[fedora-arm] An alpha ARM full of Beefy Miracle (AKA Fedora 17 on ARM alpha 1)

[Niels de Vos]

On 03/01/2012 11:39 AM, Andrew Wafaa wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-03-01 at 09:49 +0000, Niels de Vos wrote:
>> Very cool! Downloading now, but I only have access to my Genesi
>> SmartBook for the next weeks, which may provide some difficulties? I
>> guess I'm now forced to find out which patches are needed to get the
>> display working reliably.

So, I managed to boot Beefy Miracle on my SmartBook. It currently runs 
an adopted kernel based on sources from Genesi, with version 
2.6.35.14.23. The kernel really is not stable (at least on F13) and may 
hang on occasion (for to me unknown reasons).

If you are adventurous and would like to give F17 alpha1 a try, get the 
rootfs as mentioned earlier in this thread (or read 
http://nullr0ute.com/2012/03/an-alpha-arm-full-of-beefy-miracle-aka-fedora-17-on-arm-alpha-1/) 
and add the kernel, modules and by hand updated initramfs from 
http://devos.fedorapeople.org/kernel-genesi/f17-hfp-alpha1_EfikaMX-sb.tar.bz2

First thing I notices on the rootfs, was that I could not install any 
additional packages, and WLAN wasn't configured (of course). I hope 
http://blog.nixpanic.net/2012/03/wlan-configuration-of-networkmanager.html 
helps in case you like to use WLAN as well.

> Unfortunately Genesi are still working on an open driver that can be
> upstreamed for 3.x on the iMX51. I'm not sure if they'll be able to get
> it out in time for either F17 or openSUSE 12.2. We (openSUSE) can only
> get a display working if we use the old 2.6.x kernel and even then use
> their kernel tree.

Yeah, that is the same here. I hope to be able to lend a hand on getting 
some drivers in a decent state. Currently I am mainly stuck with the lcd 
(mtl017) driver on 3.x. No display makes the SmartBook difficult to use :-/

http://git.rtp-net.org/?p=efika.git;a=summary contains quite some usable 
patches, but finding out which ones are required, and porting them to a 
later kernel isn't trivial.

> Half the issue is Freescale have shifted all their focus onto the iMX6
> and so Genesi are fighting uphill, but they are making progress.

Sure, and I appreciate the work Genesi does. Imho it is Freescale that 
should have provided the drivers in an upstreamable state and failed at 
that. It is a pity that the industry does not force (non-optimised) 
drivers to be upstream.

Cheers,
Niels