Subject: [alpine-devel] Alpine ARM images

From: Timo Teras <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 09:07:08 +0200

Hi,

I'm hoping that we can start generating ARM-images for other boards
than Raspberry Pi soon. It seems this is a bit messy area, and many
other distros just have a wiki + separate downloads for the boot
loader. Though, I would like us to ship a single downloadable tarball.

Also preparing the boot media seems to vary board by board. E.g.
wandboard loads bootloader from fixed sectors of MMC, where as e.g.
cubieboard seems to load it from the first partition (FAT).

I've made now a test image with u-boot for wandboard (it also
has cubieboard u-boot, but it's u-boot script is not updated for
alpine). DTBs are for a bunch of boards, and it's a grsec kernel from
edge. apks are from 3.1.1 release.

http://dev.alpinelinux.org/~tteras/alpine-uboot-3.1.1-test-armhf.rpi.tar.gz

If you have wandboard, I'd be happy to hear feedback. This is what I'm
currently running on our wandboard builder.

Patches to support more boards (kernel config and u-boot
package/script) are welcome.

I'm also wondering how we should do this in official releases. Just ship
all u-boot images and dtbs in the tarball, and make setup-bootable to
install also u-boot for arm?

Other suggestions?

/Timo

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From: Orion <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2015 11:32:32 -0800

I think it would be best for us to work on automating these processes.
So that future boards, distro adjustments, and customized distributions
are easier for us to build, use, and play with.

I don't know exactly how all this would be put together but I've found
and received some suggestions on places that may be a good place to
start.

http://buildroot.org/
https://www.yoctoproject.org/
http://www.openembedded.org/
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-wifi-build

-- 
keybase.io/systmkor

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From: Timo Teras <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2015 21:49:06 +0200

On Wed, 28 Jan 2015 11:32:32 -0800
Orion <[email-masked]> wrote:

> So that future boards, distro adjustments, and customized
> distributions are easier for us to build, use, and play with.

That's three questions in one... :)

But yes, we have this stuff automated. The Raspberry Pi image is
automated. And building everything in the tarball I linked is
automated. Building the tarball itself is not (yet) automated, but it's
simple to make it so. That's part of what I wanted to get feedback for
- is the tarball contents now good, or should it contain something
additional, have something removed or changed.

Doing customized distributions based Alpine is certainly doable, but
not well documented. I remember seeing some use Alpine aports as basis
of their work. But have not looked into that with detail.

But simplifying spin-off distros is something we should probably talk
about. Especially for making appliance type setups. It's simpleish
already now to make custom .iso images with custom set of packages. But
adding your own packages probably requires a bit of extra work.

Doing full custom rebuilds yourself needs even more work - and is not
well documented. (You'd probably need this if you wanted optimized
builds for specific ARM cpu, etc.)

/Timo

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From: Orion <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2015 12:51:36 -0800

On Wed, 28 Jan 2015 21:49:06 +0200
Timo Teras <[email-masked]> wrote:

> automated. 
Could you post were that is located with it's documentation because I
haven't really found much.

> of their work. But have not looked into that with detail.

Again not sure were that is located.

> already now to make custom .iso images with custom set of packages.
> But adding your own packages probably requires a bit of extra work.

Agreed.

> builds for specific ARM cpu, etc.)

Agreed.

-- 
keybase.io/systmkor

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From: Timo Teras <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2015 09:17:34 +0200

On Wed, 28 Jan 2015 12:51:36 -0800
Orion <[email-masked]> wrote:

> > not well documented. I remember seeing some use Alpine aports as
> > basis of their work. But have not looked into that with detail.
> 

http://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Developer_Documentation

Seems it documents only the old style builders using vserver:
http://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Setting_up_a_compile_vserver

Since than we've migrated to use LXC containers, and the distro build
scripts are rewritten in lua too.

The sources for distro builder are:
http://git.alpinelinux.org/cgit/lua-aports/

And to generate the distributed iso images and tarballs:
http://git.alpinelinux.org/cgit/alpine-iso/

But yes, all these docs need an update. Maybe ncopa had some notes
somewhere?

/Timo

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From: systmkor <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2015 01:20:47 -0800

> http://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Setting_up_a_compile_vserver

I’ve looked at this but it seemed like it didn’t have much relevance to the
current build structure of Alpine so I figured not to go on reading it.

> http://git.alpinelinux.org/cgit/lua-aports/

I didn’t know this was actually being used. I thought I remember reading or
maybe I just got the impression that was a future project not currently
being used.

> http://git.alpinelinux.org/cgit/alpine-iso/

This was the one project that sorta made sense to me. That said I didn’t see
were it fit in with the rest of building a distro.

I think not having some higher level explanation is one of biggest barriers
for me. I agree that documentation would help a lot. Thank you for the reply
and your time.

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