Ralf,
> Thanks for putting together the Root disks! I have a couple
> of questions...
>
> Is the source available yet for all of these files?
Of course, yes. Most of the stuff are ordinary GNU programs. For some
of them I needed some patches but nothing big. Just include one headerfile
here and comment out line that conflict with libc declarations. The
GNU libc is _very_ aggressive about this. When I find the time I'll
clean up my sources and put the diffs on FTP.
It would
> be a good test of the system, once I get my machine booting, to try to
> rebuild them on Linux/MIPS. If things aren't stable enough yet, I
> would understand.
All binaries except Binutils, GCC, Libc and the kernel itself have been
built under Linux/MIPS without problems. For the mentioned programs there
are the following problems:
- Binutils: I didn't try this yet.
- GCC: Is too big to build with full optimization on a 8mb machine.
- Libc: building libc does very much I/O and would probably take a century
on a diskless machine. There is also some problem with signal handlers
that breaks enquire.
- Building the kernel fails because bash has some bug that makes it unusable
for interactive use. Nasty because the current shell ash is that
user friendly. (Hmmm ... I should try my luck with the tcsh. It's my
favourite shell anyway ...)
- Perl:
Compile dies with a signal. Might be that the compiler/binutils binaries
use a ancient libc, might also be the above mentioned signal bug or even
something completly different.
Since days I want to take the time to buy an IDE disk for my MIPS (SCSI
for the 53C94 is in the works btw.) I've already tested this; with
lokal disk (-> buffer cache gets used) and swap the machine starts to
behave like I'd expect a R4400 machine to behave: *fast*. Not a like
a topend machine but real fun to work with.
> Also, would you be willing to take additional time in making
> these images so they aren't quite as large? 22M is about the limit
> that I can go over my link to the outside world w/o seriously
> negatively impacting other users. If not, then I might be able to
> arrange for other channels to get these files, but I thought I'd ask.
> Are things to the point yet where this makes sense?
I admit that the size of the archive is far beyond the point where it is
still reasonable to distribute it as single file. For the future I
want to use ordinary tar files for a single binary package which would
make upgrading easier. As soon as I get the Debian scripts required
for package generation/installation running I want to start compiling
a real MIPS package. My current problem is that Perl 5 doesn't build.
> Is it too early to talk about installation strategies yet :-)?
Definately not. See above.
> Thanks again for the root disk...
>
> That was the other thing... I had asked a while ago if I can put all
> these files on a disk created with Linux/Intel ext2fs and then hope to
> be able to mount that disk correctly with Linux/MIPS. I don't recall
> seeing an answer coming back...
Yes, the filesystems are compatible. If real live should proof them to
be incompatible it's a bug.
Ralf
|