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#1 2009-02-20 20:27:21

proc
Member
From: Italy
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 71

Archlinux i586 announcement

Hi,

my name is Massimiliano Brocchini (aka Proc) and I'd like to officially announce my Archlinux-i586 project.
The aim of the project is to have an i586 installation CD and reasonably sized package repositories.

The project is under active development and already usable (starting from a Lowarch installation).

This is the project homepage: http://code.google.com/p/archlinux-i586/

Now you can finally run your favorite distro also on your older PCs cool

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#2 2009-02-20 22:21:47

brazzmonkey
Member
From: between keyboard and chair
Registered: 2006-03-16
Posts: 818

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

Thank you very much for your project.

I won't have time to test it in the very near future, but I have a very old pentium 133 laptop I'd like to bring back to life. I've tried a bunch of light linux distros (puppy, dsl, tinyme...) but none of them met my expectation (all I got was either good hardware support with an awfully slow system or reasonable speed with no network - it seems I have some kind of exotic PCMCIA wifi card).

Keep up this nice work, I really look forward to trying this Arch 586 port.

Greetz.


what goes up must come down

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#3 2009-02-20 23:07:15

test1000
Member
Registered: 2005-04-03
Posts: 834

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

This is awesome!

a couple of things come to mind that would make it even better:

1. Set up a build server with archlinux i586 and correct /etc/makepkg.conf flags.
2. Make a script which automatically builds all the packages in all the archlinux repo svn(makeworld?). If some package doesn't build, add it to a textfile so you can try and get it working later.
And if you want to get really spiffy add:
3. put all these files in a repo which a "run server" regurarly syncs with. The mission of the run server will be to start a program and see if it crashes, if it does, then add it to a crashing list if not, publish it a www mirror. Later you could just go trough this list while looking at debian or gentoo packagefiles and they will probably already have fixed the bug so you can just use their patch!

or something like that big_smile yay!

Last edited by test1000 (2009-02-20 23:07:26)


KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

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#4 2009-02-21 00:58:49

filoktetes
Member
From: Skien, Norway
Registered: 2003-12-29
Posts: 287

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

Hey, it's great to see that Arch on i586 has come back! I made Lowarch, which you obviously have noticed I haven't had time to work on for a long time. I even hadn't noticed that the web page was down. I guess you probably have everything you need from there, but if there's anything you miss, I have a backup of everything from Lowarch here, so just tell me.
Anyway, I was hoping someone would pick up makeing something for Arch on old computers, since it's the perfect distro for them. Good luck smile

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#5 2009-02-21 01:32:56

Xyne
Administrator/PM
Registered: 2008-08-03
Posts: 6,963
Website

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

Awesome indeed!

Good luck with this, proc. I hope  you find some collaborators to help you with what must be a hefty task. Keep at it! If you succeed, people far and wide shall tell tales of the man who resurrected abandoned hardware and put forlorn computers to work once more.


My Arch Linux StuffForum EtiquetteCommunity Ethos - Arch is not for everyone

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#6 2009-02-21 06:06:38

evr
Arch Linux f@h Team Member
Registered: 2009-01-23
Posts: 554

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

very cool! i'm looking forward to trying this out on an old computer i have gathering dust in the corner smile

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#7 2009-02-21 10:02:05

proc
Member
From: Italy
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 71

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

Thanks very much for your messages of support! We are a really lovely community smile

@filoktetes: A special thanks goes to you for Lowarch. Even though you didn't have time to work on it anymore it was the starting point for my project. During next days I'll start to work on converting the new 2009.02 installation ISO to i586. May I contact you if I have some questions?

@test1000: I have a dedicated PC for archlinux i586 so that I don't have to cross compile. I use a customized version of cimi's pacbuilder (http://code.google.com/p/pacbuilder/) to build packages.
Unfortunately some packages from ABS don't work because they are not up to date (i.e. they don't work on i686 too) so I'm keeping track of the modifications I need to do and then I'll submit them to maintainers.

@xyne: You do have some really cool tools. I'd like to use powerpill for my project when I'll have mirrors of the repositories up.

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#8 2009-02-21 17:18:56

chepaz
Member
Registered: 2009-02-21
Posts: 2

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

Awesome, this is exactly what i need, right in time.

One question:
I want to change the motherboard of my little homeserver. The problem is that the new board would be a VIA C3 (without cmov), where the old one is an celeron.
Is it possible to take your repo, doing an (down)update to i586 with pacman, and change the board?

Thanks in advance, chepaz

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#9 2009-02-21 17:31:57

timttmy
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2008-12-01
Posts: 53

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

This looks cool as fsck.
I looked a on google a few weeks ago for something like this and pulled a blank.
I think it's awesome that you have breathed new life into the i586 project because it's the oldest hardware that is going to benifit most from the lean and simple benifits of arch.
I'm downloading now smile


This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours

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#10 2009-02-22 15:04:12

filoktetes
Member
From: Skien, Norway
Registered: 2003-12-29
Posts: 287

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

proc wrote:

May I contact you if I have some questions?

Yes, of coursee I'll help you with anything I can. smile

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#11 2009-02-22 17:13:59

Daenyth
Forum Fellow
From: Boston, MA
Registered: 2008-02-24
Posts: 1,244

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

chepaz wrote:

Is it possible to take your repo, doing an (down)update to i586 with pacman, and change the board?

It's my understanding that this will not work... but I could be wrong.

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#12 2009-02-22 17:18:38

proc
Member
From: Italy
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 71

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

chepaz wrote:

Awesome, this is exactly what i need, right in time.
Is it possible to take your repo, doing an (down)update to i586 with pacman, and change the board?

Daenyth wrote:

It's my understanding that this will not work... but I could be wrong.

I'm afraid Daenyth is right... if you have some free space try to downgrade in a chroot because if you screw glibc you won't be able to do an "ls" either!

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#13 2009-02-22 20:55:39

chepaz
Member
Registered: 2009-02-21
Posts: 2

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

Thanks for clearing that. I'll try this in a chroot next week.

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#14 2009-02-23 08:55:03

timttmy
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2008-12-01
Posts: 53

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

Well, Iv'e done it!
I got my old k6 500 up and running with Arch i586. Yay. big_smile
I have used a combo of @proc's repo (where posible) and the repo at ftp://archi586.ath.cx .
I know it's probably not a good idea to mix old and new but I am having major issuses trying to compile my own stuff (gcc internal errors mean nothing to me). I even failed building fbpanel.
Anyway I'm up and running with openbox, bmpanel and rox. I boots straight into an openbox session in 1 min 6 sec, better and faster than anything else I have tried on this old box.
Thank you all.
BTW @proc I think your sudo package is corrupt, my pacman bitched about it. I even manualy downloaded it but pacman still didn't like it.


This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours

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#15 2009-02-23 21:53:00

proc
Member
From: Italy
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 71

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

filoktetes wrote:
proc wrote:

May I contact you if I have some questions?

Yes, of coursee I'll help you with anything I can. smile

Thanks a lot.

timttmy wrote:

I know it's probably not a good idea to mix old and new but I am having major issuses trying to compile my own stuff (gcc internal errors mean nothing to me). I even failed building fbpanel.

Please take a look at http://code.google.com/p/archlinux-i586 … figuration

timttmy wrote:

BTW @proc I think your sudo package is corrupt, my pacman bitched about it. I even manualy downloaded it but pacman still didn't like it.

I rebuilt and uploaded sudo. Thanks for reporting.

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#16 2009-02-26 08:43:21

timttmy
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2008-12-01
Posts: 53

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

I was compiling on the i586 machine so I don't need the uname hack and stuff , do I ?

Anyway I've set up my eeepc as a part time build server and I'm compiling stuff from the ABS just fine. I've built libwebkit +deps midori, and the s3virge video drivers so far. (libwebkit took 3 hours to compile LOL )
Thanks for the help. smile


This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours

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#17 2009-02-26 09:18:22

proc
Member
From: Italy
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 71

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

timttmy wrote:

I was compiling on the i586 machine so I don't need the uname hack and stuff , do I ?

Anyway I've set up my eeepc as a part time build server [...]

Of course you don't need the uname hack on i586 machines. But uname -m on my VIA C3 gives i686 so is always better to check on anything different from a Pentium CPU.

Would you like to contribute your packages to my project? If so I'll add you as a contributor to the project and give you svn access.

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#18 2009-02-27 17:31:48

timttmy
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2008-12-01
Posts: 53

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

You are more than welcome to the packages that I have built ( around 25 atm ), but I'm not sure how much I can contribute just using an eeepc as a build machine.


This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours

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#19 2009-02-28 22:35:31

kjon
Member
From: Temuco, Chile
Registered: 2008-04-16
Posts: 398

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

@proc

We're ready. big_smile


They say that if you play a Win cd backward you hear satanic messages. That's nothing! 'cause if you play it forwards, it installs windows.

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#20 2009-03-01 00:52:52

doorknob60
Member
Registered: 2008-09-29
Posts: 403

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

I have an i586 Laptop that I really wanna use this on, but it's CD drive is broken, and if I mess with trying to get it working with an alternative method and it doesn't work, I could risk not having any OS working on it at all (currently has a very functional Debian Lenny setup).

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#21 2009-03-01 01:15:08

kjon
Member
From: Temuco, Chile
Registered: 2008-04-16
Posts: 398

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

get an external 2.5" hdd bay and install arch on it big_smile


They say that if you play a Win cd backward you hear satanic messages. That's nothing! 'cause if you play it forwards, it installs windows.

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#22 2009-03-01 14:00:35

proc
Member
From: Italy
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 71

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

@timttmy: Thanks. How can I access them? Do you have any place where you could upload them?

@doorknob60: I hope I'll be able to have an USB thumbdrive install image one day or another, but I have to start to work on the installation CD first.
If you have a 2.5" USB box/adapter you can remove the hard disk from the laptop, resize partitions (in case you want to keep Lenny in case of problems) and install Lowarch (and then upgrade to Archlinux-i586) from another pc. You will have to fix drive letters in /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst, but it will work.

kjon wrote:

@proc

We're ready. big_smile

Thanks!
I let you the honor of telling the community what we are talking about wink
I will then give the announcement on google code too.

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#23 2009-03-01 15:56:03

timttmy
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2008-12-01
Posts: 53

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

@proc my packages are at http://www.mediafire.com/lowarch . I've managed to build 54 pkgs so far.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=4678 … 8114394287

abiword-2.6.6-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
bluez-4.30-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
bogofilter-1.1.7-3-i586.pkg.tar.gz
claws-mail-3.7.0-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
epiphany-2.24.3-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
feh-1.3.4-3-i586.pkg.tar.gz
foomatic-db-4.0_20090227-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
foomatic-db-engine-4.0_20090227-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
foomatic-db-hpijs-20090227-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
foomatic-filters-4.0_20090227-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
geany-0.16-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
ggz-client-libs-0.0.14.1-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
giblib-1.2.4-3-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gnome-desktop-2.24.3-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gnome-games-2.24.3-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gnome-games-extra-data-2.24.0-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gnome-python-2.22.3-3-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gnome-python-desktop-2.24.1-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gnome-python-extras-2.19.1-3-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gnome-terminal-2.24.3-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gnupg-1.4.9-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gnupg2-2.0.10-2-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gpgme-1.1.7-2-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gsl-1.12-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gstreamer0.10-0.10.21-2-i586.pkg.tar.gz
gstreamer0.10-base-0.10.21-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
hplip-2.8.12-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
icu-4.0-2-i586.pkg.tar.gz
iso-codes-2.0-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
libcanberra-0.11-2-i586.pkg.tar.gz
libetpan-0.57-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
libggz-0.0.14.1-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
libgnomecups-0.2.3-4-i586.pkg.tar.gz
libgnomeprint-2.18.5-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
libgnomeprintui-2.18.3-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
libgsf-gnome-1.14.11-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
libksba-1.0.3-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
libnotify-0.4.5-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
liboil-0.3.15-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
libsoup-2.24.3-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
libwebkit-1.1.0-0.41121-i586.pkg.tar.gz
midori-0.1.2-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
openbox-3.4.7.2-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
pilot-link-0.12.3-4-i586.pkg.tar.gz
pkgconfig-0.23-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
pth-2.0.7-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
pyorbit-2.24.0-2-i586.pkg.tar.gz
rox-2.8-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
scrot-0.8-2-i586.pkg.tar.gz
slang-2.1.4-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
terminator-0.12-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
vte-0.17.4-2-i586.pkg.tar.gz
wv-1.2.4-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz
xf86-video-s3virge-1.10.2-1-i586.pkg.tar.gz

I hope they are of use to you and your project.

Last edited by timttmy (2009-03-01 19:30:14)


This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours

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#24 2009-03-03 16:15:35

proc
Member
From: Italy
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 71

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

@timttmy: Thanks, as soon as I have some free time I'll test and then integrate them in my repository.

BTW, I hope to be able to setup a small web application where people willing to contribute can upload their packages for integration in the official repository.

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#25 2009-03-08 03:44:43

kjon
Member
From: Temuco, Chile
Registered: 2008-04-16
Posts: 398

Re: Archlinux i586 announcement

Seems the server is working at last, so feel free to give the official announcement! --- We got new mirror big_smile tongue
(can't give the url unless 'the boss' orders me to do so)...

Last edited by kjon (2009-03-08 03:45:00)


They say that if you play a Win cd backward you hear satanic messages. That's nothing! 'cause if you play it forwards, it installs windows.

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