Yes, the toolchain mentioned on webpal.bigbrd.com and Tom's page is what you want. The toolchain tar file must be installed in a particular locations since there are hardcoded links in the tar file, so follow the instructions on Tom's page...he appears to give the correct directory to use. After you untar the files, you should have a /usr/local/arm/2.95.3/arm-linux/bin directory which you want to add to your path. This directory has the binaries with names like arm-linux-gcc, etc. For speical cases where you want to use "gcc" and have it pick the ARM gcc rather than the native one, /usr/local/arm/2.95.3/arm-linux/bin in your path before /usr/bin will override the normal native gcc.
For kernel source, you'll need to get the correct version from kernel.org, then apply the correct rmk page, then the wp2 patch. Just stick everything on some directory other than /usr/src/linux it doesn't conflict with any x86 kernel building you might be doing. There are links on the webpal.bigbrd.com webpage to the correct verions. One warning: due to a mistake by me, the current patch flashes the lamps backwards from before, e.g. now RED LED flashes once per second, and YELLOW LED one indicates busy.)
There is also a .config file that you can use as a starting point on webpal.bigbrd.com.
In terms of what to use for /, some people use, as you are, various ARM Debian pieces. I use uclibc based things. I've got a uclibc
based set of files both for cross-compiling and also I've built the uclibc ARM builddir stuff which allows one to actually compile things on the webpal. Don't
get to excited about compiling things on the webpal itself...it is about 50-100 times SLOWER than my AMD 2800+ PC system! So, if it takes a minute to compile on the PC, its now an hour. Unfortunately, the uclibc builddir stuff builds for a later processor than the webpal. This is because its using the 3.x gcc compiler, which, for the ARM, seems to default to a later processor. I manunally patched it to be for the webpal, but I don't have an automated way of doing thing. This isn't an issue for the 2.x gcc compiler above for the kernel building above or if you build any 2.x based uclibc cross-compiling system.
Generally, I prefer the cross compiling, since its so much faster, however, some programs insist on running things on the host processor during building, which obviously doesn't work when cross-compiling...many of these can be worked around by telling the configuration programs the correct answer but its a pain.
Which method you will want to use (prebuild ARM Debian or build-it-all-yourself uclibc) depends on what you want to do with the final system. I was more interested
in building small embedded systems that use the serial port as the console, so I've just build things myself using uclibc.
Feel free to email me directly if you want. See bottom of first page of webpal.bigbrd.com for email address. We could try exchanging some of my smaller
root images and see if they work...plus I've got some newer kernels that worked with the video side of things which is what I assme you are using for your console ?
Bill
