Supported versions running on PowerMac G4?

[Justin Hibbits]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2018 14:29:30 +0100
Michael Tuexen <tuexen at fh-muenster.de> wrote:

> > On 12. Nov 2018, at 06:29, Jukka Ukkonen <jau789 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > Now that 10.4 is apparently no longer supported I would like to
> > know whether there is any supported FreeBSD version which
> > boots and runs on an old dual-cpu PowerMac G4 QuickSilver?  

FreeBSD 12 should work fine on powerpc.  HOWEVER, you cannot do a
buildworld/installworld and expect everything to work right.  I broke,
with the Tier-2 hammer, the ABI by changing the time_t type from
32-bits to 64-bits, to match all other archs (except i386), so all
ports must be rebuilt, a straight upgrade will not work for base.  The
easiest thing to do would be to backup your data and reinstall from
scratch.

> I can't comment on the SMP features...
> 
> I'm running FreeBSD head on a G4 MacMini without any problems
> (however, I'm not running a GUI on it). The only exception is that
> I can't load kernel modules via /boot/loader.conf.
> 
> I'm also running FreeBSD head on a dual CPU G5, but it runs only
> stably when disabling smp. So you might want to try disabling smp
> also on your G4 system in case you experience problems.

Andreas Tobler found a commit I made increasing KVA from ~7.5GB to 32GB
likely broke things on the G5.  Unfortunately, I was unable to test on
the G5 before committing, as my only FreeBSD-supporting G5 died back in
July, and it worked well enough on the POWER9 which uses HPT MMU as
well, so I'm pretty confused about it. This only affects powerpc64, not
powerpc. SMP on the G4 should be unchanged.


> 
> Best regards
> Michael
> > 
> > --jau

If FreeBSD 12 does not work on the Quicksilver, I really want to know.
I have a dual processor MDD I can boot up to verify if you do run into
problems.  I haven't turned it on in 2 years, and it's sitting in the
closet.

- Justin