Monday, April 20, 2015

Re: [nslu2-linux] My Optware fork

 

Huh, my box is DS412+ with the same CPU :)

I think you're right, all modern headless i686 (and x86_64) boxes are pretty powerful. We should use glibc in this case, and it isn't difficult to maintain glibc feed as well, since it's usually uClibc the one that requires extra patching/tweaking the sourcecode.

You are equally right about versions uniformity, however, there're also architecture-specific issues now and then. For instance, building softfloat mipsel feed was hindered by failing to build libffi. It took me 2 days to find a proper solution: https://github.com/atgreen/libffi/issues/187. In case of i686, this should be a breeze, since there's probably no other more widely used arch.

Adding i686 glibc target should be relatively simple, and I'll look into it, cause I use Optware on my NAS as well.

I use buildroot to build toolchains. No pun intended))
See:
Hence the names of the targets

2015-04-20 18:54 GMT+03:00 Craig Thomas Noble ipsen200@hotmail.com [nslu2-linux] <nslu2-linux@yahoogroups.com>:
 

My box is a DS1512+, which runs an Atom D2700  @ 2.13GHz. It's fairly powerful for a small headless box, and in general that will be the trend going forward as these boxes are taking on more and more media and cloud server like tasks and less simple fire sharing.

 

One issue the "old" optware had was compiling for two different targets could result in two very different outcomes, and often meant that adding a new target for some packages was a complete nightmare. Setting a fixed version of the tools and libraries for all targets would not only add consistency but also some sanity.

 

Well, that's just my opinion. J

 

Did you use crosstool-ng to build your toolchains?

 

 

From: nslu2-linux@yahoogroups.com [mailto:nslu2-linux@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: 20 April 2015 16:29
To: nslu2-linux@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [nslu2-linux] My Optware fork

 

 

Thanks for your reply! I've been thinking about adding i686 target as well. It is more or less simple to do this, but I'm not sure what libc to chose: uClibc or glibc? I know Synology uses glibc (I own a Synology NAS too), and it makes sense, since those boxes are pretty powerful, but we should also decide whether:

-there're some i686 boxes that aren't as powerful

-those boxes are popular enough to make any difference

I haven't yet made a research to answer these questions :) 

 

2015-04-20 18:21 GMT+03:00 Craig Thomas Noble ipsen200@hotmail.com [nslu2-linux] <nslu2-linux@yahoogroups.com>:

 

It depends on what you're looking for in hosting. Kimsufi has some excellent deals for dedicated hosting (100Mbps for £5/mo unlimited traffic). I mainly use optware for synology so I'll be checking this out and may try to add i686 to it for the bigger syno boxes. J

 

Thanks for your work so far!

 

From: nslu2-linux@yahoogroups.com [mailto:nslu2-linux@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: 20 April 2015 16:17
To: nslu2-linux@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [nslu2-linux] My Optware fork

 

 

Dear all! I know NSLU2-Linux project is basically stalled, but I hope this read will still be interesting for someone still subscribed to the list.
For few months I've been working in my spear time to get up-to-date Optware I could use on my routers. And here it is:
My Optware fork project

I currently maintain two feeds:

-buildroot-armeabi

-buildroot-mipsel

 

These feeds are firmware-independent and can be used on basically any device running Linux with appropriate architecture. They're both uClibc-0.9.33.2 gcc-4.9.2 binutils-2.25 targets. The ARM feed is soft-float ARM EABI (aka 'armel' in Debian), while MIPS feed is softfloat MIPSEL (mips32r2).

I test the feeds on TomatoUSB ARM and MIPSEL routers myself, buildroot-armeabi has been also confirmed to work with recent dd-wrt. Anything ARM/MIPSEL which is more or less recent should run the feeds fine.

 

Compared to the original Optware, except being firmware-independent and having modern toolchains, my fork also has numerous packages upgraded, fixed and added. I also got some X11 GTK+-2 and GTK+-3 applications to work.

 

Bootstraping instructions can be found on the dd-wrt forum:

 

All the building is being done on my laptop, and the feeds are hosted on my home server. I basically started the whole thing because it is fun, but now it's turning into something useful. What I'm really missing is an appropriate hosting options, since my ISP isn't really fault-proof)) And, of course, I always appreciate any kind of feedback.

 

Also, if you're an Optware developer, and you're missing the good old days like I do, I'm looking forward to your pull requests))

 

And I'm open to suggestions in general :) 

 

--
Best regards,
Alex Potapenko



 

--

Best regards,
Alex Potapenko




--
Best regards,
Alex Potapenko

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