Gentoo on Acer Aspire1, including binpkgs
About a month ago, I installed Gentoo on the new-to-me Acer Aspire1. Installation went like anything else, it is just a normal x86 host after all. I don’t have everything on it working, because I don’t care. If you are looking for additional resources on getting the extras working, you may want to look here or here.
The exciting part, that I got working and am ready to announce publicly, is my new atom-x86 binpkg repo. What makes this repo different than the binpkgs located on tinderbox.dev.gentoo.org/default-linux is that this repo has CFLAGS specific to the Intel Atom processor. I identified the compiler flags by using the following gcc command: gcc -Q --help=target -march=native and set the following -march=prescott -mtune=generic -msahf. On my linode (review) host, I have a chroot that builds all new packages in my world file once a day which comes from the aspire1. In this manor, I am able to always have binary packages available to me whenever I update my aspire1. Now, I have all the benefits of a source distro and the speed of a binary distro. 
If you would like to use this repo, set PORTAGE_BINHOST in /etc/make.conf and add ‘getbinpkg’ to FEATURES (or use the emerge options directly). Be advised, that thought this works for me, I make no guarantees for you.
PORTAGE_BINHOST="http://tinderbox.jolexa.net/atom-x86/"
FEATURES="${FEATURES} getbinpkg"
I also have an html view of the packages available.
Nice! I was thinking about putting Gentoo on my Aspire One. I was also worried about compilation on it. Now I will try to reuse your binary packages.
Thanks!
It is not the worst processor to compile on, but it isn’t that great either. Using binary packages will save you some time. Feel free to leave some feedback
From a bit of experimenting I found that
CFLAGS=”-march=core2 -mtune=generic -mfpmath=sse …” on GCC 4.4.2 (contrary to gcc -Q help…) gave the best performance.
I have been running this on my HP mini 5101 for several months with great results.
It is not hard to set up a chroot to build the Atom’s binpkgs, and I highly recommend it for anyone that runs ~x86 on one of these beasts as they do compile a bit slow.
I have not found a way to binpkg the kernel (compiled in the chroot), so I just tar both the source and the outputed /boot and /lib/modules and scp them over, would be nice if that was done automatically. But then Gentoo does not like automating kernel stuff: after an emerge -u I just do a “make oldconfig && make -j3 all && make install modules_install && module-rebuild rebuild” edit grub, and I am ready to go, this could really be automated (but is off topic).
Thanks for providing PORTAGE_BINHOST for those that can afford the bandwidth (/mutter against South African internet). You should, however, mention your USE flags, as they have to be the same for someone to use your bins.
Thanks for the CFLAG tip, unsure if I have motivation to change my setup but I will look. You know, maybe my chroot could build ~arch too, that way it would work for both arch and ~arch users.
I will also look at how to express my USE flags to people. It should go somewhere in the html view. If you use the -G emerge option, it uses the remote packages regardless of USE flags. (Basically, you use what I have without choice). Otherwise, if USE do not match, it will compile what it needs to.
~arch is a lot of packages to build every day (:
My netbook with only 707 packages (143 in world) updates at least 5 every day and normally around 14.
Apparently gcc 4.5 will have -march=atom, kernel 2.6.32 already has atom as a CPU target.
As a nice little hack, the html view now shows emerge –info and make.conf. I’ll also get it to show package.* soon.
What about the poulsbo driver ?
What about it and why do I care? Regardless, you can still emerge $driver regardless of the fact if it is in the binpkg repo or not.