gentoo

I’ve now began building stages for the upcoming 2008.0 release.  This release will see the introduction of MIPS3 stages for little endian targets (ideal for Loongson 2E users).

In addition, I have my O2 compiling the big endian stages, for MIPS4, MIPS3 and MIPS1 (in that order), so this will also see the introduction of generic MIPS1 stages for big endian systems.

I’ll try to provide these where I can, however there’s no guarantee that these generic stages will continue, nor is there any support provided for non-SGI/Cobalt hardware at this time.

Apparently there’s going to be a shake-up regarding the profiles too.  The profiles used in the snapshots are completely different in structure — whether this will reflect what users see in the Portage tree or not, I’m unsure.  I’ll let you know what the deal is there in due course when I find out myself.

Hi all…

With the help of robbat2, I’ve released the full LiveUSB Image of Gentoo Linux for the Lemote Fulong, and similar systems. It consists of two parts…

• The kernel image, which can be used alone to boot the system and perform an installation, or rescue an installation.
• The live system image, in the form of a 870MB SquashFS image.

If you just want to install Gentoo, you can download the kernel image on its own, and either load it from a USB disk or TFTP server.

However, if you want a full blown desktop, you need this kernel image, plus the LiveUSB system image, which you’ll find on the mirrors under the experimental/mips/livecd/loongson-2007.1 directory. I’ve pushed this straight out, due to its considerable size. (For me anyway… remember that my ADSL link pushes data up at a whopping 128Kbps… yes… “broadband” in Australia officially sucks!)

To boot the live environment, download both to a EXT2 or EXT3 formatted partition on a USB disk (FAT32 may work, but you’ll need to tweak the URL passed to PMON2000 when loading the kernel). For simplicity, place them in the root of the directory, with the kernel named “gentoo“, and the live system named “gentoo-liveusb.sqfs“.

Boot the Lemote box up and hit DELETE when prompted. You’ll be greeted by a PMON> prompt… Enter the commands as you see below…

PMON> load /dev/fs/ext2@usb0/gentoo
PMON> g console=tty0 liveusb

The highlights…

The following are some screenshots of the desktop in action. The desktop is based on the latest 2007.1 stages, and KDE 3.5.8. When it first boots, you’re greeted by the following screen:

The desktop is provided in two languages, English (UK) and Simplified Chinese — decided according to the account you login as. Both accounts are set up in KDE as passwordless, so just click on the desired account and press ENTER. If you do happen to be asked for a password, the password on all accounts (including root) is gentoo. Once logged in, you’re greeted with a largely default KDE desktop (click to enlarge). The background image is a departure from traditional Gentoo desktops — based on a photo taken by my father whilst camping up at Biggenden.

The latest stable Mozilla browser, Bon Echo (Firefox) is included. Note that due to licensing, I’m not able to use the Firefox branding that people would be more familiar with (click to enlarge). The default homepage and bookmarks have been tweaked to have some useful relevant links for Gentoo/MIPS. The Chinese version links to versions of the documentation in Chinese where available.

Should you have a query, or wish to chat to people whilst waiting for things to install, a full IRC client and instant messenger package are provided.

A full copy of the KOffice productivity suite is included…

Multimedia playback applications such as KMPlayer, Kaffeine Player and Amarok are provided…

And last but not least… if you get bored… Quake II with qmax goodness, is available… (but bring your own game files) Sadly, hardware OpenGL isn’t working yet, but despite this, Quake II is still quite playable.

Well… there have been rumours about Gentoo dying… it certainly is alive and well from where I sit.

The last few days have been spent polishing off what will become the first LiveUSB image for the Lemote Fulong computer based on the Loongson2E processor.  The image consists of a netboot image (which can be used on its own to perform a rescue or installation), and a 870MB SquashFS image, which contains the full live OS.  I’ve set it up to be a demonstration of Gentoo on the Fulong, as well as being a useful installation environment.

Software Included:

• Complete KDE 3.5.8 desktop environment
• Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.11 (Bon Echo)
• KOffice productivity suite
• Konversation IRC client
• Amarok music player
• Video playback software (mplayer with Mozilla plugin, Kaffeine Player, kmplayer)
• Quake II qmax (bring your own game files, yes … it’s quite playable on these systems, even without 3D accel.)

The desktop is available in two languages, English and Chinese (Simplified) — you select the language at the login prompt by logging in as the appropriate user (gentoo-en or gentoo-zh) — both are password-less logins.

I’ll leave putting up screenshots until I actually release it… there’s still some kernel tweaking to do… and of course being a first ever release, the distribution should be considered alpha-grade.  I’d like to release it with at least a 2.6.23 kernel, probably 2.6.24-rcX, which should allow OpenGL capability (nice framerates in Quake II, the present kernel lasts about 5 seconds before crashing with hardware OpenGL) .  The entire build has been constructed by hand at this stage, since I’m yet to learn how to produce proper LiveCDs in catalyst

But in short, I hope to have this up before the month’s end.  It’s based on the 2007.1 stages I built at the end of last year.

Well, it’s that time of the year again, and I for one will be going bush like I normally do between Christmas day and the new year.

As far as Gentoo/MIPS is concerned, I’ve still got to get around to rebuilding my Qube2… I’ve tested my MIPS1 builds and everything seems to work, but I’ve been slack on my MIPS4 builds.  That said… the delays in this release seem to be Gentoo-wide, as everyone seems to have been caught on-the-hop.

From this Friday morning (before 10:00AM UTC+10) until Boxing day, I’ll be away from home, sporadically online via PSTN dialup to check for emails.

I’ll have my Qube2 and one of the Lemote boxes with me, so I’ll be able to do some package testing at least, as well as work on a LiveUSB image for the Lemote systems.

After boxing day, I’ll be in Gibraltar Ranges National Park, on the Gwyder Highway, halfway between Glen Innes and Grafton.  No mobile phone reception or phone services of any kind there… so if you need me for something please get in touch before then, or it’ll have to wait until I get back in the new year.  And no, I won’t be bringing any desktop or laptop computers with me. 😉

This year has been very trying on my patience.  The stress levels have been quite high, and I’ve been quite apathetic in regards to Gentoo’s issues as a result.  I’m hoping 2008 will be a better year — for all of us. 🙂

Hi All…

After much waiting, the MIPS4 stages for little-endian MIPS systems are finally built. These are targeted at Cobalt users, but may also work for users of other MIPS4 and MIPS64 systems. The 2007.1 snapshot has seen a few changes in the time it’s taken me to compile this, so I may upload some updated stages later, but in the meantime, I’d appreciate any feedback on how well these stages work.

I plan to use them to rebuild my Qube2, whose root fs has accumulated many cobwebs over the years.

You’ll find the stages on my devspace for now.

Hi All…

Well, it seems I’m done building the MIPS1 stages for little-endian MIPS well ahead of time. I used one of the Lemote Fulong systems to build these, and had stage 1, 2 and 3 done in about a day and a half — which is a record for me — the Qube2 normally takes about a week, and it’s still chugging away at stage 1.

You’ll find all the generic stages on my devspace for now. I’d greatly appreciate it if some brave users could give them a try and let me know how they go. I’m doing some tests now, and things look promising, apart from guile failing a “make check”, everything seems to be going fine. These will work on any MMU-equipped little-endian MIPS box with sufficient RAM (~128MB… 64MB if you’re absolutely desperate, but you won’t be able to rebuild system packages like gcc and glibc).

The MIPS4 builds will be a little while, since the Lemote boxes only implement up to MIPS3, I can’t use them to directly build the Cobalt stages, thus they’re being done on the Qube2. I’ll let you know as things progress, but I expect it’ll be tomorrow before I have a stage1 tarball available for MIPS4.

Hi All…

I’ve started building the seed stages that will eventually become release 2007.1, once the release engineering release their snapshot. Not sure exactly when that will occur, but I expect some time in the next fortnight or so, the builds will start in earnest.

This is the first release where I’ve used the Loongsons to do much of the compiling work. My Qube2 is in bad need of a rebuild, so it may get one this year. My experimental box, zhenghe has already compiled the stage1 and stage2 pre-release tarballs in the last day — a task that would’ve normally taken me several days on the Qube2.

The MIPS4 builds will still need to be done on the Qube2 (since the Loongsons only implement MIPS3), so I anticipate I’ll have MIPS1 builds available ahead of the MIPS4 builds, but hopefully builds for both CPU types will be available for testing by the end of the month.

At the moment I’m off-line as far as IRC and IM contact is concerned — this is because I really need to concentrate on my studies. I’m repeating one telecommunications subject that I failed last year, and things are looking really bad this year — in short, I cannot afford another 3 mark or fail if I’m to continue at uni. (If I drop out, I shall have to discontinue my work with Gentoo … a bit difficult to power a PC when you don’t have a house to call home.) So my priority is definitely with my exam studies for now.

After my exams are over, I’ll certainly be back into the swing of things… I’ve got some preliminary crude images that could form the basis of a LiveUSB image to boot a Lemote Fulong PC, and I’m starting to piece together a newer µClibc-based environment for newer netboot images on Cobalt systems. Since these require much more direct intervention (I build them by hand presently) they have to wait until then.

But for now, things are plodding along nicely, Gentoo-wise. As always, if you need to get in touch, I can be reached via email for now… and I’ll let you all know as things progress. See the front page of my devspace for a progress summary.