In 2009, I installed Ubuntu on my old iBook G4. Today I decided I wanted to move to Debian because I wanted to have the same system at home as on my web hosting provider.
So, I downloaded *debian-6.0.5-powerpc-CD-1.iso* using *bittorrent* and booted the laptop from CD. I forgot a crucial sentence from my 2009 blog post: “When I installed it _while connected to the network_ via ethernet cable, it offered to download and install the necessary driver for the wireless card.”
My laptop wasn’t connected to the network and now it’s like a computing brick: Even when I plug in the cable and reboot, I can’t ping anything. 😟 ← sad face in case you didn’t notice. Yes, I am *very sad*. Grrrr.
Also, my network uses *WPA2 Personal* encryption. I’m not sure I’m going to use Gnome or KDE (the last Orientalibombus setup I used was based on ratpoison. This is why I wanted a wireless network usable from the command line.
The solution was this:
alex@subterraneobombus:~$ sudo cat /etc/network/interfaces
[sudo] password for alex:
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).
# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid Schroeder
wpa-psk *secret*
By plugging in the cable and using *ifup eth0* I was able to download stuff from the Internet.
Stuff from the Debian Wiki I used:
1. add non-free to your *sources.list* as described in the b43 section
2. install *wireless-tools*
3. install *wpasupplicant*
4. install *firmware-b43-installer*
5. run *iwconfig* and verify that wlan0 is there
6. run *iwlist scan* as described in the command line section of the WiFi/HowToUse page
Use *ifdown eth0* and *ifup wlan0* to switch to the wireless network. To be honest, I needed to reboot in order for this to work. No idea why this was necessary.
On a Swiss-German Macintosh keyboard, I need the Alt key to access stuff like number sign, pipe, brackets and bracers.
! Alt key is used to access #[]|{}
keycode 64 = ISO_Level3_Shift
remove mod1 = ISO_Level3_Shift
! Command key is alt/meta
remove mod4 = Super_L
keycode 133 = Meta_L
! check out /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ch
! keycodes: normal shifted ignored ignored Alt Shift-Alt
! prevent shift-space from inserting an unbreakable space: it's too easy
keycode 65 = space space NoSymbol NoSymbol nobreakspace NoSymbol
! use an endash instead of a hyphen for Alt Minus
keycode 61 = minus underscore NoSymbol NoSymbol endash emdash
Installing Debian Linux on PPC Part IV - Configuring Stuff
$ sudo aptitude install firmware-linux-nonfree ttf-mscorefonts-installer pommed mesa-utils $ glxgears
This installs some fonts, firmware drivers, activates the buttons to dimm the brightness, and a tool to test the performance of the graphics card: glxgears. It shows less than 100 fps. Add the following file:
$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf options radeon modeset=0
Restarted and now glxgears is giving me tenfold performance. Weird!
$ sudo /usr/sbin/lighty-enable-mod $ sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload
And finally create `/var/www/cgi-bin/wiki`# (forget about `/usr/lib/cgi-bin`) with the appropriate path to the Oddmuse script:
#!/usr/bin/perl package OddMuse; $DataDir = "/var/oddmuse"; do "/home/alex/src/oddmuse/wiki.pl";
Create the directory and a config file, too:
$ sudo mkdir /var/oddmuse $ sudo chown www-data.www-data /var/oddmuse $ sudo editor /var/oddmuse/config
Content of the config file:
$StyleSheet = "/wiki.css";'
Feel free to create a CSS file – for the moment I’m just making sure that the default CSS isn’t fetched from oddmuse.org.
#Ubuntu #Debian