More Recent Wii Linux Kernels

Install and Run Linux on Wii
Post Reply
DeltaResero
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 1:20 am

More Recent Wii Linux Kernels

Post by DeltaResero »

I'm not sure if anyone seen this or if WordPress just automatically marked my (DeltaLink) last post under the topic "Debian Installer For Wii" as spam as it had a URL in it. Anyway, all I said in the post was basically that I finished my highly optimized 2.6.32.60 Linux Kernel for the Wii and I've posted it on Github at "https://github.com/DeltaResero". I've also done some work in forward porting the MINI:KernelPreviewFive patch to the 3.0 Kernel.

Currently GPIO support is broken, but just about everything else works. I'm unable to confirm whether or not any of the USB Gecko or Gamecube exclusive stuff works; I just know that it compiles. Once I find a way to deal with the GPIO issues, I'll likely create another Git Repository for the 3.0 Kernel. Just note, until about mid February (2013), any new commits to the current 2.6.32.60 Kernel may be lost as I'm in the process of redoing the repository (due to some strange bug preventing me from committing anything more).

While my 2.6.32.60 Kernel still suffers from the lack of certain syscalls such as "accept4", my 3.0 Kernel doesn't. This should mean that Wheezy will work without having to hold udev packages from updating. Farter, would you be interested in attempting a Debian Wheezy installer once I release the 3.0 patch?
DeltaResero
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 1:20 am

Re: More Recent Wii Linux Kernels

Post by DeltaResero »

Good news everyone, I've managed to finish my forward port of the 'Mini' Kernel Preview Five (MIKE p5) patch, as well as a few others such as Farter's framebuffer patch and Nold360 SDHC driver updates, to the 3.0 Kernel. I've since made my git/github repository public for the 3.0 Kernel and can be found at the same link that I mention in the first post (https://github.com/DeltaResero). There are still minor issues such as external swap partitions not being mountable in IOS mode and USB drives not working in MINI as noted in greater detail the readme section. I think I know what's causing these issues, I just don't know how to fix them.

The swap issue showed up during one of the 2.6.39 commits (I'll make a note in Github about where it is when I get a chance). The USB issue is because I was unsuccessful in porting the hcd.c file in the original patch and left this work out of the forward port. USB mouse, keyboard, and modem do still work in MINI. With these updates, it should now be possible to use Debian Wheezy based operating systems and newer now as the udev error don't seem to effect boot with 3.0+ kernels as they did with 2.6.32 and prior kernels. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could take a look at my work and confirm whether or not I left out anything critical.

By the way, I've been able to forward port this patch farther to 3.6.11, but there were a lot of regressions so I mainly concentrated on this port. Unfortunately, since then, my hard drive containing the 3.1+ patches failed and I've been unable to track the issue that causes MINI to not boot. IOS boots correctly and the hardware seems to work correctly (except external swap partitions of course), but that's all I've been able to test so far. Hopefully I'll either get lucky and find the issue sometime in the future or someone else will. I'm not in much of rush with this as I know the same thing happens again with 3.7-rc1 as it becomes completely unbootable again here again. Unlike with this error with 3.1, I can't get anything other than a black screen to show with 3.7-rc1. Hopefully Debian 8 (Jessie) doesn't break support like Debian Wheezy did, but if it does, I'll likely make another attempt at forward porting the Kernel farther. If I do, I'll try to put it in the same area as this one (under the same name).

For basic usage, this 3.0 Kernel has several slight advantages such as reduced CPU usuage, more responsive, better throughput, and less memory leaks. It does however use more RAM though, but the pros outweight the cons in most conditions. The main advatages of using Debian Wheezy I've noticed so far is that pcmanfm (LXDE deskto p manager) can handle desktop management better, lightdm is available by default, and mplayer also now works. Xine seems to be slightly faster, but mplayer can be easily used without Xorg (just from a TTY). Xine is suppose to be able to do this too, but I've been unable to do this. Hopefully some of this information is of use. I did this not for a performance boost, but rather for compatabily for allowing newer Debian based operating systems to run.
Post Reply