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mattst88
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 5:13 pm    Post subject: If you run Gentoo on your Alpha... Reply with quote

If you run Gentoo on your Alpha,

  • we'd like to know about it.
  • we'd like for you to hang out on IRC with us (#alpha and #gentoo-alpha on irc.freenode.net)
  • we'd like for you to help test packages and find bugs
  • we'd like for you to help add content to the AlphaLinux.Org Wiki


Gentoo/Alpha officially consists of two developers right now (I'm kind of freelance) -- so we're really stretched thin and could use your help.
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dogshu
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 6:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Howdy,

I'm a Gentoo/Alpha user. I am rather impressed that you guys have Gentoo working so well on alpha with such limited resources, it even works better than NetBSD and OpenBSD on my machine. Meaning X actually works without any corruption or color issues. I was asked to join you guys on IRC in this bug, however I almost never use IRC, so I don't think that will be productive. I am willing to do some light testing of packages, however something to keep in mind is that I don't use my alpha as my main machine. Anyway, if you'd like to discuss this further, we can do it here in the forum, or you can e-mail me at the address I use for bugs.gentoo.org. Thanks for the great work guys!
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ddc
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 3:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

alpha heats too much energy, you'd better consider people want lighter machines
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mattst88
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 8:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dogshu wrote:
Howdy,

I'm a Gentoo/Alpha user. I am rather impressed that you guys have Gentoo working so well on alpha with such limited resources, it even works better than NetBSD and OpenBSD on my machine. Meaning X actually works without any corruption or color issues. I was asked to join you guys on IRC in this bug, however I almost never use IRC, so I don't think that will be productive. I am willing to do some light testing of packages, however something to keep in mind is that I don't use my alpha as my main machine. Anyway, if you'd like to discuss this further, we can do it here in the forum, or you can e-mail me at the address I use for bugs.gentoo.org. Thanks for the great work guys!


Ahh! Great! :)

We actually just figured out why X 1.6 and 1.7 weren't working on Alpha. I think we've got them fixed now. :)

I'm sure that Tobias (the team leader) would love to have some extra help testing packages. I'll send you an email with some more details.

Thanks for responding. :)
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LinuxFreakus
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 4:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I use Gentoo on my Alpha currently (AlphaServer 1200)... actually I have been using it since about 2002ish (don't really remember when I ditched redhat)... It started out with DEC Unix, then I switched to redhat to get more modern apps and because I didn't need Oracle anymore (stopped using it as a "real" server because newer/cheaper/faster/efficient hardware was readily available) but I still just have a love for the Alpha (you can pry it from my cold dead hands) and I hack around whenever I have free time. Then it became clear the that Alpha was going to be dropped like a hot potato from RH, so I came to Gentoo and never looked back.

I am rather alarmed by the state of Alpha support these days, I recently noticed that Debian has dropped Alpha from its release builds, so lenny is likely to be the last release... there are no active porters anymore for Debian (seems like there is one guy but he no longer has time). What is the situation here in Gentoo? I'm worried that Gentoo could suffer the same fate. I do not want to let this happen.
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mattst88
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

LinuxFreakus wrote:
What is the situation here in Gentoo? I'm worried that Gentoo could suffer the same fate. I do not want to let this happen.


I'm not going to let that happen. :)

We've got two good developers now, and I'm trying to tackle upstream issues, so that they're fixed before every getting to the Gentoo developers.

We've made pretty good strides in the last two years. Just to name a few things, we've
  • implemented Futex support in the kernel
  • fixed libdrm locking
  • fixed the X-server after the libpciaccess switch, which required kernel work
  • implemented a software performance events for the `perf` tool
  • fixed a number of bugs in glibc
  • improved code generation in gcc
  • wired up a number of missing syscalls


We've got our own alpha-2.6.git git tree which we use to send Linus patches, and we've got an AlphaLinux.Org Wiki.
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LinuxFreakus
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 6:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is great. I felt like we almost fell off a cliff there. I will definitely be working whenever I have time to help improve things further. The more people we have who are capable of fixing issues or helping to test, even if only intermittently, will help improve the chances of the alpha port remaining viable going forward.
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Tim Fontenot
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 16, 2010 5:03 am    Post subject: Gentoo on the Alpha Reply with quote

Let me see if I can get Gentoo downloaded and installed on my AlphaServer 800. If all goes well, I will be happy to be of some assistance. I can't code, but I can test. Not a lot of time to fool with the Alpha, but if it becomes usefull using Gentoo, I will see that it gets a little more of my time.
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Alphaer
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 25, 2010 6:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm Gentoo user and have Alphas.
How can I help the project?
May I get wishlist to port?
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phajdan.jr
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 25, 2010 7:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alphaer wrote:
I'm Gentoo user and have Alphas.
How can I help the project?
May I get wishlist to port?


I'm not a member of the Gentoo/Alpha project, but you'll find more information on the project page: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/alpha/.

Also, there's a list of Gentoo/Alpha bugs.
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mattst88
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 28, 2010 7:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alphaer wrote:
I'm Gentoo user and have Alphas.
How can I help the project?
May I get wishlist to port?


Please join the #alpha and #gentoo-alpha IRC channels on irc.freenode.net.
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Syntaxis
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 1:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

LinuxFreakus wrote:
Debian has dropped Alpha from its release builds, so lenny is likely to be the last release... there are no active porters anymore for Debian (seems like there is one guy but he no longer has time). What is the situation here in Gentoo? I'm worried that Gentoo could suffer the same fate.

An equivalent to Debian's stable branch (software versions remain static, only critical fixes and security updates applied, ala GLEP 0019) has never existed in the Gentoo sphere in the first place. So it's great that Gentoo has an active Alpha port - the more people working on the architecture, the more everyone stands to benefit - but it can never offer a true replacement.

Alpha remains available in Unstable/Sid and the autobuilder network is still being maintained. Anyone running Debian on their Alphas can put off worrying until Squeeze has been out for almost a year (at which point security support for Lenny will end) and then take a view. That's what I'm going to do, at least. :-) Hard to guess at this point what the situation'll be like over a year from now, after all.
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lewis
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 4:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Count me too. I was wondering who did all the work - thanks for that.
pls point me to newbie howto on setup/use of IRC that might work on Gentoo...

Stephen Lewis
API CS20 - dual EV68


$ emerge --info
Portage 2.1.8.3 (default/linux/alpha/10.0/desktop, gcc-4.3.4, glibc-2.11.2-r0, 2.6.31-gentoo-r10 alpha)
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-2.6.31-gentoo-r10-alpha-EV68AL-with-gentoo-1.12.13
Timestamp of tree: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:00:01 +0000
app-shells/bash: 4.0_p37
dev-lang/python: 2.6.4-r1
dev-util/cmake: 2.6.4-r3
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.13
sys-apps/sandbox: 1.6-r2
sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.65
sys-devel/automake: 1.9.6-r3, 1.10.3, 1.11.1
sys-devel/binutils: 2.20.1-r1
sys-devel/gcc: 4.3.4, 4.4.3-r2
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1
sys-devel/libtool: 2.2.6b
virtual/os-headers: 2.6.30-r1
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="alpha"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA"
CBUILD="alpha-unknown-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-mieee -pipe -O2 -mcpu=ev67 -mtune=ev67"
CHOST="alpha-unknown-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb /var/bind"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c /etc/udev/rules.d"
CXXFLAGS="-mieee -pipe -O2 -mcpu=ev67 -mtune=ev67"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="assume-digests distlocks fixpackages news parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/gentoo/ http://distfiles.gentoo.org/ http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo/"
LANG="C"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"
SYNC="rsync://10.0.200.136/gentoo-portage"
USE="X a52 aac acl alpha berkdb branding bzip2 cairo cdr cli consolekit cracklib crypt cxx dbus dri dts dvd dvdr encode examples exif fam firefox flac gdbm gif gnome gpm gtk guile hal iconv ipv6 jpeg lcms ldap libnotify mad mikmod mng modules mp3 mp4 mpeg mudflap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly ogg opengl openmp pam pango pcre pdf perl png ppds pppd python qt3support readline reflection sdl session spell spl sqlite ssl startup-notification svg sysfs tcl tcpd tiff truetype unicode usb vorbis x264 xcb xml xorg xulrunner xv xvid zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="radeon" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account"
Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, LINGUAS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS
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Altivo
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2015 2:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Uh-oh, scary how old this thread is with no new posts, but I'll bump it anyway.

I have just retired from my work as a librarian and network administrator. I have worked in the past as a documentation writer and as a quality control engineer for a library software house (NOTIS Systems, R.I.P. alas) and was once a VAX systems manager and before that a system programmer for a large IBM mainframe shop. (That was a looooong time ago, though.)

I own too many computers, but my two Alphas (a PWS 433au and an Alphaserver DS10) are among my favorites. I was really disappointed when Debian went dormant for these machines, as OpenVMS just isn't suitable as a modern desktop environment. OpenBSD claims to support Alphas, but without a working X server and with most of the packages I've tried from ports labeled "broken on Alpha" I have to question that claim.

It looks to me as if Gentoo still works. The Handbook for Alpha has some bad instructions in it that need correction, and I've found a major defect in the LiveCD installation image that I downloaded for 4.0.5, but I have managed to get the command line environment running on the PWS 433au and it runs well. I'm about to try to bring in Xorg functionality, and a bit nervous about the vague nature of the available instructions.

Given the strengths and gaps noted in my background (I'm still good at several languages but was never a C coder, for instance) I'm certainly willing to do what I can to help keep the Alpha port of Gentoo going. Documentation and testing are both strong points in my repertoire.

The PWS is up and running daily, and I'd like to use it as my main desktop machine and for amateur radio functions. In answer to the fellow who objected to power use and heat output a while back, I'll point out that the workstation Alphas are no worse than many Intel/Windows based desktop machines in this respect. Agreed, the big multiuser servers are more like a VAX, but there aren't many of those left running. Linux users are much more likely to be looking at either the desktop workstations with PCI bus slots or the later lightweight rack-mount servers like the DS20s.

Anyway, I'm here and available. And I'll check into the IRC as often as I can. Somedays, other things take precedence, of course. I'll make an e-mail address available in my profile here, and I will also respond to any private messages here on the forum. Let me know what I can do to help.
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2015 12:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Altivo,

The handbook is on the Wiki. You should be able to fix it yourself :)
If not, sign up to bugs.gentoo.org and post a bug.

Post a bug for the liveCD too.

If you have got to grips with Internet Relay Chat, there will be a few channels on freenode.net that may interest you.
Some are very busy, others are quiet. To keep spam down, you need to register your nickname before you can speak in most of them.
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those that do backups
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