Jackass! 2005.0 Development [ ok ]

[Bob P]

This is the Jackass! 2005.0 DEVELOPMENT Thread. This thread is used by Jackass! Developers and Testers to discuss the actual building of The Jackass! Toolkit.

If you have a SUPPORT question, please post your support request to The Jackass! 2005.0 Support Group thread in the Unsupported Software forum. Thanks.

2005-05-14 Update:

Just for the purpose of clarification, "The Jackass! Project for Gentoo 2005.0", "The Jackass! Toolkit", "The Jackass! Development Team", and The Jackass! Project website at http://jackass.homelinux.org are not affiliated with "Linux for Jackasses" or its website at http://www.jackasslinux.com.

It seems that both of these projects based their name on the Jackass Penguin, which was coincidental.

2005-05-09 Update:

We would like to request that other sites DO NOT mirror our site or our files without our permission. During the rollout of The Jackass! Toolkit we are monitoring the number of downloads for each architecture for quality assurance purposes. Please don't undermine our efforts.

We would also like to request that other web sites do not copy the content of our copyrighted web pages without our permission.

Thanks.

The Jackass Penguin Spheniscus demersus is a flightless seabird that is indigenous to the coast of southern Africa. It has been named after a donkey because of the loud, braying noise that it makes.

>> Click Here for Image <<


The Jackass! Project has been conceived to create an Unauthorized Minimal Installation CD and processor-specific Stage 3 Tarballs for Gentoo 2005.0 that contain an optimized GCC 3.4.3 toolkit built upon an insane set of CFLAGS that only a Jackass would consider using.

This project has evolved from the Stage 1/3 NPTL with Optimized GCC 3.4.3 Toolkit installation methods for Gentoo 2004.3 and 2005.0. Its main contributors are the usual suspects that you would associate with a jackass project like this one. The project was named by a jackass with a propensity to pontificate in a boldfaced dark blue font.

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  (_) __ _  ___| | ____ _ ___ ___| |
  | |/ _` |/ __| |/ / _` / __/ __| |
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      ___________________\/  \      /
     //                //     |____|
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|___ \ / _ \ / _ \| ___| / _ \ 
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 / __/| |_| | |_| |___) | |_| |
|_____|\___/ \___/|____(_)___/ 

Status Report: The following table reflects the current status on each segment of the project

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No  Task                      Assigned   Progress   Testing   Completed
1.  Temporary File Host        [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
2.  Permanent File Host        [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ !! ]    [ !! ]
3.  Create P-1 Tarball         [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
4.  Create P-1-MMX Tarball     [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
5.  Create P-Pro Tarbal        [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
6.  Create P-2 Tarball         [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
7.  Create P-3 Tarball         [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
8.  Create P-4 Tarball         [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
9.  Test Intel Tarballs        [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
10. Create AMD Tarballs        [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
11. Test AMD Tarballs          [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
12. Jackass Framebuffer        [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
13. Emerge Info/Branding       [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
14. Bootable CD                [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]
15. Documentation              [ ok ]     [ ok ]     [ ok ]    [ ok ]

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This is a continuation of the original thread about the Jackass! Project. The other thread has been locked because it grew to be 30 pages long.

Progress on Jackass! is moving right along. We're in the final stages of testing the Intel Pentium through Pentium 4 tarballs, and expect a Live CD to be available in the imminent future.

This past weekend, I slam-dunked the Athlon-XP portion of the project with the help of SSH and an AMD64 box provided by obsidianblackhawk.

thanks!

[Sade]

This past weekend, I slam-dunked the Athlon-XP portion of the project with the help of SSH and an AMD64 box provided by obsidianblackhawk. Anyone interested in testing the Athlon-XP tarballs should send me a PM with a description of your box, your static IP address, and your contact information.

my pm is on the way!

[Sith_Happens]

Let me start out my presence in this new thread by stating this:

I, SITH_HAPPENS, AM
MASTER OF THE PROJECT SERVER,
CREATOR OF TARBALLS,
MAKER OF LIVECD'S,
AND ALL AROUND HUMBLE GUY!!

What that means is if you have problems with accessing the project server, you need to come to me and tell me about it. I don't like hearing from Bob that so-and-so is having an indeterminate problem with the project server, can you ask them about it. Save me some time and come right to me and tell me the exact problem you are experiencing, and I'll work it out.

[obsidianblackhawk]

*Mimiking Ryan*

I Obsidianblackhawk, am
Tester of all things Jackass.
Developer of AMD Tarball
and well..... A Jackass I know it, at least i can admit it to myself

[96140]

What that means is if you have problems with accessing the project server, you need to come to me and tell me about it. I don't like hearing from Bob that so-and-so is having an indeterminate problem with the project server, can you ask them about it. Save me some time and come right to me and tell me the exact problem you are experiencing, and I'll work it out.

AFAICT, the problems I'd been experiencing awhile ago with accessing the server have been resolved, and I appreciate the fact that you also redid the md5sums for the tarballs; they used to be asking for a jackass tarball with a completely different name. But I've downloaded and am halfway through installing the Pentium2 'ball, and the .md5 finally performed as it should, checking out the right filename.

Update (2 hours later): Oops. The laptop reverted to its old troublesome ways. Either the processor, power supply, or motherboard is definitely zorched, most probably one of the latter two possibilities. Unfortunately, that ends all the work I'd done on that particular Pentium2 install attempt. I really will have to wipe this Gentoo and start over on the working laptop. *grumble* 4 hours of work down the drain...and I was so hopeful that my old hardware difficulties with the other laptop had been resolved, too!

[Bob P]

Let me start out my presence in this new thread by stating this:

I, SITH_HAPPENS, AM
MASTER OF THE PROJECT SERVER,
CREATOR OF TARBALLS,
MAKER OF LIVECD'S,
AND ALL AROUND HUMBLE GUY!!

i thought that blue was *my* color, and that green was yours.

you know, since you have to use your PC for other things occasionally, its only normal that the project server should have to go down once in a while. if redundancy helps us, its no problem for me to allow a handful of testers to access my dedicated server as a backup method for getting the jackass files. the same box that serves my Stage 1/3 stuff could serve the Jackass! tarballs for the testers, so that your occasional downtime wouldn't be a problem. all that i need are the tester's static IP addresses to add to the firewall rules.

btw, does that liveCDs comment mean that you've got a present for me?

[96140]

Okay, the Pentium2 tarball officially works now! I still haven't done an "emerge sync" yet, mindful of the pseudo-mistake I made last time, and I trust in the strength of the provided snapshot . I've emerged a few packages so far, and have yet to run into an error. If necessary, I will continue with emerging the big packages like X, which would probably be most affected by the Jackass! make.conf and toolchain, or I can get started on the Pentium3 tarball. It's just that emerging X & Gnome take much longer than simply downloading and installing a new Jackass! tarball. But I'm patient, so I can put this P2 system through the grinder, if'n ya want.

I'm going to get a few hours of sleep now, then I'll be around later tomorrow (today).

[Sade]

i've just became a athlon-xp-jackass!-betatester, so let me introduce myself.

I'm Jan Neggers (officially) i'm 24 and i live in the Netherlands (as u can see below the humpin supafly).
I listen to the names Jan or Sade.
my native language is Dutch, i can read German and English and i'm trying to write English but unfortunatly my spelling isn't close to flawless. (plz. correct me if you feel the need to.)

The machine i'm testing on is a athlon-XP barton 2800+ as stated in my sig.
I'm happy to be of some help in this project.

if you need to mail me: janneggers(at)gmail(dot)com

[Sith_Happens]

As long as we are correcting your spelling Sade, the quote in your sig should read like this (choices, not choises):

The Oracle: "We can not see past the choices we don't understand."

[codergeek42]

Just curious: will we be seeing a Pentium-M (Dothan preferably if it matters) tarball soon? I've been thinking of buying a ThinkPad for college and stuff and I really think being able to do a straight stage3 ~x86 would be awesome.

I need to save up for a few months before I have sufficient funds for such a purchase, so I'm not impatient. Thanks...

[Sith_Happens]

Just curious: will we be seeing a Pentium-M (Dothan preferably if it matters) tarball soon? I've been thinking of buying a ThinkPad for college and stuff and I really think being able to do a straight stage3 ~x86 would be awesome.

I need to save up for a few months before I have sufficient funds for such a purchase, so I'm not impatient. Thanks...

Hmm....I hadn't thought of it. But, it wouldn't take me too much time to whip one up. I guess it all depends on how much time I have on my hands to compile one. So I'm not promising anything at this point, but thanks for your input. If we do offer one, it will be untested, as we don't have any testers with a pentium-m processor, so keep that in mind.

[codergeek42]

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 If we do offer one, it will be untested, as we don't have any testers with a pentium-m processor, so keep that in mind.

Well, hopefully in a few months I'll be able to help with that.

[Bob P]

hehe. when i saw this thread, i thought we were going to get codergeek as a tester.

on the subject of pentium-m, i guess that doing that would commit us to making a tarball for every flavor of intel pentiums, wouldn't it?

i have to admit, i don't have a pentium-m and i've never had access to such a box, but the horror stories i've heard about pentium-m make me wary of designing a jackass tarball for one -- especially since we don't have proper boxes to test it on. for now, i think we need to focus on the project with its stated objectives and make sure that we meet our release deadline which is approaching fast. realistically speaking, i cannot imagine adding a new architecture and having it ready by our release date which is looming on the horizon. so if we were to do a pentium-m (or any other arches for that matter) i would only consider doing that after Jackass! 2005.0 gets released. maybe that could be added as an objective for Jackass! 2005.1.

one of the goals that we've had in designing Jackass! was to build platforms for people who really couldn't harness the CPU power to do their own Stage 1/3 installs. so we built tarballs for pentium classic, pentium-mmx, pentiumpro, etc. because those boxes weren't really capable of building their own systems within a reasonable amount of time. we specficially avoided building tarballs for processors like the pentium-m or p4m because we considered that any P3 or P4 box was fast enough that an experienced user familiar with the Stage 1/3 method could build their own.

personally, if i had a pentium-m, i wouldn't wait for us to produce a tarball for it -- the pentium-m boxes are fast enough that you could just take our pentium3 tarball, change the march flag, and rebuild the system.

[Sade]

we don't have any testers with a pentium-m processor, so keep that in mind.

i've got a dothan (ibm t42)

P.S. thx sith, i am corrected

[Bob P]

STATUS REPORTS, PLEASE.

now that the P2, P3, P4 tarballs have been out for 3 days, I'd like status reports from the testers. Please PM me and let me know:

1. which tarballs you've installed.
2. what hardware you've installed them on.
3. what you've emerged
4. how things are working, and if you've run into any probems.

I realize that the Athlon-XP tarball hasn't been out for long, but if you Athlon testers can give me any preliminary info, I'd greatly appreciate it.

thx.

bob

[obsidianblackhawk]

Hey Bob, sorry i've dissappeared for a couple of days, i've had some personal issues to deal with. PM inbound to answer your questions.

[Bob P]

LIVE CD ISO IMAGES READY FOR TESTING.

TESTERS, CHECK YOUR PM FOR ASSIGNMENTS!

[Bob P]

Hey Bob, sorry i've dissappeared for a couple of days, i've had some personal issues to deal with. PM inbound to answer your questions.

thanks, but its not you i'm worried about. you're reliable. some of these other guys tend to disappear as soon as they get what they need.

[96140]

Regarding the idea of testing Pentium-M stages, I've heard that using gcc 3.4.3 is much more reliable that simply using gcc 3.3; some more support is offered for it, as one can choose "-march=pentium-m", so it has at least some better preliminary support. Is that enough to make it an attractive option, or do we really need more testers/builders before we can consider putting out a tarball for every arch. variety?

[Sith_Happens]

Regarding the idea of testing Pentium-M stages, I've heard that using gcc 3.4.3 is much more reliable that simply using gcc 3.3; some more support is offered for it, as one can choose "-march=pentium-m", so it has at least some better preliminary support. Is that enough to make it an attractive option, or do we really need more testers/builders before we can consider putting out a tarball for every arch. variety?

Right now we are concentrating on getting the stages we've already built out the door. It wouldn't be that difficult to put out a pentium-m stage though, so it is something we will consider.

[96140]

Right; I was just considering the possibilities. I've got the Pentium2 iso downloading now, and will finish burning it and the Pentium3 iso before I install from the P2 CD. At least I've still got Windows to burn CDs from...I feel a little guilty, though. Trying to help create something for the Linux community using Windows...like it's tainting Gentoo...

or, looking at it differently, more than slightly ironic.

[Sith_Happens]

Your not alone, it seems that the majority of hits to Bob's stage 1/3 guide come from windows machines as well. It's some kind of sign I think. It will be interesting to see what the trend is with the Jackass! server.

[96140]

Your not alone, it seems that the majority of hits to Bob's stage 1/3 guide come from windows machines as well. It's some kind of sign I think.

All for the best, I hope!

In my case, I've discovered that dual-booting Gentoo and Windows at least lets me maintain productivity even when I'm wiping my Gentoo installation for repeated testing. This way I have some way of burning the LiveCD isos to discs so that I can get back to my Gentoo use all the quicker.

I certainly don't prefer to use Windows. And I think perhaps the biggest potential turn-off to the Stage 1/3 method--besides the whole much-decried text-only installation of Gentoo itself--is the lengthy compile/recompile times required to have an optimized, consistent system. Jackass! solves that, and gives Windows users--or users from other *nix distros--even more of a reason to make the switch, or at least see the possibilities Gentoo offers.

[96140]

A question: was hielvc's emerge wrapper ever integrated into Jackass? I know that Bob and others are very impressed with it, and I wonder if it would be worth incorporating into the custom tarballs.

While we haven't seen a toolchain package update for a little while, I've been under the impression that the wrapper is just the thing for making subsequent system recompiles much easier after upgrading gcc or the like. And given that the Jackass! project is about providing a different, more coherent and consistent set of tarballs, would it make sense to ask hielvc if we could include his script? I mean, in an effort to maintain the bulletproof-ness of the Jackass!-built system, would it be a good idea to include the tc-update script to make the installation future-proof, as well?

[Sith_Happens]

Have you tried out one of the live-cds? Also if people could give me some feedback on server responsiveness during the download, that would be great, seeing as all the testers were downloading at the same time.