Good day all,
Many lucky Fedora users have already received their shiny new Chromebooks and have begun tinkering, with some reports of Fedora 18 up and running.
We'd like to discuss supporting this exciting device and adding another kernel variant for the Exynos 5 SoC. Has anyone looked into upstream support and its status? Is anyone attempting to build their own kernel?
What's working so far? What's not?
Paul
On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Paul Whalen pwhalen@redhat.com wrote:
Good day all,
Many lucky Fedora users have already received their shiny new Chromebooks and have begun tinkering, with some reports of Fedora 18 up and running.
We'd like to discuss supporting this exciting device and adding another kernel variant for the Exynos 5 SoC. Has anyone looked into upstream support and its status? Is anyone attempting to build their own kernel?
I've begun working on it. There's not upstream support for it yet, not even in 3.7 so in the short term it would be a Remix kernel. I'm hoping to get an initial remix kernel built by next week some time but others are going to need to test as I don't have the relevant HW to do so myself. The patch set to support it is quite large so I'm not even going to consider adding patches to 3.6 or even 3.7. Maybe for 3.8.
On top of the kernel we need to look at the 2D X driver. There's a upstream omap style driver in process but as it's a pure copy from omap is also currently conflicts with the omap driver.
Other things we'll need to look at are: - uboot - I think like trimslice this is in a SPI flash so we can likely just work out what version/features/fork that it has so we work out whether it uses boot.scr or uEnv.txt or what recipe is needed to make it boot the kernel - if we need various Firmware for any of the HW, whether it's upstream in the linux-firmware package and if it's not whether we can get it added there or need to deal with packaging it separately. The former would be by far the easiest :-)
The above should get us basic Panda style usable support and from there we need to look at various other HW support (sound etc) and optimising the platform (both performance and power)
Peter
On 11/15/2012 09:49 AM, Peter Robinson wrote:
On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Paul Whalen pwhalen@redhat.com wrote:
Good day all,
Many lucky Fedora users have already received their shiny new Chromebooks and have begun tinkering, with some reports of Fedora 18 up and running.
Around Christmas I also got a Samsung arm-based Chromebook. I managed to get a F18 test images for the panda board running using the existing kernel from chromeos.
We'd like to discuss supporting this exciting device and adding another kernel variant for the Exynos 5 SoC. Has anyone looked into upstream support and its status? Is anyone attempting to build their own kernel?
I've begun working on it. There's not upstream support for it yet, not even in 3.7 so in the short term it would be a Remix kernel. I'm hoping to get an initial remix kernel built by next week some time but others are going to need to test as I don't have the relevant HW to do so myself. The patch set to support it is quite large so I'm not even going to consider adding patches to 3.6 or even 3.7. Maybe for 3.8.
On top of the kernel we need to look at the 2D X driver. There's a upstream omap style driver in process but as it's a pure copy from omap is also currently conflicts with the omap driver.
SystemTap really needs to have kernels with debuginfo and devel files around so it can build instrumentation modules. The kernel borrowed from chrome os doesn't provide those, so systemtap isn't too useful at the moment. I was looking around and came across the following URL talking about locally building kernel for chromeos that might be useful for the Fedora work:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/109993695638569781190/posts/34PYU79eUqP
It should provide some details on what exactly in in the kernel being used on the samsung chrome book and the options being used to build a working kernel.
I am willing to be a test subject if you have a kernel you want to try out.
Other things we'll need to look at are:
- uboot - I think like trimslice this is in a SPI flash so we can
likely just work out what version/features/fork that it has so we work out whether it uses boot.scr or uEnv.txt or what recipe is needed to make it boot the kernel
- if we need various Firmware for any of the HW, whether it's upstream
in the linux-firmware package and if it's not whether we can get it added there or need to deal with packaging it separately. The former would be by far the easiest :-)
The above should get us basic Panda style usable support and from there we need to look at various other HW support (sound etc) and optimising the platform (both performance and power)
Peter
-Will
On 01/03/2013 10:24 PM, William Cohen wrote:
On 11/15/2012 09:49 AM, Peter Robinson wrote:
On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Paul Whalen pwhalen@redhat.com wrote:
Good day all,
Many lucky Fedora users have already received their shiny new Chromebooks and have begun tinkering, with some reports of Fedora 18 up and running.
Around Christmas I also got a Samsung arm-based Chromebook. I managed to get a F18 test images for the panda board running using the existing kernel from chromeos.
We'd like to discuss supporting this exciting device and adding another kernel variant for the Exynos 5 SoC. Has anyone looked into upstream support and its status? Is anyone attempting to build their own kernel?
I've begun working on it. There's not upstream support for it yet, not even in 3.7 so in the short term it would be a Remix kernel. I'm hoping to get an initial remix kernel built by next week some time but others are going to need to test as I don't have the relevant HW to do so myself. The patch set to support it is quite large so I'm not even going to consider adding patches to 3.6 or even 3.7. Maybe for 3.8.
On top of the kernel we need to look at the 2D X driver. There's a upstream omap style driver in process but as it's a pure copy from omap is also currently conflicts with the omap driver.
SystemTap really needs to have kernels with debuginfo and devel files around so it can build instrumentation modules. The kernel borrowed from chrome os doesn't provide those, so systemtap isn't too useful at the moment. I was looking around and came across the following URL talking about locally building kernel for chromeos that might be useful for the Fedora work:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/109993695638569781190/posts/34PYU79eUqP
It should provide some details on what exactly in in the kernel being used on the samsung chrome book and the options being used to build a working kernel.
I am willing to be a test subject if you have a kernel you want to try out.
I have posted some notes describing what needs be done to be building a kernel for the samsung arm crhome book and installing it. However, this is theoretical outline rather than fully tested, guaranteed set of steps to install the kernel:
http://people.redhat.com/wcohen/chromebook/
-Will
Hi William, Peter, all,
I think most people know this, but for completeness, there is a kernel fix now for the analog speaker mux issue (melting speaker problem). It will soon be possible to run a system without relying on the correct ALSA profile being installed to prevent overheating. I know Peter and William have looked at the patches. It will be great to b able to encourage more people to install Fedora on Chromebooks :)
Jon.
I thought you were going to have a hack fest on it @ FUDCon, did that not happen?
P
On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Jonathan Masters jcm@redhat.com wrote:
Hi William, Peter, all,
I think most people know this, but for completeness, there is a kernel fix now for the analog speaker mux issue (melting speaker problem). It will soon be possible to run a system without relying on the correct ALSA profile being installed to prevent overheating. I know Peter and William have looked at the patches. It will be great to b able to encourage more people to install Fedora on Chromebooks :)
Jon.
-- Sent from my iPad
On Jan 20, 2013, at 11:52, William Cohen wcohen@redhat.com wrote:
On 01/03/2013 10:24 PM, William Cohen wrote:
On 11/15/2012 09:49 AM, Peter Robinson wrote:
On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Paul Whalen pwhalen@redhat.com wrote:
Good day all,
Many lucky Fedora users have already received their shiny new Chromebooks and have begun tinkering, with some reports of Fedora 18 up and running.
Around Christmas I also got a Samsung arm-based Chromebook. I managed to get a F18 test images for the panda board running using the existing kernel from chromeos.
We'd like to discuss supporting this exciting device and adding another kernel variant for the Exynos 5 SoC. Has anyone looked into upstream support and its status? Is anyone attempting to build their own kernel?
I've begun working on it. There's not upstream support for it yet, not even in 3.7 so in the short term it would be a Remix kernel. I'm hoping to get an initial remix kernel built by next week some time but others are going to need to test as I don't have the relevant HW to do so myself. The patch set to support it is quite large so I'm not even going to consider adding patches to 3.6 or even 3.7. Maybe for 3.8.
On top of the kernel we need to look at the 2D X driver. There's a upstream omap style driver in process but as it's a pure copy from omap is also currently conflicts with the omap driver.
SystemTap really needs to have kernels with debuginfo and devel files around so it can build instrumentation modules. The kernel borrowed from chrome os doesn't provide those, so systemtap isn't too useful at the moment. I was looking around and came across the following URL talking about locally building kernel for chromeos that might be useful for the Fedora work:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/109993695638569781190/posts/34PYU79eUqP
It should provide some details on what exactly in in the kernel being used on the samsung chrome book and the options being used to build a working kernel.
I am willing to be a test subject if you have a kernel you want to try out.
I have posted some notes describing what needs be done to be building a kernel for the samsung arm crhome book and installing it. However, this is theoretical outline rather than fully tested, guaranteed set of steps to install the kernel:
http://people.redhat.com/wcohen/chromebook/
-Will _______________________________________________ arm mailing list arm@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/arm
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 2:10 AM, Peter Robinson pbrobinson@gmail.comwrote:
I thought you were going to have a hack fest on it @ FUDCon, did that not happen?
We did have some hacking going on, Will Cohen and I spent most of our time on the chromebooks. I'll try to publish a report soon =)
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 12:41:52PM -0600, Jon wrote:
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 2:10 AM, Peter Robinson pbrobinson@gmail.comwrote:
I thought you were going to have a hack fest on it @ FUDCon, did that not happen?
We did have some hacking going on, Will Cohen and I spent most of our time on the chromebooks. I'll try to publish a report soon =)
Very cool. Will sits next to me at work so I can pick his brain. He's the reason I bought a Chromebook in the first place. :)
On 01/21/2013 01:41 PM, Jon wrote:
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 2:10 AM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson@gmail.com mailto:pbrobinson@gmail.com> wrote:
I thought you were going to have a hack fest on it @ FUDCon, did that not happen?We did have some hacking going on, Will Cohen and I spent most of our time on the chromebooks. I'll try to publish a report soon =)
A vboot-utils rpm is need to install a kernel or uboot for the samsung chromebook. Having an official vboot-utils in Fedora will be really helpful and allow fedora to roll its own chromebook kernels. I suspect that this will also be need for x86 based chrome books.
The vboot upstream code is in flux, so some versions of the git tree didn't build. We spent some time trying to track down the specific problem. Jon, did you narrow down which checkin in the git tree was causing the problems with the builds?
Jon, feel free to post work-in-progress and ask questions so any probems are resolved quickly. I would really like to get rid of the hacky vboot-utils that I am currently using.
-Will
On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 12:42 PM, William Cohen wcohen@redhat.com wrote:
On 01/21/2013 01:41 PM, Jon wrote:
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 2:10 AM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson@gmail.com<mailto:
pbrobinson@gmail.com>> wrote:
I thought you were going to have a hack fest on it @ FUDCon, did that not happen?We did have some hacking going on, Will Cohen and I spent most of our
time on the chromebooks.
I'll try to publish a report soon =)
A vboot-utils rpm is need to install a kernel or uboot for the samsung chromebook. Having an official vboot-utils in Fedora will be really helpful and allow fedora to roll its own chromebook kernels. I suspect that this will also be need for x86 based chrome books.
The vboot upstream code is in flux, so some versions of the git tree didn't build. We spent some time trying to track down the specific problem. Jon, did you narrow down which checkin in the git tree was causing the problems with the builds?
Jon, feel free to post work-in-progress and ask questions so any probems are resolved quickly. I would really like to get rid of the hacky vboot-utils that I am currently using.
-Will
I believe I've narrowed down the issues with vboot_reference and will be moving forward with an official RPM for the Fedora project. This is my first RPM for the project, so expect some minor delay as the package is poked by the packaging team.
In the near future I'm hoping to put together an updated set of instruction on the Fedora ARM Wiki for Chromebook. After that maybe generating a remix image to make the process even easier.
-
Darryl L. Pierce -
Jon -
Jon Masters -
Paul Whalen -
Peter Robinson -
William Cohen