Subject: First Linux/SGI in India

From: Raj Mathur <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 14:27:22 +0530 (IST)

Hi,

My experiences with loading Linux onto an Indy here in New Delhi.
But before I start, the obligatory salutations and expressions of
gratitude to the Linux team, and the lighting of incense sticks and
repetition of arcane mantras before Linus' photo... <2 minute wait>

No really, thanks a lot to all of you!  I got the hardhat-sgi-5.1
distribution onto my O2 (which was an experience in itself, but let's
leave that tale for another day...) and untarred it there.  After
setting up bootp, I was ready to start on the target Indy.
Unfortunately none of the kernels (the default in the hardhat distro
and the others which I downloaded from linus.linux.sgi.com) went
beyond loading through bootp -- load kernel, hang.  Wondering if it
was an XZ graphics problem (yes, the Indy was XZ), I tried it on an
8-bit machine, and Voila! it booted perfectly.

Issue 1: Doesn't Linux work with XZ graphics?

Now it refused to mount the NFS disk.  After much headbanging I
realised that the Ethernet hadn't been configured for some reason, and 
setup dhcp_bootp instead of bootp onto the O2 (IRIX 6.3).  A bit more
fiddling, and I managed to NFS-mount the root partition.

Issue 2: Perhaps the HOWTO should mention that simple bootp will not
work, DHCP is required.

For some reason DHCP/BOOTP wasn't sending the right root directory
name, so I had to create a directory /tftpboot/ip.address.ofmy.system
linked to the actual mipseb directory and NFS export that.

Finally, the setup.  I tried to take the lazy way out and just checked 
``Install all packages'' in the RedHat package selection dialogue.
Unfortunately, this twice crashed with a segv on me.  Finally I let it 
install the default packages, which went through quite OK.  Installed
the remaining packages manually later.

So... Installation is quite simple if you know what you're doing (or
can make inspired guesses).  I still miss X -- when is that out?  And
if anyone wants any packages compiled/ported, let me know.  Xemacs
would be first on my list, unless someone's already done that.

Thanks for the effort to all of you.  And now that I have it up and
running, maybe I can contribute some userland stuff to the SGI/Linux
effort.  As long as the system doesn't get sold :-)

Regards,

-- Raju

---

From: Ulf Carlsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 12:23:57 +0200

Hi Raj,

> would be first on my list, unless someone's already done that.

I haven't got X running yet, but I'm working on it. My first approach is to
get a simple shadowfb running. I will possibly get this running next weekend
with a fair amount of luck. I'll let the mailing list know when I have
something running.

I need to know how to do DMA transfers before i can archieve a reasonable
speed, unfortunately this is poorly documented. I'm waiting for Robert Tray to
come back from his vacation and tell me how to do it :-)

Regards,
Ulf

---

From: Miguel de Icaza <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 08:45:58 -0500

> I would urge btw that anyone working on an XFree SGI driver releases it under
> a license like the NPL so that the XFree people can't hide it in a locked away
> beta release in future.

Will they incorporate those changes though?

---

From: Theodoros Nikitopoulos <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 19:33:28 +0300

Hello there,

I've just setup a web page containing helpfull resources I found in
the net, in concern of the X11 Linux/SGI port. Maybe you know about
it but well just in case.. :-)

Although an X11 port seems at first sight quite difficult--in case
someone has a valuable ammount of information about--it seems
to be quiete easy.

Unfortunately, I cannot personally offer any other help in due of a
project I have to work during the period April-June at INRIA. But
in any case drop me an e-mail for any progress !  I would be glad
to hear about it  :-)

The page is located at :   http://users.hol.gr/~tnik/X11/

Cheers!
Theodore.

---

From: Andrew Isaacson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 12:52:54 -0400

> The page is located at :   http://users.hol.gr/~tnik/X11/

Interesting page.  However, I would suggest that anybody who plans to
tackle porting XFree86 to Linux/SGI should contact [email-masked]
and ask to become an XFree86 developer.  There are several resources
which are available only to developers, including mailing list
archives and the 4.0 development tree, which will likely prove
invaluable to anyone attempting a port.

If you (the porters) are willing to wait until June to have publicly
distributable code, you should develop for the 4.0 branch rather than
the 3.3 branch.  There are a lot of useful new features in the new
code base, and the new design is quite a bit easier to code for than
the old.

Also, Theodoros, I'm curious why you recommend starting with a 6.3
tree and patching up to XFree86 3.3.3.  Why not just grab the 3.3.3.1
source tarballs and be done with it?

-andy
-- 
Andy Isaacson [email-masked] [email-masked]    Fight Spam, join CAUCE:
http://www.csl.mtu.edu/~adisaacs/              http://www.cauce.org/

---

From: Miguel de Icaza <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 12:20:49 -0500

> That doesn't prevent someone from providing a driver under a different
> license (very possibly including the XFree86 code under that license),
> but a driver not under an X license will not become part of XFree86.

Fork time!

Miguel.

---

From: Ulf Carlsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 19:21:57 +0200

> it but well just in case.. :-)

I didn't know about your page, but I knew most of the stuff on your page. I have
been reading that DDX guide, but I didn't know where to find the "Strategies of
Porting guide", it didn't come with the X sources AFAIK. I still prefer reading
it in ASCII on screen, do you know where I can find an untroffed version of it?

By the way, I have access to the XFree86 4.0 alpha (beta?) sources since I'm
member of the XFree86 crew.

> someone has a valuable ammount of information about--it seems

Full support would never be easy, and I'm not heading for that in the beginning,
although it would be faster, I would probably end up with nothing at all in the
end..

> in any case drop me an e-mail for any progress !  I would be glad

I'll let you know if I have any progress.

Thanks,
Ulf

---

From: Mike Shaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 13:22:45 -0400

> code base, and the new design is quite a bit easier to code for than

I think Ulf and I are both XFree86 developers, and I've been reading
code off and on for a little while to get a handle on what has to be
done.  (We haven't coordinated anything yet, of course, and I'm sure
that Ulf will be much more useful than I, but still...)

4.0 is definitely the plan, I believe.

Mike

-- 
4204.37 3709.72

---

From: [email-masked] (Alan Cox)
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 20:10:52 +0100 (BST)

> code base, and the new design is quite a bit easier to code for than

Actually I wonder if it will be. Not having seen the code because of the silly
XFree about beta releases its hard to be sure. The X folks I talked to all
pointed me at the 8514 driver - which is very similar in many ways to the
SGI cards - both are designed for X11, both have no direct frame buffer
access and they have fairly similar concepts.

Alan

---

From: Ulf Carlsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 21:23:13 +0200

On Tue, Apr 13, 1999 at 08:10:52PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> Actually I wonder if it will be.

I got an email from the X team today which told me that pulic release date for
a beta snapshot of 4.0 still is set to June.

> Not having seen the code because of the silly XFree about beta releases its
> hard to be sure. The X folks I talked to all pointed me at the 8514 driver -
> which is very similar in many ways to the SGI cards - both are designed for
> X11, both have no direct frame buffer access and they have fairly similar
> concepts.

That 8514 driver is certainly a good driver to look at while writing a driver
for the SGI cards, but it's generally a bad idea to just rip the code off. I
have at least not had much luck doing success hacks.

The 8514 driver is also a quite old driver and it's not using the new interfaces
in for Xserver.

> a license like the NPL so that the XFree people can't hide it in a locked away

The copyright still remains to the person who wrote the code, and even if the
code is locked away in a beta release, it's possible for the writer himself to
make his own code public (i think).

- Ulf

---

From: Theodoros Nikitopoulos <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:20:48 +0300

It seems I should make more clear some things concerning the page.
First of all, it doesn't reflect the way the port will be done..  This
will be decided by the developers (Ulf Carlsson and whoever else..)
I would be very glad if I could help too, but for the time being it's not
possible. The scope of the page is mainly to provide some resources
I've found and thought they could help :-)

About why recommending starting with a 6.3 tree and patching up to
XFree86 3.3.3 well it's a personal taste of how I would probably work
on it. Why someone should worry with the differences of his docume-
ntation and his actual sources?  Just make the port and then add the
patches. Anyways, the above seems to me a minor issue. The problem
exists in porting the device-dependent parts.

By the way, I haven't found any ASCII version of the documentation, but
in case anyone is interested there exists a converter utility pstotext,
available at:

  http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/virtualpaper/pstotext.html

However, the output of it might be vague.

Regards,
Theodore.

---

From: Andrew Isaacson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 17:18:50 -0400

On Tue, Apr 13, 1999 at 08:45:58AM -0500, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> 
> > I would urge btw that anyone working on an XFree SGI driver
> > releases it under a license like the NPL so that the XFree people
> > can't hide it in a locked away beta release in future.
> 

No.  XFree86 will not incorporate any code which is not licensed to
them under an X-compatible license.

-andy (not speaking for XFree86)
-- 
Andy Isaacson [email-masked] [email-masked]    Fight Spam, join CAUCE:
http://www.csl.mtu.edu/~adisaacs/              http://www.cauce.org/

---

From: [email-masked] (Alan Cox)
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 01:17:12 +0100 (BST)

> > but a driver not under an X license will not become part of XFree86.

That is a very good reason for not doing so

---

From: Torbjorn Gannholm <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 11:39:08 +0200

> That is a very good reason for not doing so

 A pity there isn't any really free X-code.
A pity too that so many apps depend on X.
How far could you go in making an X-compatible interface for another
window-handler? (like copyrightwise)
For most apps it might be enough (but a lot of work) to make some toolkits
work with another base.

There are certainly projects going on for other handlers, like GNUstep who
are doing DPS.
And I saw a reference to a german group who were doing something else.

But then again, what's to say that X will lock away ports, the way things are
going in other areas of development? I think there is more and more openness
coming all the time, and any closed-source code will eventually be overtaken
by open-source equivalents.

The GPL is a nice guarantee, though, if the FSF have resources to enforce
it...

Just 2c´s.

--
/Torbjörn

This message is a personal message from Torbjörn Gannholm
and does not necessarily represent the opinion of my employer.

---

From: [email-masked] (Alan Cox)
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 11:35:18 +0100 (BST)

> For most apps it might be enough (but a lot of work) to make some toolkit=
> s
> work with another base.

No thanks. The only no X interface Im interested in is for PDAs

---

From: Raj Mathur <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 10:06:40 +0530 (IST)

>>>>> "Alan" == Alan Cox <[email-masked]> writes:

    >> How far could you go in making an X-compatible interface for
    >> another window-handler? (like copyrightwise) For most apps it
    >> might be enough (but a lot of work) to make some toolkit= s
    >> work with another base.

    Alan> No thanks. The only no X interface Im interested in is for
    Alan> PDAs

You mean your PalmPilot doesn't run KDE??!?

*Ducking* Raju

---

From: Miguel de Icaza <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 07:58:23 -0500

> You mean your PalmPilot doesn't run KDE??!?

The windowing layer of GNOME is being ported to Yax, a slim windowing
system for PDAs.  You will need a CE class machine though. 

I would like to point out that you can run GNOME on OS/2 now, and a
port to Windows is on the way :-)

Miguel.

---

From: Miguel de Icaza <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 13:38:14 -0500

> What size/state is YAX in. Should I shoot the Mini-X work and look at Yax
> for the psion5 ?

Do not know what is the progress so far.  I talked to them two months
ago and last I heard they were coding the font support into yax.

Miguel.

---

From: [email-masked] (Alan Cox)
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 01:20:47 +0100 (BST)