Status of Sparc and PowerPC

For SPARC much tinkering was needed to test the various combinations

of gcc-2.95.3, gcc-3.x and egcs64 with 32bit and/or 64bit userspace.

My personal result is that since gcc-3.1 is more stable for 32bit

SPARC code compared with the old gcc-2.95.3 (i.e. less Internal

Compiler Errors, faster code ...) and starting with gcc-3.1 the

compiler is also able to produce valid 64bit code, it is possible

to create a working 64bit kernel and 64bit user-space when dietlibc is

used. So far I was not able to create a "working" 64bit glibc for

SPARC. On the kernel side using the gcc-3.2 helps a lot, because the

old egcs generates Internal Compiler Errors on many modules, which I

one after the other had to disable to build my first kernel.

The current "Linux version 2.4.20 (gcc version 3.2.2) #3 Sun Feb 9

16:56:31" kernel is already running for "80 days, 12:25".

And with XFree-4.3 the PCI domain code made it into XFree. But be

warned that the 4.3.0 release had a rather odd "non-PC keyboard bug

introduced by changes to make SysRq generate the same keycode as

PrtScrn". So for a useful X you should be using at least XFree

4.3.99.1.

The selectable optimizations also got a rework. It is now possible to

choose between:

(X) build 32 bit user-space SPARC (v7 and above)

( ) build 64 bit user-space SPARC (v9 - Ultra SPARC)

whether to build:

[*] Build a 64 bit kernel for PCI Ultra SPARC

The optimization options (some of them are only available when a 64bit

kernel or user-space is not selected, since less than v9 doesn't make

sense in those cases) ...

( ) No special optimisation

( ) Optimised for Cypress

( ) Optimised for Super/Hyper SPARC

(X) Optimised for Ultra SPARC

And of course I also fixed our open-ssh package to utilize the

selected optimization ;-).

A preliminary set of .gem files is <a

href="https://schillernet.dyndns.org/rock-linux/sparc/">available. But

I had not the time to contribute the last missing peaces for an

bootable ISO.

On the TODO are some bigger items, sorry. We need a binutils-cross and

gcc-cross packages that provide a KGCC for systems with 32bit

user-land and a 64bit kernel, the boot-disk code needs to be added and

silo needs to be stoned (read a ROCK Linux Setup Tool ONE needs to be

created ;-).

From my side the SPARC target is currently a bit stalled because my

Ultra 5 with 270 Mhz is quite slow and it is too boring trying new

code because it always takes ages to get the result. So if someone

would like to offer code, or faster hardware this would be a big step

forward for an up-to-date SPARC port.

The work on the PowerPC Port restarted, after evaluating the current

laptop market. Since the Apple iBook and PowerBook product series are

of such a good quality and PMU (Power Management Unit - including such

nice quirks like display dimming and CPU frequency scaling) so well

supported in Linux, I ordered one and started compiling.

One day later ROCK Linux was running on it, and a week later it also

included X and was self-booting (without the need of the old Yellow

Dog Linux CD I used for this purpose ...).

The PowerPC port was very smooth, most packages built just out of the

box, for example the KDE packages failed because of a bug in the

binutils version used. (For googlers: The link error with older

binutils was unresolvable R_PPC_ADDR32 relocation against symbol

xyz - simply update at least to binutils 2.14.90.0.1 when you get

the error.)

So after this we only have a few more build errors compared to x86 -

and most adaption like pmud and pbbuttonsd init scripts as well as

some new powerpc specific packages are done.

The last missing bits are a stoned yaboot and some final tweaks for

the CD boot code - but this will be finished in the next two or three

days ...

A preliminary set of .gem files and a first test boot-CD are available.

Quite less is on the TODO. Aside from the usual maintenance only the IBM PowerPC

family or older Apple hardware might needs some adaption. And I still

need to make MOL DevFS aware

and figure out why it does not yet work correctly.

Here, as for SPARC or ROCK Linux in general, applies: Sponsors are

welcome! Since I got so much attention with this ROCK Linux building

iBook I carried with me the last weeks this should have been some

really nice advertisement for Apple - so maybe some hardware donations

would be possible?