Comments on: Installing Gentoo on ALIX.3D3

By: twam

twam — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:05:58 +0000

@Luca
As I don’t have the ALIX board anymore, I don’t have a patch for a more recent kernel, so you have to adapt it own your own. It shouldn’t be too difficult.

I can’t tell you anymore why i didn’t enabled pata_cs5536, but the kernel included everything needed to boot it from CF card.

By: Luca

Luca — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:00:13 +0000

@twam
I tried to apply it but I get a “failed HUNK. ” The problem is that the vanilla kernel does not have the support of the LEDs for alix boards in the tabs under “device drivers”(LED Support for ALIX.2 and ALIX.3 series
). The same thing happens for the watchdog.
I also wanted to tell you that in your .config the module “pata_cs5536″ is not enabled. You have enabled only “pata_amd”. Thanks for the help.

By: twam

twam — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:29:21 +0000

@Luca There is no. You have to adopt the old one.

By: Luca

Luca — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:27:31 +0000

@twam Thanks but where can I find the patch used for leds for kernel 2.6.37.x?

By: twam

twam — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:54:29 +0000

@Luca I did not use a tmpfs filesystem as the system only had only 256 MB. I always used a custom kernel for the system, usually the most recent one. You can find the config for that in the blog post.

By: Luca

Luca — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 13:27:20 +0000

Hi,
I’m trying to do a similar thing with Slackware. What worries me most is the use of Compact Flash as an hard-disk. You have taken some special technique, like using tmpfs filesystem or aufs2? I have no experience with these file systems and I was wondering if you could show me some guidelines to follow or to read.
Another thing I wanted to ask was whether you had a custom kernel for the card alix3d3 fairly recent. I found a 2.6.29, have you a newer version?
Finally any advice on this project is welcome. Thanks in advance.
Greetings

By: twam

twam — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:11:30 +0000

@crow You can use the config file mentioned in the article and do an "make oldconfig". So you only have to set the options introduced after 2.6.29. This might be a good start. I sold it, because I didn't had so much time for it and I had no special use for it.

By: crow

crow — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:04:31 +0000

Sorry i didnt mean on compiled kernel but its .config file . I sow you wrote that you sold it, any particular reason or just tired of playing with it?

By: twam

twam — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 10:59:12 +0000

@crow
The last kernel I used was 2.6.31 IIRC. As I sold the board, I don’t have the compiled kernel anymore. But if you don’t have the time, to compile it on the alix, you could cross-compile it on another computer. (But setting cross-compiling up, may take longer than compiling it on the ALIX )

By: crow

crow — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 09:08:30 +0000

Hi, thanks for your blog, i wanna try gentoo on alix 3d3 to. What was last kernel you used on this board and its there a way that you can publish it? Compiling default kernel on alix would take a lot of time.
Thanks

By: twam

twam — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 09:00:20 +0000

@vladimir I sold my Alix.3D3 a few weeks ago, so I don't have the CF image anymore. But a desktop gentoo with a X system is probably a little hard to get on a 4 CF system.

By: vladimir

vladimir — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 07:57:12 +0000

@twam
Hello,

I would like to try your CF image to give me a quick start exploring gentoo on alix 3d3!!

I am looking for a minimal deskop pc and thought alix 3d3 + gentoo could be solution?
Ever tried running gentoo desktop on alix 3d3?

I hope you will direct me to download link for CF image
regards, Vladimir

By: Alexander

Alexander — Mon, 24 May 2010 05:53:20 +0000

@twam Thank you! I've successfully booted Windows XP installation from USB Flash Stick (Kingston Data Traveler) 8 Gb and install it on Transcend Compact Flash 300x based on SLC memory. Everything is working fine with EWF enabled.

By: twam

twam — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 10:16:15 +0000

@Alexander

Usually any compact flash card should work for booting Linux. Windows is a bit special, because the compact flash has to identify itself as a fixed disk instead of removable media. For some cards there exist tools to change this behaviour.

You should check the speed of the card itself and the support of UDMA modi the ensure that it will work on a accepatable speed.

I personally used SanDisks Extreme IV cards in my productive systems as they support UDMA and have a speed of about 40 MB/s, but they’re not the cheapest ones. Also SanDisks guarantees me a certain amout of write cycles specified in their datasheets.

By: Alexander

Alexander — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 06:34:51 +0000

Hello guys,

I need help in choosing right type of CF selection for booting ALIX3D3. As it printed in datasheet “Hot swap of CF cards is not supported!”. What does it mean?
Will low cost “Compact Flash 8Gb Transcend (133?)” suitable for booting OS. (I want to start from WIN XP embedded for a first time).
And what CF cards do you use with ALIX.3D3?

Thank you!

By: twam

twam — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:57:48 +0000

I’m sorry that haven’t got a solution right off the top of my head. If you were able to put ntp-client in front of this would need a running network, and the running network would need net.eth0 which depends on udev. Udev needs write support on the device for creating its permanent rules… (No guarantee on that dependecies)

Maybe the easiest solution would to disable the filesystems checks at all and do them by hand.

By: marxin

marxin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:46:28 +0000

Hello, you articles connecte with gentoo on Alix PC are really perfect (LEDs & CPU Temp sensor are best). Please could you help me with my problem, I have Alix PC 3d2 which is different from your version in not having board clock. So after reboot time is 1970-01-01 and my problem is to force running ntp-client before checkfs/checkroot which fails because my partition has been mounted in a future ! I tried to specify that ntp-client will start in boot runlevel and before checkfs, but everytime checkfs is the first in boot section ?

Thank you for your ideas marxin

By: lucas

lucas — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:11:53 +0000

My fault guys, it works perfect. Sorry to bother you

By: lucas

lucas — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:27:11 +0000

Hi lads,

have a quick question about Alix3d3 performance with DivX files. I tried to run some videos using Mplayer on TinyCoreLinux and that was not too excitement, pretty slow, even when I played a little with settings. Is Gentoo doin any better? Did anyone tried?

Cheers
Lucas

By: twam

twam — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:59:25 +0000

Nice! You can post your link here if you like, so other people will benefit from it.