lubuntu-qa team mailing list archive

[Phill Whiteside <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi James,

will you please use 'reply to all' from the topic.

Phill, you are a gentleman among gentleman for going so far out of your way
to help. I notice the PPC deb is version 1.4 (and xombrero is at 1.5 now),
so if I'm successful compiling and packaging a 1.5, perhaps it could be
added to the unofficial apps instead of 1.4 (assuming that 1.4 PPC will be
included in the unofficial apps).
I spoke too soon. Xombrero 1.4 installs and starts up great, and I can get
to some websites, but certain basic tasks completely crash the browser.
(viewing Gmail, even as plain HTML, for example) Facebook opens up, I was
able to authenticate, but the browser crashed when I was trying to open up
the Lubuntu page. I *could* browse through Craiglist, although I did not
try responding to an ad.

Maybe 1.5 will be better, but given 1.4's performance, I'm not holding my
breath.

You *MUST* use the lubuntu-qa area in replies. I do have a heart for PPC,
but do NOT answer me privately. I do not have a PCC machine. do asking
things yo me directly are wrong.

Phill.

On 27 May 2013 20:14, Phill Whiteside <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 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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>
>
>
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>



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