« Posts by andrew

openSUSE on the Series 3 Chromebook – Quick and Easy

10 Dec 2012 / andrew posted in ARM, openSUSE / 1 Comment

I have blogged about how to get Linux on the Chromebook in the past; and whilst the process works, it isn’t the easiest or most friendly way. Thanks to the tireless work of the openSUSE ARM Team (especially Alex Graf and Marcus Schäfer) we now have a simpler way to get openSUSE on the Chromebook.  We now have an installable image that can be dd’ed directly to either an SD card or USB drive (I’ve not tried the internal eMMC) just like any other ARM device. To get the goodies check out the Chromebook wiki page. This process has numerous advantages to the manual process, chief amongst them is easy updating of the Kernel and painless deployment of the image. There are various things that need fixing still, but they are being worked on and will happen soon(ish).

If you have a Chromebook, please try it out and let us know how things work or don’t for you on IRC #opensuse-arm on Freenode and/or the opensuse-arm mailing list . Please take note of the known issues on the wiki page before shouting spacer

*UPDATE*
Some people asked about card/stick size to use. If you want to just use the JeOS image which is command line only, then the minimum size is 1GB, if however you wish to use the XFCE image or use JeOS and then install a DE on top then the real minimum would be 4GB. Thanks to Kiwi, the images are self extracting. This means that when you complete the first boot process it will use up all the space on your target media, so 4/8/16/32/64/128GB depending on what you have.

ARMing A Virtual World

06 Dec 2012 / andrew posted in ARM, Open Source, openSUSE / No Comments

There is now *real* hardware from ARM’s partners that offers the ability to leverage hardware virtualisation, in a similar fashion to Intel and AMD. So far three devices are shipping to the general public – the new Series 3 Chromebook, the Nexus 10 and the Arndale board. They all have one key factor in common, the Samsung Exynos5 SoC. This fine piece of silicon is a member of the Cortex-A15 family which introduces the required virtualisation extensions.

Luckily openSUSE managed to get hold of an Arndale board last month, and Alex Graf, Marcus Schäfer and others have been hard at work getting the Geeko working on the device. I’m pleased to say that their hard work has paid off, you can now run openSUSE on the Arndale with some caveats – no graphics/display atm, so serial or SSH access only for now. One of the drivers to getting the Arndale up and running was to test out Virtualisation. Below you can see a quick and dirty display of me using KVM and running three (3) VMs on the board – openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu.

Direct YouTube Link

It isn’t perfect as the guest kernel is missing DEVTMPFS support, and some of the KVM tools are missing; these are being worked on so the future will be bright spacer

Clarification & Credits for openSUSE on ARM Chromebooks

26 Oct 2012 / andrew posted in ARM, openSUSE / 1 Comment

After my post yesterday on getting openSUSE on the new ARM Chromebook, a lot of interest was generated with discussions on various forms of media – heck I even got Slashdotted (thanks spacer ). I read some but not all of them and even the comments. One thing popped out to me, and I feel I need to clarify some things.

  1. Whilst I do indeed work for ARM, my device was a private purchase and not provided to me by my employer. Luckily as part of my role I am able to spend time doing fun things like getting openSUSE on the Chromebook.
  2. I have never taken credit for doing all the hard work of working out what needed to be done to get openSUSE on the Chromebook, the hard work was done by Olof Johanssen as I mentioned. He wrote up some excellent steps that were very easy to follow. I and all other people interested in getting Linux on the Chromebook regardless of distro are indebted to Olof for his work.
  3. I am not responsible or incharge of getting openSUSE on ARM. It is a collaborative effort by the community, and there are many others that have put in a whole heap of hard work doing things that I can only aspire to do. To name a few of the fine people in our community that have put in the time and effort would be a mistake as I will undoubtedly miss some people off the list, but it is  a mistake I’m willing to accept so here goes - Adrian Schröter, Alex Graf, Joop Boonen, Guillaume Gardet, Marcus Schäfer, Dirk Müller, Andreas Färber, Bernhard Wiedemann, Bamvor Jian Zhang, Peter Czanik, Michal Vyskocil, and many more. Without the blood, sweat and tears that these fine folk have shed we would not be in the position we are now; so thank you all for your hard work and long may it continue spacer

Hopefully that will clarify any confusion that some people may have had, and sorry to those that I missed off the list – if you feel hard done by me omitting your name off this list please let me know and I will make sure you get the credit you deserve!

Geeko goes Chrome

25 Oct 2012 / andrew posted in ARM, openSUSE / 2 Comments

I was lucky enough to get into work today to have a lovely package waiting for me, a shiny new ARM powered Chromebook! \o/

I ordered it specifically to have a good mobile ARM development platform. So after having used the bundled ChromeOS for the first half of the day I decided it was time to get this machine’s Geeko on. Thankfully one of the Google employed developers , Olof Johansson, was kind enough to post his steps to get Linux on the machine. So after my meetings were done, I downloaded the openSUSE 12.2 RC1 JeOS image and followed Olof’s steps. Everything worked a treat and it was an exceptionally painless process, and proof is in the blurry cam spacer

I now need to connect to a suitable network so that I can try out some of the desktop environments, and see how well things work.

Going to the Summit of Geekos

11 Sep 2012 / andrew posted in ARM, Open Source, openSUSE / 1 Comment

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Next week I’ll be in Orlando attending both SUSE Con, and also openSUSE Summit. Not only will I be attending the Summit, but I’ll also be joining Michael Miller in the Opening Ceremony. In addition to you being able to see, talk and interact with me, I’ll also be giving away a whole heap of goodies ;-) So if you’re in the area and have an interest in ARM or most things Geeko, please give me a shout. I’d also be interested in talking to companies that are thinking about ARM but need some more discussion on the topic.

If you can make it, then head on over and join in the fun!

Boxing ARM With Geekos

15 Jun 2012 / andrew posted in ARM, openSUSE / 4 Comments

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Earlier this week, some of the fine chaps over at Geeko Central managed to get the delightful little CuBox working with openSUSE. This was helped by the fine folks at SolidRun sponsoring a couple of devices for the work, thanks SolidRun!  It isn’t 100% feature complete, but it is good enough for use as a server. The missing components are Audio and Video, so it is pretty much a headless style configuration at the moment like the Snowball.

Hannes Reinecke who wrestled things into shape has submitted several patches back to SolidRun to help try and improve things, remember folks openSUSE is inclusive and we like to give back spacer As for installing it on your own CuBox, at present there is no pre-built image, but that is coming – honest. We just need to wait for the new kernel-cubox to filter through and then we can ask kiwi to do its magic.

This now means we have openSUSE running on a wide variety of ARMv7 powered devices – Pandaboard family, Beagleboard family, Snowball, EfikaMX family & AC100. Next up is the Origen board hopefully spacer .

Time To Say Sionara

21 May 2012 / andrew posted in ARM, Open Source / 5 Comments

After five years at Fujitsu it is time for me to move on. I’ve had a blast, both good and bad, whilst there and was lucky enough to have experienced and hopefully learnt a lot. Whist there I’ve worked in all sorts of verticals; including but not limited to Government, Financial, Education, Science and HPC. Although I was brought in to deal with Linux and Open Source it was never limited to that and was lucky enough to have been exposed to a multitude of technologies that I wouldn’t have known about had it not been due to work.

I’m no longer going to be based from home, but will be based out of the fine city of Cambridge working for ARM. As for what I’m going to do exactly, all I’ll say is that it is going to be very much Open Source related (which makes me happier than a pig in poo!). I will be on leave until I start my new role, which is when I’ll tell more. I am confident that I wont need to curtail my involvement with openSUSE, if anything I will have to start getting involved with many more projects. I’m really excited at the prospect of working with other distributions, the folks at Linaro, ARM’s partners, and the wider community.

Until then, have a lot of fun folks spacer

Meeting the Incas in memory of Jane Morffew

14 Mar 2012 / andrew posted in Uncategorized / No Comments

Unfortunately one of the down sides to the 21st Century is that most people have either been directly affected by or know someone close that has been directly affected by cancer; this is a beast that takes many shapes and forms. The mortality rate for the disease is coming down slowly, but the fact is people still die from it.  Unfortunately this is what happened to my mother-in-law last year spacer

Jane was a wonderful woman that was completely focused on family, she was a true matriarch. She was loved and adored not just by her immediate family but also by the large extended family, especially the children where she had an almost magical way. It was a great shock when she passed away, especially as she had fought off breast cancer in the winter of 2010 and had made a pretty god recovery even if she had to have a mastectomy. Unfortunately the cancer returned with a vengeance in the spring of 2011 and attacked her brain and her liver, the latter was especially bad. She lost her battle after after only a short few months and passed away in the summer of 2011 at the young age of 59. She left a husband, three children and seven grandchildren as well as being an aunt and surrogate grandparent to many many more.

Her husband, Chris, was looking forward to celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary in October of 2011, but unfortunately this was not to be. As a result he has taken the decision to do something in her memory and try an raise funds and awareness for cancer research and cures for this horrible disease. He will be embarking on a 5day trek in Peru going up to Maccu Pichu and back down again, which is fine if you’re a spritely 20 or 30 something, but Chris is 65 so his body isn’t as forgiving. It is with this that I kindly ask for your help in getting him to his ambitious goal. I appreciate that there are many charities asking for your help, and many others requesting donations of one form or anther; but please help Chris reach his goal.

Please donate whatever you can by heading over to his donations page. With your help maybe we can find a way of helping more family members survive.

When a Raspberry has all the flavour a Pi needs

06 Mar 2012 / andrew posted in ARM, openSUSE / No Comments

I’m somewhat surprised at how many people are getting upset about the RaspberryPi. They are grumbling about how it is a weak, underpowered device with the only plus point being the exceptionally low price.  People, this device was devised and built for a specific task – getting children coding and learning about computers in general!! The price point is crucial, one could give it to a 4yr old (or 40yr old) and not worry too much if it accidentally gets juice poured on it or covered in chocolate spread.

Sure you can do the same sort of thing and then some more with a more powerful Pandaboard or any other ARMv7 powered device; but as a device to introduce little ones to the art of programming and all things computer related I think it is perfect. It is designed for the task of educating and as such doesn’t need or even want all the frills that a more powerful board can provide.

Not everything is about the highest specification. As long as there is enough oomph to get those inquisitive minds hacking, then there is no issue. Yes it would have been preferable if it was powered by an ARMv7, but the ARMv6 is more than capable for the task it is being used for. So what if one can’t run KDE4 or GNOME-shell? Those little fingers need to learn to use an editor for code, so a simple IDE or dare I say it – VI or EMACS – don’t need all the flashy whizz bang the big DEs provide.

What would be even better is if we could get openSUSE on the darling little thing. The thing is we have placed our stake in the ground and are focusing on ARMv7. This does not mean we won’t or don’t want to support ARMv6, we just need to focus otherwise we will never get anywhere. So if you would like to see a Raspberry flavoured Geeko then you are more than welcome to help out. The ARM team will help where we can and provide advice etc, but our time and effort is limited so don’t expect us to dive in and do the work for you spacer

When Geekos with ARMs get together

23 Feb 2012 / andrew posted in ARM, openSUSE / 3 Comments

I’m here in the belly of the Geeko at SUSE’s offices in Nuremberg, due to the fact that the new openSUSE Board had their Face to Face meeting yesterday (whole different topic needing its own post spacer ). As I was coming here I thought it would be prudent to try and get the various people dealing with and interested in the ARM port around a table at some point to discus the status of things. Yes, I know there are several people missing from the discussion – like those in the Prague office, and those not employed at SUSE – but getting everyone together will have to wait until the openSUSE Conference later this year spacer . Thanks to Bernhard who cajoled folk, we just finished having a fairly productive meeting.

The intention of the meeting was to try and get some form of milestones agreed, and work out our next moves and find out what tasks etc need to be done.  Several decisions were made:
1.) ARMv7 is the focus. This isn’t necessarily news, but we just wanted to reiterate the message. Also the ARMv5 builds are going to have their priorities in the OBS lowered to minimise the build power consumption. We’re not deleting them,  just not focusing on them; if someone really wants v5 builds then best you roll your sleeves up and get stuck  in, we will provide support, guidance and encouragement.

2.) We are aiming for 12.2 to have full ARM support. So this means we need to freeze in time for 12.2 RC1, so we can not have any build failures. If there are we need to fix them, but some applications are known not to run on ARM, where these are identified we will just use ExcludeArch: %arm. This needs to be done by 01June2012 at the latest.

3.) To ensure we can make the deadline we need to make sure that all sources are submitted into Factory via the respective devel projects. This means that we have no source overlays in the openSUSE:Factory:ARM repo. Also that all hacks and “fixes” are discussed with maintainers and either incorporated or better fixes are submitted. We will NOT have separate sources or patches for the ARM port, everything will have to be in Factory.

4.) We need to have a reference platform that ALL developers can use to verify 12.2 will work, this will be the Pandaboard. This does not mean we will not be supporting other devices, like Snowball, Beagleboard or Origen; they will be available but they may not have gone through the same rigorous tests. We will also look at having XFCE as the reference platform Desktop Environment. Now before anyone starts calling for blood, there were some reasons for refernece platform decision:

  • a.) There are sufficient numbers of Pandaboards for developers to use
  • b.) Pandaboard has the best upstream support out of all the devices
  • c.) We already have Kiwi based images for it
  • d.) XFCE is the only DE that builds almost completely and runs at the moment
  • e.) 2D graphics work out of the box on the Pandaboard

5.) openSUSE’s ARM port has gone on a diet. The Geeko is now FATless, this means we no longer have a separate FAT partition for the boot file system. All partitions are now ext3 by default, BTRFS is supported but isn’t our default.

6.) The Kiwi generated images will use the OEM format rather than the Live Install format. Basically this means that a user will dd the image to the target SD card and then the “second boot” process will kick in when a user boots from the card so that they can configure passwords/network/etc and it will repartition to take up the whole of the card.

7.) Bernhard is going to look at integrating ARM support into OpenQA. This means we can get advance notice of breakages etc. prior to releasing images.

8.) We will be triggering a rebuild of the ARM repo to ensure that builds take into account some of the big changes that have happened in Factory (like the Xorg changes), and also to clean out any “fixes” that were applied to the repo. This will most likely be initiated in batches rather than the complete repo, hopefully we can avoid the repo being out of commission for four weeks this way.

Another outcome of the meeting was working out some tasks that needed to be completed. There aren’t that many tasks and they are open to EVERYONE to help out with:
I.) We need to keep a closer eye on the package failures. Using Dirk’s Build Comparison page will help to isolate failures due to qemu. All qemu bugs/issues need to be passed on to either Alexander Graf (agraf) or Andreas Farber (afarber) for fixing.

II.) We need to look at YaST’s second stage module and see if that will be of use to the ARM port.

III.) We really need to re-work the wiki for the ARM port. It needs to be much more detailed as it hasn’t been updated in a while.

So that gives us three months or 12 weeks to get our house in order. If you want to see openSUSE get a decent release on ARM, then join in and help out!! You don’t need to know packaging/architecture/code to help, jump on IRC (#opensuse-arm on Freenode) or send a mail to the mailing list (opensuse-arm make sure you subscribe first) and ask questions and get your hands dirty spacer

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