"Full" Linux distribution and dm-crypt

[Alemarius Nexus]

Hi,


While I wait for some expertise to get my Pandora back to life, I'd like to ask some questions about the system.


Firstly, are there any of the more powerful Linux distributions for the Pandora that are still actively developed where I can use a real package manager without having to fear to destroy my whole system or having to install tons of dependencies manually? I know there is Debian, but it does not seem to be actively maintained anymore, and opkg on the default firmware seems heavily messed up. This whole PND system might seem nice and easy, but I like having my programs and libraries installed where they belong on a Linux system (even if this means having to run from SD card), and where I am able to use them from the command line without having to hack around. I also want to have a full development environment on my Pandora, where I'm not limited to using a special shell for running the compiler, just as on my desktop PC.


Secondly, is there a reason that device-mapper and dm-crypt are missing from the kernel? The wiki says these were work in progress, but that's years ago, so will there be support for dm-crypt? I know there's TrueCrypt, but I don't like it's license, so I tried getting encfs to work. I made it compile after hours, but for some reason it didn't work, I believe it segfaulted. Still, both of them do not support full-system encryption, which would be nice to have I think.


That's it for now. I hope someone can take the time to answer.


Thanks in advance!

 

[Linux-SWAT]

This is what you need:


http://pandorawiki.org/Software_projects/OS/Slackware


Also, you can recompile your kernel easily under Slack, and get whatever you miss.

 

[Alemarius Nexus]

I have considered using Slackware before. The thing that I do not like about it is that it's package manager seems not to be natively capable of automatic dependency resolving. If I understand correctly, this automatic dependency resolving can be achieved through the SlackBuild scripts, but as they are not official I guess they are not always up to date and do not exist for all packages. Also, building the packages from source seems kind of messy to me. I know from experience that building bigger packages with lots of dependencies from source nearly never works on the first try, and often does not work even after days of tracing down build errors. I'm used to having a package manager that installs binary packages and resolves dependencies automagically, like apt or yum/rpm. So how intuitive is the package installer on Slackware?


Another thing: How well is Slackware optimized for the Pandora? Is it tuned to the ARMv7/NEON architecture as much as the default Angström-based distribution? I guess here might be one of the advantages of a non-binary package management system: The packages can be compiled in an optimized version, right?


I'll try Slackware when I get my Pandora back in a usable state.

 

[WizardStan]

without having to fear to destroy my whole system or having to install tons of dependencies manually?

As of 1.52 that's no longer a problem, the Pandora has it's own repository of Pandora specific things and packages known not to be detrimental. The list is not as large as it could be on account of taking an "unsafe until proven otherwise" stance, but will grow over time as more packages are tested.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

You can achieve automatic dependencies since a long time ago using SlackBuilds queuefiles, but this can lead to long compilation times.


There is no such thing as "not official" and "not always up to date" because Slackware distro and Slackbuilds.org are totally separated and both uses only stable software.


Compiling from sources on Slackware works pretty well. I ran into a few problems because my own CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS don't include -fPIC, so from time to time, i have to set it manually. No big deal. If you use default flags, there's even less trouble.


I already compiled 250+ cortex-a8/neon/etc... optimized packages, and you can install them using gslapt, which is kinda like synaptic.


In this case, you only have to check and install dependencies manually @ slackbuilds.org, which is pretty easy.


I can set up the dependencies resolution, but this is long and i have other things to do.


Slackware base distro is armv5te softfp. I see no difference with Zaxxon on SD.