Fienix - New PowerPC Distro

AmigaOne X1000 platform specific issues related to Linux only.
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Hypex
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Re: Fienix - New PowerPC Distro

Post by Hypex »

Okay so I managed to remove Compton. I was able to a chroot to my Fienix volume to apt remove it. But it made no change. Still got blank screen. I was able to stop it later by putting recovery mode into boot args. However I got stuck at the password again. It wants a password for maintenance. I keep entering the wrong password. So far I've never managed to enter the right password for user or root at the rare times I could log in. :-)
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Re: Fienix - New PowerPC Distro

Post by SteveH »

Hi Christian,
Yes, I used Ubuntu (18.04.4) to create the partitions, a small one using FAT32 rather than FAT16, and a larger EXT4 partition. I copied the zImage to the small partition and used dd to copy the Fienix image to the larger partition - I notice that the name of this larger partition was changed from "FIENIX" to "FIENIX-DISK" during this process (see screengrab at https://newsnumeracy.files.wordpress.co ... tition.jpg ).
I am using the CFE commands you specify, although I am specifying "root=/dev/sdb2" rather than "sdd2".
I've tried both the 4.20 kernel on Casey's blog, and the 5.6 kernel but neither has booted for me.
Steve
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xeno74
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Re: Fienix - New PowerPC Distro

Post by xeno74 »

SteveH wrote: Fri Apr 24, 2020 4:05 pm Hi Christian,
Yes, I used Ubuntu (18.04.4) to create the partitions, a small one using FAT32 rather than FAT16, and a larger EXT4 partition. I copied the zImage to the small partition and used dd to copy the Fienix image to the larger partition - I notice that the name of this larger partition was changed from "FIENIX" to "FIENIX-DISK" during this process (see screengrab at https://newsnumeracy.files.wordpress.co ... tition.jpg ).
I am using the CFE commands you specify, although I am specifying "root=/dev/sdb2" rather than "sdd2".
I've tried both the 4.20 kernel on Casey's blog, and the 5.6 kernel but neither has booted for me.
Steve
Do you use the boot argument rootdelay=5? Can you mount the FIENIX-DISK with Ubuntu 18.04.4?

The kernel can't mount the root partition on your USB flash drive.
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Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
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xeno74
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Re: Fienix - New PowerPC Distro

Post by xeno74 »

Hypex wrote: Fri Apr 24, 2020 4:02 pm Okay so I managed to remove Compton. I was able to a chroot to my Fienix volume to apt remove it. But it made no change. Still got blank screen. I was able to stop it later by putting recovery mode into boot args. However I got stuck at the password again. It wants a password for maintenance. I keep entering the wrong password. So far I've never managed to enter the right password for user or root at the rare times I could log in. :-)
Maybe you need a xorg.conf.
caseycullen wrote: Tue Apr 21, 2020 6:02 pm
Skateman wrote: Tue Apr 21, 2020 7:36 am
caseycullen wrote: Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:08 pm Could someone fill me in: is Xorg.conf required if you have an SI GPU? I don't have an SI card to test so I have no experience with this. What are the parameters that the Xorg.conf needs in order to boot?
-Casey
Hi Casey,

This is the Xorg that makes the SI graphicscard users able to boot up fienix.
The fbdev is the trick...as there are no radeon drivers that support the SI cards on the PPC platform.


Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "fbdev"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
Thanks for the information! When I get around to updating the Fienix website I'll include this somewhere.
-Casey
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Re: Fienix - New PowerPC Distro

Post by SteveH »

Hi Christian,
Do you use the boot argument rootdelay=5? Can you mount the FIENIX-DISK with Ubuntu 18.04.4?

The kernel doesn't find the root partition on your USB flash drive.
Yes, I am using the rootdelay=5 argument, and FIENIX-DISK can be mounted with Ubuntu; and it is "sdb2" rather than "sdd2".
After mulitple boot attempts, using exactly the same USB stick and CFE commands, I get three different behaviours: (1) sometimes the system hangs at the line

Code: Select all

Booting Linux via __Start() @ ... 
, as in this screenshot: https://newsnumeracy.files.wordpress.co ... _boot1.jpg
(2) sometimes Linux boots but after the message

Code: Select all

Cannot open root device "sdb2"
, the system reboots, as in this screenshot: https://newsnumeracy.files.wordpress.co ... _boot2.jpg
(3) on one occasion Fienix started to load but the screen went black and an unresponsive cursor appeared at the top left - I wonder if this may be a graphics card issue (I have a RadeonHD R7 250X)?
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xeno74
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Re: Fienix - New PowerPC Distro

Post by xeno74 »

Hi Steve,
SteveH wrote: Sat Apr 25, 2020 12:16 pm (2) sometimes Linux boots but after the message

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Cannot open root device "sdb2"
, the system reboots, as in this screenshot: https://newsnumeracy.files.wordpress.co ... _boot2.jpg
I see a lot of COMRESET errors on your screenshot. I think there are some issues with the ata interfaces.

Code: Select all

COMRESET failed (erron=16)
SteveH wrote: Sat Apr 25, 2020 12:16 pm (3) on one occasion Fienix started to load but the screen went black and an unresponsive cursor appeared at the top left - I wonder if this may be a graphics card issue (I have a RadeonHD R7 250X)?
You can’t login to the default Fienix desktop with your graphics card because it needs hardware 3D acceleration. Please remove Compton in another console (CTRL + ALT + F-key) with "apt-get remove compton" and after that restart LightDM with "systemctl restart lightdm". Now, you can login to the default Fienix desktop.

Cheers,
Christian
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Re: Fienix - New PowerPC Distro

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xeno74 wrote: Fri Apr 24, 2020 6:04 pm Maybe you need a xorg.conf.
Yes that was it! Thanks. I created a file in

Code: Select all

/etc/X11/xorg.d
and called it

Code: Select all

radeon_si.conf
. :-)

I also checked my XE Jessie installer which has a similar thing. In that the acceleration is disabled. But I had to disable things like DRI and tweak KMS.

Ok so it now boots. The pointer appears but then there is some delay before the login screen appears. I failed again to log in as fienix user. Unless I'm consistently entering the wrong password, which I thought was fienixPW, there is something wrong with it. I had to log in as root or it wouldn't budge.

Then the desktop is a bit strange. I don't know why but it's designed to look like Windows 98. I really don't understand why anyone would want to do that. An AmigaOS3 window theme would be much better., :?:

I tried to add a user but the user settings window just hung on me. The other windows seemed fine. And the web browser loaded fine.

I had it booted off a 4GB stick but it's really limiting. No space to do anything but I needed to fix my HDD install first. However I found GParted or Disks is not included in the desktop. So I had to resort to parted. But it keeps messing up my partitions. I had set 20GB for Fienix. Then tried to expand it to fill the disk partition. But instead it fills up the disk to the end! I want it to be 20GB, not 250GB. Parted is too fiddly to work with.

At this point I think Fienix could do with an installer. Bit hard to manage this way off a disk image. Especially when the default user doesn't work. ;-)
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Re: Fienix - New PowerPC Distro

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xeno74 wrote: Sat Apr 25, 2020 9:05 pmYou can’t login to the default Fienix desktop with your graphics card because it needs hardware 3D acceleration. Please remove Compton in another console (CTRL + ALT + F-key) with "apt-get remove compton" and after that restart LightDM with "systemctl restart lightdm". Now, you can login to the default Fienix desktop.
If it's anything like mine it will need a lot more work! :lol:

Attaching "single" to boot args helps. As it prevents it from loading up the log in screen. Then the system can be edited.

Also, another way is to set the console to serial in boot args. As the system can be still logged into from a terminal when the screen and keyboard is disabled. It wasn't fully frozen as it was acting.

Code: Select all

console=ttyS0,115200
Last edited by Hypex on Sun Apr 26, 2020 6:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fienix - New PowerPC Distro

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SteveH wrote: Sat Apr 25, 2020 12:16 pm Yes, I am using the rootdelay=5 argument, and FIENIX-DISK can be mounted with Ubuntu; and it is "sdb2" rather than "sdd2".
Hi Steve. You may want to check your SATA cables as there are ATA errors. I'm familiar with seeing these errors. But most importantly there are USB errors attaching the USB drive.

What sort of case do you have? I have my X1000 in a Thermaltake Spacecraft thing. And on the front there are two USB ports. One is USB2 spec and the other is USB3 spec with a blue inside. For some reason the USB2 port fails on everything and can cause freezes and crashes on OS4. I can only use the USB3 port, Which is rather strange as I'm certain both ports worked at one stage.

Do your ports work fine in OS4? And in Linux usually? See if your case has a USB3 port. Of indeed if USB devices only work correctly in some ports.

Also:
I copied the zImage to the small partition and used dd to copy the Fienix image to the larger partition - I notice that the name of this larger partition was changed from "FIENIX" to "FIENIX-DISK" during this process
That's because dd overwrite the partition. And your name with it. :-)
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Re: Fienix - New PowerPC Distro

Post by SteveH »

Hypex wrote: Sun Apr 26, 2020 5:18 am Hi Steve. You may want to check your SATA cables as there are ATA errors. I'm familiar with seeing these errors. But most importantly there are USB errors attaching the USB drive.
I have been having problems with my installation of Ubuntu - the laptop I was running it on crashed and refused to reboot so I have reinstalled Ubuntu version 20.04. However, currently the link to the Fienix image at http://fienix.servehttp.com/html/fienix ... 200426.img is down so I am unable to download it.
Steve
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