CRUX PPC

Release Notes for CRUX PPC 2.4

Introduction

This page discusses the relevant changes introduced in CRUX PPC 2.4.
Everybody upgrading from the previous release is advised to carefully read the following notes.

About Power Architecture^® hardware

supported machines:
Apple 32bit "NewWorld" G3, G4
Apple 64bit G5
Genesi PegasosII, Efika
Acube Sam440ep
YDL Powerstation, IBM Intellistation POWER 185
IBM Chrp 32bit

untested machines:
IBM iSeries
IBM pSeries
IBM RS/6000 64bit
IBM Bladecenter JS

skipped machines:
Genesi PegasosI (April Fix I/II)
LinkStation/Kuro Box HG (PPC)
IBM Intellistation POWER 265/275/285
IBM Bladecenter QS
Sony PS3

Toolchain updates

CRUX PPC 2.4 64/32 bit multilib includes glibc 2.7, gcc 4.2.4 and binutils 2.18 .

Kernel

Linux-2.6.27.6

Important changes

core and opt ports

hotplug has been removed because it wasn't in use since a long time.
util-linux-ng with FSH compliance fix.
prt-get replaced by ilenia in the core collection
netkit-base port has been replaced by inetd and iana-etc.
mkimage, iproute2 and iputils included in the core collection.
mc, nano, elinks and parthenope included in the opt collection.
blackbox replaced by fluxbox in the opt collection.

X.org 7.4

CRUX PPC 2.4 ships with Xorg 7.4. Note that Xprint isn't supported anymore.
The monolithic x11 package has been replaced by the new modular xorg distribution. As the results of this update, crux.nu now hosts a dedicated "xorg" ports repository, installed by default. Ports are available under /usr/ports/{ppc,x86}/xorg, you may need to add this location to you /etc/prt-get.conf file if upgrading.

New network init script

CRUX included iproute2 and iputils in the core collection. The new default network script /etc/rc.d/net has been updated to use /sbin/ip instead of the traditional ifconfig and route commands (still available and installed by default).
Important: when upgrading from CRUX PPC 2.2rc an /etc/rc.d/net script based on iproute2 is installed, a backup copy of your previous version is saved in /etc/rc.d/net.orig. Be sure to adjust /etc/rc.d/net after upgrading.

Miscellaneous notes

Please be sure you are using the latest version of firmware for your own machine.

When upgrading from CRUX PPC 2.2 to CRUX PPC 2.4, the setup program will take a while completing the Please wait [2.2 -> 2.4 check] phase, since it's basically installing all of the xorg packages.
CRUX introduced a new boot file: /etc/rc.fix for generic operations to be excuted at boot time. At the moment the script takes care of font cache generation for xorg, so your very first boot under CRUX PPC 2.4 will take a few additional seconds.

Genesi PegasosII users: please, consider to use with Device Tree Supplement.

Genesi Efika users: bootkernel shipped with CRUX PPC 2.4 has "Root file system on NFS" enabled to . Bootkernel doesn't use Device Tree Supplement (efika-dts-20071114.zip) because there are some important issues with linux-2.6.27.x kernels.

Known issues

Avoid to upgrade from CRUX PPC 2.2rc to CRUX PPC 2.4 but consider a fresh new installation.

Apple iMac G5: if you are experiencing difficulties booting try with "install64 root=/dev/hda video=ofonly"

Genesi PegasosII: Marvell DiscoveryII 10/100/1000 [mv643xx_eth] support in kernel 2.6.27.x is broken.

Errata

Support for experimental Ext4 filesystem was removed from stable release.

We missed X.org support for mach64 and r128, they are obviously available in ppc/xorg repository.