I had noticed that the OpenELEC XBMC build for the Raspberry Pi included a 3.1.10 kernel, so decided to ‘update’ my Fedora 17 card to this, using the OpenELEC kernel source, cross-compiled.. So.. Now running Fedora 17 on a 3.1.10 kernel: $ uname -a Linux rgpi 3.1.10 #1 Tue May 8 13:41:06 BST 2012 armv6l armv6l armv6l … Continue reading →
I had intended to persevere with the Fedora 14 ‘respin’, despite it being (correctly, IMHO..) described as ‘a bit buggy’.. Performance was improved with the newer 3.1.9+ kernel image, without the debug messages, but overall the response was still very sluggish.. I selected XFCE as the UI, as I had used this – successfully – with Fedora … Continue reading →
Found the latest kernel image (still 3.1.9-based..) and associated pre-compiled modules at the git repository – https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware – and the ‘new’ version of kernel.img does away with the annoying console debug messages.. Device still seems very slow, but maybe I’m too used to quad-core systems with masses of memory! I even tried the Debian system, as this … Continue reading →
Another kernel configuration option that used to be just that – optional – but is now essential for ‘newer’ Fedora systems.. If you see Error unpacking rpm package glibc-common-n.n-nn.xxxx error: unpacking of archive failed on file /usr/libexec/pt_chown: cpio: cap_set_file On some yum/rpm updates (with httpd, as well) this can cause the actual update to fail, but yum/rpm … Continue reading →
Well, I have tried 3.3.1, and – despite applying 2 patches – the DVB-S2 card (HVR4000) still doesn’t work reliably. I was going to try 3.4-rc2, but it seems there are ‘issues’ with this, according to LKML (the Linux Kernel Mailing List), and it can best be classified as ‘unstable’ at present.. So – I have reverted … Continue reading →
Kernel 3.4rc1 is out, and appears to be the new ‘mainline’ version, according to the website at www.kernel.org.. 3.3 is not even mentioned, any more..! I just updated two of my systems (x86_64) to 3.4rc1, and everything seemed to be working just fine (see Update below..).. There are already fixes available for VMware and NVIDIA to work … Continue reading →
I have been having continuing problems with yum ‘hanging’ on my Dreamplug – through several different versions of Fedora, and numerous kernel updates (currently FC17 and Kernel 3.3..) The Fedora rootfs image did not include any swap, so – after some digging around – I decided to add a ./SWAP file, and activate it… The results (so … Continue reading →
The Raspberry Pi boot sequence is somewhat unique, due – amongst other things – to the binary code blobs necessary to drive the Broadcom CPU/GPU at boot time. The FAT32 boot partition looks like this: The three binary files arm<nnn>_start.elf provide varying allocations of the processor for CPU (compute) versus GPU (video) work. This effectively means that … Continue reading →
If you are in the habit of compiling your own kernel, don’t forget to stay up-to-date with the latest necessities! ACL used to be one of those ..’don’t select unless you know what you are doing’… options, but now is an absolute necessity for ‘newer’ versions of Fedora.. So.. don’t forget to select the tmpfs / POSIX … Continue reading →
The Linux kernel source for the Pi has been ‘forked’, rather than being released as a patch set.. This is probably a necessary evil, in order to get a working version out in public… But.. This has the (obvious) downside that we have to rely on regular creation of ‘newer’ forked versions, and the current Pi kernel … Continue reading →