Ubuntu Wii

The Feisty gift a resolution error. with pal 460 and 576 kernel.

Now trying your firts post ubuntu version.

Thank you for trying it! Sorry it didn't work right away.

Quote
opvolger
The Feisty gift a resolution error. with pal 460 and 576 kernel.

Now trying your firts post ubuntu version.

I haven't had time to look at this problem in detail, but one thing to try, and which hopefully will fix it is the following:

Edit the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf
If you have a usb keyboard for the Wii, you can edit it from the command prompt using:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Otherwise you'll have to edit it on your PC. If you're using Ubuntu, and the second partition of your SD card is mounted at /media/ubuntu-wii, enter:

gksu gedit /media/ubuntu-wii/etc/X11/xorg.conf &

Scroll down until you get to the following section:

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Device		"Wii Graphics Card"
 	Monitor         "Wii Monitor"
	DefaultDepth	16
	Subsection "Display"
			Modes	"ntsc_60"
	EndSubsection
EndSection

Change the "ntsc_60" to "pal_50"

Save and exit. In nano, <CTRL>+O <ENTER> <CTRL>+X

(Re)boot Ubuntu Wii.

Hopefully that's all it is. Try it and let me know. I don't have access to a PAL system in order to test it myself. Thanks again for all your help.

I did try that, and other configurations as well.

I will capture the error, and will post it here.

Now have installed 6.06. That works perfect. But by Wifi only WEP did work. WPA did not (did direct editing /etc/network/interface).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/2012 10:57AM by opvolger.

Quote
opvolger
I did try that, and other configurations as well.

I will capture the error, and will post it here.

Now have installed 6.06. That works perfect. But by Wifi only WEP did work. WPA did not (did direct editing /etc/network/interface).

*sigh*
That's a disappointment. And that's so weird that it works under 6.06. I will try to research the error when you get it to me.

Given that it works under Dapper but not Feisty, perhaps it will work under Gutsy. I will attempt to make an image of Gutsy.

My apologies, and thanks again.

Okay, so this is a long shot, but changing Ubuntu versions worked for WPA, so maybe...

Here is an image of Gutsy.

It has the smaller sized swapfile. I tested it with a few things and it seemed to be big enough. So the image size is only 2.4GB again.

Some new bugs have been introduced. I won't list them all but the most important is that a NetworkManager is running upon boot and taking all the CPU's idle time. Just do "ps ax | grep NetworkManager". There will be two: NetworkManager and NetworkManagerDispatcher. The Dispatcher is fine. Do "kill <pid>" where <pid> is the number in the first column of the first line of the output of the ps/grep command (the NetworkManager one). When I find the time, I will come up with a more permanent solution (assuming this version works with PAL).

In this version, I have HBC (partition 1) mounted at boot, since it doesn't show up on the desktop. Find it under /media/HBC.
I have also enabled multiverse repositories, since no one wants to have to edit /etc/apt/sources.list manually, and there's really no harm in it.

Thanks to opvolger for testing for me.

Great work on getting a heavy destkop enviroment such as Gnome to work on the Wii. This reminds me of when the people from the GC-Linux project tried to install KDE on the Gamecube about 9 years ago. Unfortantely, I'm unable to boot this normally and am forced in mounting it in read-only mode during the first boot and every time following, I get corrupt filesystem errors and cannot go on (even with fsck). I discovered that these errors are mostly caused by lowend 16GB (or greater) class 10 SD cards. I addressed these issues in my heavily patched 2.6.32.y kernel on Github (located at: "https://github.com/DeltaResero") as well as a few other minor issues.

I'm interested in building a more recent Kernel for this if possible. So far, I've successful built Kernels up to version 3.0.y (also on Github now) that worked successfully with recent Debian installations (using Farter's Debian Installer), but still can't get them to work with these outdated version of Ubuntu. It's probably just something I'm overlooking, but I would greatly appreciate it if someone could take a look at this. I'm interested in learning how to use a live cd (or the equivalent) to install Lubuntu PPC on an SD Card for Wii consoles. If this can't be made public, I would still appreciate it if someone could create an basic disk image of a more recent minimal version of Ubuntu or Lubuntu without a desktop enviroment. Currently I'm using Debian Wheezy, but it lacks some features that Lubuntu has by default such as LXDM (login manager).

@DeltaResero - Was that Ubuntu Wii Dapper that caused the read-only filesystem?
I feel like I encountered that error back when I was using whiite/xwhiite, but I don't remember how or if I fixed it.
I'll see if I can do a little research. The first thing I would try is repartitioning the SD card. Remember to use ext2 and not ext3 or ext4.

As for getting a more recent filesystem to use with your newer kernels, just do the following:
Download the LiveCD iso that you want to use. For example, you may want to use lubuntu-12.04-desktop-powerpc.iso.
In Terminal, do the following: (change "<livecd_path>" to the path to the LiveCD, such as "~/Downloads/lubuntu-12.04-desktop-powerpc.iso")

sudo mkdir /media/livecd
sudo mount -o loop,ro <livecd_path> /media/livecd
sudo mkdir /media/squashfs
sudo mount -o loop,ro /media/livecd/casper/filesystem.squashfs /media/squashfs

Now, /media/squashfs will contain a complete filesystem that you can copy onto your SD card.

When you're done, unmount /media/squashfs first, then /media/livecd. Then you can rmdir both of them.

Hope that helps.

Yes, it was Drapper and also Hardy that were causing the read-only mount issues, but as for the rest that followed in susequent boots, they were mostly hardware related resulting from bugs in the older Kernels. I've dealt with similar incidents in the past with 2.6.x Kernels as the mmc data timeouts were too short for lowend SD cards and there was a bug with how the last sector of class 10 SD cards were processed. I'll let you know whether or not I can get my new Kernel to work with newer versions of Lubuntu without these errors when I get a chance. Also, rather than mount the squashfs image, I'll just extract it with the "unsquashfs" command from the "squashfs-tools" package. Priorior to asking, I thought that the LiveCD was encypted and ran scripts that were essential to setting up a bootable system. I didn't realize it was still this easy, thanks for exaplaining this. It would appear that this method would work for testing other distrobutions of PPC Linux other than Debian based ones too.

Intead of using an Ext2 filesystem for the root filesystem (using one of the other Lubuntu default selections), would I just have to alter the /etc/fstab file? I'm not sure if this is possible using this method, or if /etc/mtab would have to be edited too. I plan to use JFS an I did with Debian as that's how I conteracted the increased CPU usage from using zRam and surprisingly this combination has worked quite well for improving the speed of non CPU intensive work.

@q885 - just a quick update:

As root, I extracted the ISO with the Ark archiver, extracted the squash filesystem.squash in the casper folder of the extracted ISO with the unsquash tool, ran "tar --preserve-permissions --preserve-order -jc squashfs-root > /filesystem.tar.bz2", and extracted this on the ext2 partition I created on the second partition of my SD card. The SD card follows the "Whiite" format and the Kernels that I'm testing it with are ones without a initrd that work with Debian Wheezy and prior with EXT2-4, FAT16/32, and NTFS support. I must still be doing something wrong because when I boot it, I get an error saying that "the disk drive for / is not ready or not present yet. Keys: Continue to wait, or press S to skip mounting or M for manual recovery". I tried editing the /etc/fstab file after so root would mount using the default partitions as it did in Wheezy, but this would only get me to a Ubuntu localhost.localdomain login prompt after showing the errors it did before regarding mounting "/". I appended "single" to the Kernel parameters as an attempt to bypass login and it seems nothing happens after this login screen. The keyboard still stays responsive, but nothing happens, so I'm force to restart using "Ctrl+Alt+Del" everytime.

@DeltaResero:

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Are you saying you got a login prompt, but have no account to log in with?

If that's the case, do the following:
First:

sudo nano <sdcard>/etc/passwd

Add (copy/paste):

ubuntu:$1$wyvrfgIF$yFftCjvLN14smjs0RYsT70:1000:1000:,,,:/home/ubuntu:/bin/bash

Then:

sudo nano <sdcard>/etc/group

Add:

ubuntu:x:1000:

Find (in "<sdcard>/etc/group"): "sudo" (i.e. "sudo:x:27:") and add "ubuntu" to the end of the line (i.e. "sudo:x:27:ubuntu").

Finally:

sudo cp -R <sdcard>/etc/skel <sdcard>/home
sudo mv <sdcard>/home/skel <sdcard>/home/ubuntu
sudo chown -R 1000:1000 <sdcard>/home/ubuntu

Now, I've put together a little archive that contains:
the "fstab" that has worked for me in the past
an "xorg.conf" that has also worked in the past
the wireless driver ("b43-open")
the Nuvalo video driver ("cube_drv.so")
a short script that turns the sensor bar on and off (type "sensor-bar on" and "sensor-bar off" to use it; you won't need it until you install cwiid, which I can walk you through once you get the graphics working)
a 512MB swapfile which is needed for the "fstab" I included. You can make your own swapfile of any size, but I figured I'd at least include one here.

You can extract it to the root of your SD card (use "sudo tar xjf") and everything should go in its proper place.

If you're really lucky, you'll get a graphical login screen, but I suspect it'll be a little more complicated than that.

As for using a filesystem other than ext2:
The reason I suggested ext2 is that the isobel kernel doesn't support ext4, and ext3 is just ext2 with journaling, which is not needed for SD cards. I don't know whether jfs will work, but it's certainly worth a try.

Also, what is zRam?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2013 01:08AM by q885.

I forgot to mention. The above instructions give you an account called "ubuntu" with the password "ubuntu".

Thanks for this Dapper for Wii. I was running XWhiite a few years back but stopped using it and eventually deleted the files. Just recently thought about getting the Wii set up for word processing but could I find a working link for XWhiite? No!

Now I've got your Dapper running IceWM and I do my writing on ABIword. Thanks to your comprehensive tutorial and active links I was able to get just what I wanted with the minimum of hassle. It's great to sit back on my big sofa with a wireless keyboard and write on the big screen.

THANK YOU

Quote
fishears
Thanks for this Dapper for Wii. I was running XWhiite a few years back but stopped using it and eventually deleted the files. Just recently thought about getting the Wii set up for word processing but could I find a working link for XWhiite? No!

Now I've got your Dapper running IceWM and I do my writing on ABIword. Thanks to your comprehensive tutorial and active links I was able to get just what I wanted with the minimum of hassle. It's great to sit back on my big sofa with a wireless keyboard and write on the big screen.

THANK YOU

Awesome! I'm glad it worked for you! Thanks for using it!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2013 12:45AM by q885.

Sorry for not getting back earlier, but I've been unable to access this site for months as it just kept giving host unreachable errors everytime I tried to access it. I was mostly successful in getting Lubuntu 13.10 working as I wanted, but it seems there are huge regression in the Ubuntu derivatives currently making it nearly impossible to reach the throughput that I had with Debian Wheezy. I found the easiest method for copying the files from squashfs image on the LiveCD was to mount in and then use cp -dpR as root to copy the files directly to the SD card. I still had few minor things that I had to do (such as set the host/hostname, locals, keyboard...) but I found out how to do this with a quick search.

I didn't realize that it would be nearly impossible to purge unneeded packages such as plymouth. It seems these do take some CPU cycles as they are daemons and it would be preferrable to be able to remove/disable them. Some of the packages (such as mplayer) that work in Debian don't seem to work in Ubuntu as they must have used different compiler flags. I have plans to eventually upload a more currently (IceWM customized) Lubuntu demo image when the UTC (clock) errors eventually get fixed too, but for now I guess I'll be using Debian. To my surprise, packages such lxdm that are not in Debian don't seem to work that well on Wii consoles anyway. Also, I did find a way to compile a newer Cube driver for current Xorg and have plans to push the commits to Github too when I get a chance.

By the way, some information on zRam can be found here: "http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM1NjQ". Basically, zRam is just a compressed swap block on ram that gives an I/O boost at the cost of CPU cycles. It can have a small benfit for things such as mplayer (depending on the workload) as it tends to help steady video framerate at the cost of framerate (usually lose at most 1 FPS). For GameCube and Wii consoles running minimalist desktops or console sessions this should make applications that aren't CPU intensive more responsive. Anything that requres a lot of ram and little CPU should benifit a bit from it. As for Zcache if you come accross it (a somewhat similar concept), I've yet to find any practical uses for it as even the Wii has too low of specs to take advantage of this. More info on Zcache can be found here: "http://lwn.net/Articles/397574/".

Thanks for the help earlier in getting Ubuntu (and variations) to work. I was even able to get Kubuntu to work, but its colors are way off due to 16bit color and the themes expecting 24bit. The memory requirements even made rasor-qt impractical too, but it was fun to try. Maybe someday with Wayland (future X11 replacement) this may be practical.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2013 04:59AM by DeltaResero.

@DeltaResero:

That's awesome!

Is the newer video driver you compiled based on Nuvalo or Farter?

Will you make your kernel and filesystem tar available? It's very exciting!

It's the Nuvalo (Cube) driver and yes I'll be making it available by posting a download link once it's uploaded. I've maxed out my upload cap again for this month, so I'll have to wait until the 26th before uploading it.

Sorry, I got busy with porting the GameCube/Wii kernel patch from to 3.0 to 3.6 unexpectantly due to devolpements with Linux on WiiU consoles in virtual Wii mode and lost the patches I was working on for the Cube driver when my SD card failed. I still have the work, I just need to make the patches again and do some more testing on it before I upload it.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2013 02:43PM by DeltaResero.

It took me a bit longer than I originally thought it would as I was quite busy elsewhere and it was a bit harder to forward port than I anticipated. There are no noticable improvements with this newer driver, but at least it will still be an option for a little while yet as it now compiles against the newer 7.6 and 7.7 Xorg versions. As of now, the updated driver (still lacks hardware acceleration), can be found on Github at: "https://github.com/DeltaResero/GC-Wii-xf86-video-cube". As with the old version, this driver must be compiled against the same version of Xorg as what it's being used with. The easiest way to compile the driver is usually on the console within the Linux operating system that the driver is for.

Quote
DeltaResero
It took me a bit longer than I originally thought it would as I was quite busy elsewhere and it was a bit harder to forward port than I anticipated. There are no noticable improvements with this newer driver, but at least it will still be an option for a little while yet as it now compiles against the newer 7.6 and 7.7 Xorg versions. As of now, the updated driver (still lacks hardware acceleration), can be found on Github at: "https://github.com/DeltaResero/GC-Wii-xf86-video-cube". As with the old version, this driver must be compiled against the same version of Xorg as what it's being used with. The easiest way to compile the driver is usually on the console within the Linux operating system that the driver is for.

That's certainly a great accomplishment, but I think the cube driver is no longer the way to go. With the Farter kernel patch, you can use the default "fbdev_drv.so". In Ubuntu, you don't even need an "xorg.conf". I would try to apply the Farter patch to your kernel. It's a much cleaner way to handle graphics. Plus there's no overscan.

For the most part, Farter's framebuffer patch allows for the framebuffer to outperform the Cube Xorg driver. Each have their own shortcommings with the Xorg driver being able output at 640x480 and the framebuffer only being output at 576x432 being the most significant (I'm not completely sure about why both don't output at 640x480 yet). The second sortcomming that the framebuffer has is that it lacks the potential for OpenGX extensions (hardware acceleration). While I lack the ability to implement this myself in the Cube driver, it does still give it potential as Xfree86 drivers are easy to maintain as they tend to change at a slow rate too. Unfortantely, Xorg being replaced by Wayland in the forseable future and Linux on WiiU having little to no use for this puts the Cube driver at a sever disavantage. I mainly updated this driver so I could run Supertux in fullscreen mode from within Linux and try to fix the GameCube SDL Linux driver (broke with recent kernel drivers). Despite it's depreciating status, maybe someone will find a use for it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2013 01:37AM by DeltaResero.

That makes a lot of sense. When my Wii vga adapter was working, the full 640x480 was very useful. I think I can safely say we all appreciate the work you've been doing. Thanks.