Gentoo live USB for Bubba|2 (with Linux 3.18.2) released
Posted: 26 Jan 2015, 15:13
Hello
I've just released a live-USB image of Gentoo Linux for the Bubba|2 (B2) on GitHub (here). It uses a customized version of kernel 3.18.2 (with these patches applied), and includes (following Gordon's very helpful input) an enhanced set of userspace packages (full list here), precompiled for convenience. All included packages are up-to-date against the Gentoo tree, as of 25 Jan 2015 (and so, of course, shellshock and heartbleed fixes have been applied).
You can burn the supplied image to a USB key (>=8GB), then boot your B2 from it, without affecting any installed (Excito) system on your B2's hard drive. (The compressed image is 324MiB; writing takes between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on your system.) You can even boot a diskless B2! No soldering, compilation or U-Boot flashing is required. (However, please read this note about quickly testing your USB key for compatibility with U-Boot - the B2 is quite picky! Lexar and SanDisk USB keys seem to work reliably.)
The live-USB may then be used as a rescue disk, to play with Gentoo Linux, or as the starting point to install Gentoo Linux on your B2's main hard drive. Any packages you install, or other changes you make, while running the live-USB are saved on the USB key, but do not affect your existing Excito system, so you can run Gentoo for a while, then reboot back into your Excito system and continue to use it as normal, then boot back into the USB at a later date - any changes you made will still be there when you do.
As this is a full (persistent) PowerPC (ppc) Gentoo system, not simply a 'minimal install' or 'stage3', you can run emerge operations (Gentoo's equivalent of apt-get) etc. immediately. All binaries (libraries and applications) on the image have been recompiled from scratch to target the B2's e300c3 processor specifically, so hopefully performance should be reasonable.
Full instructions are provided on the project's GitHub page (including how to specify initial network settings, so you can ssh in once booted, and how to install Gentoo on your B2's internal hard drive too, in case you want to do that).
Utilities for (re)building the kernel, and keeping your system up to date, are also provided on the image (and described in the instructions just mentioned).
The GitHub project has an associated wiki. I have put a few notes there on how to set up your PC as a cross-compilation / distcc server for the B2, to accelerate builds (you don't need to do this just to play with the image, of course). Feel free to add your own material!
Well, if you get a chance to try it, please let me know how you get on ^-^
best,
sakaki
PS - unfortunately, I'll not be able to put out an Arch Linux variant for the B2, for lack of an upstream - the ArchPPC project apparently is no more...
Edited to add a little more info about image size and persistence, for those coming to this for the first time.
I've just released a live-USB image of Gentoo Linux for the Bubba|2 (B2) on GitHub (here). It uses a customized version of kernel 3.18.2 (with these patches applied), and includes (following Gordon's very helpful input) an enhanced set of userspace packages (full list here), precompiled for convenience. All included packages are up-to-date against the Gentoo tree, as of 25 Jan 2015 (and so, of course, shellshock and heartbleed fixes have been applied).
You can burn the supplied image to a USB key (>=8GB), then boot your B2 from it, without affecting any installed (Excito) system on your B2's hard drive. (The compressed image is 324MiB; writing takes between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on your system.) You can even boot a diskless B2! No soldering, compilation or U-Boot flashing is required. (However, please read this note about quickly testing your USB key for compatibility with U-Boot - the B2 is quite picky! Lexar and SanDisk USB keys seem to work reliably.)
The live-USB may then be used as a rescue disk, to play with Gentoo Linux, or as the starting point to install Gentoo Linux on your B2's main hard drive. Any packages you install, or other changes you make, while running the live-USB are saved on the USB key, but do not affect your existing Excito system, so you can run Gentoo for a while, then reboot back into your Excito system and continue to use it as normal, then boot back into the USB at a later date - any changes you made will still be there when you do.
As this is a full (persistent) PowerPC (ppc) Gentoo system, not simply a 'minimal install' or 'stage3', you can run emerge operations (Gentoo's equivalent of apt-get) etc. immediately. All binaries (libraries and applications) on the image have been recompiled from scratch to target the B2's e300c3 processor specifically, so hopefully performance should be reasonable.
Full instructions are provided on the project's GitHub page (including how to specify initial network settings, so you can ssh in once booted, and how to install Gentoo on your B2's internal hard drive too, in case you want to do that).
Utilities for (re)building the kernel, and keeping your system up to date, are also provided on the image (and described in the instructions just mentioned).
The GitHub project has an associated wiki. I have put a few notes there on how to set up your PC as a cross-compilation / distcc server for the B2, to accelerate builds (you don't need to do this just to play with the image, of course). Feel free to add your own material!
Well, if you get a chance to try it, please let me know how you get on ^-^
best,
sakaki
PS - unfortunately, I'll not be able to put out an Arch Linux variant for the B2, for lack of an upstream - the ArchPPC project apparently is no more...
Edited to add a little more info about image size and persistence, for those coming to this for the first time.