Re: Where to start hacking unstable on Alpha?
On 11/07/11 02:05, Gianluca Bonetti wrote:
> I am an Alpha enthusiast, so I will try to do something for the project.
> I have one DS10 at home, where I am doing the most of my tests now.
> I also have one DS20 (2x500) and a couple of 4100s (4x533 and 2x466)
> in fully working condition, but I could only put one online at work,
> and only part time (night time and weekends), so I don't know if it is
> an option.
Well, at the moment we have nothing building so getting an autobuilder
network up and going is the most pressing issue. Without it we are dead
in the water.
I'll will check with Aurelien about part time buildds. Given that it is
up to the buildd to check for packages that need building and take one
for building I suspect it won't be a problem.
>> Might be better to dist-upgrade to snapshots.debian.org to the date of
>> roughly the squeeze release. Then upgrade (not dist-upgrade) to
>> debian-ports because the architecture "all" packages have been coming
>> through to the Alpha repository and cause a number of conflicts.
>
> I have tested this path when you suggested, but seems I get to the
> same place, more or less.
I had built my chroots for package building very soon after the Debian
Alpha Autobuilder was stopped and have been able to keep the chroot up
to date.
I am now installing a new chroot and have upgraded it to debian-ports
only. I can build the packages that are listed on
buildd.debian-ports.org as needs-build (i.e. their build dependencies
are satisfied). Stuff such as 'rm' is working correctly. I haven't
tried to build coreutils in the chroot but I would expect it to fail as
coreutils is in the bd-uninstallable list (i.e. its build dependencies
cannot be satisfied until some other packages are built.)
> Well, by now I have Lenny on DS10, which features an ALI IDE
> controller, very useful because I put a cheap 320GB drive inside two
> weeks ago.
I have a PCI-X SATA controller in my XP1000 with a large SATA drive.
Works very nicely.
> I have a spare Qlogic PCI board, I could try if need some test and
> feedback (that's mainly why I am here).
OK. But, don't spend too much time on that. I expect you will find it
fails and when you do it does not get us any closer to knowing how to
fix it.
> BTW, I am running 2.6.26-2-alpha-generic (from Lenny) and 3.0.0-rc6
> (compiled from ftp.kernel.org sources).
> I have done some compilation task on kernel 3.0.0-rc5 and -rc6 and it
> works rock solid, so it seems that at least kernel support for alpha
> architecture is still in good shape.
Yes, recent kernels are much better on Alpha. Kernel 2.6.32 is a
shocker of a kernel for Alpha and the low point. After that things have
been improving and the current kernels are quite good with regards Alpha.
>> To go much further than that you will need some patches for binutils
These fixes are now included in binutils source in unstable.
>> (which fixes a test suite failure in eglibc and fixes the building of
>> C++ libraries including building of g++ in the gcc-4.4 and gcc-4.5
>> packages), and a patch for eglibc which fixes statfs64 (and friends)
That patch is now in eglibc 2.13-10 source.
> Could you provide somewhere the .deb for coreutils you are using?
Yeah, I could do that, but there will be other dependencies that you
would need too, such as a new eglibc. It could be quite a thorny package
resolution issue. I suspect getting buildds going with debian-ports is
the best solution.
> Yeah, I have a Radeon 9200 inside the DS10 :)
> I bought one of the last PCI ones when still available for my beloved Alpha!
Up to about a year ago one could the latest Radeon cards (HD2400,
HD4350) as PCI but they seem to have disappeared from the shops now.
They have been verified to work in a number of Alpha systems.
> I am already doing some tests on my own domain hosting with different
> CMS solutions, I will let you know.
OK, also note Matt's response about the wiki at alphalinux.org. How
does your CMS thingy compare to a wiki?
> Anyway, choosen one, we could have it online in a day or so.
> Maybe opening a project hosted on alioth.debian.org would be enough
> for us for teamwork and code sharing, as it has forum, bug tracker,
> mercurial repository.
> I don't know if the development of the full Alpha port could be done
> inside a single project on alioth, or if a separate hosting would be
> better for our purposes.
I know practically nothing about the Debian supplied resources in this
regard and are happy to be educated.
Cheers
Michael.
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