slarm64 (aarch64 / riscv64 unofficial slackware linux port)

sndwvs · 12-06-2021, 12:32 PM

slarm64 is an unofficial slackware linux port for aarch64 / riscv64 architectures.

The distribution kit is built on the slackware64 assembly scripts (changes to the original scripts are made in case of architectural differences), therefore, it corresponds to the original as much as possible.

dowmloads
development
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Also within the framework of this project there is a build system images_build_kit, which allows you to build ready-made installation images for various devices.

original branch.

business_kid · 12-09-2021, 07:05 AM

Am I to take it you have got an LQ forum started? The Forum's page hasn't been updated yet, but I'm sure it will in time.

It turns out I had a run of hardware issues when I was playing with your distro. Specifically, I lost the sdcard I was using and a powered usb hub on my pi went decidedly dodgy. I need a powered hub as my official psu shouldn't be but is borderline.

EDIT: I'm trying your image again on good hardware.

sndwvs · 12-09-2021, 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid

Am I to take it you have got an LQ forum started? The Forum's page hasn't been updated yet, but I'm sure it will in time.

I hope they will do it someday.

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid

It turns out I had a run of hardware issues when I was playing with your distro. Specifically, I lost the sdcard I was using and a powered usb hub on my pi went decidedly dodgy. I need a powered hub as my official psu shouldn't be but is borderline.

EDIT: I'm trying your image again on good hardware.

yes, the raspberry pi is always power hungry. I use slarm64 on all boards on a daily basis, I don't see any particular problems.

business_kid · 12-10-2021, 04:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sndwvs

yes, the raspberry pi is always power hungry. I use slarm64 on all boards on a daily basis, I don't see any particular problems.

It should be a 240V 3 Amp power supply. I'm on 220V, but it's a switched mode psu, so a blind monkey with low monkey IQ should be able to get it singing happily on 220V. There's 110/220V supplies! First boot it went down in flames (didn't pick up the kernel modules) but I really don't care. I'll come back fresh in a while. I've had a run of dodgy hardware, and have a system working, so I'm not in the mood.

business_kid · 12-11-2021, 11:32 AM

Now that some replacement sdcards have landed, I tried slarm64 again. It came up, did an orderly reboot, came up again, and I landed on a screen with a dialog box saying "Other" asking for a user/password. Any I enter are wrong

It does appear to be booting with much less drama, so the finger of suspicion now points at yet another piece of hardware

sndwvs · 12-11-2021, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid

Now that some replacement sdcards have landed, I tried slarm64 again. It came up, did an orderly reboot, came up again, and I landed on a screen with a dialog box saying "Other" asking for a user/password. Any I enter are wrong

It does appear to be booting with much less drama, so the finger of suspicion now points at yet another piece of hardware

when you enter the root user, you are prompted to set a password.

business_kid · 12-13-2021, 05:44 AM

Now it's booting, I can log in as root, but it comes to a halt. Life and consequently setup is necessarily at a leisurely pace here. I've had a few passes at this, and hit a roadblock. https://drive.google.com/file/d/11K7...ew?usp=sharing is my screen on bootup. Does that look OK? I've no menus, no taskbar, and can't even turn off in a civilised way, which plays havoc with the sdcard.

You had 'disable_overscan=1' in the /boot/config.txt with a comment, but I changed it to 0, as I want overscan. Should it not be "overscan=1" rather than a double negative? The RPi OS has a check-box to enable overscan, and I guess that adds their default overscan of 16, which gives me a perfect picture. I ended up with these lines in /boot/config.txt after trying a setting of 32.

Code:

# overscan is only needed on old TV sets and if analog gear is in the chain (e.g. DPI)
disable_overscan=0
overscan_left=64
overscan_right=64
overscan_top=64
overscan_bottom=64

Now going from an overscan of 0 --> 32 --> 64 hasn't made the slightest bit of difference to the picture in X. The only thing that seemed to shift was the initial boot messages - the module loading from the ramdisk. By the time we were fsck'ing the disks, the text was off screen. I had the same picture in X with no overscan. I have a Benq HDMI tv/monitor. You'd think hdmi lcd monitors would be steadier, but they aren't. I think the comment about Analogue monitors is a bit unnecessary, btw as there's no CRTs left running and they never did HDMI anyhow that I know of. Tubes never had more than a 110º beam spread AFAIK so anything with a 16:9 HDMI monitor would be impossibly long. They used the 4:3 aspect ratio.

So if you don't/can't adjust width and height from /boot/config.txt, where does one adjust them from?

sndwvs · 12-13-2021, 07:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid

So if you don't/can't adjust width and height from /boot/config.txt, where does one adjust them from?

I have HDMI output for this I have not encountered a stack of problems, you need to look at the documentation on config.txt

business_kid · 12-13-2021, 08:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sndwvs

I have HDMI output for this I have not encountered a stack of problems, you need to look at the documentation on config.txt

/Sigh.

It doesn't answer the issue, but I fixed it. Read on.

I started reading up on config.txt, with your config.txt open in a root terminal. The opening entry seems to have an error

Code:

# See /boot/overlays/README for all available options

# Our kernels are located on a Linux partition. Chainload U-Boot to load them.
#kernel=u-boot.bin
#** Changed By Business_Kid! Health Warning!
kernel=vmlinuz-5.15.5

followed later by

Code:

#**Added By Business_Kid! Health Warning!
initrd=uInitrd-5.15.5 followkernel

Now the comment is wrong, because the first partition has to be Fat for the Pi to load it's firmware. I tried the other kernel lying around on /boot, and that worked with no overscan. That's the sort of mistake I used to make overdosing on caffeine in the early hours of the morning.

Don't ask me why that fixed it. But I'm allowed to strike it lucky occasionally

EDIT: Next, it's wifi. I want wlan0 to go and play in the traffic, because my Flirc case makes it directional and acts as a Faraday Shield for it. Wlan1 is a usb (Mediatek?) thing which runs on some driver whose source was written to be compiled against kernel-2.6

I felt for you guys hacking that into shape.

EDIT2: the gui sucks real bad, and sorry to be harsh. But I'll see what I can do.

business_kid · 12-14-2021, 05:47 AM

Getting better …

I have 2 wifi adapters. With Rpi OS, the internal one[wlan0] was very slow. I have a Flirc case acting as a Faraday shield, and put it down to that.

The other [wlan1] uses a Ralink 5730 chip. Mediatek bought out Ralink some years back. I've seen source code of a 2012 driver built against a 2.6 RHEL kernel, so compiling that must be a pain. But RPi OS & the 32bit slackware arm did it.

I'm getting the internal driver wlan0, and 20Mbps on speedtest.net. wlan1 seems to lack a driver. Is there a kernel module for that external one? USB ID code is 148f:5370. There appears to be support
https://linux-hardware.org/index.php?id=usb:148f-5370

EDIT: FROM MY PC

Quote:

bash-5.1$ lsmod |grep rt2800
rt2800usb 28672 0
rt2x00usb 28672 1 rt2800usb
rt2800lib 135168 1 rt2800usb
rt2x00lib 65536 3 rt2800usb,rt2x00usb,rt2800lib
crc_ccitt 16384 1 rt2800lib
mac80211 978944 4 ath9k,rt2x00lib,rt2x00usb,rt2800lib

sndwvs · 12-14-2021, 08:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid

Getting better …

I have 2 wifi adapters. With Rpi OS, the internal one[wlan0] was very slow. I have a Flirc case acting as a Faraday shield, and put it down to that.

The other [wlan1] uses a Ralink 5730 chip. Mediatek bought out Ralink some years back. I've seen source code of a 2012 driver built against a 2.6 RHEL kernel, so compiling that must be a pain. But RPi OS & the 32bit slackware arm did it.

I'm getting the internal driver wlan0, and 20Mbps on speedtest.net. wlan1 seems to lack a driver. Is there a kernel module for that external one? USB ID code is 148f:5370. There appears to be support
https://linux-hardware.org/index.php?id=usb:148f-5370

EDIT: FROM MY PC

this module is present in the kernel itself CONFIG_RT2800USB
and it is configured by the module

Code:

grep CONFIG_RT2 linux-bcm2711-next.config 
CONFIG_RT2X00=m
# CONFIG_RT2400PCI is not set
# CONFIG_RT2500PCI is not set
# CONFIG_RT2800PCI is not set
CONFIG_RT2500USB=m
CONFIG_RT2800USB=m
CONFIG_RT2800USB_RT33XX=y
CONFIG_RT2800USB_RT35XX=y
CONFIG_RT2800USB_RT3573=y
CONFIG_RT2800USB_RT53XX=y
CONFIG_RT2800USB_RT55XX=y
CONFIG_RT2800USB_UNKNOWN=y
CONFIG_RT2800_LIB=m
CONFIG_RT2X00_LIB_USB=m
CONFIG_RT2X00_LIB=m
CONFIG_RT2X00_LIB_FIRMWARE=y
CONFIG_RT2X00_LIB_CRYPTO=y
CONFIG_RT2X00_LIB_LEDS=y
# CONFIG_RT2X00_DEBUG is not set

business_kid · 12-15-2021, 11:13 AM

Fairly happy now, generally speaking.

I made a user, but cannot get that user to log in. "Password incorrect," when it is correct. Have you set sensible defaults in useradd or do I have to go farting about with usermod for expire dates or something?

I can log in as root in X, and stream a movie in firefox. But after a few minutes, the screen goes black, the sound may continue for a second or two, ...and then it comes back 30-60 secs later and it's been keeping it's place in the move because we are later. I thought it might be the browser cache running out of disk space, but / is on a 30G partition here. I don't think it's happening with mpv.

I didn't get vlc. Have you compiled it? Does it work on Arm, or is it a shoehorn job?

sndwvs · 12-15-2021, 12:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid

Fairly happy now, generally speaking.

I made a user, but cannot get that user to log in. "Password incorrect," when it is correct. Have you set sensible defaults in useradd or do I have to go farting about with usermod for expire dates or something?

just run as root

Code:

passwd <user>

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid

I didn't get vlc. Have you compiled it? Does it work on Arm, or is it a shoehorn job?

VLC does not include assembly, you can install by yourself vlc-3.0.16-aarch64-2mara.txz

sndwvs · 12-15-2021, 01:31 PM

go to the slarm64 section

sndwvs · 12-15-2021, 01:45 PM

go to the slarm64 section