How to test build using Aboriginal Linux system images. * Put a source tree into hdc.dir/. For example, this should work: git clone git://busybox.net/var/lib/git/busybox.git * Run ./make-hdc-img.sh: it will generate ext2 image file, hdc.img, from hdc.dir/* data. This requires root for loop mount. * Download and unpack, or build from source and unpack one or more system-image-ARCH directories into this directory (the one which contains this README). * Install qemu-system-ARCH. The arch names may differ from system-image-ARCH: for example, all ARM flavors (armv4l...armv6l) are served by the same qemu - qemu-system-arm. On my machine, I needed to install qemu-system-{arm,mips,x86,ppc,sparc,m68k,sh4}. * Run: ./parallel-build-hdc-img.sh system-image-DIR1 system-image-DIR2... (background it if you don't want to see "Waiting to finish" thing). This runs build in several qemu virtual machines in parallel. * Observe system-image-*.log file(s) with growing log of the build. There is no automated detection of errors for now: you need to examine logs yourself. Log files will also contain uuencoded (or if all else fails, od -tx1'ed) binary, if build was successful. To debug a build problem in one of the sandboxes, change keep_hdb to "keep_hdb=true" in parallel-build-hdc-img.sh - this preserves system-image-ARCH/hdb.img after the build, so you can go into system-image-ARCH and run "HDB=hdb.img ./dev-environment.sh" to debug the problem. You can also run "./parallel-build-hdc-img.sh -s system-image-ARCH" - single mode, output is to screen and serial input is from keyboard. If hdc.dir/bin/busybox-$ARCH exists, it will be used during build to supply additional tools (dir with all applets appended to $PATH). For me, the following system images worked: system-image-armv4l system-image-armv4tl system-image-armv5l od is buggy on arm*: # echo Hello-hello-hello-hello | od -b 0000000 110 145 154 154 157 055 150 145 154 154 157 055 150 145 154 154 0000000 157 055 150 145 154 154 157 012 <= WRONG OFFSET 0000000 (can also be even more bogus like 17767153361) system-image-i686 system-image-mips - od is buggy system-image-mipsel - od is buggy system-image-x86_64 system-image-powerpc - qemu 1.2.2 didn't work, 2.4.0 worked; od is buggy system-image-sparc - qemu 1.2.2 didn't work, 2.4.0 worked; od is buggy And these did not: system-image-armv6l - hang on "Uncompressing Linux... done, booting the kernel" system-image-m68k - my qemu doesn't like "-M q800" system-image-mips64 - init dies "Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! exitcode=0x0000000a" system-image-sh4 - qemu segfaults early in kernel boot