Subject: BE Toolchain

From: Marc Karasek <[email-masked]>
Date: 02 Nov 2001 08:37:28 -0500

Has anyone got the toolchain (binutils, gcc, glibc) to compile under
BE?  I followed the instructions at Bradley D. LaRonde has put together
and got the LE to work w/o a prolem.  I then proceeded to try the BE. 
Binutils compiled ok, gcc says that mipseb-linux is not a valid target. 
Looking in config.sub I saw a mips-linux, is this the BE option?  

Thanks,

-- 
/*************************
Marc Karasek
Sr. Firmware Engineer
iVivity Inc.
[email-masked]
(770) 986-8925
(770) 986-8926 Fax
*************************/

---

From: Dan Temple <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2001 15:06:10 +0100

> Looking in config.sub I saw a mips-linux, is this the BE option?

If you can wait a day, here's what we use - which is compilable both BE and LE:

We are going to release a complete RH7.1/MIPS installation image for the Atlas/Malta board on our FTP site, identical to what we use in MIPS engineering.All of our compiles for Linux/MIPS (except the kernel, which is probably irrelevant here) are done natively on Malta boards running Linux. We are using the compiler from the RedHat 7.1/MIPS Linux distribution. 

The toolchains on this distribution are (all commands run natively on
the installation on a Malta board):

> uname -a
Linux copmld07.mips.com 2.4.3-MIPS-01.02

> gcc -v
Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/mipsel-redhat-linux/2.96/specs
gcc version 2.96 20000731 (Red Hat Linux 7.1 2.96-99.1)

> rpm -qf /usr/bin/ld
binutils-2.11.92.0.10-1

> rpm -qa | grep glibc
glibc-2.2.4-19.4
glibc-common-2.2.4-19.4
glibc-devel-2.2.4-19.4
glibc-profile-2.2.4-19.4
 
  Dan Temple
  MIPS Denmark

---

From: Marc Karasek <[email-masked]>
Date: 02 Nov 2001 09:18:31 -0500

I should have been more specific,  I should have said cross-toolchain. 
x86 -> MIPS.  I will check out the packages you mentioned below, and
will investigate them as an option.  But as of right now, our build
enviroment is still x86 Linux (RH 7.1).  We will be targeting a MIPS
processor of our own, I cannot get into too many details.  We are using
the Malta board right now for some testing/eval work.  But will be
quickly moving to our own platform in the near future.  At that time the
Malta will prob be put aside.

---

From: "H . J . Lu" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 07:36:00 -0800

> Malta will prob be put aside.  

See #1 below.

H.J.
----
My mini-port of RedHat 7.1 is at

ftp://oss.sgi.com/pub/linux/mips/redhat/7.1/

you should be able to put a small RedHat 7.1 on the mips/mipsel box and
compile the rest of RedHat 7.1 yourselves.

Here are something you should know:

1. The cross compiler hosted on RedHat 7.1/ia32 is provided as a
toolchain rpm. The binary rpms for the mips and mipsel cross compilers
are included. You may need glibc 2.2.3-11 or above to use those
rpms. The glibc x86 binary rpms under RPMS/i386 should be ok.
2. You have to find a way to put those rpms on your machine. I use
network boot and NFS root to do it.
3. install.tar.bz2 has some scripts to prepare NFS root and install
RedHat 7.1 on a hard drive.
4. baseline.tar.bz2 contains the cross build tree.
5. Since everything is cross compiled from x86, which is little endian,
many data files for mips, which is big endian, are either missing or
wrong. To get those data files for mips, you have to rebuild/install
the folowing rpms:

cracklib
glibc

natively on Linux/mips.

Thanks.

H.J.

---

From: "Bradley D. LaRonde" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 10:49:58 -0500

I think it should be mips-linux, not mipseb-linux.

Regards,
Brad

---

From: Marc Karasek <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Nov 2001 09:49:20 -0500

I have one question:  I did not know that RH had a MIPS dist for 7.1. 
Is this something MIPS has done from the RH sources?  Or is RH planning
on supporting MIPS now?

---

From: "H . J . Lu" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 07:55:43 -0800

> Is this something MIPS has done from the RH sources?  Or is RH planning

Red Hat doesn't have a mips port. It is me who ported RedHat 7.1 to
mips.

H.J.
---

cracklib
glibc

natively on Linux/mips.

Thanks.

H.J.

---

From: Marc Karasek <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Nov 2001 11:17:09 -0500

I was refering to a formal (supported) release from RH.  Something I can
pay RH to get support for.

---

From: "H . J . Lu" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 08:30:01 -0800

> pay RH to get support for.

You can ask Red Hat about it. I offered my mips port to Red Hat before.
But it didn't get very far. Paying customers may change that :-(. On
the other hand, I can understand why Red Hat is not interested. I am
having trouble to maintain my port. I don't have a fast, stable mips
machine to work on.

H.J.

---

From: Alan Cox <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 16:45:25 +0000 (GMT)

> pay RH to get support for.

Maintaining an entire distribution support for a processor is not a cheap
business. It would depend if enough people actually wanted to buy it. I
suspect for smaller volumes you want to pay Ralf, HJ or someone rather than
try and fund an entire general distro port.

We do plenty of MIPS stuff in the embedded and contract side so it would
depend what you wanted

Alan

---

From: Pete Popov <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Nov 2001 11:30:21 -0800

> pay RH to get support for.

It's hard to make money off of a $60 distribution if you don't have
enough volume, and there isn't enough volume for a mips desktop
distribution.  If you're talking about embedded linux support, Hard Hat
Linux from MontaVista runs on mips, sh, x86, ppc, xscale, and SA. But
we're talking about thousands of dollars for a product subscription.  If
you don't want to pay that type of money for support, I think H.J. Lu
has done a tremendous job in porting rh71, and you always have the
mailing lists.

Pete

---

From: "Garrick Evans" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 13:42:45 -0800

Just looking for a little help here getting woody running on an indy.
My problem is once I boot the install kernel (linux), after the scsi snoop
and network setup, it all dies on the following line:

sending SDTR 011030130f0csync_xfer=2c<0>Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount
root fs on 08:01

I have IRIX (5.3) on dksc(0,1) and two free drives dksc(0,3) and dksc(0,4)
available for debian.
I have the following files located at / and /boot directories on IRIX
partition:
linux, root.bin, root.tar.gz, kernel_config, drivers.tgz

I have booted from the "maintainence console" (PROM) with almost every
combination I can think of - always with the same failure.

So... where is it looking to mount from? Do I need to make a new filesystem
in the root parition of the scsi 3 disk and push the kernel and root.bin
over there? If so, do I also then need to dvhtool the header on that disk as
well?

Any help would be HUGELY appreciated.  Thanks.

g

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From: "Garrick Evans" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 17:05:19 -0800

sorry for the distrib...
boot tftpboot.img root=/dev/ram
works fine, i thought i tried it before  once again, sorry for the distrib