Messages

121

General OpenPOWER Discussion / risks associated with Xorg / Wayland

« on: December 29, 2020, 11:08:08 am »

There is regular noise about Linux distributions being on the cusp of abandoning Xorg, e.g. the recent Phoronix article about Xorg being abandonware, which generated many blogs and comments on various platforms.

Talos II and Blackbird users have commented that Wayland isn't working for us.  I personally use Xorg right now, I have this in my /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf

Code: [Select]

[daemon]
# Uncomment the line below to force the login screen to use Xorg
WaylandEnable=false


Has anybody investigated the Wayland issues on this architecture in any depth?

I don't see any distribution dropping Xorg in the next 12 months but as these machines have a long lifespan, if Xorg is dropped in 2 or 3 years from now then it will be an inconvenience for this platform.

122

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Debian

« on: December 29, 2020, 10:02:30 am »

I will publish a 5.9 kernel built with the 4k page size, I think it is a really good idea to try that.

It will be available as a Debian package so you can install it very easily along with any other Debian kernels and choose between them when you boot.

I'm really interested to know if this fixes the problem for you.

It may be some time next week, I'll post an update here when it is available.

123

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Debian

« on: December 29, 2020, 09:18:27 am »

I'm going to publish more of my own Debian packages over the next few weeks, along with documentation, that will make it a lot easier.  The packages I've described this week, Domoticz, an optimized ffmpeg and OBS Studio 26.1.0 are an example of how things can be backported to get the latest fixes on POWER9.

It is really useful if people can help to test these things and provide feedback, for example, by opening Debian bug reports or trying different smart home products with Domoticz and sharing feedback about which products work and which products don't work.  Developers can then focus our energy on other aspects of development while the community is testing things.

Another good place to ask for help: subscribe to the debian-user mailing list.

124

Applications and Porting / Re: Building software, a bit of a newb question

« on: December 29, 2020, 08:22:05 am »

The packages are now available, please see the details in this thread and feel free to provide feedback or ask questions.

125

Applications and Porting / OBS 26.1.0 packages available

« on: December 29, 2020, 08:21:22 am »

This is now available for anybody else to try, I backported the latest version, 26.1.0

As described in the thread about Domoticz, backports like this are published in the Debify repository.  Before you can install them with apt, you need to run this command once to enable the repository and authentication key:

Code: [Select]

$ wget -O - http://apt.debify.org/add-apt-debify | bash

After you have added the Debify repository and key, you can install OBS with this command (if you are using Debian 10 / buster):

Code: [Select]

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -t debify-buster-backports obs-studio

This OBS has been built using the updated ffmpeg packages that are also distributed through the same repository so you may get some performance benefits and extra features not available in the standard ffmpeg on Debian 10.

126

Applications and Porting / trying the ffmpeg POWER9 optimization patch

« on: December 29, 2020, 08:17:39 am »

I've prepared a Debian package of ffmpeg compiled with this patch for performance.  This is ffmpeg 4.3.1, it is newer than the standard version in Debian 10 / buster.

As described in the thread about Domoticz, backports like this are published in the Debify repository.  Before you can install them with apt, you need to run this command once to enable the repository and authentication key:

Code: [Select]

$ wget -O - http://apt.debify.org/add-apt-debify | bash

After you have added the Debify repository and key, you can install / upgrade your ffmpeg with this command (if you are using Debian 10 / buster):

Code: [Select]

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -t debify-buster-backports ffmpeg

Please give feedback through the ffmpeg bug tracker issue if you have any problems with this patch.

127

Applications and Porting / Re: pulseaudio assertion, crashes other applications (mpv, OBS, ...)

« on: December 29, 2020, 08:08:22 am »

This can be worked around by editing /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and setting this parameter:

Code: [Select]

enable-shm = no


128

Applications and Porting / packages available for Domoticz, Zigate USB stick, home automation, smart bulbs

« on: December 28, 2020, 05:43:47 am »

The Debify repository has been updated to include builds for ppc64el and arm64

After adding ppc64el, the first packages I built in there are the Domoticz packages, these are the installation instructions

You can order the Zigate USB stick directly from this web site.  I plugged one into the USB 3 port of the Talos II and it worked fine.

I've tested the Domoticz and Zigate together with a range of products, including:

• bulbs: Philips Hue, Osram, Mueller Licht (Aldi), Livarno Lux (Lidl)
• temperature sensors: Aqara
• smart sockets (both plug pack versions and inline)
• dimmer buttons / remotes: Aqara, Philips Hue
• motion sensors: Osram

I'm planning to buy some of the Ikea products this week and test them too, there is already feedback in the Domoticz forum thread on Ikea.  The Ikea products are interesting because they are incredibly cheap and you can buy them locally, the Aqara products from China sometimes take 2-3 weeks to arrive.

For any concerns with the packages, please ask in this Domoticz forum thread on Debian packages unless it is an issue that is very specific to the Talos II.

Here is a short video where I demonstrate how to flash the Zigate stick and link each of the devices to it.  Although there are not many similarities, try to imagine the Talos II in place of the Raspberry Pi in the video.

129

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Debian

« on: December 20, 2020, 04:34:56 pm »

The 5.9.6 kernel is in backports

You can look here to see it really built for ppc64le:

https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=linux&suite=buster-backports

To install it, after you installed Debian, you type something like this:

$ sudo apt install -t buster-backports linux-image-powerpc64le

130

Blackbird / Re: [amdgpu] [Fiji] Fedora 32 Linux kernel 5.7.x crashes

« on: December 19, 2020, 04:10:58 am »

I don't know if it will be fixed.  If none of the developers responsible for that code are using POWER9 with Navi 10 then they may never be able to investigate the problem completely.

Debian 11 will include a newer kernel and newer components like mesa.  That means newer hardware is more likely to work but it is never a guarantee.  That said, you can now run the 5.9.6 kernel on Debian 10, buster, it is in backports:

https://packages.qa.debian.org/linux

Once again, I would really appreciate feedback from anybody who tries the Navi 10 cards with a kernel compiled for 4k page size.  That would reveal whether the problem only impacts the 64k page size.  It would provide another reason to ask distributions to change their default page size for POWER9 kernels from 64k to the more common 4k.  This was the issue for the NVIDIA Nouveau driver.

131

Blackbird / Re: [amdgpu] [Fiji] Fedora 32 Linux kernel 5.7.x crashes

« on: December 18, 2020, 03:35:21 pm »

For the newer Big Navi cards, it looks like stock may not arrive in serious quantities until February or March.  If they work well then maybe it will be easier to just sell any 5700 XT cards and buy the newer cards.  16GB RAM will be really useful for those multi-monitor and multi-seat setups.

Looking at Debian, the Linux 5.9 kernel is now backported and all the related stuff like llvm and mesa builds as a backport too.  Fedora will have all that too.  That is at least 2 major operating systems that will be ready to run these cards in some form.

132

Applications and Porting / pulseaudio assertion, crashes other applications (mpv, OBS, ...)

« on: November 27, 2020, 06:36:35 am »

I've noticed that some applications, including mpv and OBS Studio, are intermittently crashing with an assertion from PulseAudio

If you run applications from a terminal window then you will probably see the assertion text in the window when the application crashes.  If you are running any applications from the menu or launcher and they are crashing unexpectedly then it is a good idea to try running them from the console to observe stdout and stderr.  You can also use journalctl to search for assertions like this.

Here is the error:

Code: [Select]

Assertion 're->data || re->memblock' failed at pulsecore/pstream.c:862, function do_read(). Aborting.
Aborted

I opened bug report #1060 in the PulseAudio bug tracker.

Searching for this assertion in the search engines I found people have similar problems on ARM64.  I haven't seen it on x86.

133

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: OpenBSD 6.8, first official release, testing, outstanding issues

« on: November 23, 2020, 02:39:26 pm »

When I removed the LSI HBA from the machine, the OpenBSD installer was working, I could install onto an SSD in my USB dock

When I updated the firmware in the Talos II motherboard, I think that fixed some problems with the LSI HBA, I had to use the beta firmware from the Raptor wiki

I posted some observations on the OpenBSD PPC list.

134

Blackbird / Re: [amdgpu] [Fiji] Fedora 32 Linux kernel 5.7.x crashes

« on: November 18, 2020, 03:06:12 pm »

Interesting question, I was looking at that myself the other day.  I notice people just started working on packaging the 5.10 kernel so maybe that will be in Debian 11 by default.

llvm-11 and llvm-12 have both been packaged.

Mesa 20.2 is in unstable and 20.3-rc1 is in experimental.  I was able to build 20.3-rc1 on buster so I suspect it has a good chance of coming through to stable for Debian 11.

135

Blackbird / Re: [amdgpu] [Fiji] Fedora 32 Linux kernel 5.7.x crashes

« on: November 18, 2020, 09:46:11 am »

The best place to ask about the Fedora kernel is on the Fedora developer or kernel mailing list.

It is also a good idea to ask about the page size, I feel workstation users will have better results using the 4K page size.  That is what I use for everything I do now so it is harder for me to assist people using the 64k page size.  Maybe they can offer different permutations of the kernel package so each user can choose, just like Debian.