5:33 a.m.
Hi,
Some weeks ago, I started porting Fedora Core 2 to the Intel IXP2400,
which is basically a 600MHz big-endian xscale (ARM) core. Right now
I have ~550 out of ~950 packages building and seemingly in good order.
(I have not yet attempted to build openoffice and such.)
I would like to start submitting the (surprisingly small number of)
needed patches so far back into Fedora, perhaps shifting my efforts
towards FC3. What do people here think about such an effort?
cheers,
Lennert
6:06 a.m.
On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 20:33, Lennert Buytenhek <buytenh(a)wantstofly.org> wrote:
Some weeks ago, I started porting Fedora Core 2 to the Intel
IXP2400,
which is basically a 600MHz big-endian xscale (ARM) core. Right now
I have ~550 out of ~950 packages building and seemingly in good order.
(I have not yet attempted to build openoffice and such.)
Is anyone making machines for general-purpose use based on the IXP2400 core?
Or is it just for routers?
I would like to start submitting the (surprisingly small number of)
needed patches so far back into Fedora, perhaps shifting my efforts
towards FC3. What do people here think about such an effort?
Sounds good. Any time you port to a new architecture you are likely to shake
out bugs that aren't obvious on i386. I've found heaps of bugs by porting
code to other CPUs.
Also there's a good chance that bugs you fix for ARM may also impact IA64.
--
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page
6:53 a.m.
On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 09:06:44PM +1000, Russell Coker wrote:
> Some weeks ago, I started porting Fedora Core 2 to the Intel
IXP2400,
> which is basically a 600MHz big-endian xscale (ARM) core. Right now
> I have ~550 out of ~950 packages building and seemingly in good order.
> (I have not yet attempted to build openoffice and such.)
Is anyone making machines for general-purpose use based on the
IXP2400 core? Or is it just for routers?
[ For those not in the know: the IXP2400 is basically just an xscale
(which is Intel's version of ARM) processor, with some extra on-chip
processing logic for fast network processing. The chip itself has
an integrated memory controller, 64b/66MHz PCI unit, 4Gbps SPI-3 bus,
and 8 on-chip processors which have a very simple instruction set
designed to do network-related things such as switching, routing,
firewalling, etc. It can do full wire speed 4xGbps processing, and
its bigger brother, the IXP2800, does full wire speed 10xGbps. ]
I'm not aware of any general-purpose machines based on the IXP2400
or IXP2800 as of yet. There are a number of commercially available
switches and routers that have it under the hood, and there are
three development kits that I know of.
http://www.intel.com/design/network/products/npfamily/ixdp24xx.htm
http://www.intel.com/design/network/products/npfamily/ixdp28xx.htm
http://www.radisys.com/oem_products/ds-page.cfm?productdatasheetsid=1147
We're thinking about having an ATX form factor board designed for it,
which would be perfectly well possible since the chip has basically
everything you'd need in a general purpose PC. But no definite plans
on that yet.
My motivation for porting Fedora to it was thus: most people who use
the IXP2400 run some form of Montavista on it, but considering that
these processors run at 600MHz or 700MHz and typically have between
256MB and 1GB of RAM, why not run a normal distro on it? I'm used
to RH/FC, and I want to have all the tools I have available on my
desktop box on my 'embedded' platform as well.
Even though the IXP2400 is a bit of a niche processor, the xscale is
much more widely used, and I think that a port of Fedora to the xscale
would be a generally good idea. Especially considering that the number
of required patches is small.
> I would like to start submitting the (surprisingly small number
of)
> needed patches so far back into Fedora, perhaps shifting my efforts
> towards FC3. What do people here think about such an effort?
Sounds good. Any time you port to a new architecture you are likely to
shake out bugs that aren't obvious on i386. I've found heaps of bugs
by porting code to other CPUs.
Yeah. There are lots of strange things to be found in userland. Like
openssl assuming that linux-elf == i386, for example.
OK, so how do I go from here? Should I just submit all my patches to
bugzilla and wait?
Also there's a good chance that bugs you fix for ARM may also
impact IA64.
Perhaps so.
--L
7:01 a.m.
Lennert Buytenhek wrote:
Yeah. There are lots of strange things to be found in userland.
Like
openssl assuming that linux-elf == i386, for example.
OK, so how do I go from here? Should I just submit all my patches to
bugzilla and wait?
- File against each component in product "Fedora Core".
- At the beginning of each Summary line say [PATCH] so it is really
obvious that you are supplying a solution.
- Add Keywords EASYFIX and PATCH to each report.
- It would really help if you could also contact the upstream
development team with your patch, as it makes it easier to maintain in
the long run for all parties if upstream gets the fix for the next release.
Warren Togami
wtogami(a)redhat.com
3:42 p.m.
On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 02:01:21AM -1000, Warren Togami wrote:
>Yeah. There are lots of strange things to be found in userland.
Like
>openssl assuming that linux-elf == i386, for example.
>
>OK, so how do I go from here? Should I just submit all my patches to
>bugzilla and wait?
- File against each component in product "Fedora Core".
OK, my binutils patch just got rejected because "Fedora Core 2 isn't
ported to the ARM."
I guess I should have submitted it to 'devel' or 'test1' instead of
to '2', hmm?
- At the beginning of each Summary line say [PATCH] so it is really
obvious that you are supplying a solution.
- Add Keywords EASYFIX and PATCH to each report.
- It would really help if you could also contact the upstream
development team with your patch, as it makes it easier to maintain in
the long run for all parties if upstream gets the fix for the next release.
Thank you, this was and is useful advice.
Five submitted so far:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=129601 (binutils)
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=129607 (gcc)
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=129034 (rpm)
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=129587 (redhat-rpm-config)
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=129589 (openssl)
cheers,
Lennert
3:48 p.m.
On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 10:42:23PM +0200, Lennert Buytenhek wrote:
On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 02:01:21AM -1000, Warren Togami wrote:
> >Yeah. There are lots of strange things to be found in userland. Like
> >openssl assuming that linux-elf == i386, for example.
> >
> >OK, so how do I go from here? Should I just submit all my patches to
> >bugzilla and wait?
>
> - File against each component in product "Fedora Core".
OK, my binutils patch just got rejected because "Fedora Core 2 isn't
ported to the ARM."
If you have FC2 based port, please keep the patch local to the ARM port
(say have binutils-2.15.90.0.3-5xscale.src.rpm instead of what was shipped
in FC2 - e.g. Fedora Core SPARC port does the same).
I don't think it is a good idea to issue FC2 updates just because there
was an ARM patch added, FC2 users on i386/x86-64 would IMHO definitely
not appreciate having to download the updates with zero changes.
binutils in FC3 will be 2.15.91.0.2 (~end of July '04) or later, so the
patch in question is definitely there for FC3.
Jakub
3:56 p.m.
On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 04:48:17PM -0400, Jakub Jelinek wrote:
> > >Yeah. There are lots of strange things to be found in
userland. Like
> > >openssl assuming that linux-elf == i386, for example.
> > >
> > >OK, so how do I go from here? Should I just submit all my patches to
> > >bugzilla and wait?
> >
> > - File against each component in product "Fedora Core".
>
> OK, my binutils patch just got rejected because "Fedora Core 2 isn't
> ported to the ARM."
If you have FC2 based port, please keep the patch local to the ARM port
(say have binutils-2.15.90.0.3-5xscale.src.rpm instead of what was shipped
in FC2 - e.g. Fedora Core SPARC port does the same).
OK, so the question was, if the goal would be to have my patches
integrated into FC3, should I have submitted them to devel/test1
instead of to '2'?
I don't think it is a good idea to issue FC2 updates just because
there
was an ARM patch added, FC2 users on i386/x86-64 would IMHO definitely
not appreciate having to download the updates with zero changes.
Sure, that makes sense. I'm a bit new to this bugzilla stuff, sorry.
binutils in FC3 will be 2.15.91.0.2 (~end of July '04) or later,
so the
patch in question is definitely there for FC3.
You wrote that in the bugzilla entry too -- good to hear, thank you
very much.
cheers,
Lennert
7:45 a.m.
On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 21:53, Lennert Buytenhek <buytenh(a)wantstofly.org> wrote:
> Is anyone making machines for general-purpose use based on the
> IXP2400 core? Or is it just for routers?
[ For those not in the know: the IXP2400 is basically just an xscale
(which is Intel's version of ARM) processor, with some extra on-chip
processing logic for fast network processing. The chip itself has
an integrated memory controller, 64b/66MHz PCI unit, 4Gbps SPI-3 bus,
and 8 on-chip processors which have a very simple instruction set
designed to do network-related things such as switching, routing,
firewalling, etc. It can do full wire speed 4xGbps processing, and
its bigger brother, the IXP2800, does full wire speed 10xGbps. ]
Sounds nice. Those 8 on-chip processors, how fast are they and how complex
are the operations that they can perform? Could they be programmed to do AES
or SHA1? If so is there any idea of what the expected throughput of having
all 8 processors doing crypto at the same time might be?
We're thinking about having an ATX form factor board designed for
it,
which would be perfectly well possible since the chip has basically
everything you'd need in a general purpose PC. But no definite plans
on that yet.
Would it be possible to make that SMP? A machine with 4 of those CPUs having
all 32 processors doing crypto could have some fun possibilities. Especially
as ARM CPUs take little power, a rack full of such machines could have some
interesting uses.
My motivation for porting Fedora to it was thus: most people who use
the IXP2400 run some form of Montavista on it, but considering that
these processors run at 600MHz or 700MHz and typically have between
256MB and 1GB of RAM, why not run a normal distro on it? I'm used
to RH/FC, and I want to have all the tools I have available on my
desktop box on my 'embedded' platform as well.
Absolutely!
What do we have to do to start a Fedora port to an architecture that isn't
supported by RHEL? Are we ready to have fedora.us take on a new
architecture?
> > I would like to start submitting the (surprisingly small
number of)
> > needed patches so far back into Fedora, perhaps shifting my efforts
> > towards FC3. What do people here think about such an effort?
>
> Sounds good. Any time you port to a new architecture you are likely to
> shake out bugs that aren't obvious on i386. I've found heaps of bugs
> by porting code to other CPUs.
Yeah. There are lots of strange things to be found in userland. Like
openssl assuming that linux-elf == i386, for example.
OK, so how do I go from here? Should I just submit all my patches to
bugzilla and wait?
If any bug that you find is likely to impact IA64 or AMD64 then it should be
submitted to bugzilla. If it is strictly only going to affect ARM then it
may be best to submit it as a bug against the upstream code base instead.
--
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page
9:03 a.m.
On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 10:45:07PM +1000, Russell Coker wrote:
> > Is anyone making machines for general-purpose use based on
the
> > IXP2400 core? Or is it just for routers?
>
> [ For those not in the know: the IXP2400 is basically just an xscale
> (which is Intel's version of ARM) processor, with some extra on-chip
> processing logic for fast network processing. The chip itself has
> an integrated memory controller, 64b/66MHz PCI unit, 4Gbps SPI-3 bus,
> and 8 on-chip processors which have a very simple instruction set
> designed to do network-related things such as switching, routing,
> firewalling, etc. It can do full wire speed 4xGbps processing, and
> its bigger brother, the IXP2800, does full wire speed 10xGbps. ]
Sounds nice. Those 8 on-chip processors, how fast are they and how
complex are the operations that they can perform? Could they be
programmed to do AES or SHA1? If so is there any idea of what the
expected throughput of having all 8 processors doing crypto at the
same time might be?
The IXP2850 (variant of the IXP2800) has an on-chip crypto engine.
See http://www.intel.com/design/network/products/npfamily/ixp2850.htm
It can do DES, 3DES, AES and SHA-1, up to 10 Gbps, or so they say.
I already had plans for offloading L2/L3 switching/routing, BPF and
perhaps even iptables to the on-chip network hardware, as I think
that an IXP-based design is a good alternative for any big-name
hardware router. (In fact, I got started on the IXP stuff from the
desire not to have to shell out $30k (and that's for second hand
gear!) every time you need a 2-port or 3-port gigabit router with a
proper BGP implementation (I work for a Dutch internet provider.))
I don't see why HW ipsec accel shouldn't be implementable as well,
but that's not my first priority.
If you're not on an IXP2850 but on an IXP2400 or IXP2800.. I think
the microengine instruction set is general enough to perform crypto
ops, but I'm not sure whether you'll have enough instruction store
for that -- the instruction store is in a separate set of on-chip
registers, and there's only 4K or 8K (depending on the model)
instruction words per microengine.
(The IXP2400 has 8 microengines at 600MHz, but the IXP2800 has 16 of
them at 1.4GHz, plus triple interleaved 1066MHz RDRAM channels. I'm
sure that you could program them to do FFTs or something like that
at mindboggling rates.)
(But I digress.)
> We're thinking about having an ATX form factor board
designed for it,
> which would be perfectly well possible since the chip has basically
> everything you'd need in a general purpose PC. But no definite plans
> on that yet.
Would it be possible to make that SMP? A machine with 4 of those CPUs
having all 32 processors doing crypto could have some fun possibilities.
Hmm, did anybody ever make an ARM SMP system? :)
There _are_ multiprocessor IXP designs, but all such designs I'm aware
of run a separate kernel per CPU. (It would be very interesting to see
what could be done about that, of course.)
Especially as ARM CPUs take little power, a rack full of such
machines
could have some interesting uses.
The IXP2850 takes ~27 watts typical, ~32 max at 1.4GHz.
> My motivation for porting Fedora to it was thus: most people who
use
> the IXP2400 run some form of Montavista on it, but considering that
> these processors run at 600MHz or 700MHz and typically have between
> 256MB and 1GB of RAM, why not run a normal distro on it? I'm used
> to RH/FC, and I want to have all the tools I have available on my
> desktop box on my 'embedded' platform as well.
Absolutely!
What do we have to do to start a Fedora port to an architecture that
isn't supported by RHEL? Are we ready to have fedora.us take on a
new architecture?
I was planning on providing an apt repository of these packages myself,
but if fedora.us would want to distribute these, that'd be fine with me.
I doubt that there ever be an 'official' (i.e. Red Hat-blessed) xscale
Fedora port -- I'd be happy if the stock SRPMS just compile on the xscale.
> > > I would like to start submitting the (surprisingly
small number of)
> > > needed patches so far back into Fedora, perhaps shifting my efforts
> > > towards FC3. What do people here think about such an effort?
> >
> > Sounds good. Any time you port to a new architecture you are likely to
> > shake out bugs that aren't obvious on i386. I've found heaps of bugs
> > by porting code to other CPUs.
>
> Yeah. There are lots of strange things to be found in userland. Like
> openssl assuming that linux-elf == i386, for example.
>
> OK, so how do I go from here? Should I just submit all my patches to
> bugzilla and wait?
If any bug that you find is likely to impact IA64 or AMD64 then it
should be submitted to bugzilla. If it is strictly only going to
affect ARM then it may be best to submit it as a bug against the
upstream code base instead.
OK. Some packages only need spec file diffs and I'll just send
those to bugzilla in any case.
--L
1:38 p.m.
On Tue, 2004-08-10 at 07:53, Lennert Buytenhek wrote:
[snip]
[ For those not in the know: the IXP2400 is basically just an xscale
(which is Intel's version of ARM) processor, with some extra on-chip
processing logic for fast network processing. The chip itself has
an integrated memory controller, 64b/66MHz PCI unit, 4Gbps SPI-3 bus,
and 8 on-chip processors which have a very simple instruction set
designed to do network-related things such as switching, routing,
firewalling, etc. It can do full wire speed 4xGbps processing, and
its bigger brother, the IXP2800, does full wire speed 10xGbps. ]
So how close is this processor to the older StrongArm processor used
in the now orphaned Netwinder?
There's actually a port of Red Hat 9 to the netwinder (called Gonzo),
but I don't know if it's still available at ftp.netwinder.org, though I
do have a copy, along with some patches I came up with to get more
packages to build. (Aside: one of the key fixes, which you might have
already found, is getting libtool to recognize the platform correctly.
That allows a non-trivial number of other packages to build. Though
this may already be fixed in more recent versions of libtool, I don't
know.)
There were some issues with the firmware source not being
redistributable, but the binaries being included in the nw9 image
(though it was an obvious GPL violation on the part of those who made
the modifications, since it is, in fact, based on Linux), but I can at
least make the image without the firmware available and/or my patches.
I would love to breath new life into my old 200MHz/64MB Netwinder, so
I would most definitely be interested in helping out with this port.
However, given the measly CPU/memory of this system, I won't be able to
contribute much in the way of the larger RPMS. It also depends on how
compatable StrongArm is with the Xscale.
--
-Paul Iadonisi
Senior System Administrator
Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
Ever see a penguin fly? -- Try Linux.
GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets
1:44 p.m.
On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 02:38:21PM -0400, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
> [ For those not in the know: the IXP2400 is basically just an
xscale
> (which is Intel's version of ARM) processor, with some extra on-chip
> processing logic for fast network processing. The chip itself has
> an integrated memory controller, 64b/66MHz PCI unit, 4Gbps SPI-3 bus,
> and 8 on-chip processors which have a very simple instruction set
> designed to do network-related things such as switching, routing,
> firewalling, etc. It can do full wire speed 4xGbps processing, and
> its bigger brother, the IXP2800, does full wire speed 10xGbps. ]
So how close is this processor to the older StrongArm processor used
in the now orphaned Netwinder?
I don't think xscale code runs on the strongarm.
I'm not sure if strongarm code runs on the xscale -- can you send
me a statically linked hello world binary to find out? (Is the
strongarm mixed endian like the xscale?)
There's actually a port of Red Hat 9 to the netwinder (called
Gonzo),
but I don't know if it's still available at ftp.netwinder.org, though I
do have a copy, along with some patches I came up with to get more
packages to build. (Aside: one of the key fixes, which you might have
already found, is getting libtool to recognize the platform correctly.
That allows a non-trivial number of other packages to build. Though
this may already be fixed in more recent versions of libtool, I don't
know.)
There were some issues with the firmware source not being
redistributable, but the binaries being included in the nw9 image
(though it was an obvious GPL violation on the part of those who made
the modifications, since it is, in fact, based on Linux), but I can at
least make the image without the firmware available and/or my patches.
I'm interested. I can't seem to access ftp.netwinder.org at the moment.
Can you send me (pointers to) whatever you've got?
thanks,
Lennert
3:44 p.m.
Lennert Buytenhek wrote:
On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 02:38:21PM -0400, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
>>[ For those not in the know: the IXP2400 is basically just an xscale
>> (which is Intel's version of ARM) processor, with some extra on-chip
>> processing logic for fast network processing. The chip itself has
>> an integrated memory controller, 64b/66MHz PCI unit, 4Gbps SPI-3 bus,
>> and 8 on-chip processors which have a very simple instruction set
>> designed to do network-related things such as switching, routing,
>> firewalling, etc. It can do full wire speed 4xGbps processing, and
>> its bigger brother, the IXP2800, does full wire speed 10xGbps. ]
>
> So how close is this processor to the older StrongArm processor used
>in the now orphaned Netwinder?
I don't think xscale code runs on the strongarm.
I'm not sure if strongarm code runs on the xscale -- can you send
me a statically linked hello world binary to find out? (Is the
strongarm mixed endian like the xscale?)
ARM is to XScale as 486 is to Pentium. (Strong)ARM code runs on XScale
just fine.
I think ARM is typically LE, but it may be possible to run BE, I don't
remember off the top of my head. I believe the Zaurus is LE.
HTH,
Eli
--------------------. "If it ain't broke now,
Eli Carter \ it will be soon." -- crypto-gram
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10:26 a.m.
Russell Coker wrote:
On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 20:33, Lennert Buytenhek
<buytenh(a)wantstofly.org> wrote:
>Some weeks ago, I started porting Fedora Core 2 to the Intel IXP2400,
>which is basically a 600MHz big-endian xscale (ARM) core. Right now
>I have ~550 out of ~950 packages building and seemingly in good order.
>(I have not yet attempted to build openoffice and such.)
Is anyone making machines for general-purpose use based on the IXP2400 core?
Or is it just for routers?
Think Sharp Zaurus. They are ARM and Xscale based devices, and I for
one would like to be able to run FC on one.
Eli
--------------------. "If it ain't broke now,
Eli Carter \ it will be soon." -- crypto-gram
eli.carter(a)inet.com `-------------------------------------------------
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Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail transmission may contain
confidential and/or privileged information that is intended only for the
individual or entity named in the e-mail address. If you are not the
intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure,
copying, distribution or reliance upon the contents of this e-mail
message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail
transmission in error, please reply to the sender, so that proper
delivery can be arranged, and please delete the message from your
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11:24 a.m.
On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 10:26:00AM -0500, Eli Carter wrote:
>>Some weeks ago, I started porting Fedora Core 2 to the Intel
IXP2400,
>>which is basically a 600MHz big-endian xscale (ARM) core. Right now
>>I have ~550 out of ~950 packages building and seemingly in good order.
>>(I have not yet attempted to build openoffice and such.)
>
>Is anyone making machines for general-purpose use based on the IXP2400
>core? Or is it just for routers?
Think Sharp Zaurus. They are ARM and Xscale based devices, and I for
one would like to be able to run FC on one.
OK, cool. Do they run in little endian or big endian mode?
cheers,
Lennert
7:23 a.m.
On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 12:33:54PM +0200, Lennert Buytenhek wrote:
I would like to start submitting the (surprisingly small number of)
needed patches so far back into Fedora, perhaps shifting my efforts
towards FC3. What do people here think about such an effort?
Go for it. Please do check any submitted patches don't break x86 etc
obviously and also as much as possible push them upstream too.
Alan
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15 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
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Alan Cox -
Bill Nottingham -
Eli Carter -
Jakub Jelinek -
Lennert Buytenhek -
Paul Iadonisi -
Russell Coker -
Warren Togami