[plug] Some debian on a G4 ibook questions

[Michael Hunt]

Hiya all,

Around the middle of last week I finally took delivery of a new G4 12"
ibook that I had been considering purchasing for sometime. Trawling the
web and reading of PLUG archives have helped me overcome most of my
difficulties but I was wondering if some of the other ibook owners that
I know are lurking on the list could help me with a few of the remaining
issues I have. For the others not all of them are hardware or distro
specific so you maybe able to shine some light in areas I haven't been
looking.

Two things I should probably say up front :-

1. I am trying to stick to a sarge only install for the laptop. [0] I
need a _reliable_ desktop enviro with woody just being to out of date
and sid to much fun for what really is a machine that I need to be doing
work on. (i.e. I don't want to be fixing problems on it during my
lectures or playing with fun new toys when I should be working ;-) !!!).
This means that I have only installed sarge packages. No compiling of
anything has taken place.

2. I don't really want to have to do any compiling of new kernels, X,
window manager, _insert favourite app here_ etc. I appreciate source
distros, the benefits of compiling your own stuff and the need to build
some things from scratch in order to enable features but I am wanting to
provide feedback to the debian project by way of bug reports and doing
the above won't really help me with those aims. [1]

OK. So on to some of the problems.

(a) What are the HorizSync and VerticalRefresh values people are using.
http://www.apple.com.au/ibook/specs.html shows the display as 12.1-inch
(diagonal) TFT XGA but doesn't really help me. My current values are set
to 31.5-57.0 and 50-90 and this gives my 1024x768 @ 60 Hz (24bit colour)
but I know it can do the same @ 75 Hz. My OS X install does and when I
run OS X under MOL (mac-on-linux) it runs at this refresh rate on VT 8.

(b) On the subject of MOL how do I get it to run as a windowed app
instead of full-screen on a separate terminal. I suspect that the
following error has got something to do with it :-

<snip>

Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

Could not connect to X server :0.0
Fullscreen video on VT 8.
Could not open '/var/lib/mol/console.kbd'
Video driver(s): [console_video]

</snip>

Looks like some Xauth issue. Anyone know where I might change this ???

(I'll leave further MOL questions for the moment. If any one has any MOL
experience I'm interested in getting other devices like scroll wheel,
bluetooth, networking etc working).

(c) Getting audio working. Installing alsa-base as suggested in the
following howto http://seb.france.free.fr/linux/ibookG4/iBookG4-howto-
6.html doesn't work. Alsa conf detects the card but when you run the
service it fails. alsactl restore returns :-

alsactl: load_state:1134: No soundcards found...

(d) Does anyone know of any user space (GUI) bluetooth tools ??? I know
of stuff I can use for making ppp connection to my phone but I was
wondering if anyone has tried getting images of a phone using bluetooth
under linux ??? I can do this using mac os x so I suspect it is
possible.

(e) Are there any apps for turning off the track pad when you are
typing ??? I keep getting the mouse moving and placing my cursor
elsewhere in my text when entering my notes. Very annoying !!!

(f) What are people using for maintaining different profiles/setting say
when connected to a LAN at home, work, wireless or standalone ??? I have
found some Debian packages that do this but I was wondering what other
people were doing.

(g) Anyone managed to get sleep/hibernation working with the ibook ???

(h) Non ibook question. Are any sarge/sid users experiencing long delays
in the Gnome splash screen disappearing ??? Sometime it can take up to
two minutes for it to disappear.

All right. I think I will leave it there for the moment.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

Michael Hunt

[0] Did this using the 27/07/2004 daily build net install CD. Very
impressed. Worked a treat a nothing in the way of major bugs for the
platform.

[1] If after extensive testing the only way to get things working is to
compile then I have no problem doing so. My preference is not to in
order to facilitate finding and filing bugs. However to preempt
anarchist tomato mplayer will be compiled from source :-).