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

[Peter Robinson]

A day later than I had hoped and probably not perfect but I don't want
to keep the hungry masses from their ARM based Beefy Miracle any
longer!

This is also posted at
http://nullr0ute.com/2012/03/an-alpha-arm-full-of-beefy-miracle-aka-fedora-17-on-arm-alpha-1/

So down below is a pair of minimal root fs for ARM hardfp (ARMv7hl)
and softfp (ARMv5tel) but first a few notes about known issues:
* It's not for the faint of heart! If you don't like to roll your
sleeves up and get dirty, it's time to back away and go and buy an
iPad. While the ARM team is happy to help out with queries we don't
have the time to walk you though step by step. Google is your friend!
* SELinux is disabled by default. It should work just find but as it's
a tar file the file system would need to be re-labelled. I suggest you
enable it but get your device booting first
* root password is "fedoraarm" (no quotes)
* There's some known annoyances[0] with the kernel. It's not a major
problem, just annoying having a messages on the console. We're working
to get a fix for the next kernel
* There's 4 kernels installs by default the base "versatile" for qemu,
and one each for OMAP (3 and 4), tegra and IMX. Remove which ever one
you don't want once you have a working system.
* It boots to run level 3. We're working to get GUI interfaces but
we're not quite there yet, see below for more details
* A lot of ARM devices don't have battery backed RTCs so you need to
ensure you check your time hasn't regressed to the 70s ;-) as it will
cause havoc with yum amongst other things. ntpdate can assist you with
that.

Three's some links on the blog post to get you started with various devices.

Now on the missing GUI interfaces and "your favourite desktop". We're
working as quick as we can to get all the mainline packages built. I
would ask if you please don't just go and build random packages in
koji. We have scripts handling the build process to ensure it's built
identical to Mainline Fedora so everything works as it should but this
takes time. The quickest way to get these appearing for use if for you
to fix broken packages [1] in mainline Fedora. If they don't compile
there they certainly won't on ARM. These breakages block the build
process of packages higher up the stack as the needed dependencies
aren't there. Again please just don't go and compile random packages
in koji.

That being said there's been a LOT of work done by a few people to get
us to this point so I do hope you jump in and enjoy the ride :-D

Now for what you really are after:
http://fedora.roving-it.com/rootfs-f17-hfp-alpha1.tar.bz2 Fedora 17
ARMv7hl (hardfp) alpha 1 Minimal rootfs for tegra, OMAP, IMX5 and
other ARMv7 devices
http://fedora.roving-it.com/rootfs-f17-sfp-alpha1.tar.bz2 Fedora 17
ARMv5tel (softfp) alpha 1 Minimal rootfs for various Marvell plugs and
other ARMv5/6 devices

[0] http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-omap/msg64732.html
[1] http://ausil.fedorapeople.org/f17-failures.html