Erlang/OTP R13B ARM binary download - erlang

Is there a site where Erlang/OTP binaries for ARM-Linux can be downloaded? www.erlang.org only has source release (and I haven't managed to cross-compile it on the initial attempts), while http://cean.process-one.net/downloads/ only has R12B.

You can check the website http://www.erlang-embedded.com/.

Is your board big enough to just build it on-board from source? A beagleboard-xm will build Erlang in about 25min on a USB hard drive. I used a gentoo arm stage3 chroot and built erlang using "emerge erlang".
I've done enough cross-compiling to know to avoid it. ARM CPUs are fast enough now that I can dispense with it.

Related

How do I install luac.cross on a Mac?

NodeMCU documentation states
NodeMCU firmware build now automatically generates a luac.cross image
as standard in the firmware root directory; this can be used to
compile and to syntax-check Lua source on the Development machine for
execution under NodeMCU Lua on the ESP8266.
Where do I get luac.cross from and how do I install it?
Do I build NodeMCU firmware from source on Mac and is luac.cross created as part of that process? I have been using the cloud service to create custom firmware. Is luac.cross available via cloud build?
Straight lua code has overwhelmed the MakerFocus NodeMCU board resulting runtime panic with out of memory issue. Hoping compiled code will reduce RAM needs.
Where do I get luac.cross from and how do I install it?
You gave the answer in the quote from the documentation you posted. Specifically this
NodeMCU firmware build now automatically generates a luac.cross image...
So, if you build the NodeMCU manually on your platform the build process will also create a lua.cross for your platform. That's the reason you cannot download or install lua.cross - it has to fit your platform i.e. OS et.al.
The logical next question would then be: how do I manually build NodeMCU on macOS?
I don't know the answer to that as I build with the Docker image (from yours truly) on macOS. Running the Docker build creates a luac.cross in the firmware root directory. However, as macOS is just the host OS for Docker in this setup luac.cross is for Linux rather than native for macOS. To use it you would start the Docker container again and run bash in it to get a shell to execute the Lua cross compilation: docker run --rm -ti -vpwd:/opt/nodemcu-firmware marcelstoer/nodemcu-build bash.
Straight lua code has overwhelmed the MakerFocus NodeMCU board resulting runtime panic with out of memory issue. Hoping compiled code will reduce RAM needs.
I hate to disillusion you, but if I had to bet I would expect that savings won't be significant enough to yield the expected results. As you already started reading documentation I'd like to point you to the relevant FAQ: How is NodeMCU Lua different to standard Lua? and Techniques for Reducing RAM
And maybe using LFS will be your life saver.
In case you want to use this tool regardless of the platform - you can use my API to build it:
curl -d #yourscript.lua -X POST https://nodemcu-luacross-run-64l7ehzjta-uc.a.run.app/compile > output.luac

Building clang taking forever

I'm baffled. I have a VM running Ubuntu 14.04. I've followed procedures here: http://clang.llvm.org/docs/LibASTMatchersTutorial.html and am at the step to run ninja. This builds llvm and clang. Now, my VM is no slouch, I gave it 6GB of RAM and 4 CPUs and a 20GB swap file. The biggest problem comes at link time - it seems to start a large number of ld processes, each using at least 3-4GB or virtual memory, and at some point a lot of CPU each. But the the swap file grew to over 12GB and the processes are all IO bound, but I don't know if they are doing something useful, or thrashing. All I know is the disk is getting hammered and the jobs run forever. I've actually just dropped the CPU count to the VM to 1, to see if it might be more efficient with less parallelism, as I surmised the issue may be thrashing.
I suppose my disk could be slow... Any ideas? Should I be using make instead of ninja? My expertise is not Linux (although I'm getting there :-) ) So I'm following the tutorial but perhaps it is not recommended the "best" way to build the clang / llvm programs.
I have been there, It's happening with the latest svn release (but not if you get clang 3.8 or older releases). What is happening is that since during development a lot of debug information is also being generated for each compilation unit the file sizes are becoming big.
The solution is to turn off all the debug info that's been attached by default. You probably are not going to debug clang, so won't need it. SO instead of just doing this
cmake -G Ninja ../llvm -DLLVM_BUILD_TESTS=ON
What you should do is
cmake -G Ninja ../llvm -DLLVM_BUILD_TESTS=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
All the other steps remain the same. Now I have not tested this with ninja, but have verified it with make on ubuntu (this tutorial, I modified the same thing in step 7). This should owkr as weel.

Docker on embedded systems, why not?

There was a project thrown my way recently that involves the orchestration of several (Linux capable) embedded devices, deploying software to them, and allowing for the applications to be updated when the code base updates in a git repo.
The initial thought was to make a standard image for each device, and I set out, attempting to install docker on an UDOO Quad and an Intel Edison to start, but without any success up to this point.
My thinking is that it seems to be a good idea to install Docker on embedded devices--but if that's the case, surely it would have been ported by now. The only group out there that seems to be making these efforts is Resin.io.
Is there something I'm missing, or is there a clear reason why Docker doesn't make sense on embedded devices? If there isn't a reason, and it does make sense to run Docker on embedded systems, is there something I've overlooked out there: are there any sources of discussion on porting, or how-to's that cover this?
I have considered running docker on embedded devices (a mips system), but didn't go that way. There are some problems with it, in my humble view:
Docker is implemented in Golang. There is currently no available tool chain for mips to compile go. You will need to create the tool chain yourself using gcc-go.
The size of docker is larger than lxc. In a desktop computer this is not a problem, but the embedded device has limited flash storage.
Docker uses some quite up-to-date feature of linux kernel. Sometimes the kernel version on embedded devices are not so new and back-port is needed to make it work.
The docker image has to be built on the same architecture as the run time environment. It means that if you want to run a docker container on Raspberry Pi, the docker image has to be built on an ARM-architecture system. QEMU can be used to build docker image in the cloud, but it doesn't support all CPU architectures used in embedded system. (for example, it currently doesn't support MIPS)
In the end, lxc was chosen for the specific task of running a container on embedded device. It has limited features compared to docker, but currently it suits the requirement of the project.
As of year 2019, I would like to update this answer since I did port docker to embedded system with ARM cpu. With the price of flash usage, memory usage, by using docker you will have container management, image management, and many ready to run images from docker hub. So the decision is a balance between cost and features.
Here is an update for 2018:
You can work with Docker on embedded devices such as Raspberry Pi and Orange Pi quite easily now because of advancements in the development of Raspbian and Armbian operating system images. Specifically, both types of devices and their respective OS images now support kernels that are of sufficiently high enough versions to install Docker without any problems (at least version 3.10, though both now offer 4.x+ versions).
Your desire for faster rates of change can definitely be realized by using embedded Docker. I can say from experience that I have tested and regularly run the approach you describe. Basically, you start with a base operating system image such as Raspbian or Armbian, tweak that operating system enough that it's secure and has Docker installed, and then you use Docker for handling development iteration and application updates.
As an aside, if you are interested in running Docker on embedded Linux devices, then I recommend you check out a free, open-source, MIT-licensed command line tool I wrote to help developers work with embedded Docker on multiple devices at once: https://github.com/ForwardLoopLLC/floopcli .
Even if you are not interested in the tool itself, the documentation for the tool describes several patterns for working with Dockerized applications across multiple devices in multiple languages: https://docs.forward-loop.com/floopcli/master/index.html . The materials there should serve as a starting point for porting applications to Docker and then deploying them on embedded devices. The documentation also addresses some embedded device subtleties, such as differences between ARMv6 and ARMv7. Hopefully this helps you get started!
There is a great article on LinkedIn describing his experience with that
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whale-jar-when-running-docker-embedded-linux-good-thing-fletcher#pulse-comments-urn:li:article:7736487387895237975
Often embedded systems have a very slow rate of change. Docker works well on a minimum build then layering on top. If you want to sacrifice the overhead of running docker on a minimum embedded system for docker's ability to have a build system and steady rate of change then you could explorer it.

what is the utility of the buildroot on beagleboneBlack?

I don't understand what is the reason of buildroot of a card such as beaglebone black where as it has a Linux system when we bought.What is the utility of the buildroot?
Build a completely custom, lightweight, and fast-booting embedded Linux system?
Buildroot is a set of Makefiles and patches that makes it easy to generate a complete embedded Linux system.
Buildroot can generate any or all of a cross-compilation toolchain, a root filesystem, a kernel image and a bootloader image.
It is useful mainly for people working with small or embedded systems, using various CPU architectures (x86, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, etc.) : it automates the building process of your embedded system and eases the cross-compilation process.
The resulting root filesystem is mounted read-only, but other filesystems can be mounted read/write for persistence.
Although user accounts can be created, in practice almost everything is done as root. Buildroot uses no package manager.
Instead, package selection is managed through make menuconfig.
source http://elinux.org/BeagleBone_Operating_Systems

How to install Torch on windows 8.1?

Torch is a scientific computing framework with wide support for machine learning algorithms. It is easy to use and efficient, thanks to an easy and fast scripting language, LuaJIT, and an underlying C/CUDA implementation.
Q:
Is there a way to install torch on MS Windows 8.1?
I got it installed and running on Windows (although not 8.1, but I don't expect the process to be different) following instructions in this repository; it's now deprecated, but wasn't deprecated few months ago when I built it. The new instructions point to torch/torch7 repository, but it has a different structure and I haven't been able to build it on Windows yet.
There are instructions on how to install Torch7 from luarocks, but you may run into issues on windows as well; I haven't tried this process. It seems like there is no official support for Windows yet, but some work is being done by contributors (there is a link to a pull request in that thread).
Based on my experience, compiling that deprecated repo may be your best option on Windows at the moment.
Update (7/9/2015): I've recently submitted several changes that fix compilation issues with mingw, so you may try the most recent version of torch7 and follow the build instructions in the ticket. Note that the changes only apply to the core lib and additional libraries may need similar changes.
This webpage hosted by New York University recommends installing a Linux virtual machine in order to run Torch7 on Windows through Linux. Another option would off course be to install a Linux dist in parallel with Windows 8.
Otherwise, if you don't mind running an older version of Torch, there is a Windows installer for Torch5 at SourceForge.
I think to use a GPU from inside the virtual machine, the processor and the motherboard should not only support VT-x , but VT-d should be supported too.
But the question is, if I use a CPU with VT-d supported, do you think there will be a significant loss in PCIe connections efficiency?
From what I understand,
VT-d is important if I want to give the virtual machines direct access to my hardware components (like PCI Express cards). Like directly attach graphics card to vm instead of host machine. Isn't that mean that the PCIe connections efficiency will be the same just like if it was the host?

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