Since I have spent days but still cannot produce a helloworld binary for MIPS big endian, I need someone to to produce that for me so I can test it on my MIPS hardware.

I need to know at this stage whether a FPC produced program compiled for MIPS (big endian) can actually run on my hardware. If that result is negative, I shall need a totally different approach.

Dennis

Ehm, you know that in the previous thread about creating a cross compiler it was all about a LITTLE ENDIAN compiler?

Regards,
Sven

Did you try:

ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/snapshot/trunk/mips-linux/

I just produced an up-to-date snapshot.

Pierre Muller

I do know all the previous advices were about MIPS little endian. I have modified those to MIPS accordingly and I have 'successfully' compiled programs for MIPS by
creating symbolic links for mipseb (for strange reason, the compiler insists on mipsed, not mips):

/usr/bin ln -s mips-linux-gnu-ld mipseb-linux-ld and the same for 'as'

I also tried mipsel and that went ok, but still need to remove '-linux' in the name.
Don't know why mips has to be 'renamed' as mipseb.

Anyway, I managed to compile a "hello world" program for MIPS without errors. However, when I ran it on my MIPS hardware, it just froze without any error message.
I have attached the gzipped hello world program with this. Hope someone can kindly run it on their MIPS bigh endian hardware and see if it writeln 'hello world'.

the program was just :

program hello;
{$mode objfpc}{$H+}
uses
   Classes;
begin
     writeln('hello world');
end.

Thanks a lot.

Dennis

I am confused, in all of your other mail till now you were talking about littleendian and now you talk about big endian, which one is right?

A little endian binary will never ever run on a big endian system and your crosscompiler will need to also be configured && build with the correct endian.

Michael

I originally asked questions on big endian but so far people, and the MIPS_port doc, just reply me about litte endian . I had no choice but to modify their advice into big endian myself.

I do understand big and little do mix.

Dennis

But Pierre, that looks more like a native MIPS compiler. My MIPS hardware is too slow to run a compiler.
I need a cross compiler.

If you have MIPS hardware, can you compile and send me a simple MIPS big endian "hello world" binary executable?
I want to test run it on my MIPS hardware.

Dennis

Hello,

Can't you just run that exe with the -h flag?
Should run fast enough.

I've just checked and I have big- and little-endian "Hello, World!" programs natively-compiled that run on Debian Linux on Qemu. I can send either or both if it would help, but I'd caution that they date back to around Xmas last year and something /could/ have changed with the compiler since.

Big endian (on appropriate system):

$ file test
test: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, MIPS, MIPS-II version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped
$ ./test
Hello, World!

Little endian (on appropriate system):

$ file test
test: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, MIPS, MIPS-II version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped
$ ./test
Hello, World!

/But/ I've got a vague recollection that somebody else had problems running on some router or other, which is one of the reasons why I fired things up at the end of last year and did some careful builds. I can't remember exactly where that one got to- I suggest that you look back through the fpc-devel and fpc-pascal archive.

Mark,
Yes, please kindly send both test executables to me. Also, if you say the compiler has changed since last christmas, do you know how I can download the fpc sources version of last christmas?

Thanks a lot.

Dennis

Dennis Poon wrote

My MIPS hardware is too slow to run a compiler.

Is the project to be compiled so big, that it will take hours to compile ?

-Michael

Dennis Poon wrote

Mark, Yes, please kindly send both test executables to me.

Dennis, did you try running the compiler itself as previously explained?

The compiler is a MIPS executable compiled with Free Pascal. You can run it in the command line just to see if it runs.

Looking back through the archive (mainly fpc-devel), I see occasional discussion of trying to get FPC-compiled programs running on (MIPS) OpenWRT without anybody saying unequivocally that they've succeeded.

Can anybody confirm that they've successfully got FPC+MIPS+OpenWRT running, i.e. rather than targeting generic Linux on a development board?

Our gateway is dropping some messages due to attachments or something. Dennis, note the archives at
http://lists.freepascal.org/lists/fpc-pascal/ and
http://lists.freepascal.org/lists/fpc-devel/

| Mark,
| Yes, please kindly send both test executables to me. | Also, if you say the compiler has changed since last christmas, do you | know how I can download the fpc sources version of last christmas?

OK, you should have them but I would say that this isn't easy for me at the moment: my host system is too slow to be realistic and booting the two targets took around an hour.

The compiler was 2.7.1 (trunk) as of about revision 23218. In practical terms I'd suggest starting off with the current trunk from svn and only trying an older revision if really necessary.

If these don't work for you then I think we need to work out what's going wrong, in case it's a general OpenWRT thing.

Note below for the big-endian system:

$ file ./test-mips-msb
./test-mips-msb: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, MIPS, MIPS-II version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped
$ cksum ./test-mips-msb
3420485397 68988 ./test-mips-msb
$ ./test-mips-msb
Hello, World!
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
system type : MIPS Malta
processor : 0
cpu model : MIPS 24Kc V0.0 FPU V0.0 BogoMIPS : 78.08
wait instruction : yes
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 16
extra interrupt vector : yes
hardware watchpoint : yes, count: 1, address/irw mask: [0x0ff8] ASEs implemented :
shadow register sets : 1
core : 0
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available

Note below for the little-endian system:

$ file ./test-mips-lsb
./test-mips-lsb: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, MIPS, MIPS-II version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped
$ cksum ./test-mips-lsb
2200884524 69468 ./test-mips-lsb
$ ./test-mips-lsb
Hello, World!
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
system type : MIPS Malta
processor : 0
cpu model : MIPS 24Kc V0.0 FPU V0.0 BogoMIPS : 65.53
wait instruction : yes
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 16
extra interrupt vector : yes
hardware watchpoint : yes, count: 1, address/irw mask: [0x0ff8] ASEs implemented :
shadow register sets : 1
core : 0
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available

On my email etc. system:

$ cksum ./test-mips-*
2200884524 69468 ./test-mips-lsb
3420485397 68988 ./test-mips-msb

I've sent these in a tarball. I trust that you will accept that if the files arrive with the correct checksums that they've run successfully for me here.

I tested the mipseb helloworld provided by Mark (Thanks again) but the result is the same as my own helloworld,
on running, the whole shell just froze.
I opened another ssh and "top" and see that the program is taking up 50% of the cpu.

Also, I tried to /proc/cpuinfo and it even said Permission denied (I have already chmod 777).
This OS does not even support the file command.
I am guess some rtl might be missing or some permission problem is causing the freezing problem.
Any ideas?

On another note, my NetGear 3700v4 router is actually running DD-wrt 21286 (not Openwrt, I previously thought DD-wrt was a spin off of openwrt, Sorry).

Dennis

Dennis Poon wrote

I tested the mipseb helloworld provided by Mark (Thanks again) but the result is the same as my own helloworld, on running, the whole shell just froze.

did you try to test a "heloworld" done in C, using the cross toolchain you use ?

-Michael

Apologies for the lousy threading but our gateway drops some messages.

| > I tested the mipseb helloworld provided by Mark (Thanks again) but | > the result is the same as my own helloworld, on running, the whole | > shell just froze.
|
| did you try to test a "heloworld" done in C, using the cross toolchain | you use ?

Michael: Curious thing is that those binaries definitely ran here So there's either something very odd with Qemu/Debian, or with OpenWRT- and I know where I'd put my money.

Dennis: Transfer the binary back off the OpenWRT system to a development system, being very careful to track the file to avoid any possible confusion, and apply cksum to it to make sure it's not been corrupted in transit. Then transfer any other binary (e.g. /bin/sh) off the OpenWRT system and apply file to it, to see how it's described. Also listen to Michael and others since they've done far more recent work on this than I have, and if necessary take the trouble of getting more of the toolchain onto the target system.

I've asked elsewhere and somebody who does various embedded system work tells me that

"Yes, I had similar problems with a mips OpenWrt. I couldn't get any websourced cross compilers to work properly. Progs did compile OK on the board itself.

"Gave up after a while. Have no idea why, how or what was wrong. :-("

So it looks like it's not just an FPC problem.

| Also, I tried to /proc/cpuinfo and it even said Permission denied (I | have already chmod 777).

Dennis, is /anything/ readable in /proc? I see that the RTL refers to /proc/self/exe during startup.

Noted your comment that you're running DD-WRT rather than OpenWRT.