Re: Little Endian - Debian/Linux/MIPS Port
On Thu, Mar 18, 1999 at 11:25:46AM -0600, Russell E Glaue wrote:
[snip]
The little endain MIPS version of Linux works very good, it's just the
Deskstation Tyne model which isn't support, not because the processor isn't
supported but because none of the kernel developers has such a machine. I've
heard from Ralf Baechle that he had such a machine, and therefore there has been
support for this machine, but unfortunately his machine didn't boot anylonger a
couple of years ago and therefore no one has had the oppertunity to maintain the
port to Deskstation Tyne. As the kernel development goes on you break stuff and
if you don't fix them they'll remain broken (and myths become to legends which
are since long forgotten when..). Well anyway, I think that's what happend to
the Tyne.
The problem is not that the processor isn't supported, almost all the MIPS
processors are supported, even those which run in little endian (the MIPS port
was as far as I know initiated for little endain machines). All you will need to
do is probably to get the Deskstation Tyne specific hardware running, e.g. the
interrupt handler, the prom code and the device drivers. That shouldn't be hard
to do once you have the machine in your hands if you're a kernel hacker. :)
By the way, look here to find a mipsel kernel binary:
ftp://ftp.linux.sgi.com/pub/linux/mips/mipsel-linux/boot
And look here to find a complete mipsel redhat distribution:
ftp://ftp.linux.sgi.com/pub/linux/mips/mipsel-linux/RPMS
(of course that kernel doesn't include Deskstation Tyne support, but it's still
little endain mips and you can run those RPMs once you get the kernel up and
running... I think)
I think there are RPM binaries of cross compilation tools as well somewhere.
- Ulf
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