[gobolinux-devel] GoboLinux port to palystation 3/cell processor

[giamby at infinito.it]

On Fri, 7 Mar 2008 10:22:10 -0300
  "André Detsch" <detsch at gobolinux.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 6:48 PM, Giambattista Bloisi 
><giamby at infinito.it> wrote:
>>  To be more precise, I think the following changes 
>>should be made:
>>  - a new architecture should be supported in the Scripts 
>>package. I
>>  called it cell and is used by specific Recipes like 
>>i686, ppc, and others.
> 
> I think you should call is "ppc64", since that is the 
>type of packages
> usually used in a cell-based system, and it would be 
>compatible with
> regular ppc64 machines. Unless we use the spus in our 
>scripts, but
> this would not make much sense :)

Sure. In my case also ppc is a good candidate, at the 
moment  I compiled only glibc in 64 bit mode to have gcc 
working as a biarch compiler and the 64 bit kernel. The 
remaining system is 32 bit, since PS3 does not have much 
memory and I didn't want to waste it with long pointers.
Anyway I would like to have a sort of "cell" 
sub-architecture  so that I could enable cell-specific 
optimization in my recipes. For example:
- gcc to emit code tuned for the cell pipeline
- enable spus/ps3 support for some packages (FFTW, 
mplayer, upcoming X and Mesa drivers, OpenCV...)
- kernel tuning
- other packages tuning (glibc in my case)

Setting up a biarch system was not hard, I just had to 
compile glibc twice: in 32 bit and 64 mode (hence the 
lib64 dir). So I made a Glibc64 recipe.


>>  - lib64
> 
> Is this path hardcoded somewhere?
> If you are using a system with only 64 bits binaries, 
>there is no
> special handling needed. Only an additional 
>compatibility link if the
> path is hardcoded in applications.

Since the system is biarch, lib64 was needed by gcc to 
emit 64 bit executables.

>> and spu dirs should be handled by SymlinkProgram
> 
> /spu? I don't see why SymlinkProgram should be aware of 
>this.

spu is something I have to solve yet. Systems like yellow 
dog linux have /spu mounted as spu filesystem and /usr/spu 
as entry for include and lib search for the spe/spu 
toolchain.
I'm not using any cell sdk. I'm rather using two gccs with 
support for cell and spu targets.
I mounted /spu as spu filesystem for compatibility reason. 
But I don't have a spu-gcc that looks for files into 
/usr/spu: so I installed gcc and newlib in the same 
prefix. This is enough for having simple programs working 
(I tested libspe and fftw), but does not work if I want 
install libararies that exports spu-specific includes and 
libraries or, at least, I did not work on this scenario. 
I'll need this to work for installing OpenCV that depend 
on simdmath spu library.


>>  - genfstab/install script adaptions (such as kboot 
>>bootloader)
> 
> Ok.
> 
>>  - anything I am missing :)
> 
> How far did you went? Did you made any progress on 
>installing GoboLinux?

No progress as I did not yet started working on this 
aspect. I started working on a yellow dog linux: I made a 
rootless environment  and then I transformed this in a 
chroot environment.
As the chroot environment became stable I removed yellow 
dog linux and put my chroot dir into the root dir and I 
configured it for booting. I think it can be considered a 
"genuine" gobolinux system.

Now my priorities are:
- recipe for "official" gcc 4.3.0, released this week
- recompile some packages that still have encoded the 
rootless environment path
- recompile the kernel with unionfs and gohide patches 
(still using fibosandbox)
- resolve spu toolchain external include/lib issue
- finally work on redistributing it 
(livecd/installationcd)

> I'm working with cell machines here at work, kernel 
>development.
> Mostly IBM Cell blades, where I only installed rootless. 
>I also have 2
> PS3's used for testing kernel images (since there are 
>some differences
> on how low level stuff is accessed under cell blades and 
>PS3's).

Cool.

If you are interest in anything I have done... I'm not 
selfish ;)

Regards,
Giambattista
 
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