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openSUSE 12.3 on Android

May 9th, 2013 by

Here is a new image for your armv7l powered phone or tablet(any recent dual core device should work), you can get openSUSE 12.3 XFCE running on it without the need for repartition, formats, bootloader hacks or sacrificing your nicely running latest android on it. What you need is rooted device with busybox, Android VNC and terminal app installed and 4GB free space on sdcard(internal or external).

Instructions to run it are same as mentioned earlier. In addition to those you can also use LinuxonAndroid app with patched bootscript.sh. Replace /data/data/com.zpwebsites.linuxonandroid/files/bootscript.sh on your device with the patched one and follow the directions shown here(last 3 images):

openSUSE on android

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Posted in Architectures, Base System, Distribution, XFCE | 7 Comments »

openSUSE on phones/tablets

February 20th, 2013 by

Thanks to the fantastic work by openSUSE Arm team, you can get full desktop on your armv7l powered phone or tablet(any recent dual core devices should work), without the need for repartition, formats, bootloader hacks or sacrificing your nicely running latest android on it. What you need is rooted device with busybox, Android VNC and terminal app installed and 4GB free space on sdcard(internal or external).
(more…)

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Posted in Architectures, Base System, XFCE | No Comments »

LiveCDs

December 27th, 2012 by

As few of you might know, I made my own SUSE-based LiveCDs a while ago, using (like Knoppix) cloop compression with iso9660 and my own kernel code for file-based overlay to make it writeable. You might be amazed at how fast it runs in KVM. However, the kernel part has bit-rotten and there are other techniques out there today, so I took a look around at how others do their LiveCDs.

But first some broader overview. To make a LiveCD, the biggest problem is that CDs are not writeable (and even modern Flash devices do not want to be written too much). Embedded devices using flash had the same problem. Various approaches have been used in the past to solve this:

  • adapt all software to write into ram-disks e.g. by having symlinks (hard to create and maintain)
  • load all software into RAM (only for small distributions)
  • use file-based overlaying such as unionfs or aufs to have software write into RAM (lsof, pwd, and hardlinks can be tricky)
  • use block-based overlaying (problem: can not easily free disk space again)

Also compression is used to fit more onto a CD. And interestingly, this usually also speeds up booting because it is faster to read 10MB off a CD and decompress it into the original 30MB than to read 30MB from such a slow medium.

Now, to the distributions.

  • openSUSE has the classic DVD installs that use special installation-images and run in RAM and then there are the real LiveCDs that are created by our kiwi tool, use block-based overlaying and LZMA compression of a ext3 by means of our FUSE-based clicfs.
  • All of the other distributions use squashfs for compression. Mageia employs dracut for initrd and unionfs for file-based overlaying
  • Debian uses aufs for file-based overlaying
  • Ubuntu uses overlayfs for file-based overlaying
  • Fedora uses an ext4 filesystem image contained in a squashfs with dm-snapshot for block-based overlaying, thus being most similar to openSUSE

I also spent some time benchmarking (on my AMD A10-5800K) the various technologies with a simple script using Debians uncompressed rootfs of 495132 KiB as data.
squashfs supports three different compression methods: lzo, gzip and xz (aka LZMA).

  • squashfs-lzo: size:220992 compression:11.1MB/s decompression:134.4MB/s
  • squashfs-gzip: size:203328 compression:15.5MB/s decompression:88.9MB/s
  • squashfs-xz: size:176064 compression:6.5MB/s decompression:22.5MB/s
  • cloop(gzip): size:213348 compression:16.2MB/s decompression:49.6MB/s
  • clicfs(xz): size:185300 compression:16.7MB/s decompression:18.2MB/s

This has some surprises: even when using the same compression method, sizes can differ by 5% and speed can differ even more.

If you want to compare numbers on your system, memory throughput is also interesting:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null bs=1M count=100000
104857600000 bytes (105 GB) copied, 12.4499 s, 8.4 GB/s

Overall, clicfs is performing OK, considering that it already takes care of the overlaying, but for my own LiveCD I would prefer Debian’s method and I am wondering how it would work.

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Posted in Architectures, Base System, Distribution | 2 Comments »

Linux Kernel built with clang boots into openSUSE

July 14th, 2012 by

Whatch this:  http://youtu.be/Jp04DMXH2Rg

The kernel was compiled with Clang (C frontend of LLVM)  and boots into a running openSUSE desktop!

 

Posted in Architectures, Base System, Kernel, Toolchain | Comments Off

openSUSE ARM image

January 21st, 2012 by

When I wrote this week, how I ran openSUSE on my genesi smarttop some people asked for a ready-to-use image. After spending less than 8 hours fiddling with u-boot-scripts, partition tables, tuning ext3 and initrds, it was done… and is now so easy:

wget http://www.zq1.de/efika.img.xz # 83MB
xz -cd efika.img.xz | dd of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

with sdX being the device name of your SD-card (e.g. “mmcblk0″ on the smarttop itself) with at least 1GB (actually 1024000000 bytes) of free space.

When inserted at boot, it should just boot up within 23 seconds and let you login as root with password “linux” on SSH, serial and with a USB-keyboard on HDMI. I spent some effort on putting as few packages as possible into it. Still, you have zypper to install packages and nano to edit files.

There is still a known hangup when you try to reboot. Workaround is: init 2 ; sleep 12 ; killall rsyslogd ; umount /boot/ ; mount -o remount,ro / ; reboot

As it still uses the original linux-2.6.31 kernel, it has another bug that also happens with pre-installed Ubuntu: sometimes (in ~40% of cases), boot stopps early, before graphics is initialized, when the last line on serial is “console handover: boot [ttymxc0] -> real [tty1]“. Try turning it off and on again.

This should allow you to have a whole lot of fun…

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Posted in Architectures, Factory | 3 Comments »

running openSUSE on ARM

January 19th, 2012 by

This week I finally got my genesi efika MX box. By default it has on old Ubuntu version installed on its internal IDE-attached 8GB SSD. It features 512 MB RAM and a 800 MHz ARMv7 CPU.

Using a HDMI-cable and an HDMI-DVI-Adaptor I got it connected to a monitor, plugged in a USB keyboard+mouse and it pretty much worked out of the box with WLAN,Ethernet,X11 (except for a bug that causes it to force you to change PW on every console login). How boring.

Having read about recent progress with openSUSE on ARM I wanted the excitement of running it on this box.

Michal’s image and script (now in alpha) was very helpful to get me started within 15 minutes.

If you have any (e.g. x86) openSUSE system running, there is another easy way to create a working ARM chroot-environment:

zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/Tools:/Unstable/openSUSE_12.1/openSUSE:Tools:Unstable.repo
zypper install qemu osc
osc co openSUSE:Factory:ARM bash
cd openSUSE:Factory:ARM/bash
edit bash.spec # add lines with your packages like BuildRequires: zypper,vim
osc build –no-verify –clean standard armv7l

If it worked well, /var/tmp/build-root/ should contain a chroot environment. E.g. you can run

file /var/tmp/build-root/bin/bash
/var/tmp/build-root/bin/bash: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.16, BuildID[sha1]=0xed9ca12f44c8591560d780cf807b6b6cf8ca8873, stripped

I partitioned my SD-card into two partitions. The first one for /boot with ext2 (needs only 150MB) and the second one for / to contain the rootfs. Be sure to have barrier=0 in your fstab for all ext[34] partitions so that writing to SD will not be as slow. The default U-Boot configuration first checks on the first partition of an SD-card for boot.scr which is a uImage-formatted version of a U-boot script. I copied all of Ubuntu’s /boot and /lib/modules/, slightly adapted their boot.script file to have root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 and uImage/uInitrd-2.6.31.14.26-efikamx as kernel/initrd, dropped “quiet splash” and added “console=ttymxc0,115200″ to see more of the boot and ran a line from another helpful site:

mkimage -A arm -O linux -T script -C none -a 0 -e 0 -n “my boot script” -d boot.script boot.scr
echo mxc0:S12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L 115200 ttymxc0 vt102 >> /etc/inittab # for serial console

However, this failed to boot. Using the serial debug console, I could see U-boot trying to load the boot.scr but it was thinking it was zero bytes for some strange reason. Re-creating my /boot partition as a raw copy of /dev/sda1 with my adaptions ontop finally gave me an SD-card that just boots openSUSE Factory on ARM with framebuffer console on HDMI/DVI.

Find more ARM-related info on our openSUSE ARM Portal

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Posted in Architectures, Factory | 2 Comments »

fuk the kit you will love

January 19th, 2012 by

Dear fellows, in our moving free world, it’s not always bienvenue to talk about one of the *kit* software around.
Most of them have bad reputation, (with good or bad reasons) this is the debate of this post.

But in the uni-kit-verse there’s one you must known, especially if you are the proud owner of a laptop or one of this computer the manufacter deliver its firmware only in DOS exe format.
FirmwareUpdateKit (was introduced in 2008 in openSUSE by Steffen Winterfeldt

How that works?

As the title of the post give you the right command, open a console, then use the cnf (command-not-found) tool to learn what to do

Install the package

cnf fuk

The program 'fuk' can be found in the following package:
  * FirmwareUpdateKit [ path: /usr/bin/fuk, repository: zypp (repo-oss) ]

Try installing with:
    zypper install FirmwareUpdateKit

Pretty clear and cool, let’s install that stuff!

sudo zypper install FirmwareUpdateKit
root's password:
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...

The following NEW packages are going to be installed:
  FirmwareUpdateKit syslinux 

2 new packages to install.
Overall download size: 758.0 KiB. After the operation, additional 2.1 MiB will be used.
Continue? [y/n/?] (y): y
Retrieving package syslinux-4.04-12.1.3.x86_64 (1/2), 642.0 KiB (1.9 MiB unpacked)
Retrieving: syslinux-4.04-12.1.3.x86_64.rpm [done]
Retrieving package FirmwareUpdateKit-1.1-14.1.1.x86_64 (2/2), 116.0 KiB (178.0 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: FirmwareUpdateKit-1.1-14.1.1.x86_64.rpm [done]
Installing: syslinux-4.04-12.1.3 [done]
Installing: FirmwareUpdateKit-1.1-14.1.1 [done]

Firmware Update

Get your bios

Nothing easy for that, you will have to surf on boring mfg website, and find an appropriate bios for your computer.

Be serious during that selection, you can screw up totally your computer

Time to fuk

As always before running a program, it’s always good to check if there’s the fine manual (not the case here) or try a -h –help

fuk --help
Usage: fuk [OPTIONS] FILES
FirmwareUpdateKit version 1.1.

Create bootable DOS system and add FILES to it.
The main purpose is to assist with DOS-based firmware updates.

Options:
  --grub                        Add boot entry to /boot/grub/menu.lst.
  --lilo                        Add boot entry to /etc/lilo.conf.
  --title TITLE                 Use TITLE as label for boot menu entry.
  --iso FILE                    Create bootable CD.
  --floppy FILE                 Create bootable (1440 kB) floppy disk.
  --image FILE                  Create bootable harddisk.
  --run COMMAND                 Run COMMAND after booting DOS.
  --verbose                     Be more verbose.

Nothing complicated as a nuclear plan here, everything seems to be self explicit.
Let try it, and install a new grub entry for the new A8 version for my lappy. 

fuk --verbose --grub --run M4600A08.exe /home/bruno/src_tmp/HARDWARE/DELL_M4600/M4600A08.exe 
/tmp/fuk.lSVIgS0cMt/fwupdate.img: chs = 186/4/16, size = 11904 blocks
- writing mbr
- writing fat12 boot block
- copying:
    /usr/share/FirmwareUpdateKit/kernel.sys
    /usr/share/FirmwareUpdateKit/command.com
    /tmp/fuk.lSVIgS0cMt/config.sys
    /tmp/fuk.lSVIgS0cMt/autoexec.bat
    /home/bruno/src_tmp/HARDWARE/DELL_M4600/M4600_A08.exe
c-3po:~ #

That’s all I’ve now a new entry in my grub list

title Firmware Update
    kernel /boot/memdisk
    initrd /boot/fwupdate.img

Apply

Now just reboot and use the grub entry, then upgrade your bios, like you will normally have done with you old complicated build iso, or diskette (I’m joking)

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Posted in Architectures, Base System, Systems Management | 5 Comments »

Road to 11.3 : when pattern are not your friend, pre selection can be a trap

June 10th, 2010 by

So it’s time to take some hours to test our future version.

Today I start a fresh M7/Factory install : booting from pxe. The test case is build quickly a minimal server text mode.

Just uncheck the auto configuration, we are after all linux admin. Choose your partition keyboard, language (en recommanded for server) etc … normal.

Just before starting the install check software :  click on installation resume . You will discover that base-system-pattern would like to install a kernel-desktop, wtf why we want a server !

So there’s a new ticket about that : https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=613216

I express the fact that it would be nice to have a new pattern selected when we choose minimal install server text mode.

And you what about your opinion about pre-selection or having a base-system-server pattern … Please comment, & vote on bugzilla

A pattern guru wanted to build a patch for that.

Posted in Architectures, Base System, Factory, Kernel, openSUSE 11.2, Quality Assurance, Software Management, YaST | 3 Comments »

LXDE can do it! LXDE on Android smartphone!

August 24th, 2009 by

Yes i did it. I made LXDE running on my new Android smartphoe, the latest HTC masterpiece, the HTC HERO. Here some shots:

That’s great! But there is a main problem here, I’m not running openSUSE with X11:lxde packages, but debian with their stuff. I cannot use my geeko because the phone is an ARM and our openSUSE@ARM looks to still be in an early development stage. This post wants to be a ping to or openSUSE@ARM project and of course some marketing to this great and light Desktop Enviroment. For people interested in, here some hardware infos:

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor       : ARMv6-compatible processor rev 2 (v6l)
BogoMIPS        : 526.25
Features        : swp half thumb fastmult edsp java
CPU implementer : 0×41
CPU architecture: 6TEJ
CPU variant     : 0×1
CPU part        : 0xb36
CPU revision    : 2
Cache type      : write-back
Cache clean     : cp15 c7 ops
Cache lockdown  : format C
Cache format    : Harvard
I size          : 32768
I assoc         : 4
I line length   : 32
I sets          : 256
D size          : 32768
D assoc         : 4
D line length   : 32
D sets          : 256

Hardware        : hero
Revision        : 0080
Serial          : 0000000000000000

# busybox free
total         used         free       shared      buffers
Mem:       197016       191024         5992            0            8
Swap:            0            0            0
Total:       197016       191024         5992

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Posted in Accessibility, Architectures, Base System, Desktop, Marketing, Miscellaneous, X.org | 3 Comments »

openSUSE@ARM: GSoC status and final spurt

August 12th, 2009 by

I was buried with work in the last couple of days, so whats new on my GSoC-project:

  • a lot of patches went into factory and some more are queued
  • fixed issues with qemu
  • most yast packages already building
  • zypper builds, but requires some more bugfixing
  • X11 builds
  • cross-compilation stable, speed is good

Todo:

  • create image (bootable to console)
  • create image (bootable to x11 on beagleboard)
  • evaluate switch in webfrontend for cross-feature
  • project documentation/GSoC

Posted in Architectures, Base System, Build Service, Factory, Packaging, YaST | Comments Off

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