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!

Member Response
 

Hi,

Just curious as too the status of ARMSlack on the Pi? Any updates. I am starting to build my workstation for the RPi.

Hopefully it's almost boring :)

If you have any problems with the current installer image, please let me know. (In particular I might have optimised the disk partitions a bit too much.)

Slackware ARM: -current is progressing very smoothly, drmozes will be giving us a Slackware 14 that'll be just like all the other Slackware 14s. The official XFCE 4.10 etc is on its way. I'll build a Pi-specific LXDE shortly thereafter for people to experiment with.

Upstream Pi stuff: The official kernel is stuck on a heavily patched 3.1.9, but it has had a vast amount of driver fixes and is quite stable; I'm producing new kernel packages whenever I see significant improvements upstream. I might also produce a build of bootc's 3.2 kernel as an alternative. Accelerated X is being worked on but won't be done for quite a long time. Progress on U-Boot has stalled, so booting is still 'special', but it works. Whenever other distros have good ideas, I plagiarise ;)

Everything else: over to you :D

Still waiting for mine - ordered mid-June, counts... end August maybe?

Given that you have a very nice site set up for quick reference, may I suggest that you add the steps to enable sound output?
Everywhere it is mentioned as being in alpha status, however it works just fine in my experience. Aaaand it would be very nice to have the instructions at hand just in case I happen to break my OS "by accident" and have to re-image the Pi :)

Member Response
 

Hi,

Useful information and projects can be found at 'The MagPi'

HTH!

Do you get any noise while playing music? I'm using the sorinm 23/05 image with dave's 1/08 kernel/modules. After loading snd-bcm2835 module alsamixer shows one device, PCM, and there is no volume adjustment worth mentioning although this is not a problem if feed is to something else with amplifier capacity. However, while playing mp3's movement/clicking mouse causes crackling noises the amount of which vary. Of the three aps tried audacious is the worst, mplayer in the middle and xmms the least and almost bearable. Also a heavy load may cause playback to falter but this might be caused be by using a different start.elf.

Edit: I'm overclocked and have used both arm128 and arm192 for start.elf with no difference. I still had static when running midori while playing an mp3, tried firefox but same thing so perhaps it is not a memory issue. In any case I think in the long term I'll compile NetSurf to use as a browser on my pi. It seems to have been developed for small devices so probably a better choice anyway.

To be honest, I'm not using my Pi with X, only tried the command line players one of the few times I connected it to the TV with the HDMI cable, and found no issues.

The TV is my my wife's domain I dare not touch it. You're lucky :^)

I'm getting married in September... I'll tell you then :-D

Member Response
 

Hi,

Think other experimenters would like to know about this accessory for RPi. I really like the specs for this new board from a experimenters perspective. Plus the tools are useful;
Not in production at this point but you can reserve a unit. I do plan on getting this board. Why re-invent the wheel. My workbench setup is being designed from an educator's perspective since the intent of the RPi was education. And I do feel we need to peek some interest in more technical oriented programs for our youth. Big plus, get Slackware into youthful hands to show what can be done from an individual perspective instead of herd minded. :D

Element14 Community is a another good resource.

Something other users might find useful: Look at: See Ben Heck's Raspberry Pi Build Episode or The Ben Heck Show NEW! Watch Ben Heck's Camping Mods Episode very resourceful and I thought my personal Lab was something. Be sure to view other Ben Heck episodes.

I am still getting the parts for my workbench to complete the RPi assembly. Hopefully in the next week I can start installing ARMedSlack to get things moving.

Dell Laptop(one of my old Mod Laptops) will be the service bench system for builds, experimentation and also use with qemu install. I do have a good x86 toolbox experimenter/engineering tools that were developed for a SBC that will be useful for the RPi experimenters bench once polished, retrofit and converted. I want to keep everything 'KISS' for entry/intermediate levels.

HTH!

hi 55020. Is there any chance of a source kernel package for your latest raspberrypi installer (raspi-slack-installer_01Aug12.img.xz) I'm trying to get a mcp79410 rtc working with the kernel and need the source (3.1.9-20120801) to do so, not the (older 2.6.38.4) which came with armedslack-13.37. (the 2.6.38 source creates incompatible modules for the 3.1.9 kernel).

I wouldn't mind building with the latest kernel 3.6rc1 if I had the patches/blobs etc, especially as the 3.1.9 source is not at kernel.org any more.

I have rc-1 xfce-4.10 up and running on my pi with update and install-new via slackpkg. Install is using 55020's 1 August kernel/modules/hacks/etc. So far so good. one problem is no auto mounting of external usb drive but this may be a configuration issue, dunno yet. Its almost time to learn how to cross compile a few things.

I'm using an rpi with armedslack 13.37

http://i1242.photobucket.com/albums/...20pi/8vogb.jpg
http://i1242.photobucket.com/albums/...20pi/s2voi.jpg
http://i1242.photobucket.com/albums/...20pi/38jnm.jpg

I had used it through SSH access.

TODO List:

- Configure wireless network
- build openbox and install it


Right now I'm doing a slackpkg upgrade-all

I'd like to know how you do with auto mounting usb sticks/drives when you have the chance, cheers.

I am having problems with X configuration.

This is my 40-monitor.conf

I am using a RCA cable to connect to a TV.
This setup makes X work very very slow.
I am using openbox.

I think the problem is that the X isn't hardware accelerated yet.

Anyone can give more info on this matter?

Hi all,

Just got my RPi! YAY :)

Is it possible to PXE boot the RPi?
Would putting etherboot/gPXE on the SD-Card and have the RPi boot it work?
Is etherboot/gPXE ARM compatible?

no, the raspi is not capable of pxe boot, see the faqs.

Yes, I'm aware of that.
It doesn't boot from a USB external HD either, but you can make it so by having the SD-card make the initial boot and then "transfer" the boot process to the USB HD...

I made my old pentium-III pc, which did not have a PXE-capable NIC, network-boot by booting a floppy with etherboot, which then mounted an NFS share and booted through that. (sorry for all the "boots" on the same sentence :) )

In theory, one could do the same with the RPi... but I have no idea if the etherboot/gPXE code is ARM compatible or not.

With ARM normally the devices use the u-boot loader which supports TFTP booting and is the method documented in the Slackware ARM install docs.
The Rpi doesn't use the u-boot loader though afaik.

This looks promising U-Boot for Raspberry Pi

Nice. Didn't know there is a slack version for the pi. I been running mine as a server for a few weeks. Cool little machine.

In the short term I found netsurf to have too many dependencies compared to dillo-3.0.2 which only required fltk-1.3.0 on my slackware arm current install. I compiled both with modified slackbuilds based on the slackbuilds for dillo-2.2.1 at slackbuilds.org which included Alien Bob's new ARCH handling code block that optimises for Pi packages. Dillo is a bit spartan and uses text files for configuration but is fast on my Pi compared to Seamonkey and Firefox. dillo-2.2.1 was based on fltk2 which apparently has been dropped by its the developers as unstable so dillo has fallen back to versioning 1.X.X.

I`ve built Midori for ARMedslack 13.37. It`s very fast compared to firefox.

http://slackware.spit-ct.ro/raspberrypi/old/extra/

Hey, cheers, I remember midori working well from your image. I couldn't get libunique to budge so took the parh of least resistance. I'll have to have another squiz, thanks for the link. Anyway I think el Cid will be happy to know dillo made it onto a pi.

I wondering if there is a bug on the "setup" program in the image "raspi-slack-installer_01Aug12.img.xz".

The installation went ok, but when choosing the default Windows manager, XFCE was not listed.
I decided to run the setup again, then realized the "xfce" series package was not listed on the PACKAGE SERIES SELECTION screen.
I verified my PACKAGES.TXT file and it contains all the XFCE packages listed there.

What could be happening?

EDIT:

I looked the "SetPKG" script, and there is no mention to XFCE. It happens that the "xfce" series is new in the 14.0 version, and the setup scripts were based on the 13.37, so they doesn't expect a XFCE option.

Yes, I installed current a couple weeks back and that was the case for me as well. I installed from /slackware on a mounted (via powered hub) usb drive. I just mounted the usb again after booting up and installed all the packages in /slackware/xfce. I think I was able to run the window manager selection ap again from the command line with something like wmsetup or wmconfig but I can't check that right now.

You are right. I did the following:

Then choose the XFCE as default

I just got my Pi yesterday and have been testing it out.
Is the Slackware ARM image only 'visible' when connected via hdmi (and ethernet)?
I have an sd card I put the raspi-slack-installer_01Aug12.img.xz image on (also tested the same card w/ the 9-18-2012 Raspbian and it works just fine) then connected my USB to Serial cable to the Pi and Putty'd to it. It doesnt do or show anything, whereas with Raspbian I would immediately see the startup messages. I'm not connecting anything else to it, in either case, like ethernet. Just wondering if I need to go out and get hdmi cables/connectors to play with Slack.

Ah, I got in. had to edit the cmdline.txt and add: console=ttyAMA0,115200 kgdboc=ttyAMA0,115200

http://demin.ws/blog/english/2012/07...-serial-cable/

Here's some more info I wanted to share.
So, the Pi was still acting odd sometimes when rebooting and not presenting a screen to Putty. I read on the armedslack mailing list about copying over start.elf and loader.bin, which I did from the latest rasbpian image and that worked great, which got me to setup reliably.
I installed from a fat32 formatted usb which had slackware arm 14.0 on it.
The terminal would freeze though and become unresponsive in the normal installation, so I tried setting TERM=vt100 before running setup and picking terse messaging, that seemed to help. After nervously watching the packages scroll by, the install eventually finished.
I then ran the recommended cleanup of removing extra kernels and then mounted the boot partition and installed the raspi-extra/kernel/* /raspi-extra/raspi* packages.
Those overwrote the custom changes I had done for ttyAMA0 though!
I was then seeing the boot process finally, but hanging up on something.
So, I added loglevel=6 to the end of cmdline.txt and also (since thats where I thought I was hanging up on initially). But now I dont think I was actually hanging, I think I was still getting bit ttyAMA0 not being set up, so after some more reading/searching, I edited /etc/inittab and added:
as well as /etc/securetty to add ttyAMA0 instead of ttys0
and now I'm in...

Anybody got xbmc(or full HD playback) working with pi?

I tried Raspbmc and it played 720p files very well.
Haven't tried standard 1080p files yet, but tried a heavy video file with 38 Mbps (Samsung The Beauty of Nature) and it only showed black screen.

Wait, is Raspbmc a software or an OS itself?

EDIT: It looks like a distro to me :( . I really wish to get full HD playback working with Slackware. I tried compiling xbmc but it failed. ffmpeg worked though.

hi drmozes, if you are checking this "forum", are there any chances of updating your http://www.daves-collective.co.uk/ra...01Aug12.img.xz with it's included raspi kernel packages to a slackware 14.0 version? It would be great to use the same kernel version as armedslack 14.0 uses, and would make compiling kernel modules easier. ps. appreciate the work you've done on it already.

timsoft, that is maintained by David Spencer (55020), not Stuart Winter (drmozes) http://www.daves-collective.co.uk/raspi/

and just to report good news, from now on raspberrypi model B are shipped with 512Mb of RAM :)
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2180

thanks ponce, and that is good news. I'll just have to get another one with the extra ram :-) , and I'll send an email direct to david. his current install image has an earlier raspberrypi kernel version than the rest of armedslack. I can copy the updated binary blobs onto the boot partition, but creating armedslack raspberrypi kernel install packages myself is getting beyond what I have currently attempted and would probably be duplicating dave's work anyway. hopefully he'll have time to update his install image .

if your problem is the kernel version, you'll have to wait for updates from the raspberrypi's people: that's the modified kernel version they offered for the device until a few days ago, you can't use slackwarearm kernels on it.

they updated recently to 3.2.27, but I haven't tried it yet and I don't know how stable it is.

https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux

yes, my problem is I want to build a rtc kernel module, however the kernel src framework (from armedslack) (/usr/src/linux) is for kernel 3.4.11 and the actual kernel (courtesy of dave) (uname -r) is 3.1.9-20120801

It might might be a bit off-topic I'm not sure, but any pointers would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to screw up my nice new slack14 install on the pi, but I would like to get the rtc modules going in the kernel. In my earlier attempts, the kernel complained about version numbers, (and i think that until the 3.2.x kernel, the kernel did not have the basic rtc kernel stuff at all)

I have an mcp79410 rtc attached to the i2c bus, which according to my information, should work just fine with the ds1307 rtc kernel module - when I can compile it :-)
i have tried Register the (mcp79410) DS1307 RTC chip with the I2C address of 0x6F:
(obtained from i2cdetect 0 and from the mcp79410 data sheet)

echo ds1307 0x6F > /sys/class/i2c-adapter/i2c-0/new_device
(See http://www.element14.com/community/g...rry-pi-via-i2c )
but the 3.1.9 kernel knows nothing about this method of adding devices and complains
i'm using the i2c-tools slackbuild (thanks ponce)

If you need the RTC module your best bet is to recompile the kernel yourself. Use one of the branches from the Raspberry Pi git repository (https://github.com/raspberrypi). I've been running 3.2.27 since early September and it has been very stable and reliable. They've added a branch for the 3.6 kernel, but I haven't tried it yet.

Building the kernel is quite easy - particularly if you use David Spencer's great SlackBuild scripts. He has the scripts and instructions on his site (mentioned above) along with the older compiled kernel and supporting packages. You'll want to build the firmware to match the kernel version.

Before running the SlackBuild scripts, copy David's kernel configuration file (config-raspi) into the kernel source directory as .config, and run "make menuconfig" to generate compatible a version of the config file. Within menuconfig you can also configure what drivers should be compiled into the kernel or compiled as modules. The RTC drivers are in the "Device Drivers" category under "Real Time Clock". You may also need to adjust the configuration to compile modules for SPI or I2C support, depending on what RTC you are using.

Once you have the configuration file, the slackbuild scripts should do the rest and you can upgrade to the new kernel and firmware using upgradepkg.

The best tip I can give you is to back up the SD card with the Pi's OS before trying anything like a kernel upgrade. When everything goes wrong, it is easy to just pull the card, plug it into a desktop or laptop, copy back all the working files, and start over. With the Pi and similar device, I'll usually make a duplicate of the SD card and keep the original as the backup until I know that everything is working properly.

thanks, i'll try that. I may look at the boot image as well, and extract the kernel packages to check them out. If dave doesn't get round to updating his installer image I would like to create my own. that way i'll be able to start from scratch (but with an updated kernel) if necessary.