--- Karolina Lindqvist <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

> 
> I am running an mini-ITX board for its low power
> consumption. It is also very 
> small and fanless (noiseless).
> 


I maintain a source-only Archlinux system running on a
VIA C3 (Samuel 2 core) mini-itx system. This is
*almost* an i686, but the difference is enough that it
needs to be compiled as an i586. I just use 

export CARCH=c3
export CFLAGS="-march=$CARCH ...."
export CXXFLAGS="$CFLAGS"

in /etc/makepkg.conf and use a uname hack to make sure
CHOST gets set to i586-pc-linux-gnu by the various
build configure scripts (the stock /bin/uname detects
my system as i686 for some reason). I use a custom
kernel and don't bother with the whole klibc/mkinit
stuff.

The initial bootstrapping and setup was a bit of a
pain, but after that keeping it up to date is fairly
easy (just type makepkg, walk away, come back and
upgrade the package a while later, etc.) as long as
you're not too fanatical about being on the bleeding
edge of updates -- otherwise it can become a bit of a
time-sink. Compiling big package groups like KDE or
GNOME is probably more trouble than it is worth, but
for a simple server setup, what you want to do is not
that difficult.

Later on I had an opportunity to pick up an AMD K6-II
laptop (also an i586) for only $10, so I decided to
put Arch on it as well. I compile packages on the C3
system to run on the laptop (though with "export
CARCH=k6-2" in /etc/makepkg.conf).

I had a post a long time ago in the forums on the
steps I used to build Arch from scratch on my mini-itx
system, it is here (under the nickname
"loserMcloser"):

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=15736

though you should ignore the part about
cross-compiling on i686 -- this is a bad idea unless
you know how to set up a whole i586 cross-compiling
toolchain. Specifically, I had problems with
cross-compiling the e2fsprogs and nfs-utils -- the
resulting programs exhibited weird behaviour, and I
ended up deciding to recompile everything that I had
cross-compiled...

If you need any advice I can try to help, but I don't
really check this mailing list that often.

good luck!
loserMcloser

ps. If anybody out there has any tips or PKGBUILDs to
build a cross-compiling toolchain for setting up an
i686 system to be a distcc helper machine for i586
builds, I'd be very happy to receive them...


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