[Wish/Request] VoiceChatter server for ARM cpu.

[kaztro]

Heya people, (VC developers/admins etc and members)

I was roaming through the homepage and just basicly admiring VC in its glory
when I suddenly got me a good idea.

- I want to run VC on my QNAP TS-210 NAS!~~AYAY!!

That was my initial thought and I was quite happy about it until I actually realized that my
TS-210 does not have an x86 cpu. I've tryed to search the web, been looking for gcc compilers
and what not to actually try and do this on my own. But since I'm a linux newbie and don't
know how everything works quite yet I'm wondering;

Is anyone able to help me with this? And what kind of information would you need of me
to be able to help YOU?

Regards
kAz

[thantik]

As far as I remember, I *THINK* someone did this already. We didn't host the file but if I remember correctly someone actually posted the executables for the ARM-based server somewhere here in the forums. For the life of me I cannot find it though.

[kaztro]

Thanks for the quick response.

Yeah I've searched the forum but couldn't find any and I've really searched the WWW for an answer and I'm just not able to find any. Hopefully some GURU will see this and try to figure out a solution, or at least point me on the right way.

[thantik]

Found it!

http://www.voicechatter.org/forums/view ... b86d1a7ccb

[kaztro]

Thanks for the link thantik!

So at least it's possible and thats a step in the right direction.
It was an older version of the server, and I'm not trying to be whiny or not being thankful for it. Allthough I'm really looking forward to see someone (or myself) who's able to stay updated and keep this coming when the latest versions of VC are released.

My System:
NAS - QNAP TS-210
CPU - Marvell 800Mhz
Memory - 256MB DDR2
Flash - 16MB

And it runs linux embedded, and if I'm not wrong it should be NSLU2.

I've learned that I need a GCC cross-compiler and that would probably solve most of the problems since I would be able to compile it on my own each time the source code is released. My main issue now is the compiler and to find one that actually works/fits in to my rig.

I found this so far:
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/NativeDevelopmentSetup
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Info/NativeNSLU2Toolchain
and probably the best/easiest
http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/building-an-arm-cross-toolchain-with-binutils-gcc-newlib-and-gdb-from-source

With all this help and I still can't do it, do I need to actually edit makefiles etc to make it possible?

[thantik]

Yeah I've never cross compiled, ChrisW will probably have more experience in that field. Since a lot of servers are starting to test ARM-based appliances, I can see this maybe being of interest to him. The how-to featured on that particular blog suggests that the guy actually used his existing arm environment, used APT to install build-essential, then used the compiler that was brought in by his repo.

You're going to have to wade through quite a few build flags in order to get a proper cross compiled executable functioning properly. Although I have to say, I'm quite interested in how this turns out in the end. It would be amazing to see something like a beagleboard-hosted VoiceChatter server.

Does your NAS have some things publicly available to allow you an SSH session? -- Maybe something exists already in order to gain root access + the ability to install build tools?

[kaztro]

Yeah I can connect through Putty and works smoothly. If I try to connect as root it just kicks me out alltho it works fine connecting as the admin.

I'm able to run things thru the admin account without an issue (or thats how I see it) and I can't say that I've seen any general error installing (trying too) some compilers that I've found. Regarding too installing build tools once again, I think its working.

Yeah lets see if ChrisW likes the idea and maybe even able to solve my problem.
Really enjoying your conversation thantik, shows there's some activity even if its not major!

[kaztro]

Oh btw ChrisW, if you read this and got the time for it check it out:
http://www.tapatalk.com/plugin.php

plugin so i can check the forum on my android (would be lovely)

[ChrisW]

But Thantik was doing such a great job!

However, I should probably weigh in. I personally do not have any means of testing against an ARM architecture, so I wouldn't want to claim support for it. I've never done cross compiling before either. It should be possible, but I have no experience with it, so I'm pretty clueless.

That said, it should be quite easy for you to compile the VC server for your platform. The server has no dependencies, so all you have to do is compile the small number of files that make up the server. In theory, it should be a matter of entering these commands from the <VC-Source-Directory>/VChatServer directory:

ln -s Makefile-linux Makefile
make

And that's it.

[thantik]

Chris, I thought you had to cross compile for the PPC platform for the Mac executables? Did you just have someone donate a PPC box to you or what?

[ChrisW]

That's a mac-specific situation using a mac-specific solution. Porting to the ARM platform is a completely different situation.