FatdogArm Alpha4 for Odroid released

I had FatdogArm Alpha4 running on Odroid-U2 since early last month. In that time period, I was hoping that I could get beta up and running - but my timing was off; I got occupied by something else (Fatdog64 is one of them).

I am now building FatdogArm beta, but it will be a long way off until it reaches parity with Alpha4. So in the interim, I thought I'd just release a version of Alpha4 that will run on Odroid. Get it from the usual place here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/arm/releases/alpha4/.

Note that in addition to the kernel package, Odroid-U2 will require a newer fd-arm.sfs (named fd-arm-u2.sfs). The main change from the original alpha4 sfs are these:
a) /etc/init.d/02-cpuspeed is disabled by default - Odroid kernel is sensitive to unrecognised values; it will crash the kernel otherwise.

b) /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-gpudriver.conf defaults to "/dev/fb1" as the framebuffer device (instead of /dev/fb0) - this is how it is on Odroid, /dev/fb0 is actually reserved for LCD screen (which usually isn't connected on U2).

Other than that, it is fd-arm-u2.sfs contains a newer version of Seamonkey. You could have used the original fd-arm.sfs too and make the above changes yourself, but I thought it would be more convenient to have one that immediately works.

I have also updated the INSTALL notes; I have also updated the release notes to reflect the update.

Posted on 1 Jan 2014, 20:04 - Categories: FatdogArm Linux Arm
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Fatdog64 RC2 is released

Christmas present for everyone :)

Kirk has been hard at work building and compiling new packages for Fatdog64, and RC2 is now released.

Release notes here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/630rc2.html.

Get it from ibiblio.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/iso/ or its mirrors.

Forum thread: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=745962#745962

Highlights:
- kernel 3.12.6 with user namespaces support
- latest Xorg and Mesa for improved performances, VDPAU is now included by default for better video playback performance
- GIMP 2.8.10


Posted on 24 Dec 2013, 14:33 - Categories: Fatdog64 Linux
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Merry Christmas

It's the time of the year again. Time to remember what a blessing this year have been, and time to remember Him who has given His all so that we are where we are today. Time to remember what Christ means in Christmas - not only in this holiday season, but also for the rest of the days in the upcoming new year.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Posted on 22 Dec 2013, 3:46 - Categories: General
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Barry Kauler is back

Barry Kauler, the original author of PuppyLinux (here and here) - from which Fatdog64 originally came from, is back.

This patriarch of the Puppy community has been missing for over two months after he announced his retirement from Puppy Linux back in late September. News from him became few and far between; and there have been understandable confusions and worries among his followers in the Murga Linux forum.

But now he's back, and he's still doing Linux, among other things. It's no longer Puppy Linux admittedly, but is a quirky variant called - obviously enough - Quirky Linux (or Quirky Puppy, etc). Old habits (or hobby) dies hard :)

Whatever it is, it is a heart warming that he's still with us and is still doing Linux development of one sort or another. Let's hope that his stay is a long one.

Posted on 7 Dec 2013, 5:16 - Categories: PuppyLinux
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Odroid-U2 is fast!

Odroid-U2 is really fast. I built Seamonkey 2.22.1 (the latest at the time of writing) on it - it took me only 2 hours 45 minutes. This compares favourably with building on my 64-bit x86_64 laptop which is about 2 hours 15 minutes (or so).

It is a far cry with my original build of Seamonkey 2.19 on Mele (A10, Cortex A8, single-core, 512MB) - which took between 15 to 18 hours depending on my luck.

During the build, all the four cores of Odroid-U2 was maxed out at 100%, yet the temperature never climbed higher than 70 degrees. Odroid-U2 uses a fanless heatsink, and this heatsink - while noticeably warm - was still touchable. This contrasts with my x86_64 laptop, whose temperature climbs to a worryingly 95 degrees with its fan is being overworked to prevent thermal shutdown.

I need to revise my opinion that ARM is still playing catch-up with Intel - it no longer is. In fact, there is no Intel offerings which is on similar power/performance/price as this one. Intel Minnowboard is a single-core hyper-threaded (=dual-thread) 1GHz CPU and 1GB RAM priced at $199. Intel Galilo is a measly 400MHz single-core CPU poised to compete with Arduino. None of them are even close in terms of price/performance to Odroid-U2 (I didn't check the specs on their power consumptions) - this board and its Exynos4412 Prime CPU is in a class of its own.


Posted on 7 Dec 2013, 5:01 - Categories: FatdogArm Linux Arm
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FatdogArm on Odroid-U2 - take two

I really want to have console framebuffer on the Odroid.

So I spent quite a while to figure out what's wrong with console framebuffer. I wanted to know why the framebuffer works with X but not with fbcon.

First, I figured which driver provided the framebuffer functionality (not easy since /proc/fb doesn't show the driver name). Turned out it is "videobuf2-fb.c". Secondly, I traced the failing call from fbcon.c - this was one was quite straightforward, and brought me back to videobuf2-fb.c - and there lied the problem - videobuf2-fb.c checked for fbcon call and reject it (the line that did it was even commented that mmuch!). The check was actually for an init call from kernel space (which fbcon does).

Okay, so what happened if I allowed fbcon call to pass through? Various bad things happened - either the system didn't boot up at all; or, if I switched fbcon to use the framebuffer later, the system froze. Well I can't see anything when this is happening, so I have to hazard a guess: there must be some interlocking mutex between videobuf2-fb and fbcon. Enabling fbcon call to videobuf2-fb caused a deadlock somewhere. Without a serial console, things like these are very difficult to trace and debug - so that was the end of it.

Turned out all the above was a wild goose chase anyway. I was planning to upgrade to kernel 3.8, and now that I hit dead-end with that investigation, I decided to build it. Guess what? The hardkernel guys (or is it samsung itself? not sure) have fixed the framebuffer issue! The videobuf2-fb issue is still there; but there is a brand-new "exynos-drm" module that does the same job, but only better!

In fact, kernel 3.8 improves on other things: HDMI audio now works, alsa volume control now works ... three cheers for the hardkernel guys.

So yeah, looks like it will be smooth sailing from here.

Posted on 4 Dec 2013, 2:23 - Categories: FatdogArm Linux Arm
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FatdogArm on Odroid-U2

I've just received an Odroid-U2 board a few days ago, from a nice person who wish to remain unnamed (thank you!).

Odroid-U2 is a board with Samsung Exynos4412 Prime SoC, a 1.7GHz, 4-core Cortex-A9 CPU with 2GB of memory. It's very small (smaller than cubieboard2) yet it is very capable; it demonstrates lucidly where ARM is going (and Exynos4412 is actually last year's product - the newest one being Exynos5 which is an 8-core CPU).

I immediately set to task to get FatdogArm running on it, after confirming that the board works by running stock Hardkernel Ubuntu ARM on it.

I went with the (now) standard procedures of building the bootloader (u-boot), building the kernel, and preparing the initrd (mainly for kernel modules), and put them into SD card.

I immediately hit a snag - the system seemed to boot but my screen was blank. After a few visits to odroid/hardkernel forum, it was made obvious that odroid doesn't have a working framebuffer console for HDMI output to due quirky way the HDMI output driver had been written. For the better or worse, I don't have an UART serial cable to go with it - which means I'm blind, I don't know whether the board works or not (and if not, what is the error).

But thankfully Hardkernel guys (the manufacturer of this board) has been working hard to prepare a kernel that is rock-solid - the board actually worked the first time, it's just that I can't see the output. I typed the output blindly (I know what to expect if things goes right), slotted in my USB flash drive and piped command output to the flash drive, and read the output on my laptop. This way of working soon got me a working ssh server on the odroid, and with that I'm no longer blind. Sure I still can't see what happens before the ssh server is started but that's not so important at the moment.

With ssh working, I managed to get X desktop working shortly afterwards (as it turned out, there is nothing special required except to specify the correct framebuffer device), here's a simple screenshot based on a tweaked Alpha4 release (it must be tweaked because verbatim Alpha4 release has a boot-up command (/etc/init.d/02-cpuspeed) that causes the kernel to crash).



Posted on 3 Dec 2013, 4:59 - Categories: FatdogArm Linux Arm
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FatdogArm Alpha4 is released

Alpha4 is a bugfix release, mainly because of RAM layer problem. There is no new feature in it (apart from new distribution method). Everyone is recommended to upgrade.

Release notes http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/arm-alpha4.html.

Get it from ibiblio (or one of its mirrors):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/arm/releases/alpha4/

Forum thread: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=734069#734069


Posted on 1 Nov 2013, 15:37 - Categories: FatdogArm Linux Arm XO
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Addressing your home PCs by names

If you have a few machines connected in a home network, you may want to connect to them (for administration, file sharing, streaming, etc). You can of course connect to them by using their IP address, but this gets old very soon especially if their IP address keeps changing (e.g. due DHCP server reboots, etc). You want to address them by name (by their hostname).

If you have an all-Windows network, this isn't a problem - Windows comes with facility to directly address each other (in the same subnet) with their (netbios) names.

If your machines are Bonjour/Avahi-capable, this is also not a problem - they provide similar functionality to discover name-to-address mapping (and more).

If your machines are none of these; then you will need some mechanism to somehow map the (host)names to their IP addresses, so head to this article.


Posted on 29 Oct 2013, 18:35 - Categories: Linux
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Fatdog64 630RC1 is released

Release notes here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/630rc1.html.

Get it from ibiblio.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/iso/ or its mirrors.

Forum thread: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=730926#730926

Highlights:
- kernel 3.11.4 with dynamic power management support for radeon graphic cards (lower temperature, better battery life, better performance). Please see this post from the radeon driver developer himself to see how to control the power/performance balance.
- updated Xorg and multimedia libraries
- multiple sandboxes (as first discussed here).
- LXC-based sandbox (as first discussed here). Note that the current 630RC1 kernel doesn't support user namespaces because it still conflicts with XFS and we feel that XFS is more important across the board than user namespaces. This may change if we decide to adopt kernel 3.12 which has resolved this issue.

Posted on 17 Oct 2013, 17:09 - Categories: Fatdog64
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