Debian ppc64el port

News

The IBM Power platform, code name ppc64el, is an official architecture in both Jessie and Stretch.

Required Hardware

Debian/ppc64el requires, at minimum, a POWER8 processor machine. Although Debian was initially bootstrapped on a POWER7 set of servers. this class of server is not supported anymore, and you are not able to run Debian/ppc64el on a POWER7 processor without hitting an illegal instruction fault.

There are, at this moment, a plenty of POWER8 machines being sold by different companies.

The ppc64el port is not aimed for old Powerpc Macintosh machines, and, at the moment, there is no way to install it on this class of machines.

POWER9 hardware is also supported on unstable branch (kernel 4.15+).

Installation

See the ppc64el/Installation page.

Development

Development Team

See the ppc64el/DevelopmentTeam page.

There are significant contributions by people from open-source communities and companies.

If you are a Debian Developer, Maintainer, New Member, or enthusiast, and is interested in this port, please let us know.

Development Machines

Porterbox

plummer

Individual Virtual Machines (ppc64el mini cloud)

You can get access to ppc64el virtual machines in the OpenPOWER MiniCloud - easy, free and fast.

POWER8 Virtual Machine

A ppc64el virtual machine is available at ?OpenPower mini-cloud. This is a set of POWER8 machines and you can request a full VM for development purposes:

http://openpower.ic.unicamp.br/minicloud/

Sbuild on ppc64el

Most of the information in this topic can be found at sbuild wiki.

Create the chroot

1 sudo apt-get install sbuild sudo apt-get install sbuild 2 sudo sbuild-update --keygen sudo sbuild-update --keygen 3 sudo sbuild-adduser $LOGNAME sudo sbuild-adduser 4 ... *logout* and *re-login* or use ` newgrp sbuild ` in your current shell ... *logout* and *re-login* or usenewgrp sbuildin your current shell 5 sudo sbuild-createchroot --include=eatmydata,ccache,gnupg unstable /srv/chroot/unstable-ppc64el-sbuild http://httpredir.debian.org/debian sudo sbuild-createchroot --include=eatmydata,ccache,gnupg unstable /srv/chroot/unstable-ppc64el-sbuild http://httpredir.debian.org/debian

Try to use a local mirror so the builds run faster https://www.debian.org/mirror/list

1 sudo sbuild-update -udcar unstable-ppc64el-sbuild sudo sbuild-update -udcar unstable-ppc64el-sbuild

The arguments '-udcar' will tell sbuild-update to run an apt-get update, dist-upgrade, clean, autoclean, and autoremove in the chroot.

Building packages

From the source directory:

1 sbuild sbuild

Using the .dsc file:

1 sbuild <package>_*.dsc sbuild _*.dsc

To download and build the package:

1 sbuild -d unstable <package> sbuild -d unstable

With parallel:

DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=parallel=4 sbuild

Cleaning up schroot

Warning: This will end all sessions, including the ones you might have created manually.

sudo schroot --end-session --all-sessions

To find the specific schroot to remove, find it with {{{schroot -l --all}}}, then:

sudo schroot --end-session --chroot=<chroot>

Where <chroot> is the name of the chroot to be removed.

Technical Documentation

Bugs

Usertags: ppc64el (udd view)

Done/Closed bugs

Done/Closed bugs - archived included

News on ppc64el bugs

References

CategoryPorts