Re: Help supporting Debian on a Kurobox
On Fri, 22 Aug 2008, Rogério Brito wrote:
> Dear people,
>
> Thanks to Charles Plessy, I have now a new PowerPC based machine, which is
> a Kuro Box [*], an embedded system/NAS with a Linux kernel and a kind of
> stripped down RH-like system (no compilers, no chroot, no NFS server etc).
>
> I obviously want to run Debian on it so that I downloaded the powerpc
> basedebs.tar from woody, a statically linked busybox (for chroot), unpacked
> and manually installed these packages, upgraded to sarge and now to etch.
> This system image is already tarred and available for others to see, if
> necessary.
>
> Unfortunately, things are not that easy, since there are two main
> obstacles:
Hi,
ask on #linkstationwiki on FreeNode, or talk on
http://www.nas-central.org/ forums, or post to
LinkStation_General@yahoogroups.com (might need to subscribe).
Good luck
Guennadi
>
> * the kernel available on the firmware is a kernel 2.4.17 and the libc6
> from lenny requires a 2.6 kernel for the NTPL support. It seems to be
> possible to upgrade the kernel to 2.6, but not as trivial as with a
> PowerMac (and I'm used to both OldWorld and NewWorld PowerMacs).
>
> * There seems to be some daemons (heartbeat daemons) and utilities that
> need special attention (read: packaging) and that are not yet available
> in Debian (or outdated), together with corresponding initscripts.
>
> Since this is my first incursion into the embedded arena, I would welcome
> any help (and, BTW, learn and collaborate with the emdebian project with my
> own packages).
>
> It seems to me that a special kernel should be compiled, that special
> devices should be created (apparently, the current udev/kernels don't
> create the necessary devices needed so that the device doesn't shuts down
> automatically) and that some daemons specific to the kurobox (and variants)
> should be packaged.
>
> Well, that's it. If someone can help here, it would be wonderful. I plan on
> documenting what I do so that others can benefit from an easy/standard
> Debian install.
>
>
> Thanks in advance for any help, Rogério Brito.
>
> P.S.: One of the necessary daemons seems to be at
> <https://sourceforge.net/projects/ppc-evtd/>, with a GPL license.
> P.S.2: I'm not currently subscribed to debian-devel. I would appreciate
> being Cc'ed.
>
> [*] http://penguinppc.org/embedded/kuro/
> --
> Rogério Brito : rbrito@{mackenzie,ime.usp}.br : GPG key 1024D/7C2CAEB8
> http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito : http://meusite.mackenzie.com.br/rbrito
> Projects: algorithms.berlios.de : lame.sf.net : vrms.alioth.debian.org
>
>
> --
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---
Guennadi Liakhovetski, Ph.D.
Freelance Open-Source Software Developer
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