Subject: [E3-hacking] v2 release

From: David Given <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 23:40:11 +0100

I've just given the v2 release a try --- impressive stuff! The download Just
Worked. No more faffing around with serial downloads every time I want to boot
the thing, hurrah. It's also really nice to have a real boot loader. Plus,
thanks to the magic of jffs2 there's an astonishing amount of root file system
space...

A few minor quibbles:

- Busybox's loadkmap is very stupid and can't cope with my ASCII keymap table.
(It also wants to refer to the obsolete /dev/vc/0.) I can't figure out how to
compile my keymap, or even if such a concept makes sense these days.

- Is there an ipkg feed available where I can get iwconfig? I've tried the
same feed that I use for my NSLU2, but it's not compatible. The statically
compiled version I built myself (I couldn't make a dynamically compiled
version to work) is over five megabytes. Ho hum.

- OpenEmbedded wants to rebuild monotone's roster cache. Apparently this is
going to take about four hours.

Currently I'm trying to build a working zd1201 driver for wireless networking,
which is involving some entertaining messing around with cross compilers ---
it's suprisingly hard to find a decent cross compiler package for Debian.

-- 
+- David Given --McQ-+ "Gaping from its single obling socket was
|  [email-masked]    | scintillating, many fauceted scarlet emerald..."
| ([email-masked]) | --- Jim Theis, _The Eye of Argon_ (spelling
+- www.cowlark.com --+ original)

---

From: Jasmine Strong <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 01:00:18 +0200

> it's suprisingly hard to find a decent cross compiler package for  

Can't you just use crosstool?

-J.

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From: Don Alexander <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 08:27:07 +0100

> Can't you just use crosstool?

Or there is of course the dpkg-cross scripts. I am right in thinking
that Debian still supports the largest number of architectures in any
distro no?

Just a thought...

-- 
==

Don Alexander

E3 Development & tweaking ;)

RooSoft Ltd

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From: David Given <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 10:40:00 +0100

> Jasmine Strong wrote:
[...]
>> Can't you just use crosstool?
[...]
> that Debian still supports the largest number of architectures in any

I don't know crosstool, but Debian has a semi-automated mechanism for
building toolchains for custom architectures --- and for some reason
I've never been able to make it work reliably. It always seems to get
half-way through building gcc before falling over with an obscure error
message, and gcc's error messages can be *really* secure.

I have managed to find a suitable set of packages, but they aren't from
anywhere official; just some guy with a private repository. There's got
to be a better way of doing it than that.

Incidentally, I have since discovered that the kernel that comes with
the v2 release doesn't have wireless switched on, so I'm going to have
to recompile it. It looks as if the ams_delta_defconfig setup is *not*
the one used by default --- does anyone know where I can get a suitable
kernel.conf? Are there any easy-to-use recipes for using uboot to
replace the kernel in flash, for when I inevitably screw things up?

-- 
+- David Given --McQ-+ "Is Eris true?" "Everthing is true." "Even false
|  [email-masked]    | things?" "Even false things are true." "How can
| ([email-masked]) | that be?" "I don't know, man. I didn't do it!"
+- www.cowlark.com --+ --- _Prinicipa Discordia_

---

From: Don Alexander <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 18:18:30 +0100

> message, and gcc's error messages can be *really* secure.

I think you mean obscure and yeah you have to read native compiler geek
to make sense of them ;)

I followed this when I first built a toolchain for an Ipaq I needed to
complile stuff onto. Worked for me but was a while back.. maybe things
have changed?

http://www.mobilab.unina.it/Resources/crosscompilerHOWTO.html

-- 
==

Don Alexander

RooSoft Ltd