Note that if somebody wants to install armedslack-current inside QEMU, they first need to download updated kernels from here:


http://armed.slackware.com/fixes/versatile/

Remove the same named packages/files from the -current tree that they rsynced, and replace them with those.

The next (rather large) batch of updates to -current will have this problem corrected, but until then users need those kernels.

i've been running a debian "rpi simulator" (maybe that's a better name for it, since qemu doesn't emulate pi hardware), and since some software was built specifically for the pi, it does not run in the versatilepb machine in qemu... specifically so far i have found omxplayer and the midori web browser dump with an "illegal instruction" error, and there is no sound device for qemu-system-arm, and since the pi sound device is a bcm-chip specific device, alsa complains and doesn't initialize. this is with the Sbopkg of qemu 1.0.1 installed on slack 13.37 but i haven't seen anybody else mention these problems on the rpi forums as yet...

maybe i'm missing something, but where are the makeimg and installer_launch scripts located?

In the armedslack-devtools, subdirectory qemu, subdirectory helper-scripts

http://slackware.org.uk/armedslack/a...elper-scripts/

thank you.... much appreciated

Installtion of slack-current on RPi - OK - 1 (small) problem (solved)
 

Hi,
I installed Slack-current according to the instructions here: http://daves-slackbuilds.comlu.com/raspi/ via NFS mount of the slackware-current tree.

I had only 1 problem, which I think I solved OK. At Step 8:
This failed for all 4 packages. The error messge is: /mnt/sbin/upgradepkg: line 289: /sbin/installpkg: No such file or directory.

I looked in /sbin and there is indeed no installpkg. which installpkg says /usr/lib/setup/installpkg

I tried making a soft link in /sbin to /usr/lib/setup/installpkg. But it's too late as the old packages are already deleted.

So I just installed the newer versions thus: ROOT=/mnt installpkg /raspi-extra/xf86-*

From a quick test xfce runs OK and both firefox and seamonkey crawl happily into life. Seems that a lighter browser like Midori is needed.

A little issue whilst booting: it's very slow - is that normal?
All "USB" stuff - keyboard, mouse and ethernet are registered by 9.3 seconds.
Then there's a long wait until 91.2 seconds when there's the message "Adding 371456k swap on /dev/mmcblk0p3". After that it takes about another 90 secs to get the login prompt to the CLI.

Cheers,
Peter

Reedit - I'm hoping to be able to use my Microsoft USB wireless mouse - which has suffered from sticky keys. Will try it again shortly with Slack-current to see if there's any imporovement.
It's useless under Debian, but didn't seem to suffer from the problem with the original Arch installation, but newer Arch was awful.

Thanks for the feedback geep999. I vaguely remember looking at that part of the README late at night and thinking 'that can't be right' and changing it. Bad idea! Sorry :-(

Also, since the recent EPIC update to armedslack-current, those patches aren't needed any more, and you should upgrade to the official packages. I'll be amending the installation instructions very soon.

The sticky keys problem is better with the newer kernels but still happens occasionally. They used to say that it's a power supply problem, but ISTM it's more likely related to the lousy 8000 interrupts a second usb driver.

Also I must apologise to everyone trying the installer recently who found that the image was corrupt. It should be ok now. Thanks to the person who pointed this out. The web host has horrible problems with uploading large files, and has undocumented download limits that I keep tripping when I try to verify the images. I'll probably be moving to another host soon.

If you want midori, I've built it as part of xfce-4.10 and you can download it for -current here. But note that (since the recent EPIC update to armedslack-current) you don't need deps/vte and should keep the official package. I haven't tested that yet ;-)

There are a couple of big improvements coming soon from upstream. The kernel now has an experimental fix for the USB driver's horrible performance, and u-boot is coming. But it might be a few weeks before those are generally useable.

Edit: As you observed it takes a long time to activate the swap partition. The bigger your swap, the longer the delay. Also, the message about activating swap doesn't appear until after the delay :-( there may be something we can do about this, thanks for the nudge.

Edit 2: It's a problem with recent mainline kernels, see forums.gentoo.org. There's a fix that went into mainstream 3.2.19 :D (commit 07fb30fa5) and is therefore in Chris Boot's repo, so it might even show up in an official Raspberry Pi kernel in due course. All things considered, I'll apply that patch to my unofficial armedslack kernel asap.

Member Response
 

Hi,

Looks like 'Newark' is now shipping the 'Pi' here in the USA. I will receive my piece of 'Pi' sometime this afternoon. :)

Patiently waiting since Dec/11.

maybe EPIC still looks reductive in this case: Stuart updated nearly the whole distro, lol

some days later as they anticipated, but now they seem to sell it for real: I'll order some more ;)

EDIT: I ordered four more, but you can do it only as business: if you order as an individual it looks you can order just one.

FYI I've done a new build of the installer image, and new packages for the kernel, modules and boot firmware (built from the official Raspberry Pi git repos last revised two days ago). These are available from http://www.daves-collective.co.uk/raspi/ (it's moved ;) )

The new kernel includes a fix for the slow swap problem, new drivers for the Pi's i2c and spi hardware, and lots of bugfixes. The commit history is here. To upgrade your kernel etc, download the packages and use upgradepkg (or install them with installpkg if you haven't previously installed my kernel packages) and reboot.

There's also a new version of the raspi-hacks package that now includes teh_orph's memcpy/memset performance improvements, and slackbuilds to build everything, including the kernel and installer image.

I hope it all works properly and is useful. If you find any problems, I'll be grateful for your feedback. Thanks!

I'm on holiday now and I will be back at home (with the little friend) at the end of july, but I will surely try them :)

BTW, on my raspi I'm running a kernel patched with bfs and bfq.

Thanks for your work! currently my Raspberry Pi has the original system image (the one posted in the official forums) and is working great as an "always on" computer (currently 7 days uptime) with remote access and a few git repositories.
I want to try your kernels, can I use them by installing over my current system? I assume I can, but I'd like to know beforehand :-)

Yes, you can. If you're running one of the preinstalled images, the original kernel and boot files are not packaged, so you probably want to back up everything in /boot (just in case ;) )

The raspi-boot package will replace /boot/bootcode.bin, loader.bin and start.elf.

The kernel_raspi package will replace /boot/kernel.img.

The kernel-modules-raspi package will install modules to /lib/modules/3.1.9-20120716/ and will leave the originals in /lib/modules/3.1.9+/ so theoretically those don't need a backup. You might want to delete the originals in a few days if it all works out ok.

After installing these three packages, and before you reboot, please check /boot/cmdline.txt.new and /boot/config.txt.new for any changes that you want to merge into your own cmdline.txt and config.txt (the .new files will only be created if there is a change from your current files, just like the .new files in /etc when you do an upgrade).

Because of upstream changes some weeks ago, the new kernel needs the new boot files, and the original kernel needs the original boot files, so you need to install or upgrade or revert all three packages at the same time. Going forward, this might not always be necessary, but at the moment you need to install all three packages.

Because the /boot files are on a vfat partition, they can occasionally become corrupted if you don't get a nice clean shutdown after updating them. Maybe you could type "sync;sync" before rebooting, just to be sure. Maybe I should add that to the doinst.sh... hmm... Anyway, good luck!

Hi, thanks for your instructions. I installed the packages, the three you mentioned and in that order, and then I installed the raspi-hacks and (after stopping udev) the raspi-devs packages. Rebooted, and everything is back up without any issues. I killed my uptime, but I guest it's worth it :D

Thanks again!