[SOLUTION!] Any apt sources for Ubuntu that works?

[Hypex]

Hi guys.

So I'm having trouble finding working sources for Ubuntu. They can be found for Debian and Fienix would have the best but what about Ubuntu? I've been surviving on ports.ubuntu.com but their files are missing ppc despite ppc packages being there. I checked and the release files are missing ppc. They only have ppc64el. This looks to be an error in the build process of the release files because the ppc packages are actually there. In fact I can actually download updated packages manually as far back as trusty but that's a rather tedious process.

The main sources appear fine but the extra ones are missing the updated components. I'll give an example. Check here and you can see that powerpc has contents file and release files intact.

Code: Select all

http://ports.ubuntu.com/dists/xenial/

But here the powerpc contents file is there but the release are missing powerpc!

Code: Select all

http://ports.ubuntu.com/dists/xenial-updates/

Is there any work around for this? I suppose trying contact the maintainer would be one thing. But if anyone mentions powerpc is missing I imagine powerpc will go totally missing after that!

If there was an updated CD image that would work around it. But those will be disappearing now. I can disable the offending lines in the sources list but don't know how it will go without the extra updatesc and security patches since I want to dist upgrade as far as possible.

[xeno74]

There are some issues with repositories because of moving them to archive.ubuntu.com.

Only the default repositories are available.

xenial-updates, xenial-security, xenial-proposed, and xenial-backports aren’t available for PowerPC anymore.

Further information: forums.macrumors.com

[xeno74]

Just for info: The last Ubuntu version for PowerPC is the 17.04 inofficial (MATE PowerPC Remix).

Download: MATE_PowerPC_Remix_2017_0.9.1.img.tar.bz2

Download Size: 5.4 GB

MD5 Checksum: 5ccc3c1e7b59290cafa31cded931c6f1

If you can't change to a higher screen resolution then delete the xorg.conf in /etc/X11 and try it again.

[xeno74]

I have scanned the MATE PowerPC Remix 2017 0.9.1 and Void PPC 20230317 with Greenbone Security Scanner and with Legion.

The MATE PowerPC Remix has a poor result due to its age. (Severity: High - a lot of security problems)

Void PPC 20230317 has good results during the first tests. (Severity: Low)

Then I opened the Telnet port, installed an Apache web server and a Samba server.
The result was not as good as the first tests because of the open Telnet port and enabled Apache debugging methods. (Severity: Medium)

See screenshot for more information.

[Hypex]

Thanks for the fast response!

I don't know what I was thinking putting the links in code tags.

The archive.ports.com used to be useful in the 32-bit ppc days when my XE was popular. But in time since ports.ubuntu.com became the new repo to go to.

I used it to upgrade from precise to trusty and must have done it just in time. As now upgrading from trusty to xenial is broken. And it's only been couple years since.

So I read at macrmours they are having the same problem. And even asked about the broken files. So the response was to delete the question and on a bug report give some response about PPC not being supported. That's rather useless. We know it's not officially supported. This is about a port and not an official release so I don't see their logic there. The fact is the packages exist in the pool and can be downloaded but the release files are the blocker. So they've broken the files on the server but of course they don't care.

There's a hack there for using Debian packages. I've wondered about this but knew they were different. The warnings about it kinda scare me off. It uses Fienix repo a well. Or it would but all the sources are commented out in the file.

I wonder if something could scan and grab all the powerpc packages and collect them all? Suppose FileZilla could FTP and do a search. Then they could be uploaded as an archive.

[Hypex]

I see at the last minute you posted the MATE image. Looks very useful. Appreciate the image.

With Void out it looks like Chimera is the next best thing as it does mention BE PPC support. But over all I think Fienix is best for a new install as it's dedicated to our systems.

At this point I wonder about future proofing. As expected the focus is on LE everywhere. I've been wondering if I should modify my Linux loader to boot a ppc64el kernel. It's one of the things I had in mind when I created it. Since it controls the ELF loading and kernel launching process I just need the right code to load in a LE PPC ELF. And of course an X1000 compatible PPC64EL kernel image.

[Hypex]

Hello again.

Okay so I found a work around for the moment and updated my system to Xenial. Unfortunately I went too far after finding even more updates and ruined it. But I'm working on a fix.

So the work around is simple. Just disable the extra xenial packages. Keep the standard xenial dist with main, multiverse, restricted and universe. Then the auto software updater can work. The package list can be refreshed without errors. And it will then update to xenial without errors.

Unfortunately it will lack the security updates. All the extra packages are there on the server obviously but the missing powerpc index in release file will block them from being found. Suppose the best move would be to collect all the updated packages and then set up a repo like is done for Debian on A1 at SF.

After it updated, I freshly booted it, only to find it dropped me at a shell with root RO. Turns out this is common but I don't know know why the updater purposely breaks the setup. So if you have a "/dev/sdx" as your root in fstab it will delete it as it only likes UUID. This is fine but why delete the root entry so the system breaks? It could convert it instead. I managed to recreate it after remounting RW and loading Disks which I used to create new entry in fstab. But now there is some mount message on boot in log about some change.

So I managed to break the system after getting it updated (again). I did some more apt update, upgrade, full-upgrade and dist-upgrade until it fully upgraded which worked fine. I found an updated server ISO for powerpc dated 2019 which was fairly recent but still behind the 2021 xenial EOL. I managed to mount the image and use apt-cdrom to add it. I looked up instructions online and it seems despite CD images rarely being burnt to CDROM any more that it still lacks support for scanning and using a mounted volume as a software source. I tested advice, found most of it didn't work, until I found a way for it to work. It can only work for one disc image at a time. Small guide here:
1. Mount your CD image as a loop at /media/cdrom.
2. Issue on a terminal: apt-cdrom -m add.

After updating with packages from the server ISO I rebooted to find I was a shell again. Despite having fixed this. I tried to run startx but the X11 server froze the terminal with cursor blinking. I had to force reboot. Somehow I had broken the desktop as some packages like systemd were held back. I let apt remove unneeded packages and it somehow must have removed desktop files. So I must reinstall ubuntu-desktop and associates.

I found, after searching all over the net, that newest xenial images were hosted here:
https://vivapowerpc.eu/software/Ubuntu/

lubuntu-16.04-desktop-powerpc.iso
ubuntu-16.04.6-server-powerpc.iso
ubuntu-mate-16.04-desktop-powerpc.iso

However there is also an extra archived mate with 16.04.1 from 2019 and a 16.10 from 2020:
https://releases.ubuntu-mate.org/archived/16.04/
https://releases.ubuntu-mate.org/archived/16.10/

Grab it while it;s hot!

[Hypex]

Hello every one!

I've cracked it! I have a working solution!

This week, after fixing my broken packages in Xenial, I kept researching and testing on how to solve the missing powerpc arch issue. I did a bit of research on it, finding I had left it too late to update in time, and did testing trying to work around it. I even used Wayback at one stage as 2022 release files still had powerpc listed. But that still broke and not all files had been cached. I was looking into setting up an apt cache and proxy next until I thought about looking into how the package lists are stored by apt. I then found a correlation between package files online and ones stored in the local package lists. I did a test, duplicating a security package list locally, ran an apt upgrade and it detected the packages!

So doing it all manually was not workable as when ever the package lists are updated again the files were erased. I then created a shell script to run after an apt update and confirmed missing package lists could be found and downloaded. This worked well after issuing an apt update. But I found a related issue was that the system updater erased the missing lists after it found updates and then said depends could not be satisfied. So I looked into hooking into apt and found I could hook into the update process and install a script that is called every time it updates. Great!

The result is I ended up producing a small package to solve it. I call it a solution rather than solved as it works around the issue but does do so in a transparent as can be manner. Just install this and the process will be automatic. After the next apt update it will scan for missing packages, then download and populate the package lists if found. It will print out what it is checking for and if it finds it online. You can run it manually (as root) from /usr/sbin/update-package-lists and edit the config stored at /etc/update-package-lists.cfg to customise it slightly. By default it will look for all binary packages for the current arch and release with the standard, updates, backports, security and proposed packages in main, multiverse, restricted and universe components. Default settings are in main script and changed in config file.

It's available here from my Drive account. Feel free to share the news. Grab it while it's hot!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VxKpC0 ... sp=sharing