Hi,

Does anyone know if and how I could install ARMedSlack 13.37 on a Raspberry Pi when I get one? The SoC is a Broadcom BCM2835. The Raspberry Pi cannot boot from USB, it boots from an SD card. How would I go about installing ARMedSlack on it?

Does anyone know if ARMedSlack supports the Broadcom BCM2835 SoC? I know the site says QEMU and Marvell are the two supported types, but I thought an ARM kernel would boot on any ARM architecture CPU as long as the CPU was at least the version of ARM it needed, am I wrong? Also, does anyone know how to get the installer on an SD card?

Perhaps it is wise to have a little patience and wait until the device is actually available.
We can speculate all we want, but you will only know for certain if people can get their hands dirty.

In time, the information on how to write the SD card will be available here: http://elinux.org/RaspberryPiBoardBe...ng_GNU.2FLinux

Eric

You're right Eric, I am jumping the gun a little. Do you plan on getting a Raspberry Pi? If so, do you plan to try ARMedSlack on it?

Not attempting to answer for Eric but just to let you know - I plan on getting one of these and running ArmedSlack on it. As Eric suggests, I'll maybe wait to see what reports come up on the device before splashing out - even though they are amazingly cheap!

Yeah, I will probably wait about a week or 2 after the R-pi comes out just to make sure there are no issues with the design. I hope ARMedSlack works out of the box, or with minimal changes. bgeddy, could you make a thread about it when you get one?

I see that they are going to ship this with debian. If this is stock debian you shouldn't have any real problems with armedslack, as the mainline kernel should support everything. I have had a cursory look at the project and couldn't see if they intend to run a heavily modified debian install. The reason that I point this out is some embedded devices need a drivers that are outside of the mainline kernel tree, the dream plug being a case in point. I reckon that the geeks will be out of the blocks pretty quickly on this one, so you won't need to wait long for this to be running

Sure thing. I installed ArmedSlack under qemu some time ago using the instructions found here and it worked fine but took quite some time. This was not on an arm1176 emulation however.
The latest version of qemu, qemu-1.0-rc3 is here and I have just downloaded and built that. This enables arm1176 emulation but unfortunately it won't boot the previous mentioned ArmedSlack install.
CNXSoft mentions problems with standard kernels on the Raspberry here and even supplies a prebuilt arm1176 kernel and Debian system. I have downloaded this and it run's in the new qemu arm1176 emulation fine. All this seems to indicate that the Raspberry may well not run the bog standard ArmedSlack kernel.
CNXSoft goes into details on building a new compatible kernel so even this won't be a show stopper.
The guy on this page mentions running a Raspberry emulation and there's more useful hints on that page.
The newer version of Ubuntu will run the latest qemu and there are pre built packages available - again linked to on this page - I have built this on Slackware and ran it on a Ubuntu VM as a test but on neither system will the ArmedSlack installation boot up.
This is by no means a show stopper but it does make initial installations a little more awkward on this machine. All these test are done under qemu though so they may not be a true indication of the real thing however other folks seem to suggest the same problems so beware.

So all that really needs to be done is just recompiling the ARMedSlack kernel to support ARM11? Also, more then likely someone will post a kernel for ARMedSlack already to run on the R-Pi, then all that needs to be done is replacing the kernel in the ARMedSlack tree that I would download, right?

Well its a little more complicated than that as you need to think about the initial install. If you are running the setup on the Rasberry itself it will mean you'll need a suitable kernel and re-jigged initial ram disk for the setup to boot to.

When compiling the kernel you may compile it on the Raspberry itself or use one of the freely available pre built kernels. You may also cross compile a kernel on a PC host as there are tools available. However think about how you are to first install Slackware on the hardware. If you plan on running the standard install on the Raspberry itself, as I mentioned, you'll need to modify the associated initial ram disk that setup boots to and a corrected kernel. This means recreating the bootable image for the device and the associated software for setup. The other way is to mount the sd card on another machine, format it and install Slackware ARM from the other host along with the corrected kernel. Again this is a little more complex than booting the install routines from the Raspberry - but all very doable. There are actually quite a few ways of achieving this.

Incidentally. I have left a message asking for any advice on the #armedslack channel on freenode.net and also sent an email asking for advice to Stuart Winter, the creator of Arm Slackware himself. I've only just made these requests for help and it's early days yet.

Myself I'm very confident it's all going to be relatively easy and I'm really looking forward to the release. I see there is to be an initial early release to Qt developers so they can cross compile their software - I wish I was one! Also - Nokia and ICS have 400 boards to give away free to Qt5 software developers.

Here's some more useful links - Slackware Arm, Raspberry Pi Forum, Raspberry Pi one eLinux.org - Embedded Linux Wiki and Raspberry Pi on Google+,CNXSoft – Embedded Software Development and the ARM company's details on the Arm1776, ICS Raspberry Pi Blog

If the installer is not able to boot (perhaps due to the amount of RAM it consumes or because it's not useful since it doesn't contain any support to install to your target device), one of the options is to use the mini root filesystems that
I provide for 13.37 or -current. When I was building the first port of Slackware to ARM I had the hard disk in and out of the ARM PC into an x86 PC to install the packages more times than I care to remember, but the miniroots remove that
necessity.

Oh - I haven't seen any!


It should be pretty easy to get ARMedslack working on it. The userland is built for the lowest common denominator (armv4) so it won't be as performant at certain tasks, compared to say Ubuntu or the Debian port that is aimed at a higher
baseline, but it'll still work. Then it's the usual case of building a new kernel.

People have already got ARMedslack running on the Sheevaplugs off an SD card.

I'd consider buying a Rasperry PI myself and just making it work - adding a new kernel and some instructions; but to be honest - I have absolutely no idea what I'd do with a Rasperry Pi! I can't use it as a build box since it has too little RAM, and I have enough ARM devices already. Hmm..

ARM doesn't work like that unfortunately - it'd be great if it did!
The ARMedslack userland will run on anything greater than an armv4 (the lowest common denominator that still exists in ARM devices in use today -- mostly), but you always need a specific kernel that knows how to address the *specific* ARM device you're using.

It's explained here:
http://www.linux-arm.org/pub/LinuxKe...ph-porting.pdf

@drmozes: Hey Stuart - great that you came in and thanks for the tips. The mini root option will certainly be a great help to a lot of people.
I posted on #armedslack around midnight (UK time) last night and sent the email around the same time to mozes@slackware.com - sorry if I've used the wrong address!

I have been looking at the Arm Slack mirror here and noticed lots of useful stuff - /armedslack-devtools/ particularly but there's loads of great resources there - thanks again for all the work.

They're not much money, and I'm sure you could figure out something to do with it. If anything, supporting R-Pi with an official build of ARMedSlack is a good reason to get one, as R-Pi is a big project, and I am sure there would be quite a few users who would use ARMedSlack if there were an official build that was easy to install and didn't need to be modified. It would really help both ARMedSlack and R-Pi if you made an official build. If you could make an official build for it, that would be great, I'm sure a lot of users would love that.

I haven't seen anything still, it's best to join the mailing list and ask there. If I'm going to answer anything that's to do with the project, it's usually beneficial to more than just the person asking it.

I've been reading a little more around the Raspberry pi. Once the devices have shipped and the support is in the kernel.org kernel source I *might* have a look at it. I won't promise anything however, as the excitement level is currently only 0.1 on a scale of 0-10; my goal is for a desktop or netbook ARM machine. I'm much more interested in the Nvidia "Trimslice" at the moment.