Trying to Get Chimera Linux Running on Pentium Class Hardware

Since declaring in my last post that “it was time to return to slightly less frivolous projects for a bit” I instead spent the last week-and-change attempting to make Chimera Linux run on Pentium class 32-bit x86 hardware. I was moderately successful. This was sparked by a friend linking to the EoL page on the PC Engines website quoting the fact that they were exiting the market: Despite having used considerable quantities of AMD processors and Intel NICs, we don’t get adequate design support for new projects. In addition, the x86 silicon currently offered is not very appealing for our niche of passively cooled boards. After about 20 years of WRAP, ALIX and APU, it is time for me to move on to different things. This reminded me that I had two ALIX boards in neat little aluminium cases sitting in the cupboard: an alix2d13 purchased in 2011, and an alix3d2 purchased in 2012. My immediate thought was the alix3d2 would be perfect for hosting my retro website. alix3d2 They are powered by an AMD Geode LX800 CPU clocked at 500Mhz with 256Mb of RAM. The Geode is mostly an i686 class 32-bit x86 CPU. Instead of installing an OS that I know works on them like OpenWRT or NetBSD I have spent that last week and bit bringing up Chimera Linux on i586 (Pentium). I wanted to use Chimera Linux because: I was already hosting my retro site with it. I has already packaged the Rust binary that serves part of the site. Chimera makes cross-compiling that package super easy, as well as service monitoring with Dinit. I thought it would be fun to use a modern distro on Pentium class hardware. The process of bringing up a new platform on Chimera Linux was interesting, but tested me at times. Especially early on when I was getting segfaults in apk, thus preventing anything from working. This post aims to document the steps I took (which may not be optimal) in case it happens to be useful.