Notices by Natanael Copa (ncopa@fosstodon.org), page 3

3) Mount the boot partition and extract Alpine tarball:

doas mount /dev/sde3 /mnt
curl -s https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.21/releases/riscv64/alpine-uboot-3.21.1-riscv64.tar.gz | doas tar -C /mnt -zxv

2) Create vfat filesystem on 3rd partition:

doas mkfs.vfat /dev/sde3

Compile time of same linux kernel on different hardware:

- milkv pioneer: 0h 52m 20s
- hifive premiere: 3h 32m 20s

The pioneer has 64 CPU cores while the premiere only has 4.

#RISCV #Linux

Xfce 4.20 on alpine Linux edge with Wayland

#XFCE #AlpineLinux #Wayland

#AlpineLinux 3.21 is now listed under "Other general-purpose OS" in rpi-imager.

#RaspberryPi

#AlpineLinux rleease candidate 4 is out. This includes 6.12 kernels for Raspberry Pi. Would be nice with some help with testing.

Hopefully this is the last release candidate.

Turns out that it boots! 🎉

The #AlpineLinux linux-lts kernel finally has #riscv64 enabled https://git.alpinelinux.org/aports/commit/?id=d106e5949469

It might work on VisionFive v2, but I have no idea if it actually does.

Protip: if you ask a volunteer to test a kernel build for riscv64, make sure that you have actually built it before you ask

🤦♂️

#AlpineLinux 3.21.0 Release Candidate 1 is finally out!

Please test and report back!

I really hope that gcc 15 does not break as much.

The amount of work that has been done is insane. mio was kind enough to track most of the build breakages.

https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/issues/16335
https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/issues/16361

The not so good:

We got a bug report that was something like: "why don't you backport security fixes for some of the packages in community?"

us: "ok, which package is it?"

them: "I won't tell you. Its your job to know and its your job to fix".

And we had to deal with a violation of the Code of Conduct. Not fun at all.

Would have been so much nicer if we could get help find a solution for the problem instead of demanding complaints.

Don't be that person.

Fortunately, most people are nice

More of the good:

I took the time to register an account at kde bug tracker (I was surprised I didn't already have one! - or I just forgot the email address I used last time) - and file a bug. Within hours the fix was pointed to me and we could properly solve it.

I had the privilege to report back that the fix indeed works.

Feels good! Open Source can be very nice

This week I have experienced both the good and the bad with working with open source.

The good: Today I asked in gcc IRC channel about build failure of cross compiler. They were able the help me in the right direction and I found out it must be a bug in busybox awk. Feels so good to find that out, after banging my head into this for a couple of days. Ask for help early!

(still don't know exactly how busybox awk is broken 😨 )

Got a SiFive HiFive Premiere P550 dev board today. Thank you riscv.org!

#RISCV

@danct12
I replaced the fan with heatsink on my Banana Pi BPI-F3 to reduce noise. From my measurements of the CPU temp it seems to work better than the fan.

I just pushed linux-lts 6.12 to #AlpineLinux edge and this will be the kernel for Alpine 3.21.

@navi probably a good idea to avoid typedefs.

Linux kernel code style guide explains why
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v6.11/process/coding-style.html#typedefs

@dalias I git bisected it to this:
https://git.busybox.net/busybox/commit/libbb/dump.c?h=1_37_stable&id=e2287f99fe6f21fd6435ad04340170ad4ba5f6b3

The place where it fails in kernel build is here:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/Makefile.zboot?h=v6.6#n9

I have sent a patch for a testcase that reproduces it to busybox mailing list