[ARMedslack] Question/suggestions regarding ARMedslack

[Thomas Guyot-Sionnest]

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On 09/10/09 04:22 AM, Stuart Winter wrote:
> Hi Thomas
> 
>> enterprise-grade VPN devices out of SheevaPlugs (implementing HA,
>> Atateful failovers, Firewall, QoS on a single vlan-tagged interface).
> 
> Cool.  Have you looked at the OpenRD which has 2Gbit interfaces?
> They're more expensive than the SheevaPlug and the kernel support isn't
> finished yet, but I plan to make ARMedslack installable on that too.

Yeah, the client version + case is $300; that's pretty expensive
compared to the $99 Sheevaplug which has a target retail price of
$40-$60! Besides, I'd use a second Gbit port and a RS232 one but I don't
need all those USB, [e]SATA, VGA & other ports! If I want a serial port
for HA I can use a cheap usb dongle too...

>> would feel much more comfortable using a cross-compile environment - I
>> used to run one from a PowerPC (YDL) for my OpenWRT router and it was
>> pretty nice. If there's no documentation specific to ARMEdslack I will
>> build one as I'd like to create images from my dev platform (x86) and
>> use them straight in Qemu/Sheeva (I'll probably hack the installer too...).
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean here.  Why would you need to do anything to the
> installer?  The installer is not related to any compilation environment.

The idea is to build usable images straight from the build computer
(x86). If there's anything build into the installer to automate the
proces I'll use that (I'm not talking about tagfiles but rather all the
rest).

> ARMedslack's packages are compiled on a SheevaPlug (or what ever machine
> is free which is the correct release and has the most up to date
> installation), and using distcc is sent to a cluster of x86 machines
> running a cross compiler that has the identical versions of glibc,
> binutils and gcc as the Slackware ARM host.  So I get the benefits of
> having fast compilation times and having the packages work correctly.
> 
> If you're building an entire OS, cross compiling really isn't much fun
> because many packages' build systems aren't made to cross compile so you'd
> have to modify them.  The best part is when the Makefile tries to execute
> a binary just compiled in order to process some data -- an example of
> which is ncurses.  This is why the first ARMedslack was built inside of
> "Scratchbox" - www.scratchbox.org

Oh... Yeah.. Openwrt is pretty basic (fits in like <1MB MTD
partition!!), obviously there's no ncurses! ;)

distcc is a very nice solution - I haven't though of it :)

> I don't know of any distribution apart from Emdebian, which does not build
> their packages natively.

Ångström, and any distribution based on OpenEmbedded.

http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/

>> Also it looks like the kernel support UBIFS but there's no instructions
>> for using it. IMHO it should not only be documented but also the
>> recommended filesystem as it is much better in many technical aspects.
> 
> You're talking about installation of the OS onto the NAND flash on the
> SheevaPlug?  I don't know how to support that for a couple of reasons:
>  1. I didn't spend enough time looking
>  2. The NAND on the SheevaPlug is 512MB in size which isn't enough to
>     put a full installation of Slackware (~4GB) on to.  A full
>     installation is the recommended way to install Slackware.
>     Therefore I'd have to maintain a list of packages of a slimmed
>     down installation.

I strip down my installs all the time - who needs a GUI on a server? ;)
I have my default set of tagfiles for that purpose...

> If somebody wanted to maintain a list of packages that could fit inside
> 512MB and still leave enough space for the running system, then the "tag
> files" could be added to the installer image and presented as an
> installation option.

I can do that, just not right now though.

> I'd *like* to be able to do it because I believe it'd be useful
> but I don't have time to maintain it.

Once it's done it's pretty easy to maintain - you just have to follow
packages removal, addition & splits and make sure it still fits.

>> PS: Could the mailing list be linked to from the main ARMedslack page?
>> I'm not sure if I missed something but I had to do a Google search to
>> find it.
> 
> It is on the front page of www.armedslack.org.

Oh.. Just found the tiny section :). I'm not a web designer but I
believe it could help is there was links (to page anchors) on the side
or on the top...

Thanks

- --
Thomas
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