Ppc64le
This page is used to describe the ppc64le port.
Testing (for developers)
The hosting sponsor for the ppc64le port operate a miniCloud service which will provide Alpine ppc64le images for testing.
View their website at http://openpower.ic.unicamp.br/minicloud/ for more info.
Hardware
You can buy POWER8 hardware from IBM or other vendors, for example the IBM S812LC server is reasonably price competitive to similar x86 servers and fully supported by the ppc64le port.
These are the IBM machines model that would support Alpine Linux:
- IBM Power System S821LC [1]
- IBM Power System S822LC for Big Data [2]
- IBM Power System S822LC for Commercial Computing [3]
- IBM Power System S822LC for High Performance Computing [IBM Power System S822LC for High Performance Computing]
- IBM Power System S812L and S822L [4]
- IBM Power System S824L [5]
- IBM Power System S812 [6]
- IBM Power System S822 [7]
- IBM Power System S814 [8]
- IBM Power System S824 [9]
- IBM Power Enterprise Systems for the cloud [10]
- IBM Power System E850C [11]
- IBM Power System E850 [12]
- IBM Power System E870 [13]
- IBM Power System E880 [14]
Tyan also has machines:
- Tyan TN76-BP016
- Tyan GT75-BP012
- Tyan TN71-BP012
Open Power machines:
Installation
The Alpine 3.6.1 ppc64le ISO is available at: http://rsync.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.6/releases/ppc64le/alpine-vanilla-3.6.1-ppc64le.iso
The user login is "root" with no password.
- Booting Alpine using qemu
To start qemu using the Alpine ISO as cdrom, you can use a command similar to:
$ sudo qemu-system-ppc64 -device spapr-vlan,netdev=net0,mac=4C:45:42:45:79:F7 -netdev bridge,br=br0,id=net0 -enable-kvm -m 8G -smp 16,sockets=16,cores=1,threads=1 -nodefaults -nographic -serial stdio -cdrom alpine-vanilla-3.6.0.ppc64le.iso
- Installing Alpine to hard-disk
This feature is not currently supported.
- Booting Alpine using qemu and saving modifications between reboots
When using Alpine in this mode, you need to use Alpine Local Backup (lbu) to save your modifications between reboots and that requires some writable medium, usually removable.
Create a disk to save Alpine modifications
$ qemu-img create alpine_disk.img 8G
Start qemu attaching the created disk and using Alpine ISO as cdrom. An example of a qemu command
$ sudo qemu-system-ppc64 -hda alpine_disk.img -device spapr-vlan,netdev=net0,mac=4C:45:42:45:79:F7 -netdev bridge,br=br0,id=net0 -enable-kvm -m 8G -smp 16,sockets=16,cores=1,threads=1 -nodefaults -nographic -serial stdio -cdrom alpine-vanilla-3.6.0-ppc64le.iso
Format the attached disk and add it to /etc/fstab file:
$ apk add e2fsprogs
$ mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda
$ echo "/dev/sda /media/sda ext4 noauto,rw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
$ mkdir /media/sda
$ mkdir /media/sda/cache
Set lbu to write in the attached disk, setting LBU_MEDIA=sda in /etc/lbu/lbu.conf file
Run "setup-alpine" command and select the following configurations when asked:
- Enter where to store configs ('floppy', 'sda', 'usb' or 'none') [none]: sda
- Enter apk cache directory (or '?' or 'none') [/media/sda/cache]: /media/sda/cache
Last step is to commit the changes
$ lbu commit
After doing this configurations, you can reboot your alpine and modifications will be saved. The next time a change happens, you just need to run "lbu commit" command, as the configurations are already done.
It is import to know that by default lbu only cares about modifications in /etc and its subfolders, with the exception of /etc/init.d!. For more information about how to use lbu and include new folder to backup: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Alpine_local_backup
Reference
* ABI : https://openpowerfoundation.org/?resource_lib=64-bit-elf-v2-abi-specification-power-architecture