piCore 6.0 Beta355

[bmarkus]

After having issues with latest 3.17.y/3.18.y and few other lines of kernels we decided to stay with the official longterm kernel, 3.12.y

Beta355 is the first cut with such kernel. Please try, specially WiFi and audio and report your findings. Download link:

http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/6.x/armv6/release_candidates/

This is a beta level cut. If you decide to help test, then please test carefully. We don't want anyone to lose data.

Since this is an beta cut, although the team has worked through several preview cuts, we ask that only experienced users test. This cut is not for production use. The features in any beta may change before a public release candidate is available.

Note that the fltk library has been updated to 1.3.3 to enable unicode. fltk-1.1 and 1.3 can be installed at the same time, and old apps using 1.1 will continue to work.

We appreciate testing and feedback.

Changelog for 6.0 Beta355:

* kernel updated to 3.12.35


Changelog for 6.0 Beta200:

* kernel updated to 3.14.23


Changelog for 6.0 Beta100:

* kernel updated to 3.18.0


Changelog for 6.0 Beta2:

* kernel updated to 3.17.4
* RPi firmware updated to December 3 release
* serial terminal now started by default
* preinstalled components updated


Changelog for 6.0 Beta1:

* kernel updated to 3.17.3
* glibc updated to 2.20
* gcc updated to 4.9.2
* e2fsprogs base libs/apps updated to 1.42.12
* util-linux base libs/apps updated to 2.25.2

[jgrulich]

Why the size of the filesystem is so large?
It's nearly double compared to previous ones.

[bmarkus]

Size of the base system did not change nor the SSH release. In case of X release there are some more extensions installed due to few updated apps with new dependencies like freetype. It is just beta. Anyhow they will be reviewed before RC1.

Main goal of this beta is to verify kernel and base, extensions are out of scope.

[jgrulich]

I've found one issue in the governor which is set to "powersave" by the core during startup and I'm not able to switch it to "performance" as it was before. The only way is to "force_turbo", which is not the best and very safe way.

[bmarkus]

Check /sys/devices/sytem/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq

Both the minimum and maximum allowed clock is 700MHz, as well as scaling range is 700-700MHz which means that doesn't matter which governor is active, CPU always runs on 700 MHz, therefore powersave=performance

[jgrulich]

Yes, that's the issue. I'm using the permanent = performance, or dynamic = governor overclocking on 900MHz, because it works without the overvoltage need and is much faster than on basic 700MHz. For general use is enough to work on 700MHz, but for X version with graphical GUI it's faster when run on 900MHz.
Seems to me that this distro core has build-in overclocking feature, because in the /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_governors is not only "performance" as it was before, but four other selections. In the Rasbian distro is software dedicated to the CPU speed control which works with the "ondemand" setup to dynamically control the CPU speed.
Probably when added this program to the repo we well be easily able to set whatever around this overclocking.

[bmarkus]

I see. cpufrequtils will be added to repo to manage frequency scaling.

[bmarkus]

cpufrequtils.tcz added to repo. More info in WiKi:

http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:cpu_frequency_scaling_basics

[Gerrelt]

Hi Béla,

I've just installed this beta as a squeezelite player. All went well, and it is playing music through wifi.

Some things I noticed, which are not real problems:

1. There are some commands allready in the buffer when fresh installed. The arrow up key revealed some previous commands not entered by me.

2. The first partition mmcblk0p1 is a bit bigger (allready mentioned):

Code: [Select]

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
/dev/mmcblk0p1             513        2954       19532   c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2            2954        4053        8789+ 83 LinuxIt used to end at 704, if I remember correctly.

3. The bootlocal.sh contains a "getty" command that stops the file from executing any further commands.
This command:

Code: [Select]

# Start serial terminal
/sbin/getty -L ttyAMA0 115200 vt100I've commented it, and then it started to run the commands below it.
This might confuse other people.

Greetings,
    Gerrelt.
 

[bmarkus]

HI Gerrelt

thanks for feedback and glad to hear it works. Regarding notes

1) Will check.

2) Yes, there are more unallocated sectors at the beginning for boot now following Raspbian boot allocation. There are few megs free space to keep another initrd which makes testing easier. In final release this can be reduced to the minimal required size.

3) Will check. As a temporary fix keep it as the last command and add yours before.

[jgrulich]

These "issues" may be simply corrected as follows:
1) Delete the content of the command buffer in the tc home directory
2) You may copy the FAT partition, reduce it by the fdisk and copy it back. Than move the start of the EXT4 partition down and resize2fs the ext4 partition.
3) Simply add the "&" string at the end of the line to work the getty in the background:
/sbin/getty -L ttyAMA0 115200 vt100 &
No need to analyze this point any more.

[jgrulich]

Even I've used the cpufrequtils, the cpu is still running at 700MHz during booting time. The cpufrequtils command is acepted just after the booting time is finished.
How to change the governor to performace for the booting time? Is there some command for the startup menu? I need to speed-up the startup as much as possible.

[bmarkus]

For booting a new kernel is needed with changed default governor. Ondemand wold be a good choice over powersave.

[jgrulich]

From the personal experience with the Rasbian distro, the ondemand is not as fast as performance, because the threshold is too sensitive and it quickly switch it down, but slowly switch it up, means there is some delay to save the power. Therefore the performance mode is 20% faster, because it runs all the time with the higher frequency. And even more when I run it at 1GHz for turbo-mode, the difference is very clearly visible. After the booting time it may be switched to the default ondemand mode which is perfect for normal use.
 Is there any way how to change the default mode to performance to test the above mentioned way.

[bmarkus]

I will make a new kernel