CRUX PPC

Release Notes for CRUX PPC 2.6

Introduction

This page discusses the relevant changes introduced in CRUX PPC 2.6.
Everybody upgrading from the previous release is advised to carefully read the following notes.

About Power Architecture^® hardware

supported machines:
Apple Power Macintosh G3 Blue&White
Apple 32bit "NewWorld" G3/G4 (PowerBook, iBook, Power Mac, iMac, eMac, Xserve)
Apple 64bit G5 (Power Mac, iMac, Xserve)
Genesi PegasosII, Efika 5200B
Acube Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex
IBM pSeries POWER3/POWER3-II/POWER4/POWER4+
IBM Intellistation POWER 265/275
IBM eServer OpenPOWER 710/720 
YDL Powerstation PPC970MP

untested machines:
IBM RS/6000 CHRP (604e/604ev/604r)
Bull Estrella CHRP 32bit
Bull Escala PowerPC 64bit
Bull Escala POWERn
IBM iSeries POWERn
IBM System p POWER5/POWER5+/POWER6
IBM Intellistation POWER 185/285
IBM RS/6000 RS64 (I,II,III,IV)
IBM BladeCenter JS
IBM BladeCenter JS (SLOF)

---- --- --- --- --- --- --- ----

skipped machines:
Freescale 51xx, 5200, 5200B, 83xx, 85xx, 86xx
Eyetech AmigaOne/Micro-A1
Total Impact briQ G3/G4
Apple "OldWorld" G3
YDL Mai Logic Teron, Genesi PegasosI (April Fix I/II)

not supported machines:
PReP standard PowerPC based products
IBM "Legacy" iSeries POWER3/POWER4
IBM System p POWER7
IBM PowerPC 476FP
PCI Express (PCIe) card (IBM PowerXCell 8i Cell processor based) - CAB (Cell Accelerator Board)
Sony ZEGO BCU-100
P.A. Semiconductor PWRficient PA6T-1682M "Electra"
Grande Vitesse Systems GVS9000 PowerPC
LimePC (all MPC5121e SoC based products), Cherrypal C100/C114/C120, Vodacom Linkbook
AMCC 405/4x0 SoC
IBM/AMCC Walnut 405GP, DHT Walnut 405GP
Realm Systems BlackDog, Inaura K9/iD3
Buffalo Terastation TS/HS/TSPRO1 (PowerPC)
LinkStation/KuroBox LS1/HG/HS (PowerPC)
Thecus N1200
Plat'Home OpenBlockS 266/600
RouterBOARD RB 333/600A/1000/1000U
IBM BladeCenter QS
Xilinx Virtex-II/Virtex-4/Virtex-5 
PowerPC game consoles (Sony PS3, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft Xbox 360)
PowerPC SoC Set Top Boxes

Toolchain updates

CRUX PPC 2.6 includes glibc 2.11, gcc 4.4.2 and binutils 2.20 .

Kernel

Linux-2.6.32.x

Important changes

CRUX PPC 2.6 is released as two different installation ISO: 32bit and 64bit. The 32bit version is based on a single lib toolchain instead the 64bit one comes with a multilib toolchain. These two versions share the same ports tree.
Logical Volume Manager v.2 (LVM2) is now included and available during install process.
New xz/lzma support has been added to libarchive, it's possible to use .xz and .lzma source-archives in our ports now.
Using the file /etc/modprobe.conf to configure modprobe is deprecated, use *.conf files in /etc/modprobe.d/ instead.
Now only a small number of fonts are included with install ISO.

core and opt ports

CRUX PPC 2.6 still ships with Perl 5.10.1 to be in sync with x86 main project.
glibc does not contain all possible locales, see handbook.
binutils depends on ppl and cloog-ppl.
ppl and cloog-ppl were added to core collection.
libusb has been updated to version 1.0, to keep compatibility to version 0.1 a new port libusb-compat has been added to core collection.
libblkid, blkid, findfs and fsck are now provided by util-linux-ng instead of e2fsprogs.
libuuid, uuidd and uuidgen are now provided by util-linux-ng instead of e2fsprogs.
rdate has been replaced by openrdate in core collection.
libdevmapper, sudo and xz have been moved from opt to core.
tcsh, rpm2targz, strace and expat have been moved from core to opt.
lvm2 and alsa-lib were added to opt collection.

xorg ports

CRUX PPC 2.6 still ships with X.org 7.4 to be in sync with x86 main project.
xorg-evieext, xorg-libxevie and xorg-fontcacheproto have been removed from xorg collection.
xorg-libxfontcache and xorg-xproxymanagementprotocol have been removed from xorg collection.

Miscellaneous notes

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

When upgrading from CRUX PPC 2.5 to CRUX PPC 2.6, the setup program will take a while completing the Please wait [2.5 -> 2.6 check] phase.
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 2.6 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 2.6 has "Root file system on NFS" enabled, see Efika Install HowTo. Bootkernel doesn't use Device Tree Supplement (efika-dts-20071114.zip) because unmaintained and there are some important issues with recent kernels.

Known issues

Apple iMac G5: if you are experiencing difficulties booting, try with "apple64 root=/dev/hda video=ofonly".
Genesi PegasosII: Marvell DiscoveryII sram gigabit ethernet [mv643xx_eth] support in kernel > 2.6.31.2 is newly broken.
Genesi Efika: audio support in kernel < 2.6.31 is broken.

Tips

Apple Power Macintosh G3 (Blue&White): to boot try with "apple32 root=/dev/hda".
Apple PowerBook G3, iMac G3, iBook G3: to boot try with "apple32 root=/dev/hdb".
IBM eServer pSeries 610-6C1: to boot try with "pseries ide=nodma root=/dev/hda".
YDL Powerstation quad G5 (SLOF): to boot at yaboot prompt try with "cdrom:0,/ppc/ppc64/vmlinux root=/dev/hda".
IBM 9111-285 Intellistation POWER 285 (POWER5+): to boot try with "pseries root=/dev/hde".
IBM eServer OpenPOWER 710/720: to boot try with "pseries root=/dev/hde".

Errata

IBM RS/6000 CHRP (604e/604ev/604r): 32bit iso is perhaps unable to boot.
IBM pSeries POWER5 or newer: 64bit iso is unable to create a working hvc0 or hvsi0 console.