Prebuild binaries: more detailed setup info/parameters (busybox/aboriginal) ?

[Rob Landley]

On 04/11/2013 04:34:47 PM, piquemal michel wrote:
> Dear Rob,
> 
> Thanks for your quick reply!
> Oooops underlooked the manifest file, sorry: will check versions in  
> details.
> Aboriginal binary build I used was indeed 1.2.0, however busybox I  
> compiled was
> 1.20.2 nor 1.20.0 Yes I built static.

Huh.

Those binaries were actually cross compiled rather than natively built  
(with the cross-compiler-mips.tar.bz2 in the same directory), but it's  
the same toolchain and should work the same way. This would be the  
first I'd hear of them not doing so.

(My confusion here is that the binaries that are up worked for you, but  
rebuilding them didn't. Not sure what changed here. Possibly try  
rebuilding the old release version first? Focus on reproducing the  
known good one before fiddling with changes to it?)

> The commercial HW target I run it onto (chinese IP cam) is on Linux  
> 2.6.36 (GCC
> 3.4.2), uClibc 0.9.28...so yes I'm extremely lucky pre-built
> busybox-mipsel binary runs fine on it!

There are a couple different mips APIs. This toolchain uses the oldest  
most backwards compatible one that I'm aware of, and the fact the  
previous binary worked implied that this one should too.

(Also, don't confuse mips and mipsel, one's big endian the other little  
endian. There are two system images and everything...)

> That's why I'm eager to find-out the "magic" aboriginal config that  
> makes it possible!
> There's no debugger on this target, so I can't trace anything on  
> target I'm afraid.

The strace binaries are downloadable, statically linked, and should run  
anywhere the busybox binary runs.

   wget http://landley.net/aboriginal/bin/strace-mipsel
   chmod +x strace-mipsel
   ./strace-mipsel yournewbusybox

> I'm really thinking the issue may be due to the use of aboriginal  
> 1.2.0
> mipsel prebuilt binary, which might not match the actual binary  
> busybox
> build system used to generate busybox-mipsel. Isn't it?

One's cross compiled the other natively compiled, but they _should_ be  
binary identical.

Try building a static "hello world" and see if that works? (Is it the  
toolchain or busybox complaining here? I mostly bang on toybox these  
days so haven't really played with defconfig busybox much recently.)

> I'm going to try to compile aboriginal as described within manifest  
> and check if
> it builds the same busybox-mipsel...

Do "./build.sh mipsel" and then "BUSYBOX=1 ./simple-root-filesystem.sh"  
and the busybox binary should be in  
build/simple-root-filesystem/bin/busybox

> Would it be possible to share the .config file for the actual  
> aboriginal
> binary busybox build-system used to generate latest busybox-mipsel  
> binary?

Um, for the defconfig busyboxes it's "make defconfig" these days. (For  
a while I was switching the default shell from ash to hush but that  
stopped a while back. Don't remember if that was before or after 1.2.0.)

The plumbing in question is sources/sections/busybox.build in the build  
scripts.

Rob