Raspberry Pi OS requirements

[Liam Proven]

I didn't see this documented anywhere but my first attempt to bring up
my PiDP-10 didn't work.

I was installing -- well, trying to install -- the software according
to the steps in this document:

https://obsolescence.dev/pidp-10-building-instructions.html

It didn't work. I got the desktop icons but they don't open.

I think I have violated a core assumption of the docs: I am using a
Raspberry Pi 5, in the original case, booting off an SD card.

But I do not run Raspbian. None of my Pis run Raspbian. I don't need
the educational stuff, I don't like Wayland and I am not a big fan of
LXDE.

I am running the Pi edition of MX Linux, the latest version, fully
updated. Still based on Debian 12 like the Pi OS, but not the Pi OS.

I think that's the problem: the installation instructions expect
Raspbian and nothing else.

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[R Clark]

All my RPIs run PI OS. :) Ha!  In this case, why not, bite your tongue, and just use PI OS to get'er up and running?  BTW,  there is just a desktop option without all the 'recommended' software.  https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/ .  Ie. there is three options (Desktop, Full, and Lite) .... For me I just loaded PI OS Lite without 'any' desktop GUI for my new RPI5-16G to play around with :) .

[Liam Proven]

On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 at 19:50, R Clark <rbclar...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> All my RPIs run PI OS. :) Ha! In this case, why not, bite your tongue, and just use PI OS to get'er up and running?

Like I said: none of mine.

I use Ubuntu Server, Lubuntu, MX Linux, and RISC OS. I am planning to
try Alpine next.

There's nothing in Pi OS I want.

I mean, yes, obviously, I can try it, but if this is a requirement I
think it needs to be spelled out. Not all Pis run Pi OS.

> BTW, there is just a desktop option without all the 'recommended' software. https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/ . Ie. there is three options (Desktop, Full, and Lite) .... For me I just loaded PI OS Lite without 'any' desktop GUI for my new RPI5-16G to play around with :) .

Worth knowing. Thanks.

[Tim Radde]

I might ponder a guess that you might be the first person to try this without using Pi OS.  I don't know for sure.  But I would guess most people just

use Raspian as they just want to run Simh and little else.  There might be drivers missing.  Kind of hard to say.  How did it fail?  Did it try to start?

Are there any parts running.  Do a "ps -eaf | grep -i pidp" to see if the main part is running.  Maybe do a "top" to see what is running.  If nothing then

there are probably logs saying what failed.

[R Clark]

Actually in the Building instructions it says under the Actual Install Steps:  "The PiDP-10 requires the 64-bit version of the Raspberry Pi OS."   Just an FYI.

[Flavio Villanustre]

Also running "ldd" against any dynamically linked binary on linux will tell you which libraries it's using and, more importantly, which ones are missing from the system. That can help you identify missing dependencies and install them. Look, Linux is Linux and you could run anything on "Linux from scratch" if you want really hard. But the effort of doing so can be quite daunting and, more importantly, unless dependencies are adequately captured by a package management system, updates are all but guaranteed to leave you with a running system at the end. 

I've ran myriads of Linux distributions since the early days of SLS in 1992 (Yggdrassil, Slackware, RedHat, SuSe, Mandrake, Gentoo, Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, LFS, etc.). If you enjoy tinkering, nothing is impossible. But if you want a system that just works, you probably want to follow the recommendations in the documentation.

Alternatively, if you think that Raspberry Pi OS is bloated, you can "sudo apt remove" anything that you don't like.

Best,

Flavio

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, 21 Jan 2025 at 00:59, Tim Radde <timr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I might ponder a guess that you might be the first person to try this without using Pi OS.

You could be right. Certainly from many RPi groups I'm in online, many
Pi users don't seem to realise that there _are_ other OSes.

> There might be drivers missing

Well, the OSes I mentioned all work perfectly with no missing functionality.

> How did it fail? Did it try to start?

Installed, created desktop icons, etc. None of the icons worked. The
scripts run but generate errors and no background tasks start.

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, 21 Jan 2025 at 03:37, Ken Hansen <n2...@w5fc.org> wrote:

> You can't be serious.

100% serious.

> The very first step of the RPi setup instructions explicitly says:
>
> The actual install steps:

>
> The PiDP-10 requires the 64-bit version of the Raspberry Pi OS.

I'm a Linux professional and have been for a few decades now.

Pi OS is Debian. I'd expect anything that works on one Debian
derivative to work on any Debian derivative. Barring explicit library
version issues, even including Ubuntu.

I worked for SUSE for 4 years; obviously, I ran openSUSE. When I
couldn't find an openSUSE .rpm package, a Fedora one would usually
work fine. Maybe a manual installation of a dependency from a
differently-named package.

So I interpreted this as "you need a 64-bit OS" which is fair enough.
I had one. I was running a different derivative of _the same version
of Debian_. Yes, I expected it to work.

[Tim Radde]

I too ran some of those distros back in the day.  I often would have to rebuild the Slackware kernel to add some functionality I needed.  Those were the days.  I have never been a Windows fan.  I no longer use it except for burning eeproms as the tool does not run well under Wine.

[Tim Radde]

I meant there must be something that Simh or the code it runs must be missing or it would work.  I can't say what as I've never tried it that way.  I don't mind running Pi OS as I am only running Simh on most of mine.  One runs pi-hole for me.  I don't run the full version as I don't need the desktop.  Well, without details on how it fails no one can really offer a suggestion.  You could use strace to see where it fails.

[Tim Radde]

Just cause it's Debian doesn't mean it should run.  There is something missing or it would run.  Give us some details on the errors.  What does dmesg show.  Are they any errors in the various log files?

[Jeremy Doolin]

Could something in the pidp10 software be dependent on systemd? MX uses either SysV or runit, with the "systemd-shim" but the way systemd can be tied into so many things in the Linux world now, I wouldn't be surprised.

So yeah, I'm curious about the errors too. Bust out strace and see where it's blowing up.

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, 21 Jan 2025 at 13:58, Tim Radde <timr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just cause it's Debian doesn't mean it should run. There is something missing or it would run. Give us some details on the errors. What does dmesg show. Are they any errors in the various log files?

Tim, Jeremy, your quoting is broken and I note you're both using
Gmail. I am too, right now. It's easy to bottom-post as is good
manners for mailing lists: press Ctrl+A to select all, which expands
the hidden original text. Cursor down, trim, type beneath. That's it.
It takes seconds and I do it without thinking.

For best results click the vertical ellipsis (three stacked dots) at
the end of the toolbar at the bottom of the compose pane, and pick
"plain text." I just set Gmail to always use plain text in Settings.

Well, yes, frankly, being Debian _does_ mean it should run, IMHO, *yes.*

But if actual Pi OS is a requirement then I'll just reformat my SD
card with Pi OS. It's not worth going to great lengths troubleshooting
something unsupported. I don't use the Pi much and although MX Linux
was all set up with my email and so on, there's nothing on there that
is irreplaceable.

[sunnyboy010101]

This conversation is rather fun for me, all being "but it otta run cause its linux" and all.  Way back when I was tech support for a company that was selling a complex engineering solution that ran in one flavor of unix "windowing" and was supposed to run in all of them. Well, it was written using a Sparc SUN workstation (variant of BSD at the time) and wanted to sell it on the new IBM RS-6000 machines (AIX) as well as new 486 desktops (dating myself, much?) which only ran SCO Unix V. The Solaris version of course ran perfectly, and they even managed to get the AIX version working (totally different desktop managment systems no less), but nothing they did could ever make it run without crashing on SCO.

Some things work, and some things just don't. I realize that with modern linux flavors it should be possible to get A to work on both B and C, but sometimes you have to do a lot of digging and figuring and fixing to realize what's missing and needed. But that hardly makes it the community's fault. 

I too run many linux servers - I finally parked the last Solaris (Sun Sparc V440) 10 system years ago. I run all my commercial servers on Ubuntu "because it works for me", but don't mind Debian (Raspbien) at all. Some versions come bundled with stuff that I just don't  have the time to figure out - like OpenBSD bundled with "not Apache 2" and I just can't make it work for me. I have one web server that runs under Ubuntu (latest LTS) on a R-Pi 4, while my R-Pi5s both run Debian/Raspbien because it's easier for me right now to use the default Raspberry Pi OS when dealing with m.2 "hats". 

[Adam Morris]

Have you run Linux From Scratch?  It was an interesting concept, and it did help some people understand distributions a bit better.

<https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/>

Adam

[Flavio Villanustre]

Yes, I did. LFS was just a free and open book. Something along the lines of "bring your own code". But it was a great way to understand how a basic Unix system is put together. Of course, the complexity has crept out significantly over the years with systemd and the likes, so the old System V init system doesn't cut it anymore, but I think that the principle still stands.

Flavio

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[Tim Radde]

I myself have not.  But I did take an independent study in college that pretty much went thru how Unix operates.  From booting to up and running.  It was quite interesting.  This was before Linux even existed.

[Tim Radde]

Actually it was a reply to Adam's comment.  Not Liam's.  I didn't look as I saw the comment I replied to below it.  I have never heard of Linux from scratch til now.  But I have delved into how Un ix operates.

[Guy Sotomayor]

I haven’t heard of Linux from scratch either.

My first encounter with Unix was in 1977.  While at IBM I did lots of Unix work and even had AT&T Unix source license.  That meant the system I had the sources on was tracked and audited which was a pain as the system was upgraded fairly often as PCs (and later RS/6000s) were making significant changes during the 80s and 90s.

TTFN - Guy

On Jan 21, 2025, at 2:56 PM, Tim Radde <timr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Actually it was a reply to Adam's comment.  Not Liam's.  I didn't look as I saw the comment I replied to below it.  I have never heard of Linux from scratch til now.  But I have delved into how Un ix operates.

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[R Clark]

I went down the LFS road once. Also, for work, had to build Linux OS for some PowerPC VME boards back when with real-time extensions.  That said, I am now just a plain o' power user and let someone else worry about building a Linux system from scratch...  Not interested any more, thank you :) .  At the bottom Linux ... is Linux. Let the maintainers build different extensions and GUIs on top of it.  I've tried most of the UIs that are out there, and KDE 'now' is my goto GUI. Of course for the RPIs,the goto UI is the bash shell from SSH. One of the most awesome things about Linux ecosystem  is each of us can pick a UI that 'fits'  how we want to use the computer and not one that is picked for you like Apple or M$. Same with computer languages, from forth, basic, pascal, fortran, c, c++, rust, python, etc.... All at your finger tips. Out of context ... but one feels 'Free at last. Free at last'.

[Eric Smith]

On Mon, Jan 20, 2025 at 8:10 AM Liam Proven <lpr...@gmail.com> wrote:

But I do not run Raspbian. None of my Pis run Raspbian. I don't need
the educational stuff, I don't like Wayland and I am not a big fan of
LXDE.

I'm personally more of a fan of the Fedora/Red Hat side of the world than of Debian, but I can verify that a Raspberry Pi OS install from the "OS with desktop" does not include a huge amount of extraneous stuff that will get in your way. You can go back to a slightly earlier build if you want to avoid Wayland, although the current builds can work without Wayland.

I'm not trying to talk you out of using your preferred distribution. I'll probably try to run the PiDP-10 software on Fedora soon, although I have not yet attempted it. I just thought it would be easier to bootstrap using the preferred distro before trying an alternate, and that it would be a quicker way to get started learning how the PiDP-10 software works. I did have no significant issues using the install instructions with Raspberry Pi OS. However, I don't expect that doing the same on Fedora will be anywhere close to "plug-and-play". I expect to go back and forth between Raspberry Pi OS and Fedora boot SD cards multiple times for comparison as I'm trying to make it work on Fedora. You probably will face an easier task with a Debian-based distribution, but I still expect that you'll have to work out some things for yourself.

I definitely wish you the best of luck with either approach. Hopefully someone more expert on Raspberry Pi OS and/or Debian on Pi can offer you better detailed advice than I would be able to.

I'm really looking forward to doing some TOPS-10 and TOPS-20 programming again for the first time in years, and, if I start feeling more ambitious, learning ITS, which I've never previously used.

Best regards,

Eric