Gentoo on bananapi

littletux · n00b Joined: 08 Dec 2003 Posts: 74

For other users that also wanna do a gentoo install on a pi, a good tip is, to use a normal sata disk as installation media, because it's a lot faster than the SD card. If the big installation is finished, it is possible to move the system to the SD Card. Also for people that have a small but fast SD Card its a good solution to squash the whole system and made it like a livesystem. so you have only writings to the card if you write a updated version on it which you can update from the harddisk you have used for the first install.

Gladdle · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2014 3:44 pm Post subject:

At least, the producer has releaised a gentoo- image for SD Cards: http://www.lemaker.org/resources/9-122/gentoo_for_bananapi.html

I also got a Banana Pi, i want to use it as a Home Server. But when i emerge samba, some depencies make trouble:

destroyedlolo · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2014 9:06 pm Post subject:

Hi,

Did you try to

Gladdle · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2014 9:10 am Post subject:

Its not listet because in my post above is the Version 1.42.10.
EDIT: Now i see, there are 2 different versions called. Thanks. Also Thanks for the link for the portage Infos.
An "emerge --sync" 2 Days later solved the Problem.

Krog · Guru Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 339 Location: Roma, Italy

hi guys sorry for necroposting... why don't we share some binary package? :-)

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21619

What exactly is it that you want done? Who do you want to do it?

Krog · Guru Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 339 Location: Roma, Italy

I mean that we owners of banana pi can create a binary repository and I can of course do the job too...It's just an idea.
Never mind. Sorry and have a nice day.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 10:32 am Post subject:

Krog,

Its called a BINHOST, and yes, its a good idea up to a point.

Users do not get to choose the USE flags or CFLAGS from a binhost. There is no security on binary downloads either.
Provided users are aware of these thing its not hard to do. Here is my BINHOST. No arm7a though.
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Krog · Guru Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 339 Location: Roma, Italy

i get it...
another idea i had is to compile everything on a virtual machine and pass the binaries to the banana.. is this possible?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 3:09 pm Post subject:

Krog,

Yes but the VM will be slower than the bananapi as the VM has to emulate the arm CPU in software.
It can also be done in a chroot.

The "least worst" option appears to be cross distcc.
The bananapi does some of the work but another (amd64?) system does most of the compiling using a cross compiler.
Its not perfect as some things won't distribute but its better than pure cross compiling. You can mix both methods. Pure cross compiled packages cam be binary installed on the bananapi.
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NeddySeagoon

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

Krog · Guru Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 339 Location: Roma, Italy

i now have a very fast computer (amd64 of course)... so you say it's better to use distcc/crosscompile and so some stuff on the banana too than use only the big computer and crossdev?

Krog · Guru Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 339 Location: Roma, Italy

my question is: in order to produce binaries for small arm computers usually people compile linux on that hardware or on a bigger pc?
what help can do the banana in a distcc compilation? i would like to compile only on my main pc and then pass the binaries to the banana (and maybe to anyone on internet who wants them)

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

The best option is probably to buy a faster board, they are so cheap that probably you'll save money on your electricity bill buying a faster arm board than crosscompiling everything on a desktop pc.
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Krog · Guru Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 339 Location: Roma, Italy

uhm i did not wanted to spend more than 50€
i followed Banana Pi the Gentoo Way without success (the board does not start)
so i downloaded a pre-build gentoo sytem from official website but it's 2 years old... i'm updating the strict necessary of @system in order to start distcc/crossdev with my i5-6600k :-)

i did not started from scratch as the bootloader is alien to me and i was discouraged by the not-working system i created following the first link.
this old image works fine, I changed passwords, some settings and it works. I will start from that, then compile binaries for anyone who will want them.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 12:14 pm Post subject:

Krog,

I've done the emulation twice. Once for a 400MHz SPARC CPU. One core of my AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1090T (3.4GHz) got me a 200MHz SPARC.

The second time was for arm64. Before I did any timing tests, I ran emerge -K <package> to update my emulated environment.
That locked up with an unimplemented ioctrl when portage got to installing. The emulated unpacking the compressed tarball was clearly slow.

With cross distcc. The host still has to do the linking and build things that will not distribute, like gcc.
cross distcc can distribute configure (I've had mixed success) and compile jobs.

Once you have your crossdev cross toolchain, cross distcc is easy to set up. Its the same as normal distcc.
The arm system will ask for things to be compiled with the cross compiler.
Also, you can try your hand and pure cross compiling, then installing the binaries on the arm board.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

Krog · Guru Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 339 Location: Roma, Italy

my initial idea was in fact pure cross compiling, then install binaries... will i meet some problems in this way?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 1:03 pm Post subject:

Krog,

Yes. Almost everything in the @system set works. Perl will not cross compile.
gcc can be a challenge.
Getting gcc to cross compile C++ code may need a line in make.conf in /usr/<tuple>/etc/portage/make.conf
The kernel is cross compile friendly, its always cross compiled to bring up a new arch.

The default /usr/<tuple>/etc/portage/make.profile default symlink is not useful, you will need to fix that.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

Krog · Guru Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 339 Location: Roma, Italy

ok, distcc and crosscompile sounds easier than pure cross

mamac · l33t Joined: 29 Feb 2004 Posts: 890

Hello Gents,

Has anyone here been able to get a recent kernel (for example 4.9.28 ) running on a BananaPi?

I cloned linux gitlab source from Raspberry and used "sunxi_defconfig".

Cross compilation works fine and uImage is created but doesn't boot, same if I compile locally on the BananaPi.

I cannot get the error message because I don't have HDMI screen to connect to it (any idea on how to get kernel messages on previous boot would be welcome ;-)

).

Thank you
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Krog · Guru Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 339 Location: Roma, Italy

i abandoned the idea of gentoo on arm as even with cross compile the times were huge... there are many distros with updated kernel, you can grab from that... i think armbian is updated for the kernel

mamac · l33t Joined: 29 Feb 2004 Posts: 890

Armbian has 4.X kernel indeed but I have a very strange wifi behavior with this distro ( connexion lost after a while ) and couldn't find the reason nor get support from the community.

I'm more familiar with Gentoo so it's easier for me to fix issues, I only need to be able to sort out the kernel upgrade issue :-)

.

I agree with the sompile time however I don't mind to wait for a few hours in order to get mysql and apache running, time is not a criteria for me.
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Krog · Guru Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 339 Location: Roma, Italy

few hours? i left one day updating @system from a pre-made gentoo and it was still going on... i was using a 6600k for crosscompile.
maybe i did something wrong but i saw the compiling process on the main pc so distcc was working for sure....
about the wifi... i never used that, sorry.
maybe you can just run the armbian on a sdcard to grab the kernel config and then proceed from that?

mamac · l33t Joined: 29 Feb 2004 Posts: 890