Alpha Core 1.0a

Fri Feb 25 18:26:50 UTC 2005

Hello,

I upgraded my AlphaCore 0.9 with provided packages and did some tests.
Here is what I found:

- KERNEL

- the provided kernel package 2.6.10-1.1110axp_FC4 is actualy 2.6.11-rc2
with additional patches including those Alpha related
- Qlogic ISP10x0 driven by qla1280 driver (instead of old qlogcisp)
works ok
- alsa seems to run properly finaly (on my built in ESS1888 in PWS600)
- USB built in controller (Contaq Microsystems 82c693) is initialised
properly (a very new thing)
- iptables is reporting "Invalid argument" trying to add entry in "nat"
table - recompilation of user space utilities did not help. My kernel
build based on 2.6.10-1.766_FC3  source RPM with Alpha based patches
from 2.6.10-1.1110axp_FC4 (a bit modified) fixed the problem but my USB
controller is not initialised now (the ohci USB host seems to be fixed
in 2.6.11-rc2 patch)
- boot sequence take a long time on 2.6.10-1.1110axp_FC4 during
rc.sysinit execution. I found that hotplug scsi takes enormous time. The
problem disappeared with 2.6.10-1.766_FC3

- XORG

- the provided Xorg v.6.8.1 does not work on my PWS600 with Matrox G200
(it is segfaulting). I fixed the problem downgrading to xorg packages
xorg-x11* to 6.7.0 from AlphaCore 0.9 and it looks ok so far. The
problem with 6.8.1 seems to be the missing Alpha specific elfloader
relocations - type 10 R_ALPHA_SREL32 (the patch for this one already
exists and is applied in 6.7.0 AlphaCore package) and type 28
R_ALPHA_BRSGP (there is no patch and should be written)

- XIMIAN EVOLUTION

- I depend quite much on this package but it does not work -
evolution-dataserver is constantly crashing. I tried building the latest
stable evolution package (v.2.0.4) but compilation failed. I succeeded
building development source RPMs from FC3 (v.2.1.5) and it works
decently well so far (just writing this e-mail in it)

- SCREEN

- the supplied package does not contain the Alpha specific patch needed
so it does not work - problem fixed installing the patched package from
AlphaCore 0.9

I tested many other components (md RAID, KDE, gaim, firefox, Mozilla,
xmms, xchat, rdesktop, vnc, vtund, ssh, xterm ... etc.)  and general
impression after mentioned fixes is that system works quite well - great
job guys !

Regards

On Wed, 2005-02-16 at 14:21 +0200, Balint Cristian wrote:
>	Hi folks,
>
>	After a timeout and slow development of alpha core, me [Cristian Balint]
>and a new volunteer Sergey Tikhonov, finaly developed next release of alpha core 1.0
>wich is equivalent with fedora-FC3 but with lots of alpha specific fixes.
>
>
>	Unfortunatley Mike Barnes haven't the time these days to take major part of
>development on this new tree, so we decided to release AlphaCore 1.0a now as-is.
>
>	The main personality of the tree is the fact the Sergely fixed some important
>threading suport in glibc to switch corectly between nptl and linuxthreads, so application 
>run more stable and few bugs present even in 0.9 are gone now. The second major thing 
>is the kernel, we used 2.6.10 because between 2.6.6<>2.6.10 the mainline kernel was 
>broken for alpha, and we disable few things wich are unstable/unusable for alpha arch. 
>In rest everything else is fedora specific changes between FC2-->FC3.
>
>
>	We release this under the version "1.0a" and plan that "1.0" version will be 
>marked only on the final iso images.
>
>	The iso images will be based exact on that curent tree, unless someone discover 
>something showstopper thing to fix, and will try in a mather of 2 weeks to pack it.
>
>So, the path to AlphaCore 1.0a tree:
>ftp://ftp.rdsor.ro/pub/Linux/Distributions/AlphaLinux/core/1.0a/
>
>And olso there is a yum config file wich point to this tree:
>ftp://ftp.rdsor.ro/pub/Linux/Distributions/AlphaLinux/core/yum.conf-1.0a
>
>	Mirrors are welcome, testers and volunteers are welcome, any feedback suggestions are accounted 
>in the final iso pack.
>
>
>Thank you all,
>~cristian
>
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-- 
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