Arch Linux

BP

Member

From: South Croydon, UK

Registered: 2007-01-10

Posts: 6

Website

Arch on VIA C7 ?

Hello. I'm building a silent, small NAS server and am trying to find a good lightweight *nix to run on it.

So, key question - will Arch Linux run on a VIA C7 CPU?

I can find plenty of reference to the CPU being x86, but haven't yet found anything saying if it is 686 or not.

The Arch Linux Installation Guide says C3 is not supported, but I've no idea how similar C7 is to C3.

(The precise mobo/cpu I'm using is a Jetway J7F2 1.2GHz Eden Fanless (official site), if that's any help)

Thanks.

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ploxiln

Member

Registered: 2006-10-27

Posts: 50

Re: Arch on VIA C7 ?

According to gentoo suggested CFLAGS, the C7 is in fact i686:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/Safe_Cflags#Esth … 8Via_C7.29

I was interested myself so I looked it up.

Shagbag

Member

Registered: 2006-10-25

Posts: 259

Re: Arch on VIA C7 ?

Hey that's great!  For some reason, I'd always thought my Eden-N (Nehemiah) was i586.  I was so convinced I didn't even bother to run 'uname -m'.  I just did and it gave me 'i686'.  I presume this means I can ditch my Ubuntu install and go with the sleeker, sexier, Arch linux.      

stmok

Member

From: Sydney, Australia

Registered: 2006-11-19

Posts: 72

Re: Arch on VIA C7 ?

Many moons ago, (early 2005), I emailed the author of the Arch Linux install guide about the specifics, and that not all C3 CPUs were i586. He wouldn't accept my explanation of details. So the guide remains unchanged in regards to C3 CPUs.

All VIA C3 "Nehemiah" (regular or Eden) and "CoreFusion" are i686. Anything before it was NOT, and required i586. My EPIA PD10000, which uses a C3 1Ghz "Nehemiah", works perfectly fine with Arch Linux.

The C7 is a slightly improved C3 "Nehemiah" that can clock higher. (Up to 2Ghz from what I've read)...So it will also work.

I partly blame VIA's dumb naming scheme. They label one set of CPUs like C3, but there's like 2 or 3 versions!...They won't bother adding an extra letter to define the difference!

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The most important thing the hacker community does is write better code. Our deeds are the best propaganda we have. -Eric S. Raymond

BP

Member

From: South Croydon, UK

Registered: 2007-01-10

Posts: 6

Website

Re: Arch on VIA C7 ?

Excellent, thanks guys!

Now I'll go do some searching on how to do NAS, RAID, CDP, etc with Arch, but I'll probably have more questions after that.

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