G4 + Adelie + Rage 128 + Action retro’s xorg.conf = no screens found

Nixontheknight

Tinkerer
Nov 3, 2021
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Hey all,
I’ve been trying to put Adelie Linux on my G4 MDD for a month or so now, and I’ve made some progress, but not enough. Using action retro’s xorg.conf (painstakingly typed because Ethernet doesn’t work until Adelie is installed on the hard drive) I get a no screens found error. I read through the log file xorg left when I used the xorg.conf file, and it appears to have a problem relocating the file in /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/r128drv.so with the error “symbol not found.” How would I fix this, if at all? Or should I rip the bandaid and get the graphics card that came with the MDD, a Radeon 9000?
 

Kai Robinson

TinkerDifferent Board President 2023
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Founder
Sep 2, 2021
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Honestly, i'd try a GeForce 2 MX before trying for a Radeon 9000 - cheaper to get hold of, for sure. Of course, if you get a Radeon, i'd go for the 9600 as used in the G5 models:

 

Nixontheknight

Tinkerer
Nov 3, 2021
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Honestly, i'd try a GeForce 2 MX before trying for a Radeon 9000 - cheaper to get hold of, for sure. Of course, if you get a Radeon, i'd go for the 9600 as used in the G5 models:

1. That’s AGP pro, my machine is standard AGP
2. I have an ADC display and I don’t want to buy an adapter
 

Kai Robinson

TinkerDifferent Board President 2023
Staff member
Founder
Sep 2, 2021
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Worthing, UK
Actually, that's just standard 4x AGP, not AGP PRO, which looks like this:

1465444143__56255__35543.1546048658.jpg


To retain use of ADC, you can use this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/224816083711?
 
Nov 4, 2021
126
98
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Tucson, AZ
A GeForce 2MX will probably fail with an unresponsive screen with the Adelie 1.0-rc2 released images because of an off-by-one error in the nouveau driver that probably only effects OpenFirmware Macs. Adding
Code:
modprobe.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nvidia
to the kernel command line in grub should get the installer to boot, but X won't work so you can't get to the pretty installer (Horizon). I was able to get Adelie installed on the HDD on my eMac/800 this way but I think I had to do a a few things outside of the Adeline manual installation guide.

Also, you should be able to bring up the ethernet in the live or installer sheell with a quick
Code:
dhcpcd eth0
.
 

Nixontheknight

Tinkerer
Nov 3, 2021
121
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Could you try this xorg conf? https://gist.github.com/AdrianKoshka/c6c4a7718de43f6708711c7664e70aa0

My original one didn't work on a newer iMag G3, but this one does.
Ok with the new xorg.conf, it’s the same error on screen, no screens found, and looking in the log, same error relocating /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/r128_drv.so: fbdevHWMapMMIO: Symbol not Found, which results in the No screens found error printed on screen. Is there something wrong with Adelie’s official image, like it’s read only, or is this a deeper problem?
 
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Nixontheknight

Tinkerer
Nov 3, 2021
121
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A GeForce 2MX will probably fail with an unresponsive screen with the Adelie 1.0-rc2 released images because of an off-by-one error in the nouveau driver that probably only effects OpenFirmware Macs. Adding
Code:
modprobe.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nvidia
to the kernel command line in grub should get the installer to boot, but X won't work so you can't get to the pretty installer (Horizon). I was able to get Adelie installed on the HDD on my eMac/800 this way but I think I had to do a a few things outside of the Adeline manual installation guide.

Also, you should be able to bring up the ethernet in the live or installer sheell with a quick
Code:
dhcpcd eth0
.
Ok I think I figured out the problem with the rage 128 and xorg, it’s having a problem relocating the driver file, but to where, and is it possible to write the file there forcefully with the cp command?
 
Nov 4, 2021
126
98
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Tucson, AZ
Do you have any more details on this? :)

The bounds checking for reading the card's ROM cut off the last byte. I think in every other case that isn't a problem because the ROM image is a full power of two dump of a flash chip, so the last byte is never used, but on OpenFirmware Macs it uses a ROM image provided by OF that is only the used part of the ROM. On the GeForce 2MX in my eMac that last byte happens to be the "All done" instruction in the init scripts embedded in the ROM. Instead of parsing that "All done" instruction the bounds checking returns a 0 because it thinks it's an out of bounds read which causes the init script interpreter to freak out and abort the initialization, leaving you with no working video. It's a trivial fix, but it's not out in the wild yet.
I could post my patched nouveau.ko if anyone needs it before it percolates upstream and back down into Adelie.
 
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Nixontheknight

Tinkerer
Nov 3, 2021
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The bounds checking for reading the card's ROM cut off the last byte. I think in every other case that isn't a problem because the ROM image is a full power of two dump of a flash chip, so the last byte is never used, but on OpenFirmware Macs it uses a ROM image provided by OF that is only the used part of the ROM. On the GeForce 2MX in my eMac that last byte happens to be the "All done" instruction in the init scripts embedded in the ROM. Instead of parsing that "All done" instruction the bounds checking returns a 0 because it thinks it's an out of bounds read which causes the init script interpreter to freak out and abort the initialization, leaving you with no working video. It's a trivial fix, but it's not out in the wild yet.
I could post my patched nouveau.ko if anyone needs it before it percolates upstream and back down into Adelie.
But can you bestow any wisdom upon me as to where to copy the rage 128 driver? Because I noticed in the log, it had a problem relocating the rage 128 driver file somewhere, but it didn’t say where
 
Nov 4, 2021
126
98
28
Tucson, AZ
But can you bestow any wisdom upon me as to where to copy the rage 128 driver? Because I noticed in the log, it had a problem relocating the rage 128 driver file somewhere, but it didn’t say where
Sorry, no. My G4 tower got battery bombed and doesn't power up any more. That error message looks like a coding bug though, not something that can be fixed without recompiling Xorg.