meeting 2023-12-15

docs/events/meeting-notes/2023-12-15.md

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+# SIG/AltArch meeting 2023-12-15
+
+## Attendees:
+    * Sherif
+    * Bryan
+    * Pablo Greco
+    * Neil Hanlon
+    * Skip Grube
+
+## Follow Ups
+
+* Libre Compute - Try/Investigate using vendor tree to build uboot  - Pratham
+* Investigate `arm-image-installer` script/tool for helping write disk images for specific boards - Sherif (?)
+* Odroid N2 - Track installability
+* Orange Pi 5 - Track installability
+* Rock5b - Track installability
+* Libre Computing Boards (3)
+* Maintenance - Importing dependencies from Fedora/EPEL
+    * Neil is working on this as part of SIG/HPC, too
+* Document process on backporting uboot and kernels - Pablo
+    * To include information on how we work and interact with upstreams, with examples! - Sherif
+* Check and investigate which boards have hardcoded grubx64 paths in their uboot; address them
+
+## Discussions
+
+* Neil provided Sherif with 2 RPi CM4s (+ IO boards), an RPi5, and a SiFive VF2 (RiscV) at SC23 in November
+* Need to work on integrating SBC and related changes into SIG/Kernel mainline in order to have unified kernel
+    * Bryan has tried mainline kernel, but it isn't booting -- ends up in dracut shell.
+        * Will figure out how to capture logs via serial
+        * Libre Tritium H5
+* It's all Skip's fault
+* 32-bit arm (armhfp/arm7vl) Rocky Port
+    * Sherif has some odroid boards from work he can donate
+        * Odroid XU4 x2
+        * Odroid XU4Q x1 - XU4 w/ massive heatsink
+    * Current status (per Pablo)
+        * have the full bootstrap up to 9.1; we need to start building atop it
+        * need to add Peridot support for armhfp (i can't remember if we included the arch as an option)
+        * where will we host the odroid boards from Sherif
+    * Most of the SBCs for arm7vl/armhfp are not powerful enough to be good build hosts. Maybe we should try Honeycombs? (Solid-run)
+        * Pablo used his honeycomb and a fedora image to do the initial bootstrap builds
+        * Neil will reach out to OSU about availability of Lenovo eMAGs for us
+        * has neil spoken to Fabian? - No ; Neil will do this
+* RISCv Rocky Port Status
+    * Neil - Investigate what and how much riscv hardware we need.. and where we'll host it
+        * This probably is going to be a whole bunch of VF2s
+        * P670 (16-core - MilkV oasis) would be great, but, upstream support is not yet there. VF2 is a better target for Rocky 9
+* Various conversations happened here but Neil was dealing with keeping all the mice in his house dead. The following is second-hand :) 
+* Rpi Kernel - Should it live?
+    * We want to get rid of it, but we can't yet. Skip says yes
+    * Plan:
+        * Build the rpi kernel as a variant of the mainline
+        * rpi kernel will be subsumed into kernel-mainline-sbc, not further upstream
+            * This will allow more obvious contribution to ELrepo for SBCs
+        * RPI image will be replaced with a new GenericArm-SBC image produced by Empanadas which includes kernel-mainline-sbc
+* Next meetings
+    * Dec 29 - Cancel.
+    * Jan 12 - Keep
+
+## Action Items
+
+* Neil to actually make tickets for the follow ups / decisions. But, like, for real this time.
+* Neil to reach out to people re: ARMHFP hardwares
+    * Ampere
+    * OSUOSL
+    * Fabian (arrfab)
+* Neil to figure out what RISCv hardware we need
+* Announce Dec 29th meeting cancelation
+
+## Old business
+
+### 2023-10-20
+
+#### Action Items
+
+* Libre Compute - Try/Investigate using vendor tree to build uboot  - Pratham
+* Investigate `arm-image-installer` script/tool for helping write disk images for specific boards - Sherif (?)
+* Odroid N2 - Track installability
+* Orange Pi 5 - Track installability
+* Rock5b - Track installability
+* Libre Computing Boards (3)
+* Maintenance - Importing dependencies from Fedora/EPEL
+* Document process on backporting uboot and kernels - Pablo
+    * To include information on how we work and interact with upstreams, with examples! - Sherif
+* Check and investigate which boards have hardcoded grubx64 paths in their uboot; address them
+* Acquire armhfp (arm7vl) hardware - Neil to reach out to OSU OSL
+* Neil - Investigate what and how much riscv hardware we need.. and where we'll host it
+
+#### Decisions
+    * Images should be generic so as to be able to be installed on any board, where possible.
+        * uboot can live on SPI or external flash
+        * We need to help document this for our users and have guides on how to get the SBCs working. This is a big pain point for many SBC users as there is so much variation.
+            * To this end, we should investigate some tooling to aid in writing images for boards which will boot on the first try.
+    * Uboot should similarly be generic and work for all boards, insofar as it is practical to do so.
+        * Some boards this doesn't make sense for, e.g., ones that have uboot from 2014 + hundreds of patches, however, these are few and far between. For these, we can package them as RPMs and provide them (see note below re: licensing)
+    * We will wait for the next Kernel.org LTS to be cut, as that should have all the changes for the boards we're talking about.
+    * We will engage with our upstreams (Fedora, ELRepo, etc) for changes we make with the Kernel SIG for AltArch/SBC support.
+        * This necessitates participating in SIG/Kernel to represent our needs in these kernels.
+    * We should strive to perform native builds when possible, but recognize that emulation is a necessary evil.
+
+!!! note "uboot and other licensing"
+    We need to ensure that we are careful about the licensing of softwares we wish to include in the SIG distribution.
+