Re: What is the status of Debian on Lemote Fuloong?
On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 2:05 PM, Andreas Barth <aba@ayous.org> wrote:
> * Aaro Koskinen (aaro.koskinen@iki.fi) [120707 21:24]:
>> The PMON bootloader is crap, at least the version shipped with my
>> board. You cannot fully enable the serial console (USB keyboard & VGA is
>> always needed). Secondly, there is a bug that limits the initramfs image
>> size to some really small size (as a workaround, I'm using a kernel with
>> embedded initramfs.) I'm looking forward to try out the latest GRUB that
>> should include support to use it as a firmware on Fuloong to replace
>> the PMON. However, first I would need to acquire tools/HW to backup and
>> restore the original firmware flash as I don't want to risk bricking my
>> board (any advice for this, anyone?).
>
> How about letting pmon boot grub, and continue from there?
>
>
>
> Andi
Support on grub for the mini-pc was just announced on the most recent
grub release, which I think hadn't hit debian. I don't know if that
means keep using the grub-yeeloong version or there will be a new
binary for fullong. However with the yeloong version so far loading
the grub menu from pmon had not been possible for me, :-).
I'm curious about some prior comments about using the mini-pc as slow
desktop replacement. I too do the same. However the debian binaries
don't exploit well the architecture. They use -o32 abi, when the
machine is 64 bits allowing -n32 and -n64 abis. I imagine -n64 could
even allow applications requiring higher memory spaces for better
performance, such as libreoffice and iceweasel, to work better, :-)
At any rate wht makes more curious is that iceweasel from official
debian repo doesn't work for me at all when browsing over gmail
account. It just freezes. So I keep using an old anheng version on
testing for iceweasel.
I forgot to mention I use debian unstable (doesn't have an anheng
counterpart, so from anheng I have to use testing repo for iceweasel).
And I have no clue about official way to install debian on mini-pc.
The way I install it was to install old version of gnu-ssense first,
and then change the repos to official debian. This because when I
acquire these mini-pcs, loongson architecture was just getting into
unstable and there was no official support anywhere, as I suppose
there is now, :-)
If someone is working without problems with official iceweasel, please
let me know how, :-) Other than that I'd say, please take into
account using non official repos such as anheng ones might be
necessary...
This seems outdated to me:
http://dev.lemote.com/code/linux-loongson-community
But it's a good source of information, specially when talking about
options out there...
Thanks,
--
Javier.
Reply to: