ShowEQ and Raspberry Pi

[BlueAdept]

After the most recent apt-get upgrade, SEQ threw an error. struct bazaarSearchResponseStruct response[] in everquest.h needs to be changed to struct bazaarSearchResponseStruct response[0] to be able to get it to compile.

[Shinigami]

Is this still a viable way to use SEQ?

[BlueAdept]

As far as I know if you build it with a Pi 3b or 3b+ it should still work. I havent tried it on a 4 yet.

[Shinigami]

As far as I know if you build it with a Pi 3b or 3b+ it should still work. I havent tried it on a 4 yet.

Cheers. Do you know if CentOS 7.x is ok, or will qt be an issue?

[BlueAdept]

Use raspbian for the OS. I dont think CentOS supports ARM cpus. You might have to get an older version of raspbian for it to work.

[splooge]

CentOS 7 is working fine for me on a Pi 4B 4G.

http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/centos-altarch/7/isos/armhfp/

From my notes from about a year ago or so:

yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
yum install qt-devel libpcap-devel xorg-x11-server-Xorg xorg-x11-xauth xorg-x11-apps

I experience frequent 'freezes' with my setup, though, and I'm not sure what causes it. It doesn't freeze to the point that showeq needs to be restarted, it just stops updating until I zone and then it starts working again. I've tried using strace to see if there's anything obvious I can see but other than hundreds of gettimeofday() calls per second, I don't notice anything. I'm no strace expert, though.

[an old hacker]

CentOS 7 is working fine for me on a Pi 4B 4G.

http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/centos-altarch/7/isos/armhfp/

From my notes from about a year ago or so:

yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
yum install qt-devel libpcap-devel xorg-x11-server-Xorg xorg-x11-xauth xorg-x11-apps

I experience frequent 'freezes' with my setup, though, and I'm not sure what causes it. It doesn't freeze to the point that showeq needs to be restarted, it just stops updating until I zone and then it starts working again. I've tried using strace to see if there's anything obvious I can see but other than hundreds of gettimeofday() calls per second, I don't notice anything. I'm no strace expert, though.

I run in a (Debian) Buster based image on Rock64 (ARM64) also 4GB memory and at times I experience frequent freezes. Sometimes it recovers, sometimes it does not. I suspect it's related to the rate of incoming packets which seq has to process. I haven't had time to dig extensively into the C++ to validate. It's possible we're seeing similar behaviour.

[splooge]

I run in a (Debian) Buster based image on Rock64 (ARM64) also 4GB memory and at times I experience frequent freezes. Sometimes it recovers, sometimes it does not. I suspect it's related to the rate of incoming packets which seq has to process. I haven't had time to dig extensively into the C++ to validate. It's possible we're seeing similar behaviour.

Certainly possible. I play on the TLP's and I notice it happening more and more each expansion release. It started getting bad around Planes of Power and just got progressively worse from there.

I wonder if x86 people are having the same issue or if it's just us ARM folk.

[Shinigami]

Heh I am currently using CentOS 6.10 on a super slow/old laptop, but if Pis are prone to freezing, that doesn't sound like much of an upgrade. Has anyone tried any of the Windows 10 sticks like https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Compute.../dp/B01ASB0DJ8 etc?

[BlueAdept]

I have no problem with my Pi 3b+. It is rock steady. It has been running without reboot since last November when I moved. It is running raspbian.

[Shinigami]

I have no problem with my Pi 3b+. It is rock steady. It has been running without reboot since last November when I moved. It is running raspbian.

Good, I'll give it a try then. Which version of raspbian do you use with it?

[BlueAdept]

This post on page 6.

After many years of lurking, I may finally have something worthy of contribution.

I successfully compiled QT3 and the latest showeq on a Pi 3B+ running the Raspbian Stretch 2018-10-09 desktop image:

-- Install the following packages: subversion libtool automake libpcap-dev libx11-dev libxext-dev gcc-4.9 g++-4.9
-- Download qt-x11-free-3.3.8b.tar.gz from https://download.qt.io/archive/qt/3/
-- Set some environment variables in .bashrc or whatever location is appropriate for your shell. Adjust paths for your system, if desired.
Code:
QTDIR=/usr/local/qt3
PATH=$QTDIR/bin:$PATH
MANPATH=$QTDIR/doc/man:$MANPATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$QTDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

export QTDIR PATH MANPATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH
-- Save the following code to a file, and apply the patch to the qt sources, via 'patch -p1 < patchfile' :
Code:
--- qt-x11-free-3.3.8b/src/tools/qglobal.h.orig 2007-04-24 09:02:36.000000000 -0400
+++ qt-x11-free-3.3.8b/src/tools/qglobal.h 2007-04-24 09:03:02.000000000 -0400
@@ -315,9 +315,9 @@
QString bloat. However, gcc 3.4 doesn't allow us to create references to
members of a packed struct. (Pointers are OK, because then you
supposedly know what you are doing.) */
-# if (defined(__arm__) || defined(__ARMEL__)) && !defined(QT_MOC_CPP)
+# if (defined(__arm__) || defined(__ARMEL__)) && !defined(QT_MOC_CPP) && !defined(__ARM_EABI__)
# define Q_PACKED __attribute__ ((packed))
-# if __GNUC__ == 3 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 4
+# if __GNUC__ >= 4 || (__GNUC__ == 3 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 4)
# define Q_NO_PACKED_REFERENCE
# endif
# endif
--- qt-x11-free-3.3.8b/src/tools/qstring.h.orig 2007-04-24 09:03:11.000000000 -0400
+++ qt-x11-free-3.3.8b/src/tools/qstring.h 2007-04-24 09:03:27.000000000 -0400
@@ -194,7 +194,7 @@
char latin1() const { return ucs > 0xff ? 0 : (char) ucs; }
ushort unicode() const { return ucs; }
#ifdef Q_NO_PACKED_REFERENCE
- ushort &unicode() { return *(&ucs); }
+ ushort &unicode() { return *((ushort *)&ucs); }
#else
ushort &unicode() { return ucs; }
#endif
--- qt-x11-free-3.3.8b/src/tools/qvaluelist.h 2008-01-15 13:09:13.000000000 -0600
+++ qt-x11-free-3.3.8b/src/tools/qvaluelist.h 2018-10-29 22:35:36.253629483 -0500
@@ -51,6 +51,7 @@
#include <iterator>
#include <list>
#endif
+#include <stddef.h>

//#define QT_CHECK_VALUELIST_RANGE

--- qt-x11-free-3.3.8b/src/tools/qmap.h 2008-01-15 13:09:13.000000000 -0600
+++ qt-x11-free-3.3.8b/src/tools/qmap.h 2018-10-29 22:36:05.563527018 -0500
@@ -53,6 +53,7 @@
#include <iterator>
#include <map>
#endif
+#include <stddef.h>

//#define QT_CHECK_MAP_RANGE
-- configure qt3, enabling threading and setting a prefix:
Code:
./configure -thread -prefix /usr/local/qt-3.3.8b
-- make -j4 (take a small nap while this builds)
-- as root, execute 'make install'
-- i create a symlink, to match my QTDIR environment variable
Code:
ln -s /usr/local/qt-3.3.8b /usr/local/qt3
-- checkout seq
-- make -f Makefile.dist build
-- configure, using gcc-4.9 instead of gcc-6.3 (Newby suggested this here)
Code:
CXX=g++-4.9 CC=gcc-4.9 ./configure
-- make and make install as usual

After getting this built, I have one remaining issue that isn't relevant to my usage, so I'm posting this with the hope that it gets someone closer to a general solution.

When running directly on the Pi desktop, showeq isn't finding a default Helvetica font, so the menu texts are all placeholder boxes instead of letters. I like to run my Pi headless, exporting the DISPLAY to a remote X server on a windows client machine. The menu fonts look normal to me there, so I've no need to pursue this issue any further, but I suspect that it's possible to modify seqdef.xml or showeq.xml to override Helvetica with one of the fonts included on the Pi desktop image.

You do have to make a change for the bazaar search as noted on the top of this page

[BlueAdept]

I am currently working on seeing if I can get showeq6 running on a Pi 4. I should be ready to try to compile tonight. I am still working on turning it into a wifi router. Keep your fingers crossed. If/when I am successful, I will rewrite the how to guide and put it on the forums.