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 →
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 →
This is how I compile ARM kernels. There are other ways of doing this, but this works, for me.. First – I should mention – Read the Wicki! This is at http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Hub After getting the ‘forked’ kernel I then had to obtain a suitable config file, which included the necessary extra items for the Pi Broadcom chipset.. … Continue reading →
The Fedora armv5tel / x86_64 cross-compiler toolchain is a bit ancient (GCC 4.1.2!), and the Pi is armv6.. So.. I needed a more up-to-date and architecture-friendly substitute.. After some abortive attempts (some of the other armv7 cross-compilers were just as old!) I found a set of armv7 / x86_64 cross-compiler rpms – including gcc version 4.6.1 – … Continue reading →
Just spent some time upgrading my ARM Dreamplug to Fedora 17 (pre-release) and kernel 3.2.9.. Kernels are compiled on my Fedora x86_64 desktop, using the armv5tel-redhat-linux-gnueabi RPM set.. I’ve installed the XFCE desktop (rebuilding some missing RPMs from source..), and hacked an old (F13) ARM version of Epiphany for a working browser (as Firefox crashes all the … Continue reading →