lubuntu-qa team mailing list archive

[Phill Whiteside <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

It is not too often I do ask the release team about things PPC. Thankfully,
when I do, they take it as break from normal work and have a bunch of ideas
to bounce off and go hunting for stuff.

I do ask that you do *not* go asking these people directly, It is a favour
that I ask on now and again on behalf of the PPC team, But, with that
known, here is the chat - complete with a link for xombrero on PPC for you
to test out[1] and a less scary set of notes to compiling stuff[2]. I'm
fully upto speed with LVM and will help out with any questions. I've asked
if there has been a classroom session previously held on LVM.

(18:53:44) phillw: cjwatson: just a quick question... can launchpad ppa
area compile up a PPC version from source if asked?
(18:59:14) stgraber: phillw: devirt PPA can be used for that but they're
restricted to Canonical employees as they use the same builders as the
distro
(19:02:39) cjwatson: And because they have effectively no (or very weak)
security against a malicious user installing some kind of persistent
process that fiddles about with future builds.
(19:03:09) phillw: stgraber: thanks. It's just the PPC guys have asked to
have a play with xombrero which julien does keep at
https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-dev/+archive/non-official-apps whilst Luis
Henriques battles with licensing issues to have the new version accepted
into debian :)
(19:03:46) cjwatson: This is really a #launchpad question, but the answer
is going to be no due to long-standing policy, I'm afraid.
(19:04:04) phillw: cjwatson: thanks, it was worth asking :)
(19:06:00) phillw: one of the ppc guys is going to have to learn
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CompilingEasyHowTo one of them has
offered, but he is busy in RL for a couple of weeks. No worries, it is of
very low urgency (aka wish-list).
(19:06:46) cjwatson: Eh, just have somebody set up sbuild, not that hard
(19:07:33) phillw: cjwatson: but does it not have to build on a PPC machine?
(19:07:35) cjwatson: Install sbuild package, 'mk-sbuild saucy', fiddle with
/etc/schroot/chroot.d/<whatever the new file is called> if need be, sbuild
-d saucy foo.dsc
(19:09:46) cjwatson: phillw: Yes, in general. But one might hope that your
ppc guys have such things.
(19:10:11) cjwatson: ("in general" because it is possible to play tricks
with qemu and/or cross-building in some cases.)
(19:10:29) cjwatson: (but I wouldn't recommend starting there.)
(19:11:24) phillw: cjwatson: they do, but none of the devs have. Would it
be possible using
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/Testing/PPC%26Mac64#How_to_test_on_any_architectures_.28using_qemu.29
(19:11:28) cjwatson: "CompilingEasyHowTo" seems designed to make it sound
as scary as possible.
(19:11:49) cjwatson: phillw: In principle you could do it in a VM, sure. It
would be very slow.
(19:12:00) phillw: h eh, do you know of better documentation?
(19:12:18) phillw: more than 12 hours?
(19:12:24) phillw: as in slow ^^
(19:12:26) cjwatson: That would obviously rather depend on the package!
(19:12:49) cjwatson: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SbuildLVMHowto - if
you don't have LVM set up then drop the --vg=blah argument)
(19:13:51) cjwatson: 'mk-sbuild --arch=powerpc saucy' will have a go at
setting things up with qemu user-mode emulation. Might work. Known to have
trouble with sufficiently complicated packages that rely on decent
threading support during the build, but works with a fair number of simpler
things.
(19:14:00) ***infinity notes that quantal has a higher version than raring
in that PPA.
(19:14:56) phillw: thanks, that gives various options. shame that
openbios-ppc is only there as a .deb. I'd run a VM on my server area, but
it is CentOS (red-hat)
(19:15:19) cjwatson: It's perfectly possible to pick apart .debs on RH
machines.
(19:15:34) phillw: not for me, it isn't :D
(19:16:04) infinity: Or just install it on an Ubuntu machine, and grab the
binary you want from /usr/share/openbios-ppc
(19:16:35) cjwatson: Ten seconds' googling found
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/04/view-and-extract-packages/ (e.g.)
(19:17:34) phillw: cjwatson: I did have a try, but my knowledge is
insufficient. I managed a compile of pcmanfm with a LOT of help.
(19:18:30) phillw: infinity: if I cp that over, would virt-manager be able
to use it?
(19:18:53) infinity: No idea, I don't use either virt-manager or RHEL.
(19:19:33) cjwatson: Might be more sensible to ask in some RHish channel ...
(19:19:39) phillw: infinity: thanks, I'll go do some digging, but TBH.
centos people are not the most helpful on irc :)
(19:19:52) cjwatson: Ubuntu people aren't going to be helpful about CentOS,
I'm afraid.
(19:20:05) cjwatson: Your problem :)
(19:20:26) phillw: unless I have a bug fix for a kernel problem from
red-hat :D
(19:20:55) phillw: I do understand. But when I'm on there, it is for CentOS
issues :)
(19:21:49) infinity: phillw: http://lucifer.0c3.net/~adconrad/xombrero/
(19:21:50) infinity: phillw: Enjoy.
(19:21:55) infinity: (That was built on raring)
(19:22:16) phillw: infinity: PPC?
(19:22:26) cjwatson: Try looking at the directory listing ...
(19:22:28) infinity: Yes...
(19:23:02) phillw: infinity / cjwatson you people are stars of the 1st
magnitude. Thanks!
(19:23:16) ***cjwatson wonders whether this would work in qemu, and tries.
(19:23:58) tumbleweed: qemu's PPC emulation seems *very* slow
(19:24:10) cjwatson: I mean user mode. I can't be bothered with full-system
emulation.
(19:24:14) phillw: tumbleweed: it is, but it has a lot to do!
(19:24:56) infinity: tumbleweed: Is it even worse, clock-for-clock than ARM
(I'd expect it to be, I guess, given that people emulate ARM for a reason,
emulating PPC just means you're too cheap to buy a computer)
(19:25:59) phillw: tumbleweed: many years ago, windows would run faster in
the newest PPC chipsets than it could on the intel based ones. That was
REALLY weird (But we talking win 3.1 as to how long ago).
(19:26:33) phillw: +under emulation
(19:26:43) tumbleweed: yeah, user-mode
(19:27:39) infinity: phillw: Nothing all that weird about it, PPC740/750
was wildly faster than the Pentiums of the time.
(19:28:31) infinity: (POWER7 and the upcoming POWER8 still eat Intel's
lunch too, for that matter, as long as you don't mind running a trunk cable
from the local nuclear reactor to your living room)
(19:29:02) phillw: But, I have distracted you all for far too long. Many
thanks for all the information and I'll let the PPC testers know of the
xombrero link for them to try. At least that way they can decide if they
want to give time and effort into testing it.
(19:31:17) phillw: infinity: lol ^^ :D

Regards,

Phill.
1. http://lucifer.0c3.net/~adconrad/xombrero/
2. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SbuildLVMHowto

On 27 May 2013 18:46, <keith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I would like to try this myself, but my next 2 weeks schedule doesn't
> allow the time. I found some information which looks helpful:
>
> https://help.ubuntu.com/**community/CompilingEasyHowTo<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CompilingEasyHowTo>
>
> Keith
>
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