OpenSuse MIPS port mid-term evaluation

In order to support two Google Summer of Code projects related to Loongson this year, Dexxon/Emtec took the initiative to donate hardware to the students and got Lemote/ICT to do the same. For people not aware of what Google Summer of Code is, it is a program for student to get paid to work on Open Source software as a summer job and totally financed by Google. The two projects in question are openSuSE MIPS port and a new N32 ABI port for Debian. We're now reaching mid-term of the program and each project has provided us with their current status. We will initially post the openSuSE report and the Debian one will come in a few days.

The OpenSuse MIPS port final objective is to run basic openSuSE system on the MIPS platform, with the Gdium sub-notebook as the first supported hardware using a Loongson2f MIPS 64el compatible processor, so let's review what has been done so far.

To accomplish the project, the student has 4 phases to achieve:

1. Port a very basic boot environment on MIPS emulator (qemu MIPS 64el portion). This is the base system to install more RPM packages
2. Port more packages to build a basic system. The basic system is a usable terminal interface system, users can login, type commands in bash, handle simple local job on real machine
3. Port YaST. YaST is a very powerful system configuration tool, which is mandatory for the openSuSE porting. Once YaST is ported, users can configure the whole system by ncurse based GUI with ease.
4. Set up installation source for the MIPS openSuSE version which can be used for the MIPS openSuSE system to install/update RPM packages. Of course it means the network subsystem should work perfectly on the ported openSuSE.

There also is an extra expectation from the project mentor -- X and Graphical User Interface. If the student can port X, Gnome and some important applications (e.g. firefox, openoffice) and make it work (as in "stable"), it should be a much more excited bonus for this GSoC project.

Currently, as the time of mid term evaluation, the student has achieved the following:

1. Finished the basic boot environment. 71 packages are ported, for detailed information, see https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dtp9h3z_5fb3jzpfm&hl=en
2. Finished the basic environment. 147^[1] packages are ported, for detailed information, see https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dtp9h3z_7czk4zddr&hl=en
3. The system can run on real hardware -- the Gdium netbook.

There are however still several issues in current system, such as:

• Some programs have SIGSEG fault due to code relocation issue on MIPS
• Some programs use x86 assembly language code, which failed the compiling on MIPS
• Some file system error during first/second boot, and users have to login the system on the third boot.

While solving these issues, the student is also working on the GUI environment port right now^[2]. Current todo-list is at https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dtp9h3z_9g6kwwbgq&hl=en.

This student already gave a presentation and showed how the system ran on a Gdium. He also wrote a simple "hello world" C program, compiled and ran it as a demo. Considering his excellent job at this moment, his mentor, Coly Li, rated his mid term evaluation as PASS.

Should you need more details do not hesitate to contact directly Coly or his student, Eryu Guan, under our IRC Channel, to whom we're extending ours thanks for their work and interest. All the best until project completion and beyond!

^[1]Not all of the 147 packages are working correctly. nscd dbus gpg avahi dhcpd sshd and ssh segfault.
^[2]Haven't managed to drive the NIC card yet. The kernel says "Chip not responding, ignoring board".