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[Lee Forrest <lforrestster AT gmail.com>]

On Sun, Feb 11, 2007 at 01:50:55PM -0800, David Moberg wrote:
> Lee Forrest wrote:
> > Uclibc isn't stable enough, and my hardware requires a lot of libc6
> > software, so I decided to give in and 'upgrade' to glibc2,
> 
> glibc2 has several nice features, e.g. binary backward compatibility.
> However, like most GNU software, it's big. There's a script called
> "mklibs.sh" for Debian, which is supposed to let you remove features
> from your libc to reduce size if you don't need them. I tried it, but
> it doesn't seem to work with glibc.

That's ironic.

> It does make a _very_ small uclibc, though. I wonder if there
> is a way to reduce the size of a new version of glibc.

I'm going to start by studying that mklibs.sh script! 

Thanks for the tip.

Bet it needs bash2+ and GNU utils...

> The old
> glibcs are already smaller but don't always work as well. :(

>
> > but instead of installing it on my present system, I'm
> > rebuilding BL3 around it.
>
> You may be interested in taking a glance at BL2. It's based on
> Slackware 7.1 (glibc 2.1). But it doesn't have the nice small
> X setup of BL3, and the busybox is version 0.60.5 so sometimes
> new scripts don't work.

I have looked over SW7.1 and felt more comfortable with the 
libs for 9.0. Not really that much different.

But I'll take a closer look at BL2. 

> > Now, slowly but surely, I'm either moving files over from
> > BL3-1 or replacing them with packages from SW9.0 (the less
> > there requires libncurses so I decided to pass). 'file' needs
> > libgcc_s.so.1 and libz.so.1.2.3, so I copied those over from
> > BL3-1 and it works fine.
> >
> > I'm well under 5M right now.
>
> Since you are using a 2.4 kernel, you can use a newer glibc if
> you run into something that needs it. (Look for the GLIBC_2.3.x
> unresolved symbols.)

Okay. But X is my only real challenge, because of that i810 chip.
If I had another PCI slot I'd get another video card.

> > Next step is Xvesa and friends.
>
> The BL3 Xvesa is static. It should work with any libc.
> However, the libc5 X client programs will need to be upgraded.

Oh. That would be window manager/exterm/xpdf/xbrowser.

> Glibc-based X applications will sometimes accept the libc5
> libX11, but a few will not, so it's usually smarter to replace
> the libc5 X infrastructure with that from SW7.1 or later.

Will do. Thanks.

> > As soon as I've recreated BL3 I'll be installing gcc and
> > building an xserver for my i810 chip. First try will be the
> > tinyX, and then the regular server if that doesn't work. It
> > won't be a full X install, just the server.
>
> There's a glibc-based Xi810 binary over here:
> http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rule/XFree86/kdrive/8.0/ It
> should work unless your glibc is too old or whoever compiled it
> made a mistake.

Excellent.

Glibc is 2.3.1. I'm downloading the server right now. Will fire it up and
see what happens. I'll try the xinit from my debian OS.

Okay, did that, did ldconfig and discovered I needed the three
libs below and brough them over.

ldd xinit:

        libXmuu.so.1 => not found
        libXext.so.6 => not found
        libX11.so.6 => not found
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40017000)

It won't see them, which is weird. Any idea why?

Now consider this below, which is from ldd Xi810.

        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
        libz.so.1 => /lib/libz.so.1 (0x40016000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x40027000)
        libpam.so.0 => not found
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x4004a000)
        libpam_misc.so.0 => not found
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4004d000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x40180000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

I brought over the missing libs above, did ldconfig and ldd, and
they showed up A-OK, then just ran Xi810 solo and got a perfect,
crosshatched screen on tty3!:

KdAllocateGARTMemory: allocation of 1024 pages failed
        (Cannot allocate memory)
No physical memory available for 4194304 bytes of DCACHE

[We've seen those before, haven't we? :-)]

[This below is hardly surprising, considering there isn't even a fonts dir
yet.]

Could not init font path element /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/, removing 
from list!
Could not init font path element /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/, removing 
from list!
Could not init font path element /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/, removing 
from list!

/quote

Tried the xinit from BL3, symlinking libc.so.5 to libc-2.3.1.so,
but ldd reports that xinit doesn't even exist.

Do you think I should try the xlibs and xinit from Bl2?

Otherwise, it looks like I'm going to have to compile X just to get xinit and 
the xlibs!

Lee

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BasicLinux: Small is Beautiful
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