[debian-yeeloong-project] d-i Yeeloong port in progress

[Jason Woofenden]

Colin,

Great to hear about you putting so much time into getting debian
running and installing well on lemote.

I'm not sure what falls under d-i exactly, but the main thing that
seems to me to be missing is the yeeloong_laptop kernel module.
This is needed for the battery monitor, and temp sensors for fan
speed control. (It'd also be great to have fan speed
auto-adjusted by default; the lemote is pretty loud otherwise.)

Last I checked (2-3 months ago?), WiFi worked fine under the debian loongson-2f
kernel (debian unstable) but you have to hit Fn+F5 to enable it.

I'm currently running the 2.6.38.4-libre-lemote kernel from the
gnewsense distro because it includes the yeeloong_laptop module.

Take care,    - Jason


On 2011-06-02 02:19PM, Colin Watson wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Ryan Lortie kindly lent me his Yeeloong for a few weeks, so I'm working
> on porting d-i to it.  Other people had already done lots of the usual
> work for a new port (the kernel, the boot loader, etc.), so I'm really
> just tying together some loose ends and trying to make
> http://wiki.debian.org/DebianYeeloong/HowTo/Install less of an involved
> procedure.
> 
> Done and committed/uploaded:
> 
>  * added loongson-2f kernel udebs
>  * fixed partitioner to select msdos partition tables on Loongson
>    without complaining
>  * added d-i images (a debian-installer source package with that change
>    probably won't be uploaded for a while, but we should get daily
>    builds at
>    http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/mipsel/daily/loongson-2f/ in the
>    not too distant future anyway)
> 
> In progress:
> 
>  * fix up partitioner to have correct checks on /boot so that PMON can
>    read from it (it currently requires ext2r0 more or less by accident,
>    which is too strict)
>  * add mipsel/loongson-2f support to grub-installer
> 
> To do:
> 
>  * wireless doesn't seem to work for me in d-i, even if I 'echo 1
>    >/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/state', although I do have the rtl8187
>    module loaded and d-i does recognise that the wlan0 device exists -
>    am I missing something?
>  * autopartitioning recipes
>  * make grub-installer create a suitable boot.cfg if it doesn't already
>    exist
>  * write text for the installation guide
>  * edit lots of wiki pages
> 
> Deferred:
> 
>  * it would be nice to deliver d-i images bootable using GRUB, since
>    GRUB loads initrds faster than versions of PMON before 2010-09-13 and
>    is generally more flexible; but the lack of EHCI support in GRUB
>    right now makes this difficult
>  * alternatively, it would be nice to ship a boot.cfg which loads d-i,
>    but the PMON version installed here predates reading boot.cfg from
>    USB by default, and the hardware owner said I could do anything with
>    it as long as I didn't reflash, so I wouldn't be able to test this
> 
> Am I missing anything that's within the domain of the installer?
> 
> I must say that this is quite a nice little piece of kit.  The keyboard
> is uncomfortably small for me (I have big hands), but that's in common
> with every other netbook I've seen so I won't hold that against the
> Yeeloong in particular.  Being able to easily see exactly what the
> firmware is prepared to boot from is a boon for installer development;
> I've had to experiment and/or disassemble bits of firmware in the past.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> -- 
> Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at debian.org]