PowerBook G4 - Installation works fine, but boots to "Unable to open an initial console" followed by a kernel panic

kth5 / archpower

Unofficial Archlinux port to powerpc64le, powerpc64, powerpc and riscv64

https://archlinuxpower.org

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PowerBook G4 - Installation works fine, but boots to "Unable to open an initial console" followed by a kernel panic #34

Closed DistroHopper39B closed 2 years ago

DistroHopper39B commented 2 years ago

The computer I am using is a PowerBook G4 12 inch from 2005. Here are the specs: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g4/specs/powerbook_g4_1.5_12.html

This does not happen off the CD, just the internal HDD. At the same stage on the CD I get a bunch of nouveau messages. What am I doing wrong?

What I've tried: Installing xf86-video-nouveau drivers (using pacman -S, nothing else)

Image of my issue: PXL_20220221_144224000

kth5 commented 2 years ago

I think you may want to install systemd-sysvcompat as here it may not be able to start init from what it looks like.

Alternatively you can provide init=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd on the kernel cmdline during boot.

DistroHopper39B commented 2 years ago

I think you may want to install systemd-sysvcompat as here it may not be able to start init from what it looks like.

Alternatively you can provide init=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd on the kernel cmdline during boot.

That package is already installed, and the second command you tried doesn't work.

kth5 commented 2 years ago

Alternatively, I can see you are using linux-g4. Would it be possible to compare to linux which isn't optimized for G4 but packaged more recently?

DistroHopper39B commented 2 years ago

Alternatively, I can see you are using linux-g4. Would it be possible to compare to linux which isn't optimized for G4 but packaged more recently?

Still... doesn't work. I also tried reinstalling systemd with no luck. PXL_20220221_152352690

kth5 commented 2 years ago

That is indeed an odd issue. The install ISO boots and lets you install while you can't boot from the installed system eve though it already loaded the kernel (Grub installed OK etc).

Things to check:

arch-chroot from the booted ISO and mkinitcpio -p linux does produce errors? I.e. problem in initramfs.
what filesystem do you use that holds /boot?

DistroHopper39B commented 2 years ago

Here is my /etc/fstab because that might be causing problems:

PXL_20220221_153644743

returns no errors (besides missing firmware on fallback kernel) but those are warnings anyway
ext4 (/boot/grub is hfs)

Also, I've had none of these issues on debian powerpc (which has almost no software support) or adelie linux

DistroHopper39B commented 2 years ago

Here is my /etc/fstab because that might be causing problems:

returns no errors (besides missing firmware on fallback kernel) but those are warnings anyway

ext4 (/boot/grub is hfs)

Also, I've had none of these issues on debian powerpc (which has almost no software support) or adelie linux

I am going to try deleting one of the entries for / in fstab. Maybe that would work? Edit: it didn't. I am going to sign off for now, thanks for all your help!

kth5 commented 2 years ago

Fix will come with linux 5.16.10.arch1-2 (linux-g4 a little later). dev filesystem wasn't automounted by kernel which is expected when using genfstab.

kth5 commented 2 years ago

Tested on a macmini G4 and two powerbooks. Closing.