Installing IBM CELL SDK on Fedora 10

If you have Linux running on a PS3 you would be delighted to know that IBM has released an update to the IBM CELL SDK version 3.1. The earlier version 3.0 was officially supported only on Fedora 7 and this version is supported on Fedora 9. This is very welcome given that Fedora 9 is a much improved version compared to Fedora 7. At the same time, it still falls short of the latest version, Fedora 10.

Why is this significant ? If you have tried Fedora 10 you would know that it is a pure solid distro and the best from the Fedora stable to date. Well, you may argue that every new version is better than the previous… true, but there is a difference between evolution and revolution. In my honest opinion, Fedora 10 is true to its tag line “Infrastructure matter”. It installs like a charm, and it is rock stable. Again, I think it brings the Fedora 10 very close to the market leader Ubuntu, currently at version 8.10. Take it for a spin and you will never look at another RPM-based distro.

Secondly, the 60 page instructions for IBM SDK installation is just too much to read for doing a quick installation. The drawback is that the document tries to address all the possibilities for installing the SDK such was the different hardware (Blade Center, x86), OS (RHEL 5, Fedora) and upgrade choices. To address this, I have compiled below a short 5 step process to quickly install the SDK.

The following is the instructions that worked for me on Fedora 10 to get IBM SDK version 3.1 installed. I have tried on both a VMware virtual machine and a dual-boot system.

CELL SDK 3.1 installation instructions (simplified)

OS: Fedora 10; other Linux OS YMMV

1) Downloading CELL SDK components: you can get these files from IBM developerworks website for CELL. Download the RPM, and the tgz file and untar+gunzip the tgz. It will create a new folder.

mkdir -p /tmp/cellsdkiso/
cd /tmp/cellsdkiso
Action: Download the following 2 files into this directory
- cell-install-3.1.0-0.0.noarch
- cellsdkiso (folder contains 2 files)

2) Installing pre-requisites:

yum install rsync sed tcl wget
yum install expat
Note: rsync sed expat were installed by default in Fedora 10

3) CELL SDK installation

rpm -ivh cell-install-3.1.0.0.0.noarch.rpm
/opt/cell/cellsdk –iso /tmp/cellsdkiso install

4) Installing additional SDK components (optional)

/opt/cell/cellsdk –iso /tmp/cellsdkiso mount
/opt/cell/cellsdk verify > /tmp/cellsdk.verify
grep optional /tmp/cellsdk.verify
grep “not installed” /tmp/cellsdk.verify

5) Installing full system simulator:

download systemsim-cell from IBM alphaworks
Fedora10 required BLT and gk libraries.

I hope this is useful to you and please post your comments or questions below

Category: Computer Science 7 comments »

7 Responses to “Installing IBM CELL SDK on Fedora 10”

  1. Fabio

    Hi,

    for the first … great guide!
    But I’ve got a question about the last step …

    I get an error when trying to:

    # /opt/cell/cellsdk_sync_simulator install

    The sysroot_image is already installed (yum install sysroot _image)

    what I’m doing wrong?

    Thanks in advance.

    Fabio Campos@Mainz, Germany

  2. S P T Krishnan

    Hi Fabio,

    Can you post the error message ?

  3. Berk

    Hello
    When I try to run the full system simulator, I get the following errors from the terminal output and the gui components(buttons) are not showned in the window . Do you have any idea about this issue ? Here is my terminal output:

    root@Berk Berk# systemsim -g -q
    ==============================================================================
    THIS CELL BROADBAND ENGINE SYSTEM SIMULATOR, TOGETHER WITH ALL PERFORMANCE
    DATA RESULTING THEREFROM, IS PROVIDED BY IBM AND RECEIVED BY YOU ON AN “AS-IS”
    BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. SEE THE APPLICABLE LICENSE FOR ADDITIONAL
    TERMS AND CONDITIONS.
    ==============================================================================
    GUI Enabled
    Licensed Materials – Property of IBM.
    (C) Copyright IBM Corporation 2001, 2007
    All Rights Reserved.
    Using initial run script /opt/ibm/systemsim-cell/lib/cell/systemsim.tcl
    Warning: Tried to connect to session manager, None of the authentication protocols specified are supported
    GUI not initialized. Execute tcl command ‘gui_init’.
    could not find sysroot_disk file
    jobs : no job sig11_handler null
    jobs : No tsim_active_job (or _proxy). Segmentation fault on address 0×55
    FATAL ERROR: 0: (0): jobs : Segmentation info> BP: 0xffe82f08, SP: 0xffe82ef0, IP: 0xf7ef4228
    jobs : Restored previous handler.
    jobs : If you continue from here, the original signal will be raised
    jobs : You might want to do things like
    jobs : handle 11 stop
    jobs : handle 11 print
    jobs : before you continue
    WARNING: 0: (0): Caught TRAP Signal. Stopping Simulation
    Segmentation fault

  4. S P T Krishnan

    Hi Berk,

    Try this URL and see if it solves your problems
    http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=176658

    Let me know !

    –Kris

  5. Berk

    than you for your response, I’ve reinstalled the sysroot-image from BSC, and now it is working.I dont understand why it wasnt installed as a default.

  6. Steffen

    Hi,

    thanks for this guide!
    How can i install the BLT and gk libraries?

  7. Vivek

    Hi, I installed SDK 3.1 following the steps given in the “SDK-Installation_Guide_v3.1.pdf”
    I also installed the Eclipse V3.3 IDE for SDK 3.1.

    I attempted to try out the sample program given here in “/opt/cell/sdk/docs/programming/IDE_Users_Guide_v3.1.pdf”

    After
    But I am stuck in the Page 67 “Cell/B.E.simulator-start the simulator-step 2″

    Ie I am unable to launch the “Cell Simulator”
    These are the last few lines that are displayed in the Eclipse Console window
    . . . . . .
    . . . . . .
    148279518: (91393426): md: autorun …
    148287526: (91401434): md: … autorun DONE.
    150070701: (93194346): Initializing disk 0 with devsz 1843200
    152408962: (95536876): VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
    153362163: (96498868): Freeing unused kernel memory: 448k freed
    233759194: (147998399): ^I^IWelcome to Fedora Fedora release 9 (Sulphur)
    240341829: (154975496): ^I^IPress ‘I’ to enter interactive startup.
    335819977: (230018603): eth0: bogus network driver initialization
    335842138: (230040764): eth0: 02:00:00:00:00:00
    409099024: (282086740): Starting login process
    ………………………………………..
    After this the simulator starting process is stuck with no response at 21%!
    Can you please help me what might be wrong?
    Thanks in Advance :)


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