Hi everyone,

Again apologies for the delay, but we finally got the repository online!

The line you need to add to your sources.list is:



and just run apt-get update. A similar line will be provided for debian wheezy and ubuntu precise armhf systems soon.

UPDATE: As some users noted correctly, you will not be able to install packages before adding the genesi archive keyring first. You can do that with the following commands:



After that, you could either install packages manually on a case-by-case basis, or just pull everything via the imx-essential, imx-essential-dev meta-packages:



Have in mind that imx-essential-dev pulls imx-essential anyway, but that's only useful for people that need the actual headers.

So, what does imx-essential pull:

* xserver-xorg-video-imx: that's the 2D imx-ng video driver
* imx-libc-neon: NEON optimized common glibc function replacements (memcpy, memset, etc).
* imx-udev-rules: udev rules for i.MX5
* imx-boot-scripts: performance tweaking init scripts for the EfikaMX systems
* imx-powermanagement-config: fix suspend/resume on the EfikaMX systems
* imx-sysctl-rules: sysctl rules for improved performance
* imx-pulseaudio-config: forces alsa to route through pulseaudio
* gstreamer0.10-fsl-mm-plugins: FSL gstreamer plugins
* gir1.2-gst-plugins-base-0.10 (= 0.10.36-1.1genesi1): patched gstreamer package to use the FSL plugins
* gstreamer0.10-plugins-base (= 0.10.36-1.1genesi1): same
* libegl1-imx: EGL 3D driver for i.MX515
* libgles1-imx: GLESv1 3D driver for i.MX515
* libgles2-imx: GLES2 3D driver for i.MX515
* libopenvg1-imx: OpenVG driver for i.MX515

It will also pull the following packages as dependencies:

* libkgsl-imx: interface library for the 2D/3D drivers and the kernel gpu module
* libc2d-z160-imx: C2D interface for the z160 unit
* libc2d-z430-imx: C2D interface for the z430 unit
* libipu: VPU kernel access library for i.MX5 processors
* libvpu: IPU kernel access library for i.MX5 processors
* libsahara: SAHARA2 Hardware Security Engine library for i.MX5 processors

NOTE: After you install the packages, you *have* to give it an xorg.conf so that it can detect the imx driver -it doesn't at the moment, needs a patch in the Debian xserver package, working on that. Please use the following:



You could play with those values, we're working in an automated way to avoid the use of an xorg.conf, will probably happen in a next version, apologies for the inconvenience.

Also, the video playback uses the hardware decoder *only* via gstreamer so totem will work, but mplayer/vlc will not -yet. And it's likely you will find that some video streams do not work at all or cause instability issues. The majority of the streams I've fed to totem worked though.

Finally, have in mind that most of these packages pull imx-freescale-eula license package, which you have to agree to, in order to properly install the packages. We will not support anyone that wants to try to install the packages without the EULA, people that would like to have the packages ported to another distro should also have that in mind.

That's about it, for any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!!

Hi,

I ran into a few issues with the installation, and unfortunately the 3d drivers (I suspect it's libEGL) have some problems:

1. After adding armhf.efikamx.com, apt-get update did not work because it was not able to find the public signing keys from the server. I got around this by manually installing http://armhf.efikamx.com/pool/main/g/ge ... 03_all.deb

2. Also, the armhf installer did not work. Packages were still missing from the US repository, so I chose the DE repository. Debootstrap also had a problem with installing libept1. In the script I excluded libept1 from debootstrap

After these changes, I was able to install to the SSD drive.

Apart from the Freescale Demos located in /usr/bin (es11ex, torusknot, simple_draw, etc), The 3d Drivers have problems.

I also added the xorg.conf settings that you mentioned, but OpenGL ES programs that normally work on other platforms and with PC emulators, do not work here.

Sometimes there are visual artifacts on the screen especially when the mouse moves. Also, the Freescale demos occasionally hang the system without any errors given.

Also, I tried to use the benchmarking program, GLmark2-es2 (I compiled the source code from the Ubuntu 12.04) but it does not work. It seems to crash whenever a call to eglSwapBuffers is made. The X server reports an error, specifically with X_CopyArea.

The older version of GLmark2-es2, which uses SDL for Window creation, and comes with Ubuntu 10.10, runs for a few seconds, but then hangs the system.

Is there any source code to the Freescale demos? I think part of the problem is the way that windows are being created.

I've just installed it. I can't give specifics yet but generally speaking, performance for me seems to be much worse. With just a browser and a terminal open, the CPU is idling about 10-15% more than before. What would be the most straightforward way to rollback, in case I want to go that route?

A few questions:
1) a program I was using which required the X Double Buffering Extension no longer works due to double buffering not being enabled for the display. What is the cause of this lack of support? The new driver? I tried changing the Double Buffer line in the xorg.conf but it had no effect.
2) Out of curiosity, which packages specifically are proprietary and covered by the EULA? In other words, is it possible to install some of the packages without worrying about having to agree to the terms?
3) The above post mentions Freescale examples in /usr/bin however I have none of those...perhaps something went wrong? What package provides those examples?
4) Does anything need to be done to enable the various optimizations (ie udev, sysctl, etc)?

Ok, nevermind about the performance drop. I also made the change from wheezy to unstable in order to install these, and I hadn't noticed that my /etc/rc.local was overwritten, disabling ramzswap in the process. I restored a backup of the file and everything's much snappier now, it seems. Amazing what that one little feature can do. It does seem wicd is now using a bit more CPU than it should, but that's unrelated, I guess.

Regarding Double Buffering, I missed the "disable dbe" line in the xorg.conf. If I comment out this and the other DoubleBuffer line, the program works fine. Why should dbe be disabled, just out of curiosity?

My other questions still hold though.

I figured out the problem with EGL.

EGL only works with X11 when a X11 window's color depth is 16-bit (Using xwininfo, I found out that the Freescale demos were creating Windows with 16-bit color depth, while most of the programs I was trying to use that worked on other platforms were using the default 32-bit depth).



Returns a structure (vinfo) that I could use to create a 16-bit color window, and most of the demos started working, not sure if the random system hangings will be fixed, the Freescale demos had this problem as well...

Summary: One has to explicitly create 16-bit color windows to use OpenGL ES.

I'll experiment with the xorg.conf settings to fix the visual artifacts that sometimes appear.

I found the Freescale demos (torusknot, es11ex, simple_draw and maybe a couple others) in the /usr/bin folder. I think the EfikaMX/ARMHF distribution includes them by default?

I'll try to answer all questions, here goes:



You are correct and that was an omission on my part, the first post has been edited and fixed.



Have in mind that not all mirrors are synced, especially if you're trying to install unstable. I've had no problems with the US/DE mirror myself, but I've had other people tell me that the US mirror is out of sync.



Could you give a list of those programs? It would help us debug and drivers.



I haven't actually experienced those artifacts at all, at least not in the current setup. Could you give some hints as to how to reproduce those?



Argh, you're right about that, this used to run a few versions ago, need to check if it's the driver or the app problem.



I hope you mean the recompiled version for armhf :)



Unfortunately, they are part of the amd-gpu-src source tree, which is closed source. I will ask though if we can actually share the source for the demos.

Ok, here is the low down on performance of the imxng driver vs fbdev. In some operations, fbdev is faster as it uses the NEON unit and we've found that it's a bit faster than the internal blitting done by Z160/Z430. However, you miss Xv video playback and well, having everything being done by the CPU is not really optimal. And anyway the difference in performance is really minor, <10%. However if you really want to rollback to the fbdev you can just remove the imxng driver package and the xorg.conf file -it will force to uninstall imx-essential meta-package as well.



You could just enable dbe again in the xorg.conf.



Basically libkgsl (and all the 3d debs that depend on it), plus the libvpu/libipu which are needed for ipu/vpu control (video playback in gstreamer) and libsahara packages, for controling the security engine in iMX515.



The examples are installed when you install the imx-essential-dev meta package.



Apart from installing the packages? No.

ramzswap is enabled in the /etc/init.d/efikamx, part of imx-boot-scripts package.



To be honest this was probably just left in there since testing :)



See my previous reply.

It's not really a distribution, just Debian with an extra repository of EfikaMX-related packages. Anyway, the demos can be found in libgles1-imx-dev (es11ex), libgles2-imx-dev(simple-draw, torusknot).

Thanks Kostantinos!
After add the repository and update and upgrade and reboot, 3 video avi that I try to play with totem,vlc,mplayer doesn't play sound.
The sound itself work because i can listen music on stream radio and via youtube.

For audio, I had to install pulseaudio.

Thanks Markos;

I still have a problem while trying to generate a full mage with multistrap :

I have experienced that Freescale demos hang the system, here a piece of the var log messages

That's because you're trying to using testing setup with unstable debs, that won't work. testing debs will follow soon.