Fedora ARM 12 on IGEPv2 (Beagle Board clone)
by Matthew Wilson
Hi all,
I would like to introduce myself to the group. I have recently
received an IGEPv2 board [1], which is based on the Beagle Board, but
with wifi, bluetooth, ethernet, and more RAM. I'm still at the "wow,
it's tiny and it runs Linux" stage. I should get a bit more time over
the next month and Christmas to play around properly with it.
I'm new to embedded development, but neither new to Linux nor ARM
(writing my first ARM assembly some 15 years ago). However, for the
past 6 years I've not even built a Linux kernel, preferring to use the
default kernel in Fedora for simplicity :)
Firstly, a thank you to those involved in Fedora ARM for getting it to
this stage. If I get the time, I'd really like to contribute some
(probably small) effort to help get Fedora ARM working well on the
IGEPv2 and Beagle Board. As I progress, I'd like to know what I can
do to help.
In the meantime, I have some questions. Apologies in advance if these
seem simple.
1) There are various different kernels from different sources. I'm
used to there being a small set of "right" kernels (that is, Fedora's
idea of "right") for x86. I fully appreciate that different ARM-based
boards are quite different in capabilities (like different instruction
set variants).
a) Is there likely to be some standardised vanilla Fedora ARM kernel
source? (Or is that simply the source RPM available for Fedora?)
Then patches /could/ be offered for the more common systems (e.g.
Beagle Board & clones, SheevaPlug).
b) Would it then make sense to offer these as pre-built RPMs for common systems?
c) Is there any guidance on which version is good to use as a base?
I've seen quite different kernel versions being used (from 2.6.27 to
2.6.31).
2) I understand a little bit about the different calling conventions,
FP differences (e.g. soft FPU versus VFP), and instruction set
differences (v5 versus v7).
a) Can the kernel can be safely built with a different instruction set
targeted? (I know there are different optimisation options passed to
GCC. Apologies if this seems a bit newbie-ish.)
b) For FP-heavy programs (e.g. ogg encoding), is it possible to build
the packages with VFP/NEON but still get them to work in a soft FPU
system? I'd imagine any call to an external library would have to
somehow be defined to use a different calling standard.
3) There seem to be some missing dependencies in the packages in the
current Fedora ARM repository. For example, emacs is requiring
libotf, which doesn't seem to be there in the repository. And
likewise with the xorg-x11-font* packages needing ttmkdir. I'm
confused as to how the RPM could have been successfully built without
it. What am I missing?
4) I see there has been some discussion over unaligned data access.
(Oh, I remember that from the ARM2 days.) It seems as if the
Cortex-A8 cores allow unaligned data access when set up to do so [2].
Does this, in any way, help with the compatibility of packages
targetting Cortex-A8?
5) I've managed to get various source packages missing from the Fedora
ARM repositories to compile successfully (natively). I guess there is
a reason why there are not in the repos right now -- is that reason
down to time and priorities, or is there some blocking bugs with many
of these packages?
I look forward to being able to contribute something back into Fedora!
Kind regards,
Matthew
[1] http://www.igep-platform.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id...
[2] http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.ddi0344j/Beih...
7 years, 5 months
How to learn how to help Fedora ARM?
by Alexjan Carraturo
Hi to all,
my name is Alexjan Carraturo, and I'm involved in Fedora as
Ambassador. For some work reason, I start to work with Arm Processor
(expecially Cortex A9, but not only). I use to use x86 version of
Fedora, without significant problem,
But, Fedora ARM it's a little bit different, and I would like to help,
especially in packaging and similar operation but;
1) I don't know how to package software
2) I don't know where to find documentation.
So, I would like to start studing all I can need to became a good
Fedora ARM (and non only) Packager. Can you adivice how to find
official (or similar) documentation and guidlines, that explain
correctly and fully the package processing and details? I search on
google, but find a lot of things almost non clear or not complete.
Thank you
Alexjan.
12 years, 1 month
Fedora ARM at Seneca: Slowing Down to Speed Up
by Chris Tyler
A short note to let you know what's up at Seneca as far as Fedora ARM...
This week CDOT (our research centre) is shutting down to give our
research staff a break and to let faculty do end-of-semester cleanup and
transition work.
The next week (starting May 2), Paul Whalen and I will be joined by
three new CDOT staff working on Fedora ARM. It will take a few days to
bring the new folks up to speed, but then I anticipate that we can pick
up the pace substantially. (We'll also benefit from new infrastructure
tools put in place by the SBR600 Software Build & Release course,
including icinga/func/puppet for the ARM builders).
All that to say that we have a short slowdown to prepare for a speed up.
Next is a short RC cycle then final release for f13, followed by
simultaneous f13-updates and f14 efforts.
-Chris
12 years, 1 month
Installing Fedora 13 on a Pogoplug
by Niels de Vos
Hello all,
about two weeks ago there was an email about an offer on the pink
Pogoplug. Although I did not get that particular offer, I noticed that
the systems were quite cheap in the UK as well.
My experience can be found on the following wiki page:
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/PogoplugUSBDisk
Do not hesitate to update/extend/correct where suitable, it's a wiki after all.
I hope it's useful for someone. Cheer,
Niels
12 years, 1 month
Re: [fedora-arm] Packages not available for F-13 ARM that OLPC uses
by Peter Robinson
Hi Martin,
To break this list down a bit...
On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 8:58 PM, Martin Langhoff
<martin.langhoff(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I just ran a rough comparison of the packages we currently include in
> our F14 builds vs what's available in the F13-beta2 ARM repository.
>
> Some packages are OLPC-specific, and I note them below. Others may
> have changed name between F13 and F14.
OLPC. Some of these are in Fedora so I'm not sure they're all "olpc"
but rather just not in F13.
> 'PolicyKit-olpc', // olpc
> 'batti', // olpc-specific
> 'bootfw-q3a62', // olpc-specific
> 'ds-backup-client', // olpc-specific
> 'kernel', // heh :-)
> 'olpc-bootanim', // olpc
x86 only
> 'dmidecode',
> 'xorg-x11-drv-chrome' // ignore
New in F-14
> 'dconf',
> 'folks',
> 'gdk-pixbuf2', (this was split out of gtk2)
> 'laughlin-backgrounds-gnome', // release specific? <--- Yes!
> 'laughlin-backgrounds-single',
> 'libjpeg-turbo',
Most of these should be easy fixes, or even fixed already. Not sure
about java though!
> 'abiword', 'libabiword'
> 'atkmm',
> 'avahi-libs',
> 'csound', 'csound-python',
> 'empathy',
> 'espeak',
> 'inkscape',
> 'java',
> 'kbd-misc',
> 'libassuan',
> 'libffado',
> 'libmodman',
> 'libmount',
> 'olpc-kbdshim',
> 'olpc-powerd',
> 'olpc-powerd-dbus',
> 'olpc-runin-tests',
> 'portmidi',
> 'prelink',
> 'systemd-units', // blame Lennart
> 'telepathy-logger',
> 'upstart-sysvinit',
Extra deps.
> 'perl-threads', // WTH? Perl in our builds?
> 'perl-threads-shared',
> 'gnome-dvb-daemon',
> We should sort this into noise -- stuff that changed between F13 and
> F14, x86-specific packages, etc -- and worthy targets...
12 years, 1 month
Fedora 13 ARM Beta2
by Paul Whalen
Fedora 13 ARM users can now update to use a new repository composed on March 23rd. This new compose adds additional software and includes software groups.
The Beta2 has been signed with a new key. If you are currently running the Beta1 you will need to install the new key which can be done by entering:
rpm -Uvh http://arm.koji.fedoraproject.org/mash/beta/f13-arm-2011-03-23/f13-arm/ar...
And replace the fedora.repo file:
mv /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo.rpmnew /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo
The Fedora 13 ARM Beta2 compose can be found at :
http://arm.koji.fedoraproject.org/mash/beta/f13-arm-2011-03-23/f13-arm/ar...
A new root filesystem is available here. The password for the root account remains “fedoraarm”.
We are asking users of Fedora ARM for some feedback. Is there something missing? Is the software included so far working as expected? Any other suggestions? Please forward feedback to the mailing list
12 years, 1 month
