Fedora ARM Secondary Architecture

Introduction

Fedora Secondary Architecture

Fedora supports two primary architectures:

• i386 - 32-bit Intel/AMD-compatible
• x86_64 - 64-bit Intel/AMD-compatible

There are also a number of secondary archs:

• arm - A widely-used, low-power processor family commonly used for embedded and mobile applications
• ia64 - Itanium
• pa-risc - HP Precision Architecture
• ppc - 32-bit Power PC
• ppc64 - 64-bit Power PC
• s390 - IBM mainframes (including z90 and z9)
• sparc - Sun RISC architecture

The ARM architecture is increasingly important, but there's a lot more that could be done in terms of update frequency, number of packages successfully built, transparency of process, and integration with the other Fedora build processes.

ARM Processors

ARM chips are the most popular CPU produced -- approximately 1.6 billion are being made each year. These are being sold under a number of different brand names (ARM, StrongARM, Armada, Cortex, OMAP, Sheeva, Snapdragon, XScale) by a number of different manufacturers. Most of these are going into cellphones, but hundreds of millions are being used in other devices such as routers, NAS boxes, embedded controllers, tablets, and netbooks.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) computers, model XO-1.75, use an ARM processor. Since Fedora is used on the XO units, having a reliable ARM build of Fedora is increasingly important.

Goal

To support the Fedora ARM initiative by creating and managing a Koji build farm that will koji-shadow the primary architectures.

Plan

Initial Plan

We're going to set up a Koji build system for ARM. Initially this will be based on the CDOT system HongKong. Initial ARM builders will use QEMU emulation, which will be replaced by ARM Hardware when it arrives.

Status

Notes on Koji status at 2010-04-17 15:15:

• the test target dist-f13tets is up and running
• scratch builds can be performed

Links

• Koji-web interface

Current Tasks

Task	Person	Status	Wiki Link
Posters and Presentations	All Students	In progress - Poster text due April 16, Presentation text due April 20	Winter 2010 SBR600 Posters and Presentations
Koji Hub setup - PostgreSQL master	Arlene Daniel	Completed	Koji Database
Koji Hub setup - Koji Hub configuration	Paul Whalen,Sadiki Latty	Completed	Koji Hub
Koji Hub setup - Certificates/security	Sadiki Latty	Completed	Koji Certificates
Koji Builder setup - Shared filesystem	David Chisholm and Chris Tyler	Completed	Koji shared filesystem
Koji Builder setup - Koji Build Daemon	David Cabral	Completed	Koji Builders
Performance - iSCSI vs. NFS vs. Local USB disk	David Chisholm	Completed	Storage Performance
Initial mock tests on ARM	Everyone	Completed	Initial Mock Compilation Tests
Research and create image for F12 on OpenRD-Client	Paul Whalen	Completed	F12 on OpenRD-Client
NFS setup - HongKong to VMs	David Chisholm	Completed	NFS Configuration
Networking with NAT to connect OpenRD	Sadiki Latty	Completed	NAT
Revise mock config and .repo files in release RPM	David Cabral	53%	Repos
Build kernels natively and from SRPM	Chris Tyler	In progress	Kernels
Build iSCSI-capable kernel for testing on OpenRD	Chris Tyler	Completed (limited iSCSI functionality)	iSCSI
Set up F12 on OpenRD-Client	Chris Tyler	Completed	OpenRD-Client
Set up F12 on SheevaPlug	Alex Vlahopoulos	Completed	SheevaPlug
Posters & Presentation Graphics	Mashfique Haque	In Progress	Research Poster
Local F12-ARM mirror	David Cabral, David Chisholm, Daniel Gilloch	Completed	Local mirror of ARM repositories
VM Setup	Sadiki Latty, Paul Whalen, Arlene Daniel	Completed	Set of standing VMs running the ARM image in emulation
Mock configuration	Chris Tyler	Completed	mock configuration repository for ARM
Bootstrap the Koji repo	Chris Tyler	Completed (to be tested)	Repo Bootstrap

Resources

Wiki Pages

• Fedora Project wiki
  • fedora:Architectures
  • fedora:Architectures/ARM
  • fedora:Koji
    • fedora:Koji/ServerHowTo
    • fedora:Koji/Policies

Mailing Lists

• Fedora Mailing Lists
  • secondary - For discussion of secondary architectures
  • arm - For discussion of the ARM secondary architecture

Sites

• Koji software project site
• Booting OpenRD from SD: http://blog.thebehrens.net/category/tinkering/
• SheevaPlug Update instructions: http://chiana.homelinux.org/~marc/eib_sheeva.html

IRC

• Secondary Arch lead - Dennis Gilmore - dgilmore on irc://irc.freenode.net/fedora-devel or irc://irc.freenode.net/fedora-arm
• Fedora-ARM community - irc://irc.freenode.net/fedora-arm
• Koji community: irc://irc.freenode.net/koji