Brent Baude

I've just released a new LiveCD for PS3. Unlike the previous LiveCD, this one does not support the PowerMacs--only the PS3. Also, this LiveCD is based on the window manager XFCE4 (the prior LiveCD used Gnome). I felt like a lighter, faster window manager would be worth trying and I am definitely looking for feedback from users.

This version of the LiveCD contains Mozilla-Firefox-2, Mozilla-Thunderbird-2 (beta), koffice, xchat-2, Gaim, Audacious, among others.

The LiveCD can be found on the Gentoo mirrors in experimental/ppc64/livecd/. To find the Gentoo mirror nearest you, check out:

http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml

I have also been experimenting with putting the contents of the LiveCD onto a USB memory stick. This works fairly well with the exception of some kboot shortcomings related to how kboot searches for its configuration files. This process should be more like udev or perhaps using the busybux mdev. I need to talk with the Gentoo-relengs to see how they do this with their own install-cds, and then maybe adapt kboot to follow suit. The net of this is that I have put together a short how-to for running the LiveCD from USB storage. It can be found on the the wiki at:

http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell

A few days ago, I announced new stages had been pushed to the Gentoo mirrors. Shortly thereafter, mtb and I had a conversation on IRC where he was asking about the default set of CFLAGS in make.conf. After some short investigation, it appears that the PS3 stages were not getting the desired CFLAGS with things like altivec send to them when being built. I must thank mtb for bringing this up.

The good news is that I have corrected the problem in the build process and now stages are getting the CFLAGS consistent with the 970 profile:

CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -mcpu=970 -mtune=970 -mabi=altivec"

I have rebuilt the stages and GRP and they are already on the mirrors.

http://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/ppc64/stages/

Remember the installation instructions can be found at:

http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/InstallGentooOnPS3

As I mentioned in my last blog, I am still working on a new livecd which should include an updated version of Firefox and a working version of Thunderbird.

Enjoy!

Updated stage4s for the PS3 have been making their way around to the Gentoo mirrors overnight and are now fully populated. These new stages are based on the previous specifications but includ updated packages. Remember, these stages can be found on the Gentoo mirrors. An example would be:

http://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/ppc64/stages/

You can also find the snapshot that these were build on at:

http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/gentoo-ps3/snapshots/

In addition, I have updated the GRP repository (http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/gentoo-ps3/) based on these stages. You will notice some changes in the GRP packages. For example, Gnome for the 64ul did not build and neither did Firefox. We are actively working on solving the problem and are very close. When these wrinkles are ironed out, I will update the GRP repositories with the new packages. It is worth mentioning that the these stages and GRP are based on the active portage tree. So from time to time, errors induced by package conflicts and different environments will happen. Please drop us a line should you feel you found a problem somewhere.

I have also been asked to update the PS3 LiveCD (http://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/ppc64/livecd/). I’m currently working on that as well and perhaps I will have something to release by the end of the week. I’m holding out on the hopes of getting a working version of Thunderbird on the CD.

After these releases, I will be focusing on creating the real PPC64 64ul and 32ul stages for follow-on Gentoo releases.

The PPC64 team is always looking for folks who want to get involved in either testing or working directly with the team. Please drop by our irc channel (#gentoo-ppc64) to learn about us.

Happy hunting…