Gentoo on the OLPC XO-1.75

Currently at the Gentoo Miniconf 2012 in Prague, we have two OLPC XO-1.75 devices and are working to install Gentoo on them.

These XO-1.75 is based on the Marvell Armada 610 SoC (armv7l, non-NEON), which promises countless hours of fun enumerating and obtaining obscure pieces of software which are needed to make the laptop work.

One of these is the xf86-video-dove DDX for the Vivante(?) GPU: The most recent version 0.3.5 seems to be available only as SRPM in the OLPC rpmdropbox. Extracting it reveals a "source" tarball containing this:

.:
total 1364
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users 423968 12. Sep 14:39 aclocal.m4
drwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users     80 12. Sep 14:39 autom4te.cache
-rwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users    981 12. Sep 14:37 build_no_dpkg_env.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users      0 12. Sep 14:37 ChangeLog
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chithanh users     37 12. Sep 14:39 config.guess -> /usr/share/automake-1.12/config.guess
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2120 12. Sep 14:40 config.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   1846 12. Sep 14:40 config.h.in
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  43769 12. Sep 14:40 config.log
-rwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users  65749 12. Sep 14:40 config.status
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chithanh users     35 12. Sep 14:39 config.sub -> /usr/share/automake-1.12/config.sub
-rwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users 440014 12. Sep 14:40 configure
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2419 12. Sep 14:37 configure.ac
-rwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users   1325 12. Sep 14:37 COPYING
drwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users    262 12. Sep 14:37 debian
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chithanh users     32 12. Sep 14:39 depcomp -> /usr/share/automake-1.12/depcomp
drwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users    252 12. Sep 14:37 etc
drwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users     44 12. Sep 14:37 fedora
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chithanh users     35 12. Sep 14:39 install-sh -> /usr/share/automake-1.12/install-sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users 293541 12. Sep 14:40 libtool
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chithanh users     35 12. Sep 14:39 ltmain.sh -> /usr/share/libtool/config/ltmain.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  27005 12. Sep 14:40 Makefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   1167 12. Sep 14:37 Makefile.am
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  25708 12. Sep 14:40 Makefile.in
drwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users     76 12. Sep 14:40 man
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chithanh users     32 12. Sep 14:39 missing -> /usr/share/automake-1.12/missing
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   4169 12. Sep 14:37 README
drwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users   1192 12. Sep 21:48 src
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users     23 12. Sep 14:40 stamp-h1

src/:
total 688
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   3555 12. Sep 14:41 compat-api.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    805 12. Sep 14:37 datatypes.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  55994 12. Sep 21:22 dovefb.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  32160 12. Sep 15:11 dovefb_cursor.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    278 12. Sep 17:09 dovefb_cursor.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   6052 12. Sep 14:41 dovefb_driver.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    974 12. Sep 17:09 dovefb_drv.la
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  13856 12. Sep 14:37 dovefb.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    264 12. Sep 17:09 dovefb.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users 128733 12. Sep 15:11 dovefb_xv.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    270 12. Sep 17:09 dovefb_xv.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2548 12. Sep 14:53 list.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  22242 12. Sep 17:08 Makefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2121 12. Sep 14:37 Makefile.am
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2134 12. Sep 14:37 Makefile.am.sw
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  21742 12. Sep 14:40 Makefile.in
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  18584 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_crtc.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    856 12. Sep 14:37 mrvl_crtc.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    270 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_crtc.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    851 12. Sep 14:37 mrvl_cursor.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2509 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_debug.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2284 12. Sep 14:37 mrvl_debug.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    272 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_debug.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  32528 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_edid.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   5794 12. Sep 14:37 mrvl_edid.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    270 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_edid.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  84262 12. Sep 17:07 mrvl_exa_driver.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    282 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_exa_driver.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  10388 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_exa_fence_pool.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    290 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_exa_fence_pool.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   9189 12. Sep 14:51 mrvl_exa.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   4258 12. Sep 14:37 mrvl_exa_profiling.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  46583 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_exa_utils.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   3768 12. Sep 15:06 mrvl_exa_utils.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    280 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_exa_utils.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  20622 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_heap.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   3256 12. Sep 14:53 mrvl_heap.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    270 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_heap.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   1774 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_offscreen_memory.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    235 12. Sep 14:37 mrvl_offscreen_memory.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    294 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_offscreen_memory.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  47286 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_output.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    274 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_output.lo

More pictures of the Gentoo Miniconf can be found at the Google+ Event page.

xorg-server-1.12 going stable

It is time for xorg-server-1.12 to go stable in bug 419473. If you want to help testing, run the awk command

# awk '/YOURARCHHERE/ {print "="$1}' x11_stable.list > x11_stable.keywords

on the stabilization list attached to the bug, and add the result to /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords (or package.keywords if you are still using the legacy location).

After the xorg-server upgrade, do not forget to rebuild all x11-drivers. If you find a regression, please report a bug (if none already exists) and make it block bug 419473.

In related news, our current x11-drivers/ati-drivers maintainer Enrico Tagliavini is going to step down, as support for his notebook was dropped by AMD in version 12.6. Enrico has done an excellent job maintaining the package and we thank him very much for his work.
If you care about this package and like writing ebuilds, please come to #gentoo-desktop on irc.freenode.net and contact the x11 team.

xorg-server-1.11 going stable

In bug 394393, a number of x11 packages are going stable, including x11-base/xorg-server-1.11.2-r2.
After you upgrade, don't forget to rebuild your x11-drivers packages. Use the command that is shown in the elog messages to find out which. In case you missed it:

# qlist -I -C x11-drivers/

The output of qlist can be directly passed to emerge like this:

# emerge -1 $(qlist -I -C x11-drivers/)

If you are sitting at a gdm/kdm/xdm/... login prompt and can't type anything, press Alt+SysRq+R to switch to raw input mode and Ctrl+Alt+F1 will bring you back to the console.

Should portage hide build output from the user by default?

There has recently been a discussion on gentoo-dev about making portage output less noisy
http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_4f0401066abe2dc04458a952ac2a17bd.xml

A solution was implemented to suppress the build output (the configure, make and install) by default, unless the user specifies --quiet-build=n explicitly. There were both supporters and critics of that idea, but no real data about what users think.

If you have an opinion on this, please visit  the forums and participate in the poll and/or comment in the forum thread:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-901858.html (plain)
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-901858.html (ssl)

New toy: AMD E-350 Zacate motherboard

Today I picked up an ASRock E350M1 from a local computer store for 94 EUR. I'll never be able to use an Atom again! 

On this mobo, there is an AMD E-350 Dual-Core CPU with a Radeon 6310 (comparable to 5450) graphics core. To use this board with open source drivers, you need xf86-video-ati-6.14.0 and kernel 2.6.38_rc1 or later. The proprietary driver supports it too, but I didn't test that.

According to various reviews, the E-350 does fairly well against the competition. Let's see how long compiling LibreOffice will take.