Mailing List Archive: INDY installation problems + solutions

Hi,

below a shortened and only partially accurate (since not everything
was noted) installation log and comments for my indy with gentoo mips.
The time period covered is from somewhere start of march or so till
now, some of the issues has gone away since then but not all, it might
be of some help to other ppl trying to install gentoo-mips on the indy
I'll try to figure out how to file bug reports etc for the stuff i
encountered that i could fix.

Aim was to install gentoo-mips is possible with hardened patches etc.
The hardened part is currently on a small part since i didn't investigate
it and the initial point was to install it.

Tried to do it following the gentoo mips install guide. (url?)

- image: ip22-r4k-20050128.img
broke keyboard support on my indy reverted to:
ip22-r4k-20040627.img
which worked very well.

- stage tarballs are not available, need to look into experimental directory
and then they are quite old 2004.3 doesn't contain a stage 1 or 2 tarbal
reverted to old ones.
experimental/mips/stages/mips4/stage1-mips4-20040713.tar.bz2

- mips4 crashes on me, wrong arch probably i have an indy ip22 so lets try
mips3 experimental/mips/stages/mips3/stage1-mips3-20040713.tar.bz2

- got latest portage(portage-20050301.tar.bz2)

- emerge --sync worked after some retries. (probably network problems
nothing serious)

- got error: str object has no attribute insert
google-> profile problem resetted profile to usr/portage/profiles/mips-linux-2004.1
got errors on bootstrap but non fatal only "profile not support or some such"
still compiling.

- popt doesn't want to compile doesn't recognize os, is because it
tries to determine big vs little endian using /proc/cpuinfo
but /proc/cpuinfo doesn't contain that info anymore starting from
.2.4.20 upwards. little compile hack, will send a bug report

- setting up distcc on fast machine along with cross compilition.
using the instruction from:

This is all resolved with the new cross-dev package so the stuff
about cross compiling is removed if someone is still interested
please email me.

- vlock works as well mips can be added to keywords i think. (just
on tested on indy)

Trying to install the kernel 2.6.10-r1 masked with -* and ~mips
lets see :)

make MAKE='make -j10' CC='distcc mips-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc' CROSS_COMPILE=mips-unknown-linux-gnu-'

- arcboot masked by ~mips.
(just cross compilation problems are solved now)

- dvhtool might want to mention that you need to add -d /dev/sdb
if you didn't install on the primary disk.

- X:
needed in Section Module:
load xaa

- lots of packages at least compile and run, can be masked ~mips i
think including cryptsetup and devicemapper

--
gentoo-mips@gentoo.org mailing list

> Tried to do it following the gentoo mips install guide. (url?)
>
>
> - image: ip22-r4k-20050128.img
> broke keyboard support on my indy reverted to:

Known issue, unknown how to fix it just now.

>
> - stage tarballs are not available, need to look into experimental directory
> and then they are quite old 2004.3 doesn't contain a stage 1 or 2 tarbal
> reverted to old ones.

We have 2005.0 stages, plus stage1 and stage2 tarballs are next to
completely useless on mips. You won't gain any performance by ricing
out your CFLAGS.

> - mips4 crashes on me, wrong arch probably i have an indy ip22 so lets try
> mips3 experimental/mips/stages/mips3/stage1-mips3-20040713.tar.bz2

Did you read the install docs carefully? The mips4 tarballs are for
R5000 and higher processors.

> - got error: str object has no attribute insert
> google-> profile problem resetted profile to usr/portage/profiles/mips-linux-2004.1
> got errors on bootstrap but non fatal only "profile not support or some such"
> still compiling.

That's just because the old stages have an old portage and use the
non-cascading profiles. This isn't an issue anymore.

> - popt doesn't want to compile doesn't recognize os, is because it
> tries to determine big vs little endian using /proc/cpuinfo
> but /proc/cpuinfo doesn't contain that info anymore starting from
> .2.4.20 upwards. little compile hack, will send a bug report

No bug report needed...I suspect you had this problem because you aren't
using a cascaded profile that defaults to FEATURES="autoconfig"

> - vlock works as well mips can be added to keywords i think. (just
> on tested on indy)

File a keywording bug report.

> Trying to install the kernel 2.6.10-r1 masked with -* and ~mips
> lets see :)

2.6.10 works for me on ip22, but doesn't work for everybody. This is
why it is still ~mips. Plus pretty much all of the machines that
support 2.6 kernels are considered experimental.

> make MAKE='make -j10' CC='distcc mips-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc' CROSS_COMPILE=mips-unknown-linux-gnu-'

Ten make jobs is really excessive on an indy, even if you are using
distcc. Remember, linking and preprocessing is still done on the indy,
and Indys max out at 256mb of RAM...which most people don't have. I
suspect this slowed your compile down a lot. Try using something more sane.

> - arcboot masked by ~mips.

This package doesn't work on all of our supported machines and has a
couple of experimental patches if I'm not mistaken. This is why it is
still ~mips.

> - dvhtool might want to mention that you need to add -d /dev/sdb
> if you didn't install on the primary disk.

When you run dvhtool --help, it prints this out...do we really need to
spoon feed everyone?

> - X:
> needed in Section Module:
> load xaa

Yeah, this only recently changed with the revamped newport patch.
However, X really isn't part of the install docs, so we have no place to
put this information. I'll probably be working up some sort of X on
mips howto eventually.

> - lots of packages at least compile and run, can be masked ~mips i
> think including cryptsetup and devicemapper

You need to file bugs for these. And *please* do not file a separate
bug for every single package. Just make a big list and put it in one
keywording bug.

Just for your information, a good portion of your issues were with using
old stage tarballs and the old non-cascading profiles. And, like I
said, starting from stage1 or stage2 on mips is pretty much a total
waste of your time. You should have just gone with the stage3 2004.3
and you wouldn't have had nearly as many problems I think. You could
also have asked on irc or the mailing list, and we would have pointed
you to the link for the 2005.0 stages.

-Steve

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