Re: NetBSD on a PowerBook G4

[Michael Lorenz <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hello,

On Jun 5, 2008, at 18:15, Taylor R Campbell wrote:

> Hello!  Last night I installed NetBSD 4.0 on my PowerBook G4 1 GHz,
> 12-inch, and, despite the apparent complexity of the installation
> instructions, once I understood how to follow only one thread through
> the instructions for six different installation media and three
> different major Open Firmware versions, the installation went
> pleasantly smoothly.

Yay :)

> I'd like to be able to experiment with this laptop as a primary work
> machine.  There are two show-stopping issues with this proposition
> that a preliminary Googling answered with disappointing results,
> though, as did the INSTALL file for the 4.0 distribution.  This
> PowerBook has an AirPort Extreme card, which is listed as unsupported;

OpenBSD has a driver for it ( 'bwi' ) - porting it to NetBSD  
shouldn't be too difficult but it's certainly non-trivial.

> and if I am to use this for general-purpose work, support for sleep
> would be very convenient, but appears to be absent.

NetBSD got a new power management framework after 4.0 but I didn't  
get around to add support for Apple laptops yet.

> Is there work in progress in it, and is this likely to change soon?

Depends - I don't have nearly as much time as I used to, I don't know  
if anyone else is working on macppc support for power management  
( and sleep )

> Supposing that you were to stumble upon someone with a great deal  
> of free time and
> interest in making it change soon, what would the changes entail?

We need:
- - power management support in relevant PCI host bridge drivers  
( uninorth and ohare, maybe heathrow as well )
- - many macppc-specific device drivers lack all power management  
support. On the other hand, at least ADB is handled by the PMU anyway  
and in newer PowerBooks there isn't that much proprietary hardware left
- - code to tell the PMU to fall asleep ( should be easy )
- - code to deal with uninorth's power control registers ( there are  
two 32bit registers which control things like power to various  
devices, PCI, firewire etc. clock and so on )
- - code to re-initialize the graphics chip on wakeup. This may work  
with radeonfb but radeonfb has trouble on some chip variants.

Many machine-independent PCI device drivers already have power  
management support. It works pretty well on quite a few x86 laptops.

have fun
Michael

> A third issue of somewhat less importance -- since I can, and shall
> anyway, just use screen -- is whether tty-switching with wscons is now
> supported.  I stumbled across a discussion on this list in the archive
> from December of 2005, in which was discussed a new virtual console
> driver that should adequately deal with Open Firmware, mentioned in
> <http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2005/12/07/0008.html>.  Is
> this, or anything, supported in 4.0, or in -current; or shall I just
> use screen solely for now?
>
> Finally, I may want to install X eventually.  I know that I can
> install XFree86 from the distribution sets, but then I suspect that it
> will be an inevitable pain later to move to X.org.  However, I
> stumbled across a bug report for X.org on NetBSD-current/macppc at
> <http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-bugs/2008/01/19/msg000373.html>,
> which concerns me -- is X.org supposed to work on NetBSD/macppc 4.0,
> and if it does, and I install it now on 4.0, is it likely to continue
> to work if I upgrade to 5.0 when it is released?  Or, since the
> follow-up to the bug suggests that this problem is probably common to
> XFree86 and X.org, is XFree86 just as likely to fail in 5.0, rendering
> the question moot?  (Any XFree86 users on -current?)
>
> As a postscript, does anyone have any further thoughts or advice on
> the use of NetBSD on a PowerBook for a general-purpose work machine?
> Anything other important snags that will make me stumble?  Anything
> especially spiffy that I ought to know about?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin)

iQEVAwUBSEh4tMpnzkX8Yg2nAQK+fgf7B3ALwRkHrF3xDn3rJR4Us57FH8MpZBbl
YhWQbnDKGwEtbYwWJssaj/aFNjsL4EFshOSonZ3G/aB2bBjZtD4fgmdJzYBHNKL8
DEAQcTpP+5ghZWiScNs+oxPO1inQfMGr09Pr8dkQaBwl44lJD1BC1ZMTMxnoEA9Y
EFwOctV46JhuxVPJzLxOejOilz6Fjf4Li2LRVbCbShfYCDzrozbXqVNP5WLe9W5r
vKxfTIeNQy6BI5T5W0aUnLUvdqJZecKuoV24AdJi9sR7o50CDKQGcGoTVl/QATXJ
Pkon6mCwrGuAT4p1FebgWF/cK9HitmoLpkR5KzyWcnA3QCrI71MzTw==
=MWRq
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----