter just to get the beta working for now.

So busybox and the kernel are okay, at least for now. :P

I think I'll try to upload a working beta up for other to see the progress.
It won't include the mac SFS file because I haven't made it yet. But if they know enough linux sh/bash commands and such they can at least mount the cdrom or hard disk and explore them through the command line. :)

Oh yeah, any information on how to compile programs statically would help. Because at the moment I don't know how to do that. :P
-PowerPup

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Aitch
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#17 Post by Aitch »

perhaps you need to have a look at the construct of yellow dog?

http://us.fixstars.com/products/ydl/

It's a dvd I believe, as it has loads of software, but I've read that Terrasoft were brought in as they had succeeded in porting to PS3, involving a live video accelerator, & which is still being developed....

I, too, have a couple of G3s and a fair few friends with MACs who'd love PPCPUP :D

Good luck

Aitch :)

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Lobster
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#18 Post by Lobster »

Oh yeah, any information on how to compile programs statically
Pretty sure you don't mean
going into a full lotus and meditating whilst compiling but just in case
http://tmxxine.com/w/MindTraining

. . . you could also read these posters whilst compiling
that might keep you still for a while
http://www.funnyordie.com/blog/posts/14305

More importantly (when you pull this off) I hope you can be added to the Puppy 5 Kennels
http://pupweb.org/wikka/PuppyKennel/
Puppy Raspup 8.2Final 8)
Puppy Links Page http://www.smokey01.com/bruceb/puppy.html :D

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PowerPup
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#19 Post by PowerPup »

Well, I've got some of the program to compile with dietlibc. Need to work on getting the others to compile statically. Meaning that are independent of any library files.

Thought I'd now share what I currently have so far. :D
PowerPup_beta.iso
I recommend using a CD-RW so you don't waste a good CD-R. :P

Wow Lobster, that's so cool! :D About maybe being added to the Puppy 5 Kennels. While I am trying to keep as close as possible to the original Puppy coding as possible, I'm probably going to have to go back and clean it up after I get it working.
Last edited by PowerPup on Wed 08 Apr 2009, 20:04, edited 2 times in total.

brymway
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#20 Post by brymway »

I downloaded the iso and burned it. I booted my emac up with it by pressing 'c' during the boot up and got to boot prompt. I pressed enter and it started booting the kernel, went thru a few screens and then went black. I booted again, pressed 'tab', found out the commands and typed failsafe and it booted into the command line perfectly. (I have to admit my heart was racing at the anticipation, this is gonna be huge if you pull it off) I moved and poked around for a while, even made three directories and moved a file between them. The 'cp' command wasn't found though? I saw it in /bin but it didn't work. Anyway, rock and roll! What's next? I gotta new stack of cd's just for testing this if you want subjects PowerPup. Great work!

As to compiling statically, can't you copy some programs off of Puppy 3 and throw them in? I have been playing around with minor, easy compiling for my own usage. I can just as easy go and build a Puppy 3 system on a partition and download the devx file and play with a few small programs. Am I understanding you correctly?
[url]http://wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html[/url]

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PowerPup
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#21 Post by PowerPup »

Glad to hear of your success brymway! :D I'm not sure why you had to go through failsafe to get it working though. Looking at apple-history.com Your Emac uses a Nvidia GeForce2 MX chip. and the only macs I have to test with use ATI. So maybe there's something in the kernel for that. (I know I enabled Nvidia.)

As for getting programs off of Puppy 3, I can't do it that easily. The all the programs are compiled for intel cpus. I have to recompile everything from source to PPC. Don't know why the cp wasn't working for you, tested that myself earlier... Maybe I forgot something. :P

The next thing is getting the guess_fstype and the probepart_init script working properly. This script is for finding out which drives have partitions that it can look for puppy files on.

If you have other kinds of macs it would help to test them too. That way we have a good idea of compatibility. I don't think you would want to use a bunch of your CDs on the semi-working beta though. ;)

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#22 Post by brymway »

I can go pick up a RW cd to try. Just to confirm, I tried running "linux" at the boot again and it crashed. Then I rebooted and ran "linux-failsafe" and it booted into the command line.

As far as compiling to ppc, are you downloading a devx file to your mac and compiling that way?

I downloaded MP editor tar package. It works on 301 with no dependencies. And it doesn't need an x server.

I only have one mac but my sister in law has an imac and a ppc laptop. I'm pretty sure I could use those every once in a while.
[url]http://wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html[/url]

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#23 Post by Lobster »

Thought I'd now share what I currently have so far. Very Happy
PowerPup_beta.iso
I am nowhere near a Mac for the next few days
Hope you get some feedback.

Been planting seeds today: Dill - oh yum with fish, Basil for those Italian tomato flavours, chives for everything and thyme (for thyme travellers).

Anyway part of Kennel is to share resources, get more people testing
starting a Powerpup page for you
Maybe a logo

. . . any offers of help . . . guys . . .?
Last edited by Lobster on Wed 01 Apr 2009, 06:26, edited 1 time in total.
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#24 Post by brymway »

I have a domain with a dormant forum on it. I have 250 megs of space that I pay for each month. I'd be glad to have it used by Powerpup. I don't know how to do anything with my web space. The company installed the forum software for me and I maintained it. But now it just sits there. Anything I can do I will.
[url]http://wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html[/url]

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#25 Post by PowerPup »

Hope I don't disappoint you brymway, I had been planning to make a PowerPup home page (Using free hosts) and have it set up now.
http://powerpup.yi.org/
I plan to work on the PowerPup home page more.

As for a logo I know someone who might be willing to make one for me. :D

Now when you say "share resources" Lobster, do you mean like source codes and such? Because everything I'm using comes from either slackware/slackintosh, puppy sources, or from the author's website.

anyway, fix the cp command and still working on the init scripts, I'll post when I've updated the online iso.

-PowerPup.

brymway
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#26 Post by brymway »

Hope I don't disappoint you brymway,
Absolutely not! More power to you! :D I'm just offering help if you need it. The page looks good. I'll throw the iso disc in the laptop tomorrow and ensure it works as well.
[url]http://wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html[/url]

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#27 Post by PowerPup »

Cool. :) Anyway, after using bootinit.log to help debug. (Gotta love them log files. :P ) I have finally gotten PowerPup to detect the pup_301.sfs file on the CD and Hard Disk! :D I even used my ext3 partition with a ubuntu sfs file renamed to pup_301.sfs and ran PowerPup. It copied the whole 640MB file into ram and booted it. Although X11 didn't work because it was missing stuff from the ubuntu initrd. This mean I have pretty much three thing left to do, as far as I know.

Create the PPC pup_301.sfs file.
Get the initscripts to properly mount hfsplus to save and load pup_saves.
trim the kernel and initrd.

Updated the home page, and added link to new PowerPup_beta.iso there and previous post above. (This is why I recommend using a CD-RW, because I'm am constantly at work updating it. :) )

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ecomoney
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#28 Post by ecomoney »

Good luck with this project PowerPup. Old macs are a major blindspot when it comes to recycling software, but they are very sought after items for their "cool" factor. The only really viable alternative was xubuntu for ppc, which isnt very well maintained and tricky to install.

you may want to think about compiling gnash for this too, as currently I believe there is no flash plugin produced by adobe for linux on ppc.
Puppy Linux's [url=http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=296352#296352]Mission[/url]

Sorry, my server is down atm!

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#29 Post by brymway »

Powerpup iso.2

emac=boots to menu, crashes with "linux" command, runs with "linux-failsafe"
made three directories again and moved them all around. Cp still doesn't work. When the cp command is given, the response is the file specified is "omitted", but it isn't, and the file isn't moved to the target directory. Rm and rmdir work.

ibook G4=boots to menu, works fine with "linux" command. Everything else is the same as above.

Any more extensive tests you would like me to try?
[url]http://wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html[/url]

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#30 Post by Lobster »

Now when you say "share resources" Lobster, do you mean like source codes and such? Because everything I'm using comes from either slackware/slackintosh, puppy sources, or from the author's website.


We are still very much on the 4.2 to 4.2.1 (4.3) development.
As Kennel develops with more users available, help may be offered in terms of logo, a wiki page, testing etc.
Kennel is a question of sharing our most valuable resource. Keen Puppy users. :)
Puppy Raspup 8.2Final 8)
Puppy Links Page http://www.smokey01.com/bruceb/puppy.html :D

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#31 Post by PowerPup »

Lobster wrote:
Now when you say "share resources" Lobster, do you mean like source codes and such? Because everything I'm using comes from either slackware/slackintosh, puppy sources, or from the author's website.


We are still very much on the 4.2 to 4.2.1 (4.3) development.
As Kennel develops with more users available, help may be offered in terms of logo, a wiki page, testing etc.
Kennel is a question of sharing our most valuable resource. Keen Puppy users. :)
Ah, so when you say "logo" you mean a logo for Puppy Linux and not PowerPup? :P Because that's what I thought you meant and what I asked my brother to do. lol.

brymway, your problem with the CP command is so puzzling. I've tried it myself copying a text file from the CD to ram and it worked fine. it worked fine when copying the sfs file to ram. but anyway your Emac will probably always need to boot in failsafe for Open Firmware issues is my guess. Probably nothing we can do. that's probably why the failsafe option is there, to make it work. :) (Or its the the kernel and the nvidia card. dunno.)

I agree totally with you ecomoney, so many times I've seen a "cool" mac on craigslist but don't have the money or necessarily the need for it. :P
Actually I found slackintosh very easy to install, after finding out how to partition the hard drive. I found the book "Running Linux" from O'Reilly Publications. It had a small section about Linux PPC and partitioning the hard disk. I've found this book helpful considering I'm still somewhat new to Linux. If anyone is interested I can make a small guide on installing slackintosh. And thanks for the info on gnash, I'll keep that in consideration. ;)

Well at the moment I am at a small standstill for PowerPup. I now need to figure out how to create the SFS file that will be on the CD to boot. Woof seems like the best and easiest route to go. Since Slackware's and Slackintosh's are exactly the same, (one for Intel, the other PPC,) it should be theoretically possible and somewhat easy to do. Although since my slackintosh DVD has all the binary packages on them it be nice to make the scripts use them instead of downloading them again. I can probably just copy them onto the hard disk. The question is will it work the way it is or does it need to be made slackintosh compatible? Maybe I can get some help or info from BarryK on this.

Until I get this figured out I'm going to try to slow it down and take it easy for a bit. After all, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I'm not too far from a usable PPC Puppy Linux. :D Just need some time and patience. :P

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#32 Post by Lobster »

Ah, so when you say "logo" you mean a logo for Puppy Linux and not PowerPup?
We have a logo for Puppy. There is still work being done on 4.2 and Kennel will only be active and fully supported after this process. For now good luck with your brothers logo. In the future I hope a Kennel support artist will provide a Logo combining Kennel + PowerPup - as well as offering an independent logo. They could even have a go now with the PowerPup logo :)
Puppy Raspup 8.2Final 8)
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#33 Post by Aitch »

Well, Lobster, Powerpup

Since Powerpup is for Mac, perhaps the logo should be a 'kilted' Puppy... [tossing a caber]? :wink: :lol:

OK, tell me to shut up.....I'm still on medication....

Aitch :)

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#34 Post by PowerPup »

Ah, okay. Thanks for explaining to me Lobster. ;)

Well, that's not a bad idea Aitch. It'd be nice to put a little of my heritage into the logo. How you guessed that I have no clue. :shock:

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Aitch
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#35 Post by Aitch »

Best I can find....no caber, though.....maybe someone with gimp skills?

Image

Aitch :)

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