Debian 12 "Sid" on PowerMac G5 Quad hangs at "smp_core99_bringup_done" after install

[CircuitBored]

I am currently attempting to set up Debian 12 "Sid" on a PowerMac G5 Quad. The installer (recently fixed to provide proper GRUB setup on PPC64) runs without a hitch. Unfortunately, upon rebooting the system and using GRUB, the system hangs at "smp_core99_bringup_done", just after loading the kernel. To me this seems like a hangup related to setting up multiprocessing. Perhaps this build was only tested on dual-core systems.

URL I am downloading from: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/current/

There are two versions (different checksums at least) on that site. The other is at: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/12.0/ppc64/

I have tried both of these versions to the same result.

This is a bit of a bummer but ultimately not very important to get fixed as I just wanted to mess around with PowerPC linux, which I haven't done for about ten years! Sadly a web search yielded no similar issues from other users. It could just be another case of "G5s are weird".

If you have any tips or tricks, please do share!

 

[CircuitBored]

Well, as is often the way, I figured out the issue myself shortly after complaining about it online. It turns out that my ATI X1900XT graphics card was to blame and is a model known to be iffy on PPC64 Linux. Rats! Unfortunately the puny GeForce 6600 is no good either, although it does get further into the boot process than the ATI card. Ah well, back to boring old Leopard for me for now.