As you are probably aware of, installing MintPPC is not always successful. This has to do with the fact that MintPPC is based on Debian sid, which is the unstable version of Debian. Debian stopped releasing stable versions for the powerpc and ppc64 architectures. What we are dealing with nowadays is Debian-ports. What is Debian-ports you might ask? Well, basically Debian attempts to build all the packages of Debian sid for the officially unsupported arches and hosts them in Debian-ports. These packages are automatically built by buildd. You can have a look at buildd.debian.org to find out the status of a certain package. In the case that a certain source package cannot be built for powerpc and/or ppc64, we might encounter a problem if such a package is needed to install MintPPC. We face these problems on a daily basis. In a stable release, we do not encounter such situations as the maintainers of Debian ‘freeze’ all packages when they are in a stable situation, meaning that all packages can be installed. Only security updates to such packages are allowed.
I would like to be able to ‘freeze’ Debian sid once in a while, when I find out that all packages required for MintPPC are installable from Debian-ports. For this I need to have space and bandwidth on a server. In the case that this is possible, I would like to be able to upload all Debian packages to a repository with enough space and bandwidth. I am talking about gigabytes here. I don’t know the exact amount of space, I will have to find this out later on.
At the moment MintPPC is served from a small repository in the Netherlands. I do this with my own money, it is a hobby project. I cannot host a copy of Debian there, as this would be too costly for me.
I would like to ask someone, who has server space and bandwidth available, to host a copy of Debian powerpc / ppc64 / all packages. It would be handy if such a server is accessible via ssh, so I can rsync Debian-ports at will. It would help users of MintPPC tremendously to make installations hassle-free as at the moment you never know before you start the installation process whether the installation will work or not. This is totally dependent on the state of the packages. If I can host a stable ‘frozen’ state of Debian sid, installation of MintPPC would be always successful.
I hope I made myself clear with the situation MintPPC is in. Please, if you can help me, contact me.
Best regards,
Jeroen Diederen
jjhdiederen at zonnet dot nl
Well… The thing is I have the server, but my Wan connection only gives 140 to 200 ~ kb/s (I am on Venezuela, owner of one of the worst Internet connections ever…), so no luck, unless you can somehow use onedrive storage (I can give you 1tb per account my friend), pardon that I can’t be of more utilitie….. Unless you can work with onedrive that is
Thanks John, but I need a little faster connection 😉
How much server space do you think it would take? Please let me know so I can get an idea of the cost involved to see if it could be done.
Thanks.
To have a mirror of Debian ports for powerpc/ppc64 one needs 250 Gb.
My wife uses SiteGround. Let me find out what that would cost for a year to see if I can afford it.
I just checked on the cost. It would be $200 (actual quoted price was $190/month, I just rounded it up) per month. Right now, that does not look reasonable, but, if I can make some good money with lawn and tree work, who knows. I will keep you informed.
I have been thinking lately how to solve the problem of not being able to install MintPPC because of missing packages in Debian-ports. Initially I did not want to go this route, but I think it makes sense. Basically, what I can try is to make a disk image, like Fienix does, and make it downloadable. This image can then be copied onto a hard drive and booted from. I am not sure whether it will work but I can try. I will let you know when such an image is available.
I appears to me that the best long term solution to the problem is for someone to set up a server with enough drive space and bandwidth to make things work.
I’m looking into what it would take to set up a server.
The alternative is to pay some company to provide the space that is needed.
Anyone can do indeed that, but you need quite a fast connection because there are several people online at the same time all the time. Another thing what you have to take into account is safety. There are a lot of hackers out there, trying to get in. Make sure, if you go this way, to read about security. I think an easy cheap way to set up an ftp server is a Rasberry Pi. In all honesty, I don’t want it at home. I am too concerned with safety.
WNLEWIS, I plan to make a disk image of a working MintPPC installation. If I have that, you can simply download and dd it onto a stick or hard disk. I will use my Google account to host the file. I know that Fienix does it the same way.
OK. Sounds good for now.
So it would probably be a live image, but for 32 bit for G3 and G4.
Fienix appears to have restricted it to 64 bit, and G5 only.
Speaking of Fienix, it works perfectly with AmigaOne X5000 (e5500 cpu, no altivec). What is the situation with MintPPC, does it work with X5000, too?
I don’t know.