Alternative option for solving Fedora i686 vs geode problems

[John Gilmore]

> 2) FESCo (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee) is dealing with the
> issue upstream [1][2] in Fedora with the view of getting it fixed
> upstream for F-14 or at the very least clarified. It was agreed in
> F-12 that the Geode LX would be supported and that decision wasn't
> discussed otherwise. Please add to the conversation on the ticket or
> the list. It might be worth seeing the outcome of this before we go
> and reinvent the wheel again.
> 
> Peter
> 
> [1] http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2010-June/137070.html
> (but thread goes back to April)
> [2] https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/387

It's nice to know we have the attention of the right folks.  But there's
some useful info we could give them for tomorrow's FESCo meeting.

Do we know which i386/i686 packages in F13 actually contain NOPL
instructions?  Apparently, glibc does contain them, due to the report
here from the beta:

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=579838

If fixing F13 would only require rebuilding five, ten, or twenty
packages, then fixing it in the F13 repos (for everybody, not just for
OLPC) is totally doable.  If it requires a total rebuild, then the fix
could only occur in the next Fedora release.

This message suggested that the NOPL instruction doesn't appear in any
of the coreutils programs:

  http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2010-June/137144.html

To figure this out, I downloaded and booted the F13 "i686" LiveCD and
did this:

  for x in {,/usr}{/bin,/sbin,/lib}/* ; do
    echo $x
    objdump -d $x | grep nopl
  done

It shows nopl's in:

/sbin/ldconfig
/sbin/mdadm.static, 
/sbin/sln
/lib/ld-2.12.so
/lib/ld-linux.so.2, 
/lib/libanl-2.12.so
/lib/libanl.so.1
/lib/libc-2.12.so
/lib/libcidn-2.12.so
/lib/libcidn.so.1
/lib/libcrypt-2.12.so
/lib/libcrypt.so.1
/lib/libc.so.6
/lib/libdl-2.12.so
/lib/libdl.so.2
/lib/libm-2.12.so
/lib/libm.so.6
/lib/libnsl-2.12.so
/lib/libnsl.so.1
/lib/libnss_compat-2.12.so
/lib/libnss_compat.so.2
/lib/libnss_dns-2.12.so
/lib/libnss_dns.so.2
/lib/libnss_files-2.12.so
/lib/libnss_files.so.2
/lib/libnss_hesiod-2.12.so
/lib/libnss_hesiod.so.2
/lib/libnss_nis-2.12.so
/lib/libnss_nisplus-2.12.so
/lib/libnss_nisplus.so.2
/lib/libnss_nis.so.2
/lib/libpthread-2.12.so
/lib/libpthread.so.0
/lib/libresolv-2.12.so
/lib/libresolv.so.2
/lib/librt-2.12.so
/lib/librt.so.1
/lib/libSegFault.so
/lib/libthread_db-1.0.so
/lib/libthread_db.so.1
/lib/libutil-2.12.so
/lib/libutil.so.1
/usr/bin/gencat
/usr/bin/getconf
/usr/bin/getent
/usr/bin/iconv
/usr/bin/locale
/usr/bin/localedef
/usr/bin/rpcgen
/usr/bin/sprof
/usr/sbin/build-locale-archive
/usr/sbin/glibc_post_upgrade.i686
/usr/sbin/iconvconfig
/usr/sbin/iconvconfig.i686
/usr/sbin/nscd
/usr/sbin/prelink
/usr/sbin/zdump
/usr/sbin/zic

There are no nopl's anywhere under /lib/modules.  objdump couldn't
examine the mashed kernel image in /boot, but I bet it's free or
almost free of nopl's.

Virtually all of these files are generated from the libc sources
(except two executables statically-linked with libc).  In short, this
is almost exclusively a glibc problem.  It's probably just a bug
introduced into the glibc configuration or makefile in F13.

Fedora Bug 579838 should be reopened -- it was inappropriately closed
by Andreas Schwab on 2010-04-07.  (Jakub's comment wasn't pretty, but
he didn't close the bug - Andreas did.  But closing bugs
inappropriately to make your bug stats look good is rampant in every
development org - e.g. I regularly complain to Ubuntu about this.)
This is not a dead issue for F13, and we should seek solutions within
F13 as well as outside it.

Oddly, F13 offers release CDs and DVDs only for "i386" (and x86-64),
but offers live CDs only for "i686" (and x86-64).  It is completely
unclear from the documentation (which suggests using these
interchangeably) whether the "i386" DVD is really compiled for i686 or
i386.  See:

  http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options
    (hover over the "Download Now" buttons to see which ISO image each
     one offers.)
  http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Installation_Guide/ch-new-users.html#sn-which-arch

	John