hello, I want to use raspbian but can only find a link to an image with a load of stuff I dont need/want in it. is there a minimal install image similar to the ones debian offer? I really only need a command prompt and networking to build my lamp up from there.

Holy One wrote:hello, I want to use raspbian but can only find a link to an image with a load of stuff I dont need/want in it. is there a minimal install image similar to the ones debian offer? I really only need a command prompt and networking to build my lamp up from there.

You could try the darkbasic install - http://www.linuxsystems.it/2012/06/rasp ... mal-image/ I know nothing about it, but it's supposed to be a minimal image and there are plenty of users in the forums

Holy One wrote:hello, I want to use raspbian but can only find a link to an image with a load of stuff I dont need/want in it. is there a minimal install image similar to the ones debian offer? I really only need a command prompt and networking to build my lamp up from there.

Or forget about images and use the installer - see: http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianInstaller

oh cool the installer works? yeah I'll use that then. I see the kernel is bloated with 'everything under the sun' as per standard, so recompiling it should be a larf. are there any guidelines as to which kernel modules are 'mandatory' for the pi's hardware perchance? also anyone tell me roughly how long the pi takes to compiling a kernel without distributed assistance? planning to use the pi co-located as a webserver. :D

Holy One wrote:oh cool the installer works? yeah I'll use that then.

You might be interested in this 1GB Raspbian image mikerr built using the installer.

Holy One wrote:... anyone tell me roughly how long the pi takes to compiling a kernel without distributed assistance? ...

I found it took about 6 hours plus

jerry.tk wrote:

Holy One wrote:oh cool the installer works? yeah I'll use that then.

You might be interested in this 1GB Raspbian image mikerr built using the installer.

My sdcard is only 2gb so that would be way too large. Honestly if you just want a LAMP box you're talking 200mb or so .. I don't even install a sys logger. :D

I'll just build it up from the installer I guess. Or just use debian if thats an issue. NBD.

Also lol 6 hr kernel. Crickey. :D

Raspbian get a mention in this months Debian Project News: http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2012/15/#raspbian

(apologies if already mentioned elsewhere)

mpthompson wrote:

m][sko wrote:How can I make my own base rootfs with my own compiler configuration?
You wrote here that you compile every single package from start.

I'm sorry, I don't quite follow what your question is. Debootstrap is a Debian tool that works within Raspbian that can be used to create an initial root file system. However, I don't understand the part about your own compiler configuration. Can you give me an example of what your are trying to do?

I bought snowball board http://igloocommunity.org/
And I want to build my own debian base distribution with compiler specific options
Like you did with raspberry
But I my case I want to rebuild all packages with neon, alignment, hardfp and other nice speed ups
I don't really think that linaro.org packages are compiled in best way

m][sko wrote: I bought snowball board http://igloocommunity.org/

Looks pretty cool. I notice they are using an ethernet chip on a paralell data bus which is fairly unusual. Most designs i've seen are either USB based (yuck) or have the mac integrated in the SoC

On the downside it doesn't seem to have native SATA.

And I want to build my own debian base distribution with compiler specific options
Like you did with raspberry

We didn't do anthing particually magic, we just modified the compiler packages to change the defaults and then started rebuilding stuff. When we ran into build failures we found ways to fix or work arround them.

The hard bit in our case was because we were working downwards we had to make sure absoloutely every scrap of code (including static libraries) got recompiled. Often this meant rebuilding packages multiple times.

Currently we run the raspbian build cluster on a hacked up version of an aincient wanna-build but since we set it up documentation has been released on recent versions of wanna-build and we would advise using these instead.

http://wiki.debian.org/SetupBuildServiceForWanna-build
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWannaBuild ... nOneServer

We do not cross-compile, all are builds are done natively on arm hardware (we currently use freescale IMX53 quickstart boards) like debian does

But I my case I want to rebuild all packages with neon, alignment, hardfp and other nice speed ups
I don't really think that linaro.org packages are compiled in best way

Debian/ubuntu armhf already has hardfloat and an alignment of 8. The general impression i've got is that neon and the extra FP regs are not much help with most code so rebuilding everything with neon options is probablly a waste of time and you would be better off targetting specific packages that could take advantage of the extra regs and/or neon.

plugwash wrote: Debian/ubuntu armhf already has hardfloat and an alignment of 8. The general impression i've got is that neon and the extra FP regs are not much help with most code so rebuilding everything with neon options is probablly a waste of time and you would be better off targetting specific packages that could take advantage of the extra regs and/or neon.

NEON is useful for all gfx stuff (raster operation)
memcpy, memcmp, string comparation

As X11 is all about memcpy :(

m][sko wrote: NEON is useful for all gfx stuff (raster operation)
memcpy, memcmp, string comparation

As X11 is all about memcpy :(

So investigate those routines, find out if there is already a specific neon assembler version that can be used (or may already be being used, runtime detection of neon is perfectly doable). Find out if enabling neon autovectorisation has any impact and so-on. Maybe even consider writing your own version of those routines.

But none of this requireas recompiling everything, only the pacakes you are targetting.

It should also be possible to interlink hardfp code and softfp code by decorating the headers to mark the different linkages. It is a big pain though, since you're better off rebuilding the libraries, but for precompiled things like OpenGL libs, it works well enough.

Nice theory but there are two problems with it.

1: In order to allow for multiarch debian's dynamic linker is explicitly designed to stop code using the hardfloat and softfloat abis from being linked together
2: While you may be able to influence the calling conventions used by your code to call a given library you can't really influence the calling conventions used by that library to call system libraries.