Dear all, I was searching for a recent i586 for CentOS-5 in the CentOSPlus repository. Finding none, I decided to try my hands at building one. I have documented the changes made to the stock SRPM for building an i586 kernel on a temporary wiki page: * http://wiki.centos.org/TimothyLee/centos5_i586_patch These instructions have been successfully tested against the 2.6.18-164.10.1.el5 kernel. All comments are welcomed. I have two questions for the development team: * Is this article suitable for publication on the wiki? * Can the changes mentioned in that article be incorporated into the stock SRPM? (As far as I know, non-i586 builds should not be affected) Regards, Timothy Lee
Christopher Chan
2010-Jan-11 06:29 UTC
[CentOS-docs] Article on building i586 CentOS-5 kernel
Timothy Lee wrote:> Dear all, > > I was searching for a recent i586 for CentOS-5 in the CentOSPlus > repository. Finding none, I decided to try my hands at building one. I > have documented the changes made to the stock SRPM for building an i586 > kernel on a temporary wiki page:Wow. There are Pentium machines still running out there? You do know that Pentium optimizations are only for Pentiums and that such binaries could actually run slower on anything Pentium-II/Pentium Pro and above than i386 (actually i486 optimized binaries iirc - must check gcc) optimized binaries due to the architecture differences of the Pentium? Been such a long time since i saw any mention of i586.
Karanbir Singh
2010-Jan-11 12:18 UTC
[CentOS-docs] Article on building i586 CentOS-5 kernel
Hi, I am lagging a bit on the -docs maillist backlog, will try and catchup over the next few days. On 01/11/2010 06:17 AM, Timothy Lee wrote:> * http://wiki.centos.org/TimothyLee/centos5_i586_patch > > These instructions have been successfully tested against the > 2.6.18-164.10.1.el5 kernel. All comments are welcomed.sounds good :)> I have two questions for the development team: > > * Is this article suitable for publication on the wiki?I'd say no, not here in the user facing wiki> * Can the changes mentioned in that article be incorporated into the > stock SRPM? (As far as I know, non-i586 builds should not be > affected)No, but there is a big open door in the c5plus kernel window. That would be the best place for this. However, expanding a bit ( and this conversation might be better for -devel rather than -docs ). Is the modified kernel the the only bit of change you need for i586 support ? I'd think a glibc.i586 might be worth doing as well. And there were a few other packages that were required to be patched on c4 to make it work for i586. How many of those are needed here as well ? And there are a lot of patches in the kernel tree that might not impact the i586 code at all. eg. whats the state of xen in this i586 kernel ? If there is reasonable interest in running a i586 tree, then imho, a SIG dedicated to this would be the best route to go. It would also make it possible to have a i586 specific tree that can be maintained in parallel to the main core distro. -- Karanbir Singh London, UK | http://www.karan.org/ | twitter.com/kbsingh ICQ: 2522219 | Yahoo IM: z00dax | Gtalk: z00dax GnuPG Key : http://www.karan.org/publickey.asc