Support here too much biased towards kernels...?!

AmigaOne X5000 platform specific issues related to Linux only.
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Roland
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Joined: Tue May 02, 2017 7:23 am

Support here too much biased towards kernels...?!

Post by Roland »

This is only my opinion but the few support people here seem to be too much concentrated to just making new kernel versions... For end users, it is really not necessary to get every single subversion of newest betas! The long terms will do for most users, and the efforts should be more biased toward the distros itself and to solve the problems in their installation and use.

My experience has been lately that it is waste of time ask anything here about Fedora, which I think is peciliar... However, it is currently the ONLY WELL SUPPORTED AND SERIOUSLY DEVELOPED distro for X5000! The other ones (32-bit Ubuntus and Debian) are already abandoned and thus dead-end products, or far from being usable for X5000 end user (Tumbleweed). So, why not concentrate to support Fedora also here?

Just my two cents...
- Roland -
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Skateman
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Re: Support here too much biased towards kernels...?!

Post by Skateman »

I just hope more PPC linux distros will become available soon..
It might help if the Acube PPC laptop wil become available one day... https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/

Here a link to some distros as well http://bgafc.t-hosting.hu/oses4ppc.php

Besides that, all effort made by people is very welcome. So if new kernels are being compiled, i am willing to test them.
AmigaOne X5000 -> 2GHz / 16GB RAM / Radeon RX 570 / Radeon X1950 / M-Audio 5.1 -> AmigaOS / Linux
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caseycullen
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Re: Support here too much biased towards kernels...?!

Post by caseycullen »

Debian PPC64 is an active port.
Fedora and OpenSUSE also have active PPC64 ports.

I agree that support tends to focus on Debian and Debian-based distros; hopefully interest in Linux on PPC grows, and with more people there will be greater opportunity for more people to test and troubleshoot more distros.

It is important for people to test kernels and catch bugs because the kernel is the foundation for everything else, on all distros. If bugs go unnoticed for too long and bug reports aren't submitted we could eventually find ourselves in a huge mess. For example, Kernel 4.1 LTS was released in 2015 and is still supported; so if we were all using it without testing new kernels something could have been broken long ago without noticing. This recently happened; something went wrong in 2016 that broke the kernel on Power4 processors, and it was just recently noticed, so rather than fix it they dropped support for Power4.

---Casey
kas1e
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Re: Support here too much biased towards kernels...?!

Post by kas1e »

@caseycullen
Debian PPC64 is an active port.
Fedora and OpenSUSE also have active PPC64 ports.
Is any of them support x5000 out of box ? I.e. to be able just download iso , burn it on dvd, and boot from it on x5k ?

I tried yesterday ubuntu-mate, i.e. just download ubuntu-mate-16.04.1-desktop-powerpc.iso , burn it on DVD, and tryed to boot from on x5k : no luck. So start curious, if any of linux supported well enough so anyone can download it from some official site, burn on DVD and boot from.
Roland
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Re: Support here too much biased towards kernels...?!

Post by Roland »

caseycullen wrote:Debian PPC64 is an active port.
This is something I realized just quite recently, having only the 32-bit version... What is the best route to install it on X5000?
Fedora and OpenSUSE also have active PPC64 ports.
I was of course meaning these in my message (the 32-bit versions for AmigaOne are very ancient!). I abandoned Tumbleweed because it was slow and the updates were almost impossible to install due to missing depndencies. You have to be an expert to use and maintain such distro... In contrast, Fedora (26) has been very fast and the updates has installed themselves so far without any 'technical' problems. The only problem is the lacking knowledge...
It is important for people to test kernels and catch bugs because the kernel is the foundation for everything else, on all distros. If bugs go unnoticed for too long and bug reports aren't submitted we could eventually find ourselves in a huge mess. For example, Kernel 4.1 LTS was released in 2015 and is still supported; so if we were all using it without testing new kernels something could have been broken long ago without noticing. This recently happened; something went wrong in 2016 that broke the kernel on Power4 processors, and it was just recently noticed, so rather than fix it they dropped support for Power4.
The sad thing is that even long time ago reported bugs are not always fixed in kernels... Good examples are the problems with Envy24HT and RTL 8169 cards, for which I have waited a fix in every new kernel, without luck. Finally, when MOS 3.10 came out I decided to downgrade to RTL 8139, which works with all the three OS lines for X5000!
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Roland
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Re: Support here too much biased towards kernels...?!

Post by Roland »

kas1e wrote: Is any of them support x5000 out of box ? I.e. to be able just download iso , burn it on dvd, and boot from it on x5k ?

I tried yesterday ubuntu-mate, i.e. just download ubuntu-mate-16.04.1-desktop-powerpc.iso , burn it on DVD, and tryed to boot from on x5k : no luck. So start curious, if any of linux supported well enough so anyone can download it from some official site, burn on DVD and boot from.
I'am afraid the answer is no. With the current U-Boot version that might be very difficult task, if not impossible...?

But for older AmigaOne models, there is this:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/vie ... orum=34&61

(Let's hope Hypex will next do the same for X5000 !-)
- Roland -
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Re: Support here too much biased towards kernels...?!

Post by kas1e »

@Roland
I'am afraid the answer is no.
Yeah, i also tried for now to burn some ISO of fedora26 ppc64, and it can't boot too. It has the same symptoms of show nothing on serial and on screen, just can't go futher after initial x5000 boot logo. So .. how to install it all then, if DVD/CD isos can't boot ? Only USB way ?
Roland
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Re: Support here too much biased towards kernels...?!

Post by Roland »

kas1e wrote:Yeah, i also tried for now to burn some ISO of fedora26 ppc64, and it can't boot too. It has the same symptoms of show nothing on serial and on screen, just can't go futher after initial x5000 boot logo. So .. how to install it all then, if DVD/CD isos can't boot ? Only USB way ?
Yes, I hink the USB way is after all the simplest path. But you need a machine/OS in which you can copy (e.g with DD) the first image on a USB medium. When you get your first Linux running in X5000, you can install more easily the next ones.

I downloaded the partition image for Fedora26 from this link: http://www.xenosoft.de/fedora26.img.gz

In U-Boot, I have chosen to split the needed env settings in three separate sets, which I can modify and combine individually to run each distro from the different Boot menu items available:

l0d=setenv bootargs root=/dev/sdc2 rootdelay=9 radeon.pcie_gen2=1
l0f=setenv bootargs root=/dev/sdc3 rootdelay=9 radeon.pcie_gen2=1
l0m=setenv bootargs root=/dev/sdb3 rootdelay=9 radeon.pcie_gen2=1
l0s=setenv bootargs root=/dev/sdc1 rootdelay=9 radeon.pcie_gen2=1
l0u=setenv bootargs root=/dev/sdb2 rootdelay=9 radeon.pcie_gen2=1
l1=fatload usb 0:1 1000000 uImage-4.14.31;fatload usb 0:1 2000000 cyrus_5020.dtb
l2=bootm 1000000 - 2000000

ethernetboot=usb reset;run l0d l1 l2
harddiskboot=usb reset;run l0f l1 l2
linuxboot=usb reset;run l0u l1 l2
massboot=usb reset;run l0m l1 l2
opticalboot=usb reset;run l0s l1 l2

(d=debian, f=fedora, u=ubuntu, m=mate remix, s=suse)

This way you can run 5 different distros directly from the Boot menus !-)
- Roland -
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xeno74
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Re: Support here too much biased towards kernels...?!

Post by xeno74 »

Roland wrote:What is the best route to install it on X5000?
Hi Roland,

I created a small image of Debian Buster/Sid PPC64 last year.

Link to the thread

Please try it.

Cheers,
Christian
http://www.amigalinux.org
http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
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xeno74
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Re: Support here too much biased towards kernels...?!

Post by xeno74 »

Roland wrote: Yes, I hink the USB way is after all the simplest path. But you need a machine/OS in which you can copy (e.g with DD) the first image on a USB medium.
Yes, that’s correct. You can also use the USB Image Tool on Windows for copying the images.

Download: usbit.zip
http://www.amigalinux.org
http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
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