Mailing List Archive

On 5/23/2019 18:42, Florian 'rephlex' Panzer wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> In a long and tedious journey through LFS helper systems, cross-compiler
> environments and building netbooting old green boxes off bootp, I
> finally managed to put together a working up-to-date gentoo running on
> the SGI Octane. And yes, all the packages are the latest and greatest.
>
> It has all the hardware working (even audio!), runs on kernel 4.12 and
> even runs Xorg - IF you downgrade xorg to a 2012-ish version using raw
> force.
>
> Here's the tarball:
>
> https://rephlex.de/blog/2019/05/10/gentoo-octane-a-modern-gnu-linux-system-for-the-sgi-octane-workstation/
>
> Enjoy!
>
> Maybe somebody working on gentoo/MIPS could use this to build a proper
> gentoo release (?), and maybe this is even useful for other MIPS machines.
> Of course, the kernel sources are included - and boy, they contain some
> assorted patches to support all the funny hardware!
>
>
> ------ Slightly OT below this line ------
>
> You read that right, I hat xorg running, but in an old version. The only
> thing that keeps us from having a *current* version of xorg running on
> the octane's impact card is is the fact that xorg changed its module API
> around 2010-2012.
>
> If someone could help modifying the xf86-video-impact module init
> functions to work under a current version of xorg, we could make impact
> great again (the head of current work on this matter is here:
> https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/rephlex/xf86-video-impact)
>
>
> Regards,

Thanks for this. I've actually been working on new stages and a new
netboot, but very slowly, as I haven't had much time available. I'm hoping
to put something out after the US Memorial Day holiday after I can build new
kernels (4.18.20) with the current netboot image. The stages themselves are
based off of a 20190323 portage snapshot (it takes about 2 months to fully
build complete stages for six different targets). Userland is based on
gcc-8.3.0, binutils-2.32, and glibc-2.29. I have a uclibc-ng target
(MIPS-II, o32) as well.

Porting work to kernel 4.19 has been started and is mostly complete, except
the recent DMA API changes are still a blocker. There's been renewed
upstream activity on fixing the SGI IP27 (Onyx/Origin) machines, from which
IP30 is related, so that will probably further slow down new kernels until
the dust settles.

I am also working on building up a musl target (MIPS-III, o32), but this
will take awhile as I have to start from scratch on that (currently piecing
together a seed stage for catalyst).

--
Joshua Kinard
Gentoo/MIPS
kumba@gentoo.org
rsa6144/5C63F4E3F5C6C943 2015-04-27
177C 1972 1FB8 F254 BAD0 3E72 5C63 F4E3 F5C6 C943

"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And
our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."

--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic

On 24/5/19 9:02 am, Joshua Kinard wrote:
> The stages themselves are
> based off of a 20190323 portage snapshot (it takes about 2 months to fully
> build complete stages for six different targets).

Not sure if you're building natively or not… I've found QEMU these days
runs mips(el)(64) targets decently on modern hardware, as that's what I
used to bootstrap mips64el n64 stages for Loongson a couple of years ago.

I'm told the same instructions used today hit a bump in the road
regarding gdbm and gettext bickering about infrastructure ("gettext
infrastructure mismatch")… evidently a bug that can be reproduced on a
straight AMD64 system so possibly not a cross-compile bug per-se. I
think someone who knows more about those two packages than me could
probably solve it.

I did have a crack at musl, didn't seem to get past first base with
`crossdev`.

Ultimately that might be the answer though, because let's face it, even
the Yeeloong doesn't have oodles of RAM and it's not like backward ABI
compatibility with proprietary glibc-linked applications is a concern on
MIPS.

Regards,
--
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.