• SpecialInterestGroup
• AltArch
• ppc64le

Introduction

This architecture is for 64-bit IBM POWER8 machines using little endian byte ordering.

This is the second major release of ppc64le by the AltArch Special Interest Group. This release is based on the Source Code from CentOS 7 (1804) x86_64 Architecture and includes all current updates from the main CentOS 7 tree. It is derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5.

Known Issues

Missing Ada compiler

Building gcc-gnat, libgnat requires gcc-gnat >= 3.1, libgnat >= 3.1. There isn't a Fedora ppc64le Ada compiler to bootstrap the CentOS ppc64le Ada compiler. I am still investigating a x86_64->ppc64le cross toolchain to bootstrap Ada. For now, gcc.spec has been modified with %global build_ada 0.

Installation

Installation is performed via the install ISOs and is the same as described in the standard CentOS 7 installer articles.

Basically, boot one of the install ISOs and use the anaconda installer OR use a custom kickstart file.

Install ISOs are available here:

http://isoredirect.centos.org/altarch/7/isos/ppc64le/

sha256sums

72c454bdd9c24046e35e366dec75fb2f421a46fc89309cbfbadc1c322ce200cd  CentOS-7-ppc64le-Everything-1804.iso
3a4132119a9ab203e02bb05acfa55be1c17a06f1336ba69814f86da395d2b6f4  CentOS-7-ppc64le-Minimal-1804.iso
55340e670ccfaf08152f4f6da7ebe3cc7573b1f9bafe8fc42dcb3ca47ff445b8  CentOS-7-ppc64le-NetInstall-1804.iso

ppc64le RPM repository:

http://mirror.centos.org/altarch/7/os/ppc64le/

Getting involved

The ppc64le effort is being done as a community SIG project. Everyone is welcome to participate. We still need community help to maintain documentation and also fix issues that may arise in this architecture.

We encourage vendors to come and join this effort, especially OpenPOWER community members.

The wider CentOS Ecosystem is also welcome to engage with us, both at the project and code level. If you are working with a project that interfaces, manages or develops on top of CentOS, especially in the virtualization, cloud, container and infrastructure management areas - we would love to have you guys get involved.

Package Changes

Most packages are clean builds from the most recent release of CentOS 7, but there are some changed sources specifically for ppc64le, as listed here:

Packages unique to ppc64le

These packages are exclusive to ppc64le/ppc64

Packages not in ppc64le

The following packages exist in x86_64 but are not in ppc64le:

Not In ppc64le

Bootstrap Process

Fedora 21 ppc64le was used to bootstrap the first CentOS 7 ppc64le rpms. Attach CentOS linuxfromscratch.org steps here