2.6.15-xx ppc kernel fails to boot on G4

[Mike]

1. Upgraded successfully from Breezy to Dapper on Mac G4
2. On reboot, found I had to choose "old" kernel to come back up. If I instead chose the default "linux" kernel, a white screen was produced, then a blinking light on my monitor with a totally hung machine. No error messages appeared on the screen, which stayed white.

Above "old" corresponded to vmlinux-2.6.12-10-powerpc (the last kernel I had on Breezy). It is still my working Kernel today. "linux" corresponded to vmlinux-2.6.15-23-powerpc. That kernel is the one that produced a white screen and died.

A few days or perhaps a week ago, I was encouraged when Dapper released a new kernel, vmlinux-2.6.15-25-powerpc. However, that produces the same results as vmlinux-2.6.15-23-powerpc.

Here are some details about my machine that I hope will help you fix the problem. Since I run newer kernels under Gentoo and Fedora on G3 and G4 powerpc's, I think it's not a kernel problem per se, but perhaps something with the patches provided specific to debian or ubuntu. Don't know. I just hope you can fix it as Ubuntu is one of my favorite distros.
mike@monkey:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
cpu : 7400, altivec supported
temperature : 42-44 C (uncalibrated)
clock : 400MHz
revision : 2.9 (pvr 000c 0209)
bogomips : 794.62
machine : PowerMac3,1
motherboard : PowerMac3,1 MacRISC Power Macintosh
detected as : 65 (PowerMac G4 AGP Graphics)
pmac flags : 00000004
L2 cache : 1024K unified
memory : 544MB
pmac-generation : NewWorld

mike@monkey:~$ lspci
0000:00:0b.0 Host bridge: Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth AGP
0001:10:0b.0 Host bridge: Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth PCI
0001:10:0d.0 PCI bridge: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21154 (rev 05)
0001:11:02.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200] (rev 01)
0001:11:07.0 ff00: Apple Computer Inc. KeyLargo Mac I/O (rev 02)
0001:11:08.0 USB Controller: Apple Computer Inc. KeyLargo USB
0001:11:09.0 USB Controller: Apple Computer Inc. KeyLargo USB
0001:11:0a.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB12LV23 IEEE-1394 Controller
0002:21:0b.0 Host bridge: Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth Internal PCI
0002:21:0f.0 Ethernet controller: Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth GMAC (Sun GEM) (rev 01)

mike@monkey:~$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 045e:0040 Microsoft Corp. Wheel Mouse Optical
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0430:0005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Type 6 Keyboard
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

mike@monkey:~$ cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 546692 kB
MemFree: 3988 kB
Buffers: 3092 kB
Cached: 117584 kB
SwapCached: 556 kB
Active: 448724 kB
Inactive: 51912 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB
LowTotal: 546692 kB
LowFree: 3988 kB
SwapTotal: 1562492 kB
SwapFree: 1556640 kB
Dirty: 16 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
Mapped: 438736 kB
Slab: 15600 kB
CommitLimit: 1835836 kB
Committed_AS: 1616548 kB
PageTables: 2656 kB
VmallocTotal: 416320 kB
VmallocUsed: 44616 kB
VmallocChunk: 371396 kB

My current /boot. Note I had to change the softlinks to point back to my old working kernel:

mike@monkey:~$ ls -l /boot
total 48605
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 208302 2006-04-28 15:44 abi-2.6.12-10-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 208261 2005-10-10 16:47 abi-2.6.12-9-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 248749 2006-05-23 16:10 abi-2.6.15-23-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 249070 2006-06-14 13:54 abi-2.6.15-25-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 46818 2006-04-28 15:21 config-2.6.12-10-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 46817 2005-10-10 16:25 config-2.6.12-9-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 57999 2006-05-23 15:45 config-2.6.15-23-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 57941 2006-06-14 13:25 config-2.6.15-25-powerpc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 2006-06-18 09:41 initrd.img -> initrd.img-2.6.12-10-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6452671 2006-06-04 14:32 initrd.img-2.6.12-10-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6037811 2005-12-25 18:25 initrd.img-2.6.12-9-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8096239 2006-06-04 20:10 initrd.img-2.6.15-23-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8109776 2006-06-18 09:24 initrd.img-2.6.15-25-powerpc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 2006-06-04 14:37 initrd.img.old -> initrd.img-2.6.15-23-powerpc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 2005-12-25 17:48 lost+found
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 822794 2006-04-28 15:44 System.map-2.6.12-10-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 822587 2005-10-10 16:47 System.map-2.6.12-9-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 667985 2006-05-23 16:10 System.map-2.6.15-23-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 660245 2006-06-14 13:54 System.map-2.6.15-25-powerpc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 2006-06-18 09:41 vmlinux -> vmlinux-2.6.12-10-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4135326 2006-04-28 15:44 vmlinux-2.6.12-10-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4134050 2005-10-10 16:47 vmlinux-2.6.12-9-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4262734 2006-05-23 16:10 vmlinux-2.6.15-23-powerpc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4207671 2006-06-14 13:54 vmlinux-2.6.15-25-powerpc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 2006-06-04 14:37 vmlinux.old -> vmlinux-2.6.15-23-powerpc

I can provide more detailed info (such as lshw) if you need. I will check back on this bug report.

Thanks for you time.
/Mike Hammill

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

This is odd, because your /proc/cpuinfo is almost identical to mine. It's a G4, gray box. I was and have been running dapper on it for over 6 months (in fact, it was pretty much my development box throughout the dapper release cycle).

I also have dapper running on my G4 PowerBook. I can't understand why you are having this kind of trouble. Could you perhaps try booting the liveCD for dapper and see if it works? No need to install, just booting it will suffice.

[Mike (michael-hammill)]

Well, it took some time to get those Ubuntu official CDs. I get the exact same error (non-booting Kernel) on both a G4 (which is running Ubuntu 6.06 with an old 2.6.12-10-powerpc Ubuntu Kernel) and a G3 (B&W) which is running Ubuntu server (2.6.12-10-powerpc Ubuntu Kernel) when I boot up with the official CDs and the default Kernel.

While waiting for those official CDs, I have tried the interim Kernels provided by 6.06, namely:
vmlinux-2.6.15-26-powerpc
vmlinux-2.6.15-27-powerpc
(possibly others, but those are the only ones still around under /boot),
but it's the same story.

It's a pain to try these then have to boot off an old Ubuntu CD to point vmlinux.old and initrd.img.old to my old 2.6.12-10-powerpc kernel. I find it totally remarkable that no one else has encountered this. I have a similar B&W G3 running FC5 Kernel 2.6.17-1.2157_FC5, and a similar G4 running Gentoo Kernel 2.6.17-gentoo-r4 so I know the kernel is not "beyond" the hardware.

I tried using "Linux debug" with the Ubuntu Official CDs when letting it take the default didn't work, but that didn't make any difference. Is there some way to get more information to figure out what is going on?

Hope you can shead some light. I really like Ubuntu, and would like to keep using it.

Best regards,
Mike Hammill

[Mike (michael-hammill)]

Sadly, no one ever followed up on this bug report. I really don't know
why your system is marking it as "Needs info" when I added comments back
in September. In any event, the problem is now, FINALLY AFTER 6 MONTHS,
solved with the introduction of your kernel 2.6.15-27-powerpc. This
kernel boots my machine without hanging, as all those between
2.6.12-10-powerpc and 2.6.15-27-powerpc (non-inclusive) did. Yeah! I
still love Ubuntu! (Too bad the bug tracking software you're using
sucks.)

So now, this bug can be closed. I wonder how long that will take... :-)
/Mike

[Clive Darra (osde8info)]

PLEASE re-open
ubuntu 5.04 works
xubuntu 6.10 doesn't (screen freezes at end of live boot)

0000:00:0b.0 Host bridge: Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth AGP
0000:00:10.0 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage 128 RL/VR AGP
0001:10:0b.0 Host bridge: Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth PCI
0001:10:17.0 ff00: Apple Computer Inc. KeyLargo Mac I/O (rev 02)
0001:10:18.0 USB Controller: Apple Computer Inc. KeyLargo USB
0001:10:19.0 USB Controller: Apple Computer Inc. KeyLargo USB
0002:20:0b.0 Host bridge: Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth Internal PCI
0002:20:0f.0 Ethernet controller: Apple Computer Inc. UniNorth GMAC (Sun GEM)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux-source-2.6.15 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]