Bootable 64-bit RPi3 Gentoo image (OpenRC/Xfce/VC4) UPDATED

[Hu]

Your output says you passed --usepkg or similar. If you did not pass that on the command line, then it came as an emerge default option through a configuration file or environment variable.

[Sakaki]

orion777,

The gentoo-on-rpi3-64bit image has a backing weekly autobuild binhost, and sets getbinpkg in FEATURES. You can temporarily turn this off to force a local emerge, using (e.g.):

[orion777]

In the topic https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8224202.html#8224202 such recommendation was placed:

[Sakaki]

orion777,

whether to disable bindist really comes down to your particular use case, and in particular, the additional packages you want to install. (Side note about a common issue, in case it is relevant: it used to be the case that packages requiring elliptic curve crypto would enforce a -bindist requirement on dev-libs/openssl, but the underlying issue has recently been (mostly) addressed by pulling in parts of the Fedora patchset, see commit 962021d and the original acd5dfa. I'm not sure if this reality is reflected in all the client ebuilds yet, however.)

FWIW, I run my build server with bindist set globally, and have not experienced any stability issues directly traceable to that.

To your other questions, if you unset bindist in e.g. your /etc/portage/make.conf, then yes, a number of your existing packages will need re-emerging (and will be built locally from that point on whenever you run e.g. genup, and eligible upgrade versions are available).

You can get a sense of what will be rebuilt by issuing e.g.:

[orion777]

Thank You for the explanation! Since all packages are already build with bindist flag, I will not reemerge it without this flag; but will keep in mind it for some specific net installations, that are not in the image setup

Sakaki, could you please specify what about raspberry camera support? (for today raspberry manufacturers provides camera v2.1 https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/camera-module-v2/ ; mine is 1.3, but suppose that they use same drivers/libraries and so)

[Sakaki]

[orion777]

Will leave it here for the analysis in future (maybe helps with camera setup) https://wiki.jmk.hu/wiki/Live_Video_Streaming_with_Raspberry_Pi_camera_module

[orion777]

One more question.. What CPU freuency driver is used in your setup in order to allow "on demand" operation?

[Sakaki]

[orion777]

So, in the your image Default CPUFreq governor is Ondemand or Powersave?
Also sorry, I don't understand what scaling drivers you use BCM2835?
in the → CPU Power Management → CPU Frequency scaling

[Sakaki]

orion777,

the (upstream) kernel default is powersave, but this is switched to ondemand at boot time on the image by the script I cited previously (and ondemand is used from that point on).

The bcmrpi3_defconfig kernel config for the kernel shipped with the image is available here, from which you can extract all the settings. For example, if you search this file for CPUFREQ, you will find the following stanza:

[NeddySeagoon]

orion777,

The Wiki does it one way. Sakaki does it another.
Both ways are correct.

CONFIG_ARM_BCM2835_CPUFREQ is the driver, which was not in the upstream kernel, last time I looked.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Sakaki]

[orion777]

Okay.. The problem is that when I work on your kernel (supplied with the image) everything in fine; but whet I build my kernel and select Ondemand

[roylongbottom]

New Copy of Gentoo, problem installing Samba

I somehow managed to corrupt my Gentoo (For RPi 3B+) SD card and have installed the latest. This displays on my TV but does not fill the screen on monitors and eventually only provided flashing desktop images on them. Using the TV, I could not install cifs-utils, samba nor vcgencmd, all producing the following message

[Sakaki]

roylongbottom,

could you post the full command line and output from the emerge command you are trying please? The stanza you posted ("...config files... need updating") is an incidental message; it is telling you that a package you've updated has tried to overwrite a protected config file (e.g. a file in /etc/...) and you need to decide what to do about the 'shadow' updated copy that Portage has written (use it in place of your old version of that config file, retain your old file and ignore the new one, merge the old and new versions etc.) There are various utilities that you can use for this, for example dispatch-conf (see also my notes here). But if you are unable to install packages, there will be a 'real' error message somewhere in the output too.
_________________
Regards,

sakaki

[Sakaki]

Also, I'm just in the final stages of testing a 1.2.2 release of the image; this version will have net-fs/samba, net-fs/cifs-utils and media-libs/raspberrypi-userland (for vcgencmd) bundled. I hope to release within the next few days and will obviously post here when I do so.
_________________
Regards,

sakaki

[roylongbottom]

[Sakaki]

roylongbottom,

so, you just need to update the custom rpi3 user ebuild repository (aka 'overlay') utilized on the image, in order to pick up the various USE flags etc. required by samba and friends. To do so, issue:

[roylongbottom]

[Sakaki]

Hello,

I've just posted a v1.2.2 release of my bootable 64-bit Gentoo image for the RPi3 (model B and B+) on GitHub (here, includes full download instructions).

A changelog from the prior release image (with upgrade instructions) may be viewed here, but in summary:

• Migrated the default binary kernel package from bcmrpi3-kernel-bin to bcmrpi3-kernel-bis-bin; the latter uses a slightly tweaked version of the upstream bcmrpi3_defconfig via this weekly autobuild (to which, incidentally, config-change PRs will be accepted for review). The original bcmrpi3-kernel-bin package (and autobuild) will continue to be supported, and indeed you can easily switch to this version if you desire (just run, as root, "emerge -av1 sys-kernel/bcmrpi3-kernel-bin && reboot"). However, having the ability to tweak the configuration (and possibly kernel source in future) provides additional flexibility. For example, in this release KVM is supported (see this thread) and the image ships with app-emulation/qemu if you want to try it out. Other facilities will be rolled out in future.
  
• The RPi3's SoC has a hardware random number generator, added the sys-apps/rng-tools package to start using it for /dev/random.
  
• Added the top-level package media-sound/mpd and media-sound/mpc (a music player daemon and client).
  
• Added a (first-cut, 64-bit) build of media-libs/raspberrypi-userland, so you can now use vcgencmd etc. Please note that (as with all 64-bit distros for the RPi3 at the moment), MMAL and OpenMax IL features are not supported (see also this issue).
  
• For those wishing to share files with Windows boxes, net-fs/samba is now bundled (you need to configure and activate it yourself, however, see e.g. these notes).
  
• Added a /etc/sysctl.d rule to optimize cache usage settings for low memory (per this article).
  
• Added a service (rpi3-safecompositor) which turns off display compositing if a high pixel clock is detected (> 1.2175MHz, currently). This is because certain applications, for example LibreOffice v6 Draw and Impress, can cause the whole system to lock-up when used with compositing on under such conditions.
  
• Added a startup service (rpi3-ethfix) to workaround some of the RPi3B+ Ethernet issues via ethtool.
  
• Various minor ebuild tidy-ups.
  
• All packages brought up-to-date against the Gentoo tree, as of 3 June 2018 (including Firefox Quantum v60.0.1).

A variant image for the Pi-Top v1 (an RPi3-based DIY laptop) is also included.

Have fun ^-^

And, as always, any problems or comments, please post in this thread!
_________________
Regards,

sakaki

[roylongbottom]

Slow 3B+ Multithreading Performance - Temperature or Power?

On running my multithreading benchmarks, I noted unusual slow performance from certain tests. The first was the Whetstone benchmark, with independent copies of the program, using 1, 2, 4 and 8 threads. Then, the running time should not increase much using up to 4 threads, but should be just over twice as long using 8. As shown in the example below, the 4 thread test was too slow and this was particularly due to the long running COS test.

[orion777]

Is it possible to exclude modemmanager from the system?
I can mask it in the /etc/portage/package.mask , but
but I can't rebuild networkmanager with -modemmanager flag because it is pulled in nm-applet and so..

I wish to do this because software for the drones, which I use, can conflict with the modemmanager.
If I remove modemmanager by emerge -C, then each time emerge returns error like

[orion777]

Finally, I'm getting failed system during genup. What was done:
The gentoo was 1,5 month old, genup was discarded from the cron weekly, because I'm using custom kernel with MPTCP implementation. The key problem with this kernel is that when its make modules_install was done, the native kernel will boot in degraded mode (no network interfaces, xserver start freeze the computer, no custom resolution,... but the file system is accessible).

To run genup:
I was started emerge -v rpi3-64bit-meta WITHOUT dev-embedded/rpi3-64bit-meta -kernel-bin in the /etc/portage/package.use/rpi3-64bit-meta
Next I was added dev-embedded/rpi3-64bit-meta -kernel-bin to the /etc/portage/package.use/rpi3-64bit-meta and rerun
pi64 ~ # emerge -v rpi3-64bit-meta
pi64 ~ # emerge --depclean

Now I was copying my custom kernel to the /boot
but I forgot to run make modules_install again!

Next, through the ssh with screen /usr/sbin/genup was started.

When I come back after some hours, the rpi3 was running (warm CPU, touched by hand), but there is no response from ssh client. Reboot does not help.
Next, monitor was attached via hdmi. It shows such welcome screen:
This is (none) (Linux aarch64 4.14.44-v8+) 20:20:20 (none instead of pi64!!)

I'm able to login, but there is no network interfaces, none of commands like make menuconfig, make modules_install are working, returning an error read-only file system (remember that my laptop with this custom kernel and modules_install, but using native kernel still is able to access the file system, only network interfaces, etc will fail).
Original kernel probably boot the system (as it responds on ctrl+alt+del), but the screen is empty (probably video chip is not started) (I was trying to boot from the original kernel by putting it thru the card reader).

I'm still able to access the file system via card reader of the laptop, but I don't know how to solve this problem If someone have any ideas, these are welcome, because reinstalling again and again.. rpi3 64 bit image, kernel implementation and custom drone software are time-expensive..

[Goverp]