Unoffical new release piCore-10.1beta1a

[TimJ]

Here is a new unofficial release of piCore 10.1beta1a.

http://timjanes.uk/piCore/10.x/armv7/test_releases/RPi/
The file is called  piCore-10.1beta1a.zip.

note that this is on a different  server  to the main one, see the separate thread.

It is based on kernel 4.19.46
Built for arm6 and arm7 architecture
The main libraries are the same as 10.0beta5a so existing 10.x extension should run.

One change is that on first boot the 2nd partition on the sd-card will automatically be expanded to fill the card and the SSH keys will be saved. This resize can be prevented by creating a file noresize (or noresize.txt) in the root of the boot partition. This resize process needs an automatic reboot and the resize takes several minutes.

To partially cope with the lack of available extensions I have added two command tce-load9 and tce-ab9 that use the 9.x repository. Please report any 9.x extensions you find that work and they will be copied across

I have updated the following extensions
glibc-*      -    rebuilt to match the same version as the glibc l
            ibrary in the image
openssl    -    the configuration directory moved to /usr/local/etc
            it now picks up the ca-certificates
git       -   rebuilt so that it find the http & https helpers
utils-linux   -   was built linking with the wrong ncurses library.
openssh      -   removed cosmetic error message on startup
python3.7   -   to build python-dev
bash      -   added default .bashrc from piCore 9.x
asciidoc   -   dependantcy  changed for python2.7 to 3.7
compiletc   -    added back in
submitqc   -   remove check on arm6 to allow zsync to run
growpart   -   growpart from cloud-utils & sfdisk for 1st boot
All module extensions (except v4l) for both arm6 and arm7
A whole bunch of extensions copied from 9.x.

Have fun and all feedback bug reports etc very welcome.

Tim

    [EDIT]: Link modified due to forum policy violation.  Rich

[Rich]

Hi TimJ

2. No attachments/links of binary extensions

Found here:
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,7738.0.html

You may not post direct links to binaries. I modified your post to point to your site so individuals can go there and fetch
it themselves if they so wish.

[TimJ]

Rich,
many thanks
Tim

[Paul_123]

Since there is not package manager......folks need to realize that they need to be very careful downloading anything from the piCore repo.   Dependencies may be different between the two repos.  (And yes, pCP has it's own repo too)

I have quite a few packages......at least the ones that needed updated due to openssl and ncurses changes.  And of course most of the audio libraries a built too.   If there was a problem with ca-certs, I could have just rebuilt the package for you, since there are quite a few certs in /etc/ssl......I see the one file I accidentally left at /usr/local/etc/ssl.

Wifi packages are mostly rebuilt too to the latest wpa_supplicant, I also have crda support figured out.....that significantly improves the onboard rpi wifi performance.

Not sure if you ran into this or not, and I've not looked at your image.  But the initrd has a linker issue.

/usr/lib/libpthread.so linker script is still trying to pull in libpthread_nonshared.a, this file is no longer part of glibc.  I left the linker script, but just removed libpthread_nonshared.a from the file....

[Greg Erskine]

Oh! Interesting development.

Congratulations on getting this all together. 

[TimJ]

Paul,

I fully agree about package dependencies and different repos. I have tried to keep mine compatible with the main piCore repo v10.x, but very many in the 9.x tree will not run uner 10.x

I am very happy to work with you in anyway that will benefit piCore. You clearly have some access to the main website. Do you have enough access to put together a full working distribution there? If so that would be my preferred option.

Failing that I am happy to go with my website. I can add any extensions you make available to me by any means. I have setup an email address timj.picore@gmail.com. Or maybe I can pull them from the piCorePlayer repo?

As regards tour technical points

My starting point was piCore10.0beta5 and the available extensions.

glibc - the libraries in initrd were from v2.27, but all the extensions ie glibc_base-dev were from V2.29, and the source was v2.28.
My feeling was that they all should be the same version, but changing the main ones in initrd would cause many extensions problems, so I rebuilt he extensions back at v2.27. As a side effect this builds libpthread_nonshared.a.

openssl / certs location. You have chosen to go with the using /etc/shh as the config location, I chose to go with /usr/local/etc, for the reason that Tinycore's policy is to put config data there. The ca-certs package is built into the initial image so the one in the repo is never actually used, and I have not noticed that you had updated it. I am happy with either solution. (or maybe a soft link from one location to the other).

I had built my own wpa-supplicant, but I am now just using yours from the main repo.

On 4.14.98 I had to add some crypto modules back into the image to get a ralink Wi-Fi adapter to work, I am not sure if they are still there in 1.19.46, but the adapter works.

I had never heard of crda, it explains this in dmesg on a Pi3B+

Code: [Select]

[    5.518402] cfg80211: Loading compiled-in X.509 certificates for regulatory database
[    5.537042] cfg80211: Loaded X.509 cert 'sforshee: 00b28ddf47aef9cea7'
[    5.537136] platform regulatory.0: Direct firmware load for regulatory.db failed with error -2
[    5.537141] cfg80211: failed to load regulatory.db
[    5.552348] brcmfmac: F1 signature read @0x18000000=0x15264345
However after loading crda.tcz I get this - Any thoughts

Code: [Select]

[    5.621611] cfg80211: Loading compiled-in X.509 certificates for regulatory database
[    5.655177] cfg80211: Loaded X.509 cert 'sforshee: 00b28ddf47aef9cea7'
[    5.684811] brcmfmac: F1 signature read @0x18000000=0x15264345
[    5.694229] brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio for chip BCM4345/6
[    5.695982] usbcore: registered new interface driver brcmfmac
[    5.714363] cfg80211: loaded regulatory.db is malformed or signature is missing/invalid
Tim.

[Paul_123]

I never had access the piCore site.  Around the time the last beta was pushed, Bela had more time and was pushing up the extensions that I sent him....but that was a long time ago.

What initrd did you start with?   The one with 4.19.13 was definitely 2.29 based, and I have been using that for a long time.   Most of the extensions I built would have been with a 2.29 glibc base, which could explain some problems.

This is on my 3B+, make sure CRDA is loaded before the firmware is loaded, and you might need to grab the latest crda from our repo.   I dont thing I had to change anything in the firmware, but you can check that easily.

Code: [Select]

[    9.329234] cfg80211: Loading compiled-in X.509 certificates for regulatory database
[    9.354590] cfg80211: Loaded X.509 cert 'sforshee: 00b28ddf47aef9cea7'
[    9.376996] brcmfmac: F1 signature read @0x18000000=0x15264345
[    9.381614] brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio for chip BCM4345/6
[    9.382858] usbcore: registered new interface driver brcmfmac
[    9.661572] random: crng init done
[    9.683819] brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio for chip BCM4345/6
[    9.694303] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware: BCM4345/6 wl0: Feb 27 2018 03:15:32 version 7.45.154 (r684107 CY) FWID 01-4fbe0b04


[TimJ]

My work has been based on 10.0beta5a that is a 4.14.y kernel and uses glibc2.27 . I have just had a look at beta12 and that is kernel 4.19.13 and glibc 2.29.

I guess if I am to include any of your extensions I need to change to 2.29 as well. I will give it some thought.

I have downloaded piCorePlayer - it looks good. and as you say that does not have any problems with cdra, but piCore10beta12 does. They are both using the same crda.tcz, but as I have 2 systems one working, one not it should be possible to track the problem down.

Anyway I have to go and do a couple of paid days work now, keep a few pennies coming in.

Tim.
 

[MrPorcine]

First of all, I'm pretty much just an ordinary user. I've got piCore-10.1beta1a running on a 3B, and I've installed X and all its dependencies from the xx9 repository. So far so good. flwm works. The mouse works and the right-click menu works.  I haven't found anything to run under flwm yet, so that is TBD. The X installation does have a problem with fonts. This is not a beta issue, it existed before. There is a work-around, so it is not a show stopper.

So good. It's great to see piCore being worked on again.

I have a Qt app that I'd like to run, but getting all the Qt dependencies worked out is so far out of reach. I've set up /opt in a persistent partition and loaded all the missing libraries in a folder under /opt. ldd shows all the dependencies in the Qt app resolved. I just copied over the libraries from a working version under Rasbian. Yet Qt still stumbles trying to get xcb working. First it says it can't find xcb, then it lists xcb as one of the plugins that it found. The native X xcb seems to be installed, so I guessing I'm still missing a piece of Qt.

[TimJ]

MrPorcine,

Thanks for the encouraging feedback. It is good to know that you have X running. If you can let me have your onboot.lst I will take a look with the aim of copying the relevant tcz across to the 10.x repo. 

I don't know if you are aware to deb2tcz that may help you copying Raspbian packages across.
https://gist.github.com/nuxlli/ddd3fa2ceed7b2cecdd3

Tim

[MrPorcine]

Hi TimJ

OK, here's the content of my onboot.lst:

Code: [Select]

mc.tcz
openssh.tcz
libgcrypt.tcz
Xorg.tcz
flwm.tcz
fontconfig.tcz


[Paul_123]

There is a library in crda.tcz that was definitely linked against libc 2.29.   That could be the problem.

[TimJ]

Paul,
The main problem with crda was that the crypto module sha256_generic was not loaded. dmesg is now clean. I cat use iw reg set GB and iw reg get reports back OK. iwconfig reports the power as 31dB, but it did before installing crda, I have not had time to try iperf3 yet, so I am not sure what it achieves.

I have built glibc2.27 and 2.29, one difference in the output files is that 2.27 has libpthread.so as a text file containing

Code: [Select]

/* GNU ld script
   Use the shared library, but some functions are only in
   the static library, so try that secondarily.  */
OUTPUT_FORMAT(elf32-littlearm)
GROUP ( /lib/libpthread.so.0 /usr/lib/libpthread_nonshared.a )

but in 2.29 it is a just a link. I guess this file/link failed to get updated when Bela updated from 2.27 to 2.29
I will definitely update to 2.29 when I next build an image.

[Paul_123]

Code: [Select]

/* GNU ld script
   Use the shared library, but some functions are only in
   the static library, so try that secondarily.  */
OUTPUT_FORMAT(elf32-littlearm)
GROUP ( /lib/libpthread.so.0 /usr/lib/libpthread_nonshared.a )

but in 2.29 it is a just a link. I guess this file/link failed to get updated when Bela updated from 2.27 to 2.29
I will definitely update to 2.29 when I next build an image.

I never built the glibc package, I wasn't sure of the correct way to handle......but a link makes sense.

[Paul_123]

Couple of other things you may wish to do.....you will notice that we are using a newer version of busybox..  1.30.1

Feel free to use our binaries....Bela never included busybox build scripts/configs on the src dir, I can send what I use if you wish.  The only real deviation from original piCore was including httpd applet in the base busybox, rather than it's own extension.   If you do, take a look at our fork of the CoreScripts and the commits.  https://github.com/piCorePlayer/Core-scripts  There are at least one update to the core needed for the newer busybox.   You can ignore all of the kmod stuff, we decided to use kmod for module loading, as there are a couple of sound card modules that have soft dependencies, and busybox doesn't support that.

Also, grab a copy of tce-bootload.  I added multi-threading to the extension load process......It reduces the boot time quite a bit on a multi-core processor.  The process fork limit is set to the number of cores......as anything more would actually slow it down.