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Stephen P. Becker schrieb: |
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> Tomasz Chmielewski wrote: |
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> |
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>> I was wondering if gentoo-mips is a right distribution/tool for me. |
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>> |
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>> Here's the summary what I have and what I want to achieve. |
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>> |
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>> I am interested in porting apps for wrt54 and similar hardware (they |
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>> have Broadcom CPUs). When I connect a 2 GB usb-stick to such a device |
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>> (i.e., to ASUS WL-500g Deluxe or to any other device listed on |
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>> http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware), a small router could turn |
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>> into a really useful, rock-stable (no moving parts like hard-disk, fan |
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>> etc.), cheap, small, quiet, multi-purpose device (domain controller, |
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>> print server, web server etc.). |
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> |
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> |
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> A good idea...which is already facilitated by openwrt. |
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Indeed. |
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That's what I'm using on these routers. |
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>> As compiling software on these devices directly isn't really a good |
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>> idea, at first I thought I'd just cross-compile the software. |
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>> However, very often, cross-compiling is not that easy (sometimes |
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>> involves lots of patching, which in my case turned out to be |
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>> duplicating someone's job). |
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> |
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> |
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> Duplicating...you mean like the work openwrt has already done? |
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Either openwrt or gentoo-mips folks. |
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It seems to me that there is a chance that gentoo-mips will have more |
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apps ported than openwrt (which doesn't really have many applications |
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ported). |
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>> So I searched the web a bit, and came to a conclusion: |
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>> |
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>> I have to run gentoo-mips in qemu on my x86 hardware, compile/port |
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>> apps there, strip the binaries, and move them to these tiny routers. |
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>> |
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>> Is my thinking correct? |
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> |
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> |
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> Theoretically, our mipsel uclibc stages would let you do that, except |
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> that apparently qemu for mips still has problems with userland programs. |
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Have you read qemu 0.8.0 changelog? It was released a couple of days ago. |
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- MIPS and MIPSel User Linux emulation |
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> That and I don't think qemu is particularly fast. |
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Whatever slow it is, it will be faster than trying to compile anything |
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natively on these tiny routers :) |
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>> Will such compiled software compiled on gentoo-mips run on |
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>> Broadcom-based routers? |
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> |
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> |
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> If you use the mipsel uclibc stages, and optimize for -march=mips32, sure. |
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So, this means, that if I build a whole gentoo-mips under qemu - sounds |
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easy, doesn't it? :), with mipsel uclibc stages/-march=mips32, almost |
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each and every binary copied from such a system should run on these tiny |
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routers? |
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I'm quite new to other architectures than x86. |
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>> Or maybe I just should give up this idea, as it's totally wrong from |
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>> the beginning? |
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> |
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> |
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> This is really the smartest thing you have said thus far. Gentoo is |
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> really not set up to run on these devices. It is far too heavy to |
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> directly run on them (they don't have enough RAM, and typically not |
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> enough disk space), and cross-compiling everything is a pain in the ass. |
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> Folks behind distros like openwrt have already done a lot of hard work |
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> porting apps and making them compile inside of their buildroot environment. |
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I never intended to run gentoo on these tiny routers. |
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I just thought that compiling/porting software for openwrt/mips on |
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gentoo-mips would be easier than compiling software for mips on a x86 |
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system (I'm really not a cross-compiling expert; and not everything is |
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ported to openwrt). |
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>> I could check it myself, but as I failed to run the gentoo-mips livecd |
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>> in quemu, I'd like to know if I'm doing something reasonable before I |
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>> invest some time in running gentoo-mips on qemu. |
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> |
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> |
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> The gentoo-mips livecd is definitely not what you want. The userland on |
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> the cd and included kernels are only for big endian SGI hardware. It |
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> has no chance of working on anything else. If I recall, qemu emulates a |
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> little endian, MIPS 4kc cpu. |
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Now I see why it didn't even start. |
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-- |
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Tomek |
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http://wpkg.org |
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WPKG - software management with Samba |
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-- |
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