Re: Current Debian m68k in Amiga

2015-08-27 Thread John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
On 08/26/2015 08:43 PM, Carlos Milán Figueredo wrote:
> Thanks for the answers John!

Adrian.

> I knew about the list. Shortly I expect to get into my hands a D-Link DE-660+ 
> for testing it. In the list it says "should" in both, Linux and NetBSD.

I *think* I have that particular model and it works, but I don't
remember anymore. I don't know at the moment where I put it :).

> It must be a very tough work. It is suspicious NetBSD/amiga is in the same 
> status regarding the PCMCIA. Considering NetBSD supports Amiga hardware 
> better than Linux, this is a bit suspicious.

I don't think it's necessarily a tough work. It's just something
someone has to do which involves some time and therefore should
pay off anyhow. The problem is that there aren't too many potential
users for this, so investing all that work would likely end up
in code that not many users will actually use.

>> The port is still maintained by a couple of fear- and restless kernel and
>> Debian developers as well as several other valuable contributors.
> 
> Our heroes :)

I'm one of the DDs involved, Geert is one of the kernel developers,
for example. Most of us are on this list.

>> If you want to help and don't want to code, you can start writing a detailed
>> installation guide, preferably with screenshots which shows the installation
>> of Debian/m68k on the Amiga step-by-step.
> 
> Nice, how do I get writing permissions on the wiki?

Here: https://wiki.debian.org/FrontPage?action=newaccount

The wiki pages for the m68k port can be found here:
https://wiki.debian.org/M68k

>> A good idea would also be to test whether you can create a fully
>> bootable chroot with the help of vmdebootstrap which does not
>> require stage 2 of the debootstrap process to be run on the m68k machine,
>> see: https://wiki.debian.org/vmdebootstrap
> 
> Is there any toolkit that would allow me to cross-compile the kernel and 
> packages for m68k from a x86 machine? My Amiga is just a 68030/25 and it 
> could take days to do the job :)

I think you misunderstood. You don't need to compile anything as Debian
is a binary distribution and all packages are already precompiled for
the end user.

(vm)debootstrap is a tool that allows to install a minimal Debian system
and currently the only way to install the m68k version of Debian.

> And talking about vmdebootstrap, by the documentation I don't get clearly 
> what are the debootstrap stages (took a look 
> https://wiki.debian.org/Debootstrap and 
> http://manpages.debian.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?sektion=8&query=debootstrap&apropos=0&manpath=sid&locale=en).
>  

stage1 is when the Debian packages are downloaded, copied and unpacked
into your new chroot. stage2 is when the packages are configured. As
stage2 requires package scripts and commands to be run, it normally
needs to be run on the target system, in this case an m68k computer,
while stage1 can be run on any machine which can execute deboostrap.

In order to save time, you can run deboostrap on your normal x86
PC with the --foreign --arch=m68k parameters and thus run the stage1
processes on the fast computer. Then you boot your m68k computer
with the chroot system with "init=/bin/bash" on the command line.

After the machine has booted up, you run "deboostrap/debootstrap
--second-stage" to trigger stage2 and configure the newly created
chroot.

Now, with vmdebbootstrap you can actually run *both* stage1 *and*
stage2 on your x86 PC as it uses qemu to run all the target code
in a a CPU emulator. This requires that your target platform is
supported by qemu which is the case for m68k.

However, I haven't tried vmdeboostrap yet which is why it would
be nice whether someone could actually test it and document it
somewhere. This should dramatically increase the bootstrapping
process and make it easier as well.

> Is there any sid m68k working repository for debootstrapping it?

There is no such thing as a bootstrap repository for debootstrap
as the tool uses the normal package repositories. m68k is in
Debian unstable (ports archive) and can be accesses using the
known methods (APT and so on).

You can debootstrap a fresh m68k chroot any time with:

$ debootstrap --foreign --arch=m68k unstable mychroot \
  ftp://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian

But, as I said, this just generates a stage1 chroot which still
needs stage2 to be run once on the target system. With vmdeboostrap,
you should be able to avoid the second step though.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913



RE: Current Debian m68k in Amiga

2015-08-27 Thread Carlos Milán Figueredo
> Adrian.

Sorry, I got confused with your email display name.

> I *think* I have that particular model and it works, but I don't remember 
> anymore.
> I don't know at the moment where I put it :).

I will try and report it back then :)

> I don't think it's necessarily a tough work. It's just something someone
> has to do which involves some time and therefore should pay off anyhow.
> The problem is that there aren't too many potential users for this, so
> investing all that work would likely end up in code that not many users will
> actually use.

Sad but true, I agree with that.

> I'm one of the DDs involved, Geert is one of the kernel developers,
> for example. Most of us are on this list.

Good to know. I'll take the chance to say a big thank you all of you say that, 
there are many people in the shadows -like me until now- that uses and values 
so much the work you are doing with the architecture. Getting a current 
operating system running in the Motorola CPUs is really remarkable.  I myself 
am doing the tests with a 68030, that is way slower than a 060.

> Here: https://wiki.debian.org/FrontPage?action=newaccount
> The wiki pages for the m68k port can be found here:
> https://wiki.debian.org/M68k

Ok! I will play a bit with the debootstrap and the toolchain a bit.

>> Is there any toolkit that would allow me to cross-compile the kernel 
>> and packages for m68k from a x86 machine? My Amiga is just a 68030/25 
>> and it could take days to do the job :)

> I think you misunderstood. You don't need to compile anything as Debian
> is a binary distribution and all packages are already precompiled for the
> end user.

Yup, I misunderstood :)

> (vm)debootstrap is a tool that allows to install a minimal Debian system
> and currently the only way to install the m68k version of Debian.

> After the machine has booted up, you run "deboostrap/debootstrap 
> --second-stage"
> to trigger stage2 and configure the newly created chroot.

Nice!

> Now, with vmdebbootstrap you can actually run *both* stage1 *and*
> stage2 on your x86 PC as it uses qemu to run all the target code in a a
> CPU emulator. This requires that your target platform is supported by
> qemu which is the case for m68k.

VERY nice!

> However, I haven't tried vmdeboostrap yet which is why it would be
> nice whether someone could actually test it and document it somewhere.
> This should dramatically increase the bootstrapping process and make
> it easier as well.

I will give a try this weekend!

> There is no such thing as a bootstrap repository for debootstrap as the
> tool uses the normal package repositories. m68k is in Debian unstable
> (ports archive) and can be accesses using the known methods (APT and so on).

> You can debootstrap a fresh m68k chroot any time with:

> $ debootstrap --foreign --arch=m68k unstable mychroot \
>  ftp://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian

> But, as I said, this just generates a stage1 chroot which still needs stage2
> to be run once on the target system. With vmdeboostrap, you should be
> able to avoid the second step though.

I will give a try and report back here!

Thank you so much for your answers.

Greets,
Carlos

Carlos Milán Figueredo | HispaMSX System Operator |   http://www.hispamsx.org 
| |  telnet://bbs.hispamsx.org