Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

filoktetes · 2006-11-13 21:47:26

So, after a lot of work with compiling and tweeking, but also a lot of fun and learning, I've uploaded the first iso for the Arch Linux based distro for old computers, Lowarch.

I have mentioned my project <a href="http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=26711">before</a>, but I'll repeat myself just a little here:

How did I make it? The following is an almost correct simplification of the truth:

1. I made a CLFS (Cross Linux From Scratch), with the help of the uname hack, to make a i486 build system on my i686 machine.

2. I installed pacman and started to make packages for base. When they were finished, I installed them into an empty partition with pacman -r.

3. After booting into the new i486 base system, I continued to make packages, in the order of dependencies untill I had most of current and certain other packages I wanted.
This was not as simple as it sounds, since a lot of packages has started to be uncompilable because of changes to kernelheader, glibc, gcc or other libraries. This is where I have learned a lot about searching for patches and writing patches.

4. I made a i486 version of the 0.7.2 install cd by compiling busybox for i486 and using the already compiled i486 binaries for other commands.

What state is it in?
It's not tested much yet. It works for me on my two i586 laptops and on my i686 laptop. I'll be glad if anyone wants to try it out and tell me how it works for them. I have not seen any indications of serious problems, but remember, so far I'm the only one who has tested it. I'd me surprised if I haven't missed a lot of bugs.

Where can it be downloaded from?
Here: http://lowarch.linuxophic.org/iso/lowarch-0.1.0.iso
(Edit: New url: http://www.lowarch.org/iso/lowarch-0.1.0.iso )

I'm making a webpage for it at http://lowarch.linuxophic.org but it's not finished yet.
(Edit: It's finished, but with a new url: http://www.lowarch.org )

The online packages repo is uploading at the moment, but it'll take a while. My webhost's upload speed is 50kb/s. I hope the download is faster. Let's try....hmm. yes, a lot faster. Good.

That's it for now. Hope someone wants to try it. Remember, together with the uname hack, it's a perfect way to get a i486 Arch build environment on a i686 machine.

And, package lists etc. will come on the webpage in a few hours..if I don't fall asleep first

tomk · 2006-11-13 22:14:37

kudos filoktetes - seriously. It's great to see someone just go ahead and do something like this. A few months ago I'd have been your first customer, but unfortunately the particular P166 that I was using as an AP then has since died and gone to CPU heaven.

/me gives filoktetes a standing ovation

scrawler · 2006-11-13 22:47:26

Howdy.

Nice to hear you have lowarch going. how difficult would it be to have a single ftp install floppy? my 133mhz processor, 128m ram laptop has no cdrom drive...

filoktetes · 2006-11-13 23:06:48

tomk wrote:

/me gives filoktetes a standing ovation

/me blushes humbly at the loud attention
Sorry about your AP, tomk

scrawler wrote:

how difficult would it be to have a single ftp install floppy?

I think it has to be more than a singel floppy, three or four could be enough, I think, to get the necessary network drivers etc.
I'll look at the Arch floppies and see how it's done. It'll come, but it might take a small while, since there'll probably turn up a lot of other things that need fixing. :

Chman · 2006-11-14 00:20:11

filoktetes wrote:

I think it has to be more than a singel floppy, three or four could be enough, I think, to get the necessary network drivers etc.
I'll look at the Arch floppies and see how it's done. It'll come, but it might take a small while, since there'll probably turn up a lot of other things that need fixing. :

That would interest me a lot, I have a 166Mhz laptop but its cdrom drive can't read CD-RW and I don't have CD-R anymore (I'm used to DVD and CD-RW). I guess I could buy a CD-R box for cheap... But I have another laptop, a 66Mhz with floppy drive only, although I'm not sure what I'd be able to do with it, it should be interesting to see how can Arch runs on that thing... I don't have CD-R but I have some floppy disks. Yep, that's weird

Thanks for your efforts and keep up the good work, I'll test Lowarch as soon as I can !

*Watching this topic for future updates*

sash · 2006-11-14 02:31:31

You just gave a new life to my k6-500 proc

filoktetes · 2006-11-14 03:00:17

It's nice to see that there are people who are interested in this

The webpage is starting to take form now. And the package repo upload is at 38%. I'll stop it now and take it to a faster line, a café with good tea and a fast line I think, tomorrow.

filoktetes · 2006-11-14 15:07:54

The packages are uploaded, so it should now be possible to sync and upgrade from the repository. The packages are the same as on the cd for now, though, but maybe someone could try the ftp install. I haven't a possiblility to do that, since I only have a wireless connection, and there aren't a driver for the wireless card on the install cd.

I'll just write the url for the Lowarch current repository on the <a href="http://lowarch.linuxophic.org">webpage</a>, since I'm concerned about what would happen if someone should get the nift idea to use the Lowarch repo as thier Arch Linux current repe. Bad things could happen, I'm sure. Thinking about it, I think that from the next release, I'll change the repo name to lowarch or something, so there'll be less chance of confusion.

The webpage is in a workable state now, I think. I'll post info about package upgrades etc. there. And I even made a forum. I'll still post here about interesting changes to Lowarch, though.

pelle.k · 2006-11-14 16:39:53

kool! just the other day i installed "ubuntu 6.10 server" on my k6-2 350, because arch was a no go.
What can we expect from this project in the future? i.e. People will probably install lowarch just "for the fun of it"... but the interest of a < i686 distro will be fading away. Are you still going to maintain it despite that?
Either way, i will probably give it a try and report back

filoktetes · 2006-11-14 17:38:15

I will probably maintain the project and make occational updates, try to keep it up to date and work on making it better whatever the interest for it will be, as long as I stumble upon old computers, which I do quite often.

But of course, the more interest, the more I will be encouraged to work on it. I don't think it'll ever be as up to date as Arch, of course, even after cutting down on unneeded packages. As you can see, the packages are already old, compared to Arch's. But packages will be updated, steadily, although more slowly.

The_Nerd · 2006-11-15 06:44:25

Fantastic work filoktetes!

Very impressive to see something like this emerge finally after a number of half-arsed attempts it seems like you are willing to see this through a bit longer than this single ISO. I plan on using it on some old k6's of mine and perhaps a mini-itx box, who knows!

Thanks again, I'm sure everyone appreciates the effort in porting Arch to another, albeit older, archetcure!

Kenetixx · 2006-11-15 07:18:57

Excellent work!!
I will be replacing Redhat on my old PII 233 laptop and putting this on, i will report how it went after it is done, again excellent work .

iphitus · 2006-11-15 08:39:06

hurrah!

filoktetes · 2006-11-15 12:18:52

The_Nerd wrote:

Fantastic work filoktetes!

satanix wrote:

Excellent work!!

iphitus wrote:

hurrah!

Thanks a lot for the appreciation

It looks like two people have downloaded the iso already, so now I look forward to get some feedback.
If you're interested, you could also help me out by looking at the <a href="http://www.lowarch.org/node/6">package list</a> and give me your opinons on which packages are unneccesary on old systems, and which you feel are missing.
There's a category for that discussion in the forum. By the way, there's still a chance to get the first post in the whole forum. I feel the nice forum I made is like a big cake, and nobody dares to take the first slice.

Chman · 2006-11-15 12:47:35

filoktetes wrote:

It looks like two people have downloaded the iso already, so now I look forward to get some feedback.

I downloaded it yesterday to test it in a VM (useless, I know, at least it worked). I should be able to test it on Saturday on i486 hardware.

filoktetes wrote:

If you're interested, you could also help me out by looking at the <a href="http://lowarch.linuxophic.org/node/6">package list</a> and give me your opinons on which packages are unneccesary on old systems, and which you feel are missing.

I'm thinking about some WM that could be nice for older systems, like Openbox, Ion3, Wmii and such. From what I see, there's only Twm, Xfce & Fluxbox available, but hey, people can use PKGBUILD from i686 arch and those tiny WM are not so long to compile

Speaking about packages, how are you going to handle repositories ? I mean, you currently have a "current" repos but it's not really following the default Arch conventions (Xfce should be in an "Extra" repository, "Current" only contains the base system). Any plans ? Something like :

current-i486
extra-i486

...could be nice to avoid i686/i486 incompatibilities in case someone wants to use mixed repos as you said in a previous post. And each package should be in the same repos as the original Arch to keep things simpler.

filoktetes wrote:

There's a category for that discussion in the forum. By the way, there's still a chance to get the first post in the whole forum. I feel the nice forum I made is like a big cake, and nobody dares to take the first slice.

Should we report bugs/suggestions in this topic or use the dedicated forum ? What's better ?

tomk · 2006-11-15 12:54:00

I was going to take the first slice - had a plate ready and all - but

You are not allowed to post a new forum topic.

filoktetes · 2006-11-15 13:27:12

tomk wrote:

I was going to take the first slice - had a plate ready and all - but
You are not allowed to post a new forum topic.

Oops, strange default access settings in drupal. Registered users not being allowed to create forum topics. It's fixed now, I think

Chman wrote:

I'm thinking about some WM that could be nice for older systems, like Openbox, Ion3, Wmii and such.

That's what I like to hear. They'll come in for sure. Can't make people compile such obvious packages.

Chman wrote:

Speaking about packages, how are you going to handle repositories ? I mean, you currently have a "current" repos but it's not really following the default Arch conventions.

Since Arch and Lowarch are aimed at very different usage, I don't think it's neccessary to keep Lowarch as similar to Arch as possible. I suppose I'll make changes where it seems to make sense.
When it comes to havening everything in [current], I think I'm actually following the Arch convention of having all the packages that come on the install iso in [current]. My plan, so far, has been to reduce the number of packages in [current] / iso, to make it maintainable, and not to introduce an official [extra] repo, unless, at some time in the future we are ten dedicated maintainers, and we see that we have no problems keeping [current] up to date.
But I am interested in hearing all views on these things, since until now, I've just had my own thoughts to go by...

tomk · 2006-11-15 14:26:42

filoktetes wrote:

Oops, strange default access settings in drupal. Registered users not being allowed to create forum topics. It's fixed now, I think

Yeah - thanks.

I'll post some actual feedback whenever I get around to burning/installing.

filoktetes · 2006-11-16 14:32:42

I've got a real challenge now,
I just got hold of a Compaq Contura Aero 4/33C
It's got, 486sx 33Mhz, 16Mb Ram. 170Mb Hardisk.
I sort of see it as impossible, but it runs windows 95 quite well,
so I just can't give it up. And it's really nice, it's extremely small,
and old fashioned beautiful. I fell in love with it at once.

It's only got floppy, though, so now you'll soon see the floppy installer
But it might take a while, since it's got a PCMCIA floppy drive, have you ever heard of a PCMCIA floppy drive? That makes it really hard to make a boot/root floppy pair. The bios finds the boot, but then the kernel doesn't find the pcmcia drive easily, of course. But it shouldn't bee too hard.
I might make some floppy package sets for these very old computers, but I think I'll have tog get hold of a PCMCIA network card, so I can test the ftp-install with it. Whatever I'll fit into it, that is...

I have already had some thoughts about slimming down base, since there are things that are not strictly neccessary there. I think I'll make a set of startup systems, maybe, all depending on a minimal packages set. I'll have to make some really stream lined minimal kernel variants as well.

Chman · 2006-11-18 12:25:32

Ok... Here is my first feedback.

I downloaded the iso, burnt it (low speed), then boot it on my old Toshiba Sattelite 460CDT (166Mhz - 160Mo ram).

Here's what I got :

ISOLINUX 3.31 2006-09-25  Copyright (c) 1994-2005 H. Peter Anvin
isolinux: Disk error 20, AX = 42D4, drive 82

Boot failed: press a key to retry...

I downloaded the iso again, burnt it and the same error happened... Just to be sure that the initially uploaded iso wasn't corrupted, I tried it with qemu and it works like a charm...

Any idea what's wrong ? Help would be appreciated

filoktetes · 2006-11-18 22:36:58

It's a strange thing...
I have burned and installed the iso on three different computers.
It could be the burning process. I burn the iso like this, with cdrecord as root to be sure:

#cdrecord -v dev=/dev/hdb lowarch-0.1.0.iso

Of course change hdb to your cd burner.

It could also be some incompatibility with your cdrom or bios or whatever, but it's unlikely.
I'll also put the md5sum of the iso on the download page, and here:

f05c71c8c7e2a73c49b924cd865c960b

I also searched the Disk error 20, and it might be a problem with your cdrom. I might need som cleaning. Have you used it for other things resently?

If it's the cdrom, I'll hopefully have a floppy installer ready in a few days. Then you can boot from the floppy, and see if you can install the cd from there.

multitronic · 2006-11-18 23:11:19

Hi,

I installed lowarch on a I686 for testing and it is working very well.
I would like to install it on a K6, but I am using kde. I still
have to decide if I try to compile my own packages.

The only problem during the installation was a missing xterm
when I tried to start X with the startx command. I fixed this
with a symlink to rxvt.

Good work, filoktetes.

filoktetes · 2006-11-19 00:29:51

Great to hear that it works for you too, multitronic. I'm really happy that you have taken the time to test it on a i686. I think most bugs should be discovered also on i686s, except of course if any i686 code has sneaked in, but it seems my i486 build system (Lowarch + uname hack) is quite fail safe.

I don't think kde will be a part of the official Lowarch. I'm in the process now of checking all the packages that are in Lowarch at the moment on my Pentium MMX 266 Mhz laptop. That's probably one of the better i586s around, so if a program is unusable on that, I'll probably delete it from the package list.
If you decide to compile kde, it'd be nice if you did it inside Lowarch and used <a href="http://cross-lfs.org/~jciccone/uname_hack.tar.bz2">the uname hack</a>, and maybe make a repo for it or something. I'll concentrate on maintaining the things that are for low-end systems, though. That's enough for me...

And about xterm...I just couldn't find the source for it. I looked for a long time (it was probably right under my nose), and then decided that I've never used it, and since I include rxvt, mrxvt and aterm, that'll do somehow. But I know it's sort of standard, so I'll probably have another look and find it eventually.

By the way, in a moment I'll upload abunch of package upgrades, e.g Firefox 2.0

skottish · 2006-11-19 02:02:43

There's a link to XTerm sources on this page:

http://www.davidsimmons.com/soft/xtermhacks/

If it's not what you're looking for, he does mention where to find the originals.

Chman · 2006-11-19 23:42:57

After a few different try, I think my problem is the cdrom. Iso checksum is ok, burning process is ok (1x, 2x and 4x speed)... I alwais get the same error.

I guess I have to wait for the floppy installer. So let's wait

Arch Linux

#1 2006-11-13 21:47:26

Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#2 2006-11-13 22:14:37

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#3 2006-11-13 22:47:26

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#4 2006-11-13 23:06:48

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#5 2006-11-14 00:20:11

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#6 2006-11-14 02:31:31

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#7 2006-11-14 03:00:17

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#8 2006-11-14 15:07:54

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#9 2006-11-14 16:39:53

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#10 2006-11-14 17:38:15

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#11 2006-11-15 06:44:25

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#12 2006-11-15 07:18:57

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#13 2006-11-15 08:39:06

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#14 2006-11-15 12:18:52

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#15 2006-11-15 12:47:35

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#16 2006-11-15 12:54:00

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#17 2006-11-15 13:27:12

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#18 2006-11-15 14:26:42

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#19 2006-11-16 14:32:42

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#20 2006-11-18 12:25:32

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#21 2006-11-18 22:36:58

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#22 2006-11-18 23:11:19

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#23 2006-11-19 00:29:51

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#24 2006-11-19 02:02:43

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

#25 2006-11-19 23:42:57

Re: Lowarch 0.1.0 (Duhsala) released

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