Installing Debian Linux on PPC Part V - Bugs & Quirks

So now you have your system all up and running, but there are a few things that don't quite work right. If you've installed the Testing branch some bugs are to be expected, but there are other bugs and general quirks in Linux that have been around long before and likely long after.

One bug that qualifies as having been around long before is the infamous disappearing partition bug. Every time you run through the Debian installer, it somehow messes up your Mac OS 9 drivers making any OS 9 partition unbootable. It was a nasty surprise for me, but let me take away all the suspense. Simply boot with your Mac OS install CD, launch Drive Setup, highlight your hard drive from the list, and from the Functions menu select Update Driver. Problem solved. You will now be able to boot into OS 9.

Another thing you should know about OS 9, never use the Startup Disk control panel to choose a startup disk (this applies to OS X's Startup Disk system preference, too). It'll mess up yaboot and you won't be able to boot into Linux. If this should happen to you, reset the pram (hold down command + option + p + r keys on startup) and yaboot will be restored.

Dual booting between Linux and OS 9 also has an issue with system clocks. While your Debian system is set to UTC time, your Mac system is set to local time, so though your Linux time may be correct, you Mac clock can be several hours off. Solve this with:

sudo nano /etc/default/rcS

and change UTC=yes to UTC=no. Now when you boot into OS 9, the time should display correctly. Also, if you ever need to change timezones in Debian, you can use:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

One problem I had in Squeeze which seems to be fixed in Wheezy is screen blanking overriding the media player. In Squeeze I had to run:

xset -dpms s off

to temporarily turn off screen blanking while watching a movie, otherwise the display would turn off every ten minutes if I didn't move the mouse around. Thankfully, this is no longer an issue in Wheezy. In any event, if DPMS is giving you problems, install XScreensaver and its settings will override DPMS.

I mentioned in Part III, video playback on VLC and mplayer is broken on G3s as they were compiled with altivec instructions. The fix is to compile them from the Debian source with the configure option --disable-altivec. The steps are fairly simple. After installing the build-essential development package, run:

sudo aptitude build-dep vlc

Then create a folder to download the source code:

mkdir ~/Source

Now change to ~/Source as your current directory and download the source code with apt-get:

cd ~/Source
apt-get source vlc

Then:

cd ~/Source/vlc-2.0.3 (or whatever the new folder name happens to be)

and:

./configure --disable-altivec

Once it's done, while still in ~/Source/vlc-2.0.3, do:

make
sudo make install

When completed, if you launch VLC in the terminal and get the error, "vlc: error while loading shared libraries: libvlc.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" the fix that worked for me is detailed here. You simply enter the following three symlink commands:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libvlc* /usr/lib/
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libx264.a /usr/lib/
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/vlc /usr/lib/vlc

Then you should have a working VLC. For mplayer, just replace the vlc above with mplayer. Also, for a GUI frontend like smplayer, make sure in preferences to point it to /usr/local/bin/mplayer. (UPDATE: There's a new fork of mplayer called mpv that's available in Jessie. It works out of the box on G3s, so no need to compile.)

Moving on, if you run audio production software and need to run a JACK audio server, you may fail to get a connection with jackd2 (Well, I did, anyway.). In that case you can install jackd1, which should work.

If you have a tray-loading Mac you may find your disc tray inexplicably refuses to open. There's a bug where after the first time you insert a disc and eject it, you'll no longer be able to open the disc tray. Run the following command in a terminal to restore it:

eject -i off

Were you dumb enough (like me) to burn backup DVDs with the OS X application Burn and choose Mac-only as the file format? If so, those discs won't automount on the desktop, so you'll have to mount them manually with:

sudo mount -t hfsplus /dev/yourdevice /media/cdrom0

where hfsplus is the filesystem and your particular device path can be found in your /etc/fstab file. Burning discs from the OS X Finder or in Burn using Mac + PC hybrid format should avoid this problem.

Got a Powerbook and notice the caps lock light doesn't work? Some kind of conflict with mouseemu causes this, so to get your caps light back, uninstall mouseemu and use /etc/sysctl.conf to emulate right and middle click as detailed at the bottom of Part III - Installing the GUI.

When running a minimal system like Openbox, there are some things missing like a built-in clipboard manager. In this case, you may experience the problem of copying something to the clipboard, then quitting the application you copied from, and having its clipboard contents disappear. To see if you have this problem, copy some text in Leafpad or another text editor, then quit and try pasting the text in another application. If nothing shows up, you got it. The solution is to install a clipboard manager like Parcellite and put it in your autostart file.

Finally I should probably remind you there's no force quit button unless you install a panel that has one, but you can just as easily force quit processes in a terminal by entering killall -s9 process name. Though in the case of Iceweasel, the process name is "firefox-bin". Good to know.

And another troubleshooting tip, if your system is broken and you need to boot into Single User Mode to fix it, you can do so by hitting tab at the second yaboot prompt and then typing "Linux single". You'll eventually be prompted for your root password, and when you're done with any repairs you can type "exit" and it'll logout and continue booting to your normal login manager.

I'll leave you with a few links that you might find of interest:

Openbox - Debian Wiki

WiFi/HowToUse - Debian Wiki

PowerPCFAQ - Ubuntu Wiki: A wealth of information here. And Ubuntu is based on Debian, so almost all of it applies.

Ubuntu PowerPC Installation Guide: Ridiculously comprehensive.

SwitchingToUbuntu/FromMacOSX - Community Ubuntu Documentation: A good rundown of software alternatives.

Best Linux Software: Another good rundown of software titles.

Linux on your Apple Mac | iLinux |

Linux MintPPC | fast and slick Linux for PPC computers: The forums here are fairly active.

I'll be updating this post, hopefully with more good news than bad, as time progresses. In the meantime, happy Linuxing!

Part I - Pre-Installation
Part II - Installing the Base System
Part III - Installing the GUI
Part IV - Configuring Stuff