Hi,
Recently OLPC announced that we're working on two new ARM devices -- a laptop (XO-1.75) and tablet (XO-3), both running on Marvell's Armada 610 (MMP2) SoC:
http://blog.laptop.org/2010/05/27/xo3-marvell-and-olpc/
We're interested in shipping Fedora ARM on both devices, since we've been using Fedora on our x86 laptops all along. I've got the Fedora 12 rootfs running on an MMP2 board already, but we've got a few questions about how shipping Fedora ARM in a product would work:
* Since Fedora ARM isn't an official release or secondary architecture yet, is it possible to ship a legal Fedora remix using its packages?
* Which release would it make most sense for us to use? I know that F13 isn't available yet, although I see that dgilmore's started some F13 package builds in koji.
* Do you think there's much of a chance that F14 could have ARM as an official secondary architecture?
* Relatedly, what could we do to help that happen, and to help with the port in general?
Thanks!
- Chris.
On Mon, 2010-06-07 at 19:15 -0400, Chris Ball wrote:
Hi,
Recently OLPC announced that we're working on two new ARM devices -- a laptop (XO-1.75) and tablet (XO-3), both running on Marvell's Armada 610 (MMP2) SoC:
http://blog.laptop.org/2010/05/27/xo3-marvell-and-olpc/
We're interested in shipping Fedora ARM on both devices, since we've been using Fedora on our x86 laptops all along.
Obviously, OLPC is a major target for the Fedora ARM effort :-)
I've got the Fedora 12 rootfs running on an MMP2 board already, but we've got a few questions about how shipping Fedora ARM in a product would work:
- Since Fedora ARM isn't an official release or secondary architecture yet, is it possible to ship a legal Fedora remix using its packages?
As I understand it, ARM is a recognized SA, so it should be fine to ship a remix based on it.
Here's the status of the Fedora ARM effort:
The previous ARM build farm was decommissioned, and a new one is being built, with some corresponding team changes. The status right now is that the shipment of new build hardware (a farm of GuruPlugs) was delayed due to a design defect; a revised version of hardware is supposed to be shipped next week. In the interim, there are two builders available.
dgilmore and PaulW are (as I understand it) bootstrapping the repos to prepare for using koji-shadow. (I'm away right now (teaching POSSE etc) but will rejoin the effort in early July).
- Which release would it make most sense for us to use? I know that F13 isn't available yet, although I see that dgilmore's started some F13 package builds in koji.
Only the previous F12 binary packages are available now. However, I don't think it will be too long before we start pumping out F13 packages. The challenge is that the ARM patches for F12 didn't get committed upstream, so there's a backlog of package maintenance that needs attention.
- Do you think there's much of a chance that F14 could have ARM as an official secondary architecture?
The intention is to shadow the primary arch builds using Dennis' koji-shadow system, so eventually we'll have rawhide and releases fairly closely following the primary archs.
So yes, F14 ARM will be there -- the question (and we'll understand the answer to this better over the next few months) is how much lag there will be between the primary and ARM secondary arch releases, and how complete the package set will be relative to the primary archs (for example, right now Mono doesn't appear to build on ARM, which knocks out the other packages that depend on Mono).
- Relatedly, what could we do to help that happen, and to help with the port in general?
Two things would be really helpful:
- Point us to a list of packages you are using in your Remix, so we can put priority on those as we triage build failures.
- When the time comes (soon!), help get the ARM patches upstream. This includes both packaging patches and source patches.
-- Chris
Hi Chris, thanks for the quick reply,
- Since Fedora ARM isn't an official release or secondary
architecture yet, is it possible to ship a legal Fedora remix using its packages?
As I understand it, ARM is a recognized SA, so it should be fine to ship a remix based on it.
Oh, cool; I didn't realize it was already an SA. That's great to hear.
The previous ARM build farm was decommissioned, and a new one is being built, with some corresponding team changes. The status right now is that the shipment of new build hardware (a farm of GuruPlugs) was delayed due to a design defect; a revised version of hardware is supposed to be shipped next week. In the interim, there are two builders available.
Would it help if we bought some Sheevaplugs, put them online as koji builders and gave access to Fedora developers? That sounds like something we could do.
Oh, and has anyone experimented to see whether qemu-arm on a fast x86 box with lots of RAM performs faster compiles than a SheevaPlug?
Two things would be really helpful:
- Point us to a list of packages you are using in your Remix, so
we can put priority on those as we triage build failures.
Sure. Here's the list, we're currently on F11:
http://build.laptop.org/10.2.0/os125/os125.packages.txt
- When the time comes (soon!), help get the ARM patches
upstream. This includes both packaging patches and source patches.
Okay! Feel free to ask for specific help on the list or IRC channel as well.
Thanks,
- Chris.
On Tue, 2010-06-08 at 18:13 -0400, Chris Ball wrote:
The previous ARM build farm was decommissioned, and a new one is being built, with some corresponding team changes. The status right now is that the shipment of new build hardware (a farm of GuruPlugs) was delayed due to a design defect; a revised version of hardware is supposed to be shipped next week. In the interim, there are two builders available.
Would it help if we bought some Sheevaplugs, put them online as koji builders and gave access to Fedora developers? That sounds like something we could do.
Thanks for the offer, but not sure it would help: GlobalScale is backlogged on the production of both SheevaPlugs and GuruPlugs, so I doubt a new order would arrive any earlier than the 20 units already coming -- plus the local builders are connected directly to the hub by GigE. (Update today: GlobalScale says the plugs will ship the last week of June).
Oh, and has anyone experimented to see whether qemu-arm on a fast x86 box with lots of RAM performs faster compiles than a SheevaPlug?
We used qemu-system-arm to do initial feasibility testing last semester. On a decent Intel box, it runs at about 10% of the speed of a Sheeva/Guru when executing build tasks.
Two things would be really helpful:
- Point us to a list of packages you are using in your Remix, so
we can put priority on those as we triage build failures.
Sure. Here's the list, we're currently on F11:
Perfect, thanks! Looks like there are a few dozen packages you use that are missing in F12 ARM.
-Chris
Hi,
Would it help if we bought some Sheevaplugs, put them online as koji builders and gave access to Fedora developers? That sounds like something we could do.
Thanks for the offer, but not sure it would help: GlobalScale is backlogged on the production of both SheevaPlugs and GuruPlugs, so I doubt a new order would arrive any earlier than the 20 units already coming -- plus the local builders are connected directly to the hub by GigE. (Update today: GlobalScale says the plugs will ship the last week of June).
I told our Marvell contact about this this morning, and he immediately drove over to us to drop off a loan of three SheevaPlugs and a GuruPlug; we can put them online behind Gig-E on MIT's network and give out access if it'll help tide things over until your units show up. (Kudos to Marvell for the fast loan!)
We used qemu-system-arm to do initial feasibility testing last semester. On a decent Intel box, it runs at about 10% of the speed of a Sheeva/Guru when executing build tasks.
*nod* That's a shame.
Perfect, thanks! Looks like there are a few dozen packages you use that are missing in F12 ARM.
Ah, do you have the diff to look over?
Thanks,
- Chris.
Hi folks,
I told our Marvell contact about this this morning, and he immediately drove over to us to drop off a loan of three SheevaPlugs and a GuruPlug; we can put them online behind Gig-E on MIT's network and give out access if it'll help tide things over until your units show up. (Kudos to Marvell for the fast loan!)
Just a quick follow-up to note that, thanks to excellent work from PaulW and dgilmore, we've got five new koji builders (a mix of SheevaPlug and GuruPlug, with gigabit access to storage over NFS) online now. Thanks to all!
(There was worry about whether the GuruPlug's thermal problems would get in the way -- I disabled bluetooth.ko, and haven't seen any reboots while using gigabit, even when running programs like iperf.)
- Chris.
On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 3:06 AM, Chris Tyler chris@tylers.info wrote:
On Mon, 2010-06-07 at 19:15 -0400, Chris Ball wrote:
Hi,
Recently OLPC announced that we're working on two new ARM devices -- a laptop (XO-1.75) and tablet (XO-3), both running on Marvell's Armada 610 (MMP2) SoC:
http://blog.laptop.org/2010/05/27/xo3-marvell-and-olpc/
We're interested in shipping Fedora ARM on both devices, since we've been using Fedora on our x86 laptops all along.
Obviously, OLPC is a major target for the Fedora ARM effort :-)
I've got the Fedora 12 rootfs running on an MMP2 board already, but we've got a few questions about how shipping Fedora ARM in a product would work:
- Since Fedora ARM isn't an official release or secondary architecture
yet, is it possible to ship a legal Fedora remix using its packages?
As I understand it, ARM is a recognized SA, so it should be fine to ship a remix based on it.
Here's the status of the Fedora ARM effort:
The previous ARM build farm was decommissioned, and a new one is being built, with some corresponding team changes. The status right now is that the shipment of new build hardware (a farm of GuruPlugs) was delayed due to a design defect; a revised version of hardware is supposed to be shipped next week. In the interim, there are two builders available.
dgilmore and PaulW are (as I understand it) bootstrapping the repos to prepare for using koji-shadow. (I'm away right now (teaching POSSE etc) but will rejoin the effort in early July).
- Which release would it make most sense for us to use? I know that
F13 isn't available yet, although I see that dgilmore's started some F13 package builds in koji.
Only the previous F12 binary packages are available now. However, I don't think it will be too long before we start pumping out F13 packages. The challenge is that the ARM patches for F12 didn't get committed upstream, so there's a backlog of package maintenance that needs attention.
Let me know if I can help out with any of the patch maintenance. From the OLPC/Sugar side of things I (co)maintain pretty much all of the main sugar packages and can help out with most of the rest. Is there a list somewhere giving an overview of what needs change?
Peter
On Wed, 2010-06-09 at 12:58 +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:
Let me know if I can help out with any of the patch maintenance. From the OLPC/Sugar side of things I (co)maintain pretty much all of the main sugar packages and can help out with most of the rest. Is there a list somewhere giving an overview of what needs change?
This appears to be the list of diffs that were used to produce F12 ARM which we can use as a starting point:
http://arm.koji.fedoraproject.org/old-koji/arm.koji.fedoraproject.org/diffs-...
-Chris
I'd be more than happy to help in any way that I can. I currently have a SheevaPlug on back order with globalscale so I will probably get it around the same time the GuruPlugs arrive at the build environment site but if there's anything I can do just let me know.
-AdamM
On 09/06/10 14:37, Adam Miller wrote:
I'd be more than happy to help in any way that I can. I currently have a SheevaPlug on back order with globalscale so I will probably get it around the same time the GuruPlugs arrive at the build environment site but if there's anything I can do just let me know.
I'd lke to be involved too. Is the SheevaPlug the right thing to buy to run Fedora ARM? I have a rather elderly Babbage board, but I guess that's no use.
Andrew.
On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 5:47 PM, Andrew Haley aph@redhat.com wrote:
On 09/06/10 14:37, Adam Miller wrote:
I'd be more than happy to help in any way that I can. I currently have a SheevaPlug on back order with globalscale so I will probably get it around the same time the GuruPlugs arrive at the build environment site but if there's anything I can do just let me know.
I'd lke to be involved too. Is the SheevaPlug the right thing to buy to run Fedora ARM? I have a rather elderly Babbage board, but I guess that's no use.
The SheevaPlug is/will be quite well supported. There's a couple of other devices out there should be well supported such as the BeagleBoard [1] and the GuruPlug. I think they mostly work but might well need to get some dedicated kernels built for them.
Peter
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Adam Miller -
Andrew Haley -
Chris Ball -
Chris Tyler -
Peter Robinson