Hi,
> All that has changed. Now I (and as many others as our
> bosses can get who have any experience in kernel hacking)
> have been charged with getting a MIPS/Linux port working on
> one of our Star II boards. 8-)
>
> The good news is that the kernel and a serial port are
> all that are required to be working for now. The bad news
> is that they want it before Christmas - just to be able to
> show at least a limping Linux/MIPS demo and send out some
> Unix mail.
>
> So far we've grabbed a PC, dumped Linux onto it, and
> now are setting up a cross development environment. I'm
> reading:
> "Index of /ac86/linux/ALPHA/mips/crossdev/i486-linux"
> which you wrote. It lists four files needed to get started:
>
> gcc-2.6.3-2.tar.gz
> binutils-2.5.2-2.tar.gz
> include-4.6.27-2.tar.gz
> libc-4.6.27-2.tar.gz
>
> Now, the first two files were in that directory, so we
> downloaded them. However, the other two files were not
> there. There is a note in the text: "Note: If you don't
> find libc-4.6.27-2.tar.gz here, it's because a little
> problem we're still working on. Libc will appear rsn!"
Actually libc 4.x is dead. I'm working on a GNU libc port. Just have some
more days patience until I release working port of the GNU libc.
> These seem too old given the note listed above. Of
> course, the date is probably just when the link in the web
> page was made and has no relation to the dates on the files.
> But given the note and the fact that I had to go down
> another path to get to the files makes me nervous. Are
> these the right files to work with?
Seems your files are a bit out of date. The newest files are always
available from ftp.fnet.fr.
> Also, there seems to be two paths for Linux/Mips - a
> 1.2.x based one and a 1.3.x based one. We want to keep our
> Star II running big endian if we can. I gather from the
> mailing list that the 1.2.x port is more stable, but the
> 1.3.x port is more MIPS compliant (and is 'where the action
> is'). Which would you recommend we use? Is one definitely
> better than the other for starting out or are there some
> tradeoffs? I'm sure we want to be running 1.3.x eventually
> - is it a waste of time to consider 1.2.x (i.e. will waste a
> lot of effort having to start over again)? Any views you
> have on this will be greatly appreciated.
Better go 1.3. I won't put a my fingers again on 1.2. 1.2 more
reliable than 1.3 on MIPS? Definately not. Believe me, I'm the
one who wrote it ;-)
Aside of that the fact that you want to use Linux on a big endian
machine is reason enough to use the newest 1.3 kernels. The Sparc
people did some changes to the kernel for their port that should
help a lot to port Linux to a big endian MIPS machine. Well, about
that byte order stuff - I did my best to make the kernel stuff working
in both byte order. However I don't have access to a big endian machine
for kernel development so this stuff it's not tested very well.
> A related question - is the cross development
> environment mentioned above good for both 1.2.x and 1.3.x
> Linux/MIPS kernels, or is it built to handle one of them
> only?
There is no difference between the compilers & other tools for 1.2.x
and 1.3.x. The big changes that I made where the low level system
interfaces like who to do syscalls and many of the constants/structures
involved in this process. That this decission was right was already
being shown during the process of porting GNU libc to Linux/MIPS.
Where Linux/i386 is nonstandard and requires special code Linux/MIPS
can just use the normal code for other MIPS, generic System V or UNIX
systems.
Ralf
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