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headless squeak for nslu2?

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Brian Zhou

headless squeak for nslu2?

Hi all squeakers,

I've ported quite a few languages to the nslu2 optware (see
http://nslu2-linux.org for detail). The only major language not running on the
"slug" is Smalltalk.

Any idea where to start to get a headless squeak running on the slug?

I vaguely remember there is some package allow one to use web browser as a
Smalltalk browser. Combined with a headless image, that would be a fun
environment to experiment.

Any pointer would be greatly appreciated.

-Brian Zhou
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Profiles/BrianZhou

Re: headless squeak for nslu2?

Hi!

Brian Zhou <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Hi all squeakers,
>
> I've ported quite a few languages to the nslu2 optware (see
> http://nslu2-linux.org for detail). The only major language not running on the
> "slug" is Smalltalk.
>
> Any idea where to start to get a headless squeak running on the slug?

Start with squeakvm.org - suck down source, compile a VM. The VM can be
built without X, or you can run it using "-headless" or similar options.
If you have a decent Linux I am guessing you are home free, perhaps
someone already have done it.

And btw, if you have VNC that works dandy too - so you can actually run
an image with the UI, but remotely. In fact, Squeak has a VNC included
even (as an addon from SqueakMap). We (web app devs) use VNC all the
time.

regards, Göran

timrowledge

Re: headless squeak for nslu2?

I quite like the list near the top of the page:-

" Every community has its own set of rules. Here are ours:

You will search the wiki first here and read the FAQ before asking
questions.
You must read and follow the steps in the README file precisely when
flashing firmware.
Those who ask the questions, update the wiki when they get the answers.
Those who complain about the documentation, update the wiki to make
it better.
Friends don't let friends flash custom firmware without confirmed
RedBoot Upgrade Mode access.
Friends don't let friends flash custom bootloaders without confirmed
JTAG access."

Maybe we should adopt analogous rules wrt our community education needs.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: AGO: Allow Games Only

Re[2]: headless squeak for nslu2?

Hello Tim,

tR> " Every community has its own set of rules. Here are ours:

tR> You will search the wiki first here and read the FAQ before asking
tR> questions.

That's just a simple way for getting very few new people into the
boat.

For different reasons (not being sexy like squeak) the german forth
people suffer this thing. I'm in that club (just paying member) for
over a decade and they just get older and diminish.

tR> Maybe we should adopt analogous rules wrt our community education needs.

Those (understandably) frustrated by the always repeating questions
which could be solved by just searching the wealth of information
about Squeak just stop replying and use their mail filters.

Otherwise I fear we have to face the biological solution.

Herbert mailto:[hidden email]

timrowledge

Re: Re[2]: headless squeak for nslu2?

On 28-Apr-06, at 10:17 AM, Herbert König wrote:
[snip]

>
> Otherwise I fear we have to face the biological solution.
Fair points Herbert.
Perhaps if the normal response to 'frequent question' by a newcomer
was a polite message like:-

Hi XXXXX,
I think your question might be answered by http://foo.bar.com/FAQ/
1.html so please take a look and see if it helps. If it doesn't, then
please let us know so we can help and improve our knowledgebase.

... then we might have some success.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
To define recursion, we must first define recursion.

Re[4]: headless squeak for nslu2?

Hello Tim,

tR> I think your question might be answered by http://foo.bar.com/FAQ/
tR> 1.html so please take a look and see if it helps. If it doesn't, then
tR> please let us know so we can help and improve our knowledgebase.

tR> ... then we might have some success.

I agree and and my patience is also limited.

And personally I don't mind if someone tells me "I talk to you AFTER
you read the FAQ".

A visit from friends kept me from reading mail.

Herbert mailto:[hidden email]

Brian Zhou

Re: headless squeak for nslu2?

In reply to this post by Göran Krampe

<goran <at> krampe.se> writes:

>
> Hi!
>
> Brian Zhou <b88zhou <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi all squeakers,
> >
> > I've ported quite a few languages to the nslu2 optware (see
> > http://nslu2-linux.org for detail). The only major language not running on the
> > "slug" is Smalltalk.
> >
> > Any idea where to start to get a headless squeak running on the slug?
>
> Start with squeakvm.org - suck down source, compile a VM. The VM can be
> built without X, or you can run it using "-headless" or similar options.
> If you have a decent Linux I am guessing you are home free, perhaps
> someone already have done it.
>
> And btw, if you have VNC that works dandy too - so you can actually run
> an image with the UI, but remotely. In fact, Squeak has a VNC included
> even (as an addon from SqueakMap). We (web app devs) use VNC all the
> time.
>
> regards, Göran
>
>

Thanks Göran,

I'm glad to tell you all that squeak has been ported (cross compiled) to run on
the nslu2! (266MHz big-endian ARM with 32MB RAM -nodisplay -nosound)

0 tinyBenchmarks
'14692378 bytecodes/sec; 551451 sends/sec'

The cross build makefile and patches are checked in at
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/nslu/unslung/make/squeak.mk
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/nslu/unslung/sources/squeak/

Since "optware" supports a couple of other small devices, it should not be too
hard to get squeak running on them. The binary package for nslu2 is at

http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/nslu2/cross/unstable/squeak_3.9.7-1_armeb.ipk

NSLU2 wiki page:
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/RunSqueakSmalltalk

In fact, I'm running the seaside 2.6 image thru the built-in RFBServer, not
fast, but quite usable.

If only we had a Seaside/Ajax version of the SystemBrowser, Transcript &
Workspace, then we can remove lots of the GUI stuff. What do other squeakers
think about this idea?

-Brian Zhou

Avi Bryant

Re: headless squeak for nslu2?

On May 1, 2006, at 11:24 PM, Brian Zhou wrote:

> If only we had a Seaside/Ajax version of the SystemBrowser,
> Transcript &
> Workspace, then we can remove lots of the GUI stuff. What do other
> squeakers
> think about this idea?

See John Pierce's LiveWeb, available from http://
squeak.saltypickle.com .

Avi

timrowledge

Re: headless squeak for nslu2?

In reply to this post by Brian Zhou

On 1-May-06, at 11:24 PM, Brian Zhou wrote:
>
> I'm glad to tell you all that squeak has been ported (cross
> compiled) to run on
> the nslu2! (266MHz big-endian ARM with 32MB RAM -nodisplay -nosound)
>
> 0 tinyBenchmarks
> '14692378 bytecodes/sec; 551451 sends/sec'

Yup, that's pretty much exactly what I used to get on my old Acorn
RiscPC SA 202MHz machine, so no surprises there. You might get better
figures in the larger benchmarks because the slug can't possibly have
a memory system as primitive that the RPC (16MHz 32 bit wide bus
meant for 1992 era RAM) even if they tried.

You'll find that performance is ok for everything but morphic but
since I'm reasonably sure the slug doesn't have graphics of its own
that probably won't be a problem.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.

Torsten Sadowski-2

Re: headless squeak for nslu2?

In reply to this post by Brian Zhou

Hi,

the nslu2 seems also to be supported by the openembedded project. I did
get the system to compile a 3.4 VM for the Simpad and intended to port the
3.8 VM for Qt (Opie) and for fbdev but this is currently on hold due to
massive timeout problems (my time) and autoconf difficulties.

Torsten

On Tue, 2 May 2006, Brian Zhou wrote:

> <goran <at> krampe.se> writes:
>
> >
> > Hi!
> >
> > Brian Zhou <b88zhou <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi all squeakers,
> > >
> > > I've ported quite a few languages to the nslu2 optware (see
> > > http://nslu2-linux.org for detail). The only major language not running on the
> > > "slug" is Smalltalk.
> > >
> > > Any idea where to start to get a headless squeak running on the slug?
> >
> > Start with squeakvm.org - suck down source, compile a VM. The VM can be
> > built without X, or you can run it using "-headless" or similar options.
> > If you have a decent Linux I am guessing you are home free, perhaps
> > someone already have done it.
> >
> > And btw, if you have VNC that works dandy too - so you can actually run
> > an image with the UI, but remotely. In fact, Squeak has a VNC included
> > even (as an addon from SqueakMap). We (web app devs) use VNC all the
> > time.
> >
> > regards, Göran
> >
> >
> Thanks Göran,
>
> I'm glad to tell you all that squeak has been ported (cross compiled) to run on
> the nslu2! (266MHz big-endian ARM with 32MB RAM -nodisplay -nosound)
>
> 0 tinyBenchmarks
> '14692378 bytecodes/sec; 551451 sends/sec'
>
> The cross build makefile and patches are checked in at
> http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/nslu/unslung/make/squeak.mk
> http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/nslu/unslung/sources/squeak/
>
> Since "optware" supports a couple of other small devices, it should not be too
> hard to get squeak running on them. The binary package for nslu2 is at
>
> http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/nslu2/cross/unstable/squeak_3.9.7-1_armeb.ipk
>
> NSLU2 wiki page:
> http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/RunSqueakSmalltalk
>
> In fact, I'm running the seaside 2.6 image thru the built-in RFBServer, not
> fast, but quite usable.
>
> If only we had a Seaside/Ajax version of the SystemBrowser, Transcript &
> Workspace, then we can remove lots of the GUI stuff. What do other squeakers
> think about this idea?
>
> -Brian Zhou
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Brian Zhou

Re: headless squeak for nslu2?

Torsten Sadowski <moehl <at> akaflieg.extern.tu-berlin.de> writes:

>
> Hi,
>
> the nslu2 seems also to be supported by the openembedded project. I did
> get the system to compile a 3.4 VM for the Simpad and intended to port the
> 3.8 VM for Qt (Opie) and for fbdev but this is currently on hold due to
> massive timeout problems (my time) and autoconf difficulties.
>
> Torsten
>

The nslu2 port I did is for optware running unslung firmware. My only two slugs
are running unslung fw and debian respectively. When I get my third slug, I'll
probably run the openslug fw.

We often trade recipes for cross-compilations between optware and openslug. So
it should not be that difficult to create a .bb file. That would probably open a
wider door to more devices.

-Brian Zhou

Nagy Attila

Performance comparisons

In reply to this post by Brian Zhou

Some performance comparisons between my PocketPC, my desktop and the
nslu2. I ran the Integer>>tinyBenchmark on my 400 MHz Intel PXA255
PocketPC (little-endian ARM, 64 MB RAM, Turbo mode). Results are:

18048505 bytecodes/sec; 627490 sends/sec

If the speed is scaled down to 200 MHz:

9216589 bytecodes/sec; 312981 sends/sec (no surprise)

However, the nslu2 almost reaches the 400 MHz performance of the PXA255!

> I'm glad to tell you all that squeak has been ported (cross compiled) to run on
> the nslu2! (266MHz big-endian ARM with 32MB RAM -nodisplay -nosound)
>
> 0 tinyBenchmarks
> '14692378 bytecodes/sec; 551451 sends/sec'

On my AMD XP 2800+ 512MB desktop running Linux 2.6:

225153913 bytecodes/sec; 7844410 sends/sec

Despite of the tremendous difference (12.5*), Squeak is definitely
usable on the PocketPC (speedwise at least), after having done one minor
adjustment: changing the SystemWindow maximize method so that the
maximized window fills the entire screen. You can even do development,
just use Class browser instead of System browser.

Attis