[CentOS-devel] CentOS 7 on power64 status

Fri Sep 11 10:57:55 UTC 2015
Karanbir Singh <mail-lists at karan.org>

On 10/09/15 23:32, James O'Connor wrote:
> Just an email to summarize where we stand with CentOS 7 ppc64le (Little Endian) and ppc64 (Big Endian). We don’t have an official CentOS power64 SIG yet but I am interested in enlisting further community participation and testing when the time is appropriate.

I think we should just onramp into the AltArch SIG, and use the
mechanics already coming up in place there.

> 
> I have working proof of concept builds of c7-ppc64le and c7-ppc64. Both ports were done using Fedora 22 based PowerKVM guests.
> 
> The LE port was done cleanly and involved developing a c7 based Linux From Scratch toolchain to get around a thorny issue with glibc-2.20 in Fedora 21 LE but glibc-2.17 in CentOS 7. This issue further prevents the use of Fedora 21 LE rpms because they all require GLIBC_2.18 and c7 provides GLIBC_2.17.
> 
> The BE port is much more straightforward as Fedora 19 ppc64/ppc rpms are used to bootstrap the initial CentOS 7 ppc64/ppc rpms.
> 
> As of yesterday we have IBM POWER8 systems up and running PowerKVM in the CentOS datacenter. Similar development and test systems are available at http://osuosl.org/ Work is underway to get Fedora ppc64le and ppc64 builders up and running and replicate the proof of concept builds.
> 
> Stay tuned to the centos-devel email list or drop by #centos-ppc on irc.freenode.net to say hello.

We should have basic VM's up that can be used soon, and we have some
resources at OSL that can be made available for wider community side
participation on the platform, once we have enough of the distro
bootstrapped. I know a few other SIG's have expressed interest in being
able to build on power as well, we should be able to provide that
capability soon after we have the baseline bootstrap up.

thanks James,

-- 
Karanbir Singh
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