installers not booting

[pocock]

petitboot starts up and displays the menu

I've tried both the Debian 10 and OpenBSD USB sticks.  Neither of them appears to be working.  The install options (e.g. Debian/Expert mode) appear in petitboot, I select the option I want, the screen goes blank and then displays the message "SIGTERM received, booting..."

Leaving the machine like this for 5 or 10 minutes, nothing more happens, it just appears stuck like that.

[MPC7500]

In July I have read that the Bullseye installer is using serial port for some reason. I would try to sshing into the TalosII.
root@talos -t -p2200. The password is in the mainboard package. The paper looks like a sales slip.

[pocock]

I had tried changing the option in petitboot configuration from hvc0 to tty1

I also tried pressing 'e' on the Expert mode option and manually adding console=tty1 to the command line

Neither of these things made any difference.

I found a few USB serial dongles but I haven't found my serial cable yet so I've tried ssh and obmc-console-client

For Debian, on the console, I found the kernel had crashed during mpt3sas driver initialization.  I saved the stack trace.  I removed the HBA and now it boots.  The HBA is a spare LSI 9207-4i4e that I had hoped to use temporarily.  It is based on LSI SAS 2308.  Is there any hope for this card working on Talos II?

For OpenBSD, I found a different problem, here is the output:

Code: [Select]

SIGTERM received, booting...
[   22.960137] kexec_core: Starting new kernel
Hello, World!
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1995-2020 OpenBSD. All rights reserved.  https://www.OpenBSD.org

OpenBSD 6.8-beta (RAMDISK) #47: Thu Sep  3 19:35:45 MDT 2020
    deraadt@powerpc64.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/powerpc64/compile/RAMDISK
real mem  = 137438953472 (131072MB)
panic: buf_mem_init: can't reserve VM for buffers

The operating system has halted.
Please press any key to reboot.

128GB and can't reserve VM for buffers... I didn't fill all the slots so I could add more I suppose.

This is the OpenBSD image I tried to use:

https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/powerpc64/install68.iso

sha256sum install68.iso
ecfcaf79833358c94ecf8f7390346c8d4f167169f7eb987417a6b532bf1e12e7

[pocock]

For the Debian installer boot issue, I tried updating the system with the PNOR file here and now the LSI 9207-4i4e is working

For the OpenBSD installer issue, I've queried it on the OpenBSD ppc mailing list

In Debian, X is able to start on the VGA but it is not working through the RX 580 GPU.  The screen flickers, sometimes it says there is no signal, nothing happens.

X logs show it is sees both the GPU and the monitor, it obtains the monitor ID string and supported resolutions.

I tried installing the jumper on the motherboard to disable the regular VGA, that has not helped.

I've tried various other things, for example
- disabled wayland in gdm config
- apt install firmware-linux-nonfree firmware-amd-graphics
- update the Debian kernel from buster-backports, 5.7.0-0.bpo.2-powerpc64le

Can anybody make any suggestions about how to get the GPU and display functional?

[pocock]

I had a closer look and the VGA disable jumper was not correctly attached.  After fixing it, the X display started working.

The current Debian config on the machine is buster with the following from backports:

Code: [Select]

bind9-dnsutils                           1:9.16.6-2~bpo10+1                 
bind9-libs:ppc64el                       1:9.16.6-2~bpo10+1                 
firmware-amd-graphics                    20200721-1~bpo10+1                 
firmware-linux-nonfree                   20200721-1~bpo10+1                 
firmware-misc-nonfree                    20200721-1~bpo10+1                 
linux-image-5.7.0-0.bpo.2-powerpc64le    5.7.10-1~bpo10+1                   
linux-image-powerpc64le                  5.7.10-1~bpo10+1                   
wireless-regdb                           2020.04.29-2~bpo10+1

although after discovering the jumper issue, it is not clear if I really needed those things from backports.

Looking closely at the log, I notice the amdgpu driver in Debian was compiled for Xorg 1.20.3:

Code: [Select]

X.Org X Server 1.20.4
...
[  2101.612] (II) Module amdgpu: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[  2101.612]    compiled for 1.20.3, module version = 18.1.99
[  2101.612]    Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[  2101.612]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 24.0


This appears to arise from the sequence in which the official Debian packages were compiled and uploaded to the Debian archive.

Overall, my original issue with the Debian installer is resolved, I'll put another comment here after getting feedback about the OpenBSD installer.

[pocock]

The OpenBSD memory issue mentioned above has been resolved by a patch.  I created separate topic for any dedicated discussion about OpenBSD 6.8