Gentoo for Amlogic S9xx (TV box S905\S905X\S912)

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

Wait, there is another way that I have not tested, but should work:
IIRC balbes kernel boots using root=label=ROOTFS
So if you format the /dev/data partition using the ext4 and label it ROOTFS and wipe (or relabel) the ROOTFS from the sd card it should boot from the SD and use /dev/data as rootfs, I wanted to test it but than installed a kernel in the internal memory replacing android :-)

Of course you have to make sure the gentoo system in /dev/data is actually bootable and contains all required modules and firmware
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True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
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mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

I used the SD only for the first emerge -e word, months ago, the difference was considerable, several hours less. Consider that booting from the sd and having root in the /data partition involves 0 risks .... I was really surprised of the speed, expecially using -j4, sd really uscks when multiple processes write to it. eMMC is, in practice an embedded SD with an SSD controller that supports TRIM.
Ideally someone should update the uboot bootloader, archlinuxarm always ships recent uboot with network console enabled for supported platforms, it's very nice to enter the uboot 'bios' over the network without opening the case and use an usb->ttl .... but that is really risky

I am really considering to re-emerge -e world using -flto and -ftree-vectorize :-)

graphite usually makes only little difference and is still hard masked somewhere.
_________________
Ok boomer
True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
Ab esse ad posse valet, a posse ad esse non valet consequentia

My fediverse account: @erm67@erm67.dynu.net

mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21607

mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

I also found a new trick ;-)

useflags can be unmasked here:
/etc/portage/profile/use.mask

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2017 11:03 am Post subject:

erm67,

/etc/portage/profile/use.mask actually inverts the USE mask in force.
arm64 has (-java) so the -java entry inverts the forced off. You can also force things off here.

/etc/portage/profile/package.use.mask allows per package USE unmasking

So far, I have

mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

@NeddySeagoon let's face the truth, be honest with yourself and the others, some stuff that works perfectly on all other arm64 distro is masked in gentoo for no reason at all SINCE 2010, in 7 years nobody tested them or unmasked the stuff, do you think maybe in another 7 years someone will unmask that stuff? All those programs and features works already without any modification simply unmasking them, what's the added value in waiting for someone to unmask them? TBH it's a shame that all that stuff is still masked in 2017, but arm64 is not an official arch anyway.
_________________
Ok boomer
True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
Ab esse ad posse valet, a posse ad esse non valet consequentia

My fediverse account: @erm67@erm67.dynu.net

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2017 5:17 pm Post subject:

erm67,

keyword additions are one of the easiest githup PRs to get into the tree.
Join #gentoo-proxy-maint to dip a toe in the water. Oh, I can't commit things as I'm not an ebuild developer.

When some reasonably performing arm64 hardware in available, 1G RAM/core. SATA. ... > 4 cores, arm64 will interest
more people. The cello looked promising but the PCIe slot
doesn't work with new AMD silicon.

I don't see me keywording KDE on a Raspberry Pi but I've made a start on smaller packages.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 11:52 am Post subject:

erm67,

You are right about the really slow IO on the Pi. Just a single USB2 root hub for USB and ethernet.
The vc4 hardware driver still looks to be 32 bit only, so its framebuffer only for me at the moment.

sdlmame builds but with sub 1Hz framerates, it not useful.

I don't agree about keywording. Adding ~arm64 shows a package had had some testing.
It may encourage less adventurous users to play on arm64. Its going to be required to get more than @system stable on arm64.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 9:28 pm Post subject:

erm67,

Yes I have icedtea for arm64
Its a bit of a hack but you will only do it once.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

Thank you, it works, but there's only a jdk available for arm64 and not a jre .... in a couple of places you wrote jre in other jdk ....

I choose not to emerge it since it pulls in Xorg even using USE=headless_awt, I only need java for a couple of things (like projectx) and I'll be fine with oracle jdk.
_________________
Ok boomer
True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
Ab esse ad posse valet, a posse ad esse non valet consequentia

My fediverse account: @erm67@erm67.dynu.net

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2017 12:50 pm Post subject:

erm67,

The jdk includes the jre. There are probably not enough users to package a separate jre.

I didn't notice the dependency on Xorg as I run a desktop on my Pi3,
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212

https://yadi.sk/d/8WUMwurb38CYTi
Gentoo_8gb_20170128.img.xz
md5sum da1c74abca86f07e866dac6cced01f7c

This gentoo system image and kernel are 100% natively built on minimx-g s905 itself.
It has been verified to run on s905x too.

The gentoo is bleeding edge in that it accepts all keywords,
also: gcc-6.3.0 and glibc-2.24 ebuilds are hacked (KEYWORDS un-commented),
and: arm64 use.mask profile is less restrictive.
A few packages are added in top of system.

You must set date manually or emerge will complain. In root there is a README file.
To change resolution, etc.. follow same procedure as outlined by Author balbes150 in OP.

In fact: all kind help comes from him and all credits go to him.

Kernel is 150balbes github branch S905X. It is natively built with gcc-4.9.4.

Starting from this image I have built a LxQt centric Desktop without much pain.
You can use it to build any other gentoo machine you feel like building.

Kernel is work in progress. There is another branch (ordroid) in 150balbes github which may become the next kernel. But ordroid kernel is s905 -only for now.

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

Do you have the overlayfs backport patch? It comes from the odroid kernel but it was ported to kszaq kernel for libreelec 8.0 beta, I think it might work with minor change also with balbes kernel
The patch is in libreelec git:
LibreELEC.tv/packages/linux/patches/amlogic-3.14/linux-002-backport_overlayfs.patch

overlayfs is really a bonus to run docker since, well, the device-mapper backend of docker never worked very well and btrfs in kernel 3.14 is too ancient to be relayed on.
_________________
Ok boomer
True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
Ab esse ad posse valet, a posse ad esse non valet consequentia

My fediverse account: @erm67@erm67.dynu.net

mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212