antiX on Intel-based older OSX iMac

[Moderator caprea]

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Did you try both kernels in the advanced options?

There have been reports of imacs to get around the “waiting for device to be …” boot stop, by using a DVD instead of a usb-stick.
Here and on the MX forum.
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/stalls-at-dev-2/
https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=57052#p566948
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/another-case-of-waiting-for-dev-to-be-fully-populated/page/2/#post-95621

It might would be helpful to know the hardware , in particular the graphic part.

[Member dukester]

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madibi wrote:

1. after the iso download have you verified the ckecksum?

I did not! My bad! Remind me how to do that please.

I’ll look for the two “safe-mode” boot options that you suggest. Nothing ventured – nothing gained! Right? 🙂

If all else fails, I’ll try booting 32-bit antiX-22 Full and see how far I get.

Thanks again for your input.

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dukester

[Member dukester]

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caprea wrote:

Did you try both kernels in the advanced options?

Don’t remember if I did – but I will for sure!

caprea wrote:

t might would be helpful to know the hardware , in particular the graphic part

Graphics/Displays:
ATI Radeon X1600:
Chipset Model: ATY,RadeonX1600
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 128 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x71c5
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-xxxxxx-139
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.139
Displays:
iMac:
Resolution: 1280 x 800
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: O!
Online: Yes
Built-In: Yes
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected

USB:
USB High-Speed Bus:
Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBEHCI
PCI Device ID: 0x27cc
PCI Revision ID: 0x0002
PCI Vendor ID: 0x8086
Bus Number: 0xfd
Built-in iSight:
Product ID: 0x8501
Vendor ID: 0x05ac (Apple Inc.)
Version: 1.89
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Micron
Location ID: 0xfd400000 / 2
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 100

ATA Bus:
MATSHITADVD-R UJ-85J:
Model: MATSHITADVD-R UJ-85J
Revision: FCQ5
Serial Number:
Detachable Drive: No
Protocol: ATAPI
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
Low Power Polling: Yes
Power O!: No

Disc Burning:
MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-85J:
Firmware Revision: FCQ5
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipping Drive)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO
Media: To show the available burn speeds, insert a disc and choose View > Refresh

Serial-ATA:
Intel ICH7-M AHCI:
Vendor: Intel
Product: ICH7-M AHCI
Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.10 Supported
WDC WD2500JS-40TGB0:
Capacity: 250.06 GB (250,059,350,016 bytes)
Model: WDC WD2500JS-40TGB0
Revision: 20.06C04
Serial Number: WD-WCANY2154156
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Medium Type: Rotational
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Capacity: 209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)
Writable: Yes
BSD Name: disk0s1
Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 249.58 GB (249,581,158,400 bytes)
Available: 73.39 GB (73,389,297,664 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /
Thunderbolt:
Thunderbolt: No hardware was found.

Thanks for those links!! Next job – look for a DVD-RW disc in my pile. 🙂
Much obliged for your input. The old girl is chomping at the bit. I better get busy! LOL

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dukester

[Member dukester]

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@madibi

Checksums are good! Googled for a refresher course. 🙂

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dukester

[Member madibi]

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@dukester

caprea wrote:

by using a DVD instead of a usb-stick

I agree. This is an old advice that worked on my Macbook Pro. On the Imac(s) I never had the necessity to apply it.

In case also the above doesn’t work, you can try first MX. But I remember some years ago that on one Mac no Debian derivative could work, so I was obliged to switch to ubuntu derivatives. In this latest case, my advice is to give a try to LXLE

Please let us informed 🙂
m

[Member dukester]

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@madibi
With the checksums of both 32 and 64 bit antiX-22 Full verified to be good, I’ll try again to boot in a safe-mode and try both kernels.

I’ve used LXLE on older PCs. I don’t recall ever being disappointed. Thanks for the suggestion.

I’ll burn a DVD anyway – just to determine if it does or does not work! It cannot hurt anything – right? 😀

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dukester

[Moderator caprea]

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dukester wrote:

ATI Radeon X1600:
Chipset Model: ATY,RadeonX1600

Your card needs the radeon driver to load .You can try to add a boot parameter to the line boot options on live boot screen.
xorg=radeon
or otherwise
radeon.modeset=1

Either you manage to use the radeon driver when booting the live stick, or you do this later when the system is installed.
If the live stick is booted with e.g. safe-mode, an alternative graphics driver like vesa is used. This is at the expense of graphics quality, lower resolution, etc.
But it has the advantage that you can easily install another kernel or similar in graphical mode.
But in the end you always have to get the system to use the right driver. In your case that is the radeon.

[Member dukester]

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@caprea

Thanks for Radeon setup tips. I’ll give it a shot in single-user mode.

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dukester

[Member dukester]

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Got it done. Thus post is coming from iMac1.5 !! WOOHOO!!
Used the newer kernel
selected fluxbox
selected a screen resolution
selected xorg safe mode
Bingo!! 😀

Now I suppose I have a choice to wipe the HDD and install antiX-22 Full exclusively – which I would prefer.
or keep booting off the LiveUSB.

What do I need to do install permaently on the HDD?

BTW – antiX looks awesome on this iMac! Thanks everyone for your kind and generous help. The old girl will be very pleased – I hope!

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dukester

[Member dukester]

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I switched from fluxbox to rox-fluxbox.
I see an “Install” icon on the desktop.
Clicked on it and I’m in the antiX Linux Installer.
Partitioning the HDD – of 230G – how much for root and how much for home would you recommend? TIA

Partitoning might not work from the Installer, but I’ll give it a shot

• This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by dukester.

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dukester

[Member PPC]

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Hi! Congratulations, dukester!

I usually just use a root partition, it’s simpler. The downside of that is that, if you have to reinstall, you have to make backups of everything you want to keep (documents, pictures, etc)…

P.

[Member dukester]

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Thanks! It’s a blast working with antiX – especially when things go correctly. 😀
I think that I’ll use a / and /home partition. I’m too old to live dangerously anymore. LOL

I’m thinking /swap = 4G (got 2G RAM)
/ = 50G
/home = balance of HDD space

What do you think?

• This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by dukester.

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dukester

[Member dukester]

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Got it DONE! Installed on the iMac HDD. Boots into the Grub menu and away we go!
Set up Fluxbox as default for the time being, with huge yellow sunflower on the desktop.

I had some problems getting the HDD partitioned. On the first try, I hosed the boot sector so that I didn’t even get a boot menu – i.e. HDD or UEFI.

I had to load the Snow Leopard install cd in order to re-partition the HDD and fix the boot sector.
Once done, the USB stick was found and I could boot off of it.

It took me a few tries to successfully partition the HDD from the antiX-22 install app. I once partitioned a HDD by running a script that asked questions like: MBR/ESP/etc ; root size in GB; home size in GB ; swap size ; etc etc. It was the slickest partitioning exercise that I ever saw – but I can’t remember what OS. Maybe OpenBSD.

Anyway – it’s done and many thanks to all who pitched in with suggestions, links etc. 👍

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dukester

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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@dukester: I’m glad that you were able to get some cool, freely available software installed. UNIX, BSD, Linux, and even iOS and Android actually have quite a bit of common lineage, but when you get down to specifics, there are also a great deal of differences and code between them. While it’s also possible to share certain source code and compile it for multiple platforms, whether it actually works or not depends greatly on how well it is written, and whether it offers the necessary libraries to actually build on different platforms. Believe it or not, REALLY well written code CAN be portable enough to run on all those platforms, but the developers would have to take a GREAT deal of time to get all of them to work properly. That said, it really is possible.

Regarding antiX, it is one of only a couple remaining distributions that can run across quite a range of equipment. Depending on what the Debian (upstream project) does as they complete their Bookworm release (12), we may lose support (likely) for some of the oldest equipment in the 2023 release; fortunately we have multiple years remaining on at least one or two release groups, and someone recently found an extended kernel maintainer for the 4.19 kernel, should anyone require a few additional years of support, and in the meantime, we’re getting support for newer systems with the Version 6 series kernels.

I’m very happy with the number of choices we have. I multi-boot my systems, meaning I use multiple distributions. There is no question in my mind that antiX is the most efficient of the distributions I use. However, people require different capabilities.
I happen to be using a Debian derivative at the moment, siduction, that is developed by a team in Germany. It’s based on Debian Sid. With a fast system, it takes excellent advantage of hardware. When I added more modern NVME technology on one of my systems, I could hardly believe how much faster it could be with a system that can take advantage of the features. antiX is fast mostly because it’s designed to be lean. siduction is fast because it utilizes the most recent features designed to take advantage of modern hardware and software, whereas antiX, while of course it uses technology too, achieves its ability through efficient resource utilization.

I mention all of this because there are advantages to multiple different approaches, and that’s what I love about Linux, and more than that, though I personally use mostly “free” software, I also believe in the freedom of choice, if people want something commercial for a particular reason, that’s their “freedom to choose” too, whereas some people put up walls against either free or proprietary equipment; I advocate choice. Clearly I personally prefer software similar to ours yet respect and appreciate everyone’s choice to use what best suits their personal needs and preferences.

With that, I wish everyone freedom in as many areas as their personal situation permits.

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Brian Masinick

[Member dukester]

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@Brian Masinick: Right on!

• This reply was modified 2 months, 2 weeks ago by dukester.

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dukester

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