Re: NetBSD 6.0 and earmv7hf

["Ernst J. Oud" <ernstoud%euronet.nl@localhost>]

>> How to go about compiling, say rsync, for the NetBSD 6.0 TC's earmv7hf
>> architecture? Any tips?
>
> Is it possible that Apple built the userland binaries with earmv6hf or 
> similar?

Hard to tell... I tried some of the earmv6hf packages (and earmv7hf) (of the 
NetBSD 7.0 branch on ftp.netbsd.org) and they abort
with bus errors. Probably caused by NetBSD 7.0 userland executables running 
on a NetBSD 6.0 kernel.

A NetBSD 7.0 earmv7hf kernel cannot be compiled for the Apple device since 
it contains proprietary drivers from Apple.

I cannot crosscompile NetBSD 6.0 userland (using NetBSD 6.0 i386 in a VM) 
since I cannot crosscompile the compiler for earmv6hf or
earmv7hf since both machine/architecture types are not supported for NetBSD 
6.0.

Although it says somewhere that NetBSD 6.0 has limited support for the 
Raspberry Pi (which is earmv6hf, and the Pi 2 earmv7hf) you
cannot compile for that cpu type since the GCC compiler with NetBSD 6.0 does 
not allow those options.

Chicken/egg problem. It is weird that the NetBSD 6.0 evbarm set (comp.tgz) 
contains a GCC toolset that is not able to compile for
this router/nas which runs NetBSD 6.0. Perhaps Apple had access to a 
toolchain provided by Broadcom for this BCM53019 SOC.

Bit of a shame since my (older) NetBSD 4.0 TimeCapsules now run rsync fine 
(succesfully crosscompiled on a NetBSD 4.0 i386 VM) so I
can use them for Windows/Linux backup purposes and that for the latest 
TimeCapsule that runs a newer version of NetBSD it is
impossible to compile packages for.

I am not very much  familiar with the ARM instruction set but I was a bit 
amazed to experience that a three line hello.c program
statically compiled for armv5te (NetBSD 4.0) does not run on earmv7hf 
(NetBSD 6.0). NetBSD 6.0 simply states that it can't run this
ELF file (error ENOEXEC).  I believed that the ARM instruction set was 
downward compatible but it does not appear to be...

>> BTW; why does the NetBSD community not keep the packages archives for 
>> older
>> versions; the binaries for the OS are kept but not the packages
>> unfortunately...
>
> I think its a combination of disk space and providing older packages
> with known security issues

Granted. But you would expect that somewhere, someone has such an archive. 
But no.

> Thanks
>
> David

Thank you for your input. I guess this Airport Extreme Time Capsule now ends 
op on eBay :-)

Ernst