... the Raspberry Pi is not!

I just got mine, after months of waiting...

First task: Try to communicate with it.

Post a reply to this message

On 10/12/2012 2:26 PM, clipka wrote:
> First task: Try to communicate with it.

Second task: Port Pov to it.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Stephen wrote:
>
> Second task: Port Pov to it.
>

I'm curiously waiting for official benchmark results.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

On 10/12/2012 4:00 PM, Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
>>
>> Second task: Port Pov to it.
>>
>
> I'm curiously waiting for official benchmark results.
>
> -Aero

Third task:   ;-)

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> Second task: Port Pov to it.

Nitpicking but...

There's a difference between "porting" a program to a platform, and
simply "compiling" it for that platform. Porting would require code
modifications, and povray probably doesn't need any for the Raspberry Pi.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Am 10.12.2012 16:37, schrieb Stephen:
> On 10/12/2012 2:26 PM, clipka wrote:
>> First task: Try to communicate with it.
>
> Second task: Port Pov to it.

Exactly.

Post a reply to this message

Am 10.12.2012 18:38, schrieb Warp:
> Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
>> Second task: Port Pov to it.
>
> Nitpicking but...
>
> There's a difference between "porting" a program to a platform, and
> simply "compiling" it for that platform. Porting would require code
> modifications, and povray probably doesn't need any for the Raspberry Pi.

Someone already tried the compiling part some months ago, only to find 
that although it did compile and even run, the results weren't 
satisfactory (as in, the output included artifacts that shouldn't have 
been there).

That's when I decided to order one myself.

So yes, it /is/ "porting" this time.

Post a reply to this message

clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Someone already tried the compiling part some months ago, only to find 
> that although it did compile and even run, the results weren't 
> satisfactory (as in, the output included artifacts that shouldn't have 
> been there).

> That's when I decided to order one myself.

> So yes, it /is/ "porting" this time.

Sounds more like bug-fixing rather than porting, unless it really is
something that has to be modified because the platform, for some strange
reason, works differently from all other platforms. Which would sound
really strange given that it runs Linux and BSD...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 10/12/2012 07:01 PM, Warp wrote:
> clipka<ano### [at] anonymousorg>  wrote:
>> Someone already tried the compiling part some months ago, only to find
>> that although it did compile and even run, the results weren't
>> satisfactory (as in, the output included artifacts that shouldn't have
>> been there).
>
>> That's when I decided to order one myself.
>
>> So yes, it /is/ "porting" this time.
>
> Sounds more like bug-fixing rather than porting, unless it really is
> something that has to be modified because the platform, for some strange
> reason, works differently from all other platforms. Which would sound
> really strange given that it runs Linux and BSD...

It probably doesn't implement IEEE-754 arithmetic correctly or something 
daft like that.

Post a reply to this message

Am 10.12.2012 20:01, schrieb Warp:
> clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>> Someone already tried the compiling part some months ago, only to find
>> that although it did compile and even run, the results weren't
>> satisfactory (as in, the output included artifacts that shouldn't have
>> been there).
>
>> That's when I decided to order one myself.
>
>> So yes, it /is/ "porting" this time.
>
> Sounds more like bug-fixing rather than porting, unless it really is
> something that has to be modified because the platform, for some strange
> reason, works differently from all other platforms. Which would sound
> really strange given that it runs Linux and BSD...

Not so strange if you recall that the porting work for Linux (and 
probably also BSD) to run on ARM platforms had been done already.

One possible difference might be the floating point math, which doesn't 
seem to be as straightforward as we're used to on x86 machines. I guess 
there is /some/ reason why the official reference Linux distro for the 
Pi is built to use software-emulated floating point math, rather than 
the on-chip floating point hardware.


Even if it turns out that there's nothing else to do, there's still 
porting work to be done in the sense of checking whether the 
platform-specific header files make sense for the ARM.

Post a reply to this message

clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Not so strange if you recall that the porting work for Linux (and
> probably also BSD) to run on ARM platforms had been done already.
>
> One possible difference might be the floating point math, which doesn't
> seem to be as straightforward as we're used to on x86 machines. I guess
> there is /some/ reason why the official reference Linux distro for the
> Pi is built to use software-emulated floating point math, rather than
> the on-chip floating point hardware.
>
>
> Even if it turns out that there's nothing else to do, there's still
> porting work to be done in the sense of checking whether the
> platform-specific header files make sense for the ARM.

I hope you're porting for Raspbian as it supports hardfloat.
Raspbian also became the recommended distro some months ago.

Post a reply to this message

I'm more into 'physical computing' these days. I just bought an Arduino Uno, to
play around with (and to learn some rudiments of the C language.) The Raspberry
Pi is for geeks. And, of course, I'm not one of *them*, Heaven forbid...  :-P

Post a reply to this message

Am 11.12.2012 10:42, schrieb Aydan:

> I hope you're porting for Raspbian as it supports hardfloat.
> Raspbian also became the recommended distro some months ago.

It's apparently also the distro that came with my Pi (from RS 
Components), so yes - that's going to be my target platform.

Post a reply to this message

Am 11.12.2012 12:27, schrieb Kenneth:
> I'm more into 'physical computing' these days. I just bought an Arduino Uno, to
> play around with (and to learn some rudiments of the C language.) The Raspberry
> Pi is for geeks. And, of course, I'm not one of *them*, Heaven forbid...  :-P

You're joking, right? Granted, the 6 analog inputs are neat, but aside 
from that it's just a mere abacus compared to the Pi - which is about 
the same price, but a guesstimated 100-fold computing power and memory 
capacity. Not to mention the HDMI output, USB-A connectors, Ethernet 
port, and - best of all - a standard Micro-USB-style 5V power connector :-)

Post a reply to this message

clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:

> You're joking, right? Granted, the 6 analog inputs are neat, but aside
> from that it's just a mere abacus compared to the Pi...

Yes, joking. Good analogy, BTW. ;-)  The Pi looks like a fantastic little
machine...but way above my computing skills, sad to say. I'm just looking for
the Arduino to easily control some external thingies and gizmos. I did consider
the Pi, though (briefly!)

The Wikipedia entry about the Pi reads more like an enthusiastic sales pitch
than a neutral article. That was surprising.

Post a reply to this message

Am 12.12.2012 00:18, schrieb Kenneth:

> The Wikipedia entry about the Pi reads more like an enthusiastic sales pitch
> than a neutral article. That was surprising.

If it can stand up to its promises, I wonder how one couldn't be 
enthusiastic about it, given its price tag.

Post a reply to this message

Am 10.12.2012 15:26, schrieb clipka:
> ... the Raspberry Pi is not!
>
> I just got mine, after months of waiting...
>
> First task: Try to communicate with it.

Okay, first step was a piece of cake: Shove in the SD card with the 
Raspberry Pi OS, hook up the Pi's HDMI port to a display (a HDMI/DVI-D 
adapter cable will work fine), plug a keyboard into the USB port, and 
power it up with a standard MicroUSB-style power adapter.

There. Linux boots, ultimately firing up some minimalistic GUI. A bit 
cumbersome because we haven't plugged in a mouse, but what the heck, 
real programmers don't need one.


Second step: Hook up the Pi's Ethernet port to the DSL router, fire up 
the package management, and see what happens.

Nice. It connects to the 'net without any fuss, updates its package 
list, and finds me 95 packages to update. But first things first: I want 
the dev packages for boost, libpng, openexr and the like. But the thing 
refuses: It demands that I become root, and I have not the slightest 
idea what the root password is.

A bit of browsing the Wiki on eLinux later, I find that there's no 
password to know, and that instead you are supposed to do everything via 
"sudo" - which obviously you can't if you're starting the programs via a 
GUI. But they tell me how to equip root with a password, which I do. 
Fine, now I can get the package manager to actually do something useful.


Third step: Communicate with the Pi remotely from my Windows machine. 
Turns out that SSH is enabled by default and works fine, and there's a 
good how-to section on the Wiki for setting up the Pi as a Samba-based 
file server, with step-by-step instructions that even a total noob can 
follow.

I would have liked to set up the Pi to remotely access its desktop via 
Xming, but XDMCP doesn't run out of the box, and there's no fancy how-to 
for it on the Wiki, so I'll stick with SSH for now. After all, what else 
am I expecting to do than run "./configure", "make install" and "povray 
foo.pov" from the command prompt? :-)


So now for task 2 step 1: Try to compile the most recent POV-Ray 3.7 
development version on the Pi. I think I already have all the necessary 
libraries installed, but we'll see...

Post a reply to this message

Am 12.12.2012 14:56, schrieb clipka in povray.off-topic:

> So now for task 2 step 1: Try to compile the most recent POV-Ray 3.7
> development version on the Pi. I think I already have all the necessary
> libraries installed, but we'll see...

Downloaded & unpacked the original povray-3.7.0.RC6.tar.gz fresh from 
povray.org.

"./compile" is considerably slower than on my x86 Linux machine (maybe 
the SD card is a bottleneck?), but seems to be happy with what it finds. 
I'm not, as I forgot to specify "--prefix=...", so I had to run it again.

"make check" is a slow crawl, which again I blame on the SD card. What 
worries me a bit is that I get repeated assembler warnings like:

{standard input}: Assembler messages:
{standard input}:2148: Warning: swp{b} use is deprecated for this 
architecture

I wonder what this means; for the time being I suspect this to be a flaw 
in the Raspbian distro, specifically the compiler suite.

Anyway, this is going to take ages, so unless this first build already 
turns out to run like a charm, the next task is probably to hook up some 
external HD via USB and see if that speeds things up. Maybe even a USB 
stick will do.

Post a reply to this message

On 12/12/2012 09:44 AM, clipka wrote:
> Am 12.12.2012 14:56, schrieb clipka in povray.off-topic:
>
>> So now for task 2 step 1: Try to compile the most recent POV-Ray 3.7
>> development version on the Pi. I think I already have all the necessary
>> libraries installed, but we'll see...
>
> Downloaded & unpacked the original povray-3.7.0.RC6.tar.gz fresh from
> povray.org.
>
> "./compile" is considerably slower than on my x86 Linux machine (maybe
> the SD card is a bottleneck?), but seems to be happy with what it finds.
> I'm not, as I forgot to specify "--prefix=...", so I had to run it again.
>
> "make check" is a slow crawl, which again I blame on the SD card. What
> worries me a bit is that I get repeated assembler warnings like:
>
> {standard input}: Assembler messages:
> {standard input}:2148: Warning: swp{b} use is deprecated for this
> architecture
>
> I wonder what this means; for the time being I suspect this to be a flaw
> in the Raspbian distro, specifically the compiler suite.
>
> Anyway, this is going to take ages, so unless this first build already
> turns out to run like a charm, the next task is probably to hook up some
> external HD via USB and see if that speeds things up. Maybe even a USB
> stick will do.
>

must be like having christmas come a few weeks early ( a new toy to play 
with) ... have fun

Post a reply to this message