Messages

1

Firmware / Re: Idenitfy versions of firmwares

« on: October 22, 2024, 03:27:13 pm »

I am so glad to announce you that the update has been applied successfully! Fans run now at 1800 and 1700 RPM ... so the machine seems so quite!

I was a bit scary and wanted to be sure not making a mistake, so it tool much time but now I can use it without complaints from my wife 

@carlosgonz To be honest, with all these components and various versions (here different versions of BMC but with the same Linux git sha1 ...), I think that's not clear at all. But I applaud Raptor CS for their machines and their work. My Talos 2 is great and I love PowerPC.

@ClassicHasClass Thank you for the feedback

Ah, I was about to forget: the scp transfer worked after I added the option -O, I found that on a forum: "it an issue with OpenSSH client. Since OpenSSH 9.0, the client uses SFTP protocol by default. To use the legacy protocol, the -O option must be specified."

I am impatient to come back to some more productive work with my Talos 2!

2

Firmware / Re: Idenitfy versions of firmwares

« on: October 21, 2024, 03:43:59 am »

Thank you, guys .. even if that does not work.

@borley With the full path, also providing a filename in the /tmp destination directory, that changes nothing

@ClassicHasClass Ok, at least that removes one subject of worry.

I see 2 possible next steps: try to upgrade BMC first (to V2.10) or contact someone at Raptor CS.

The BMC Linux version from dmesg made me think it was in version V2.00 as it gives:

Linux version 5.0.7-a8a208fa7346ad643e8f6100c49cb7b8468b6d38 (oe-user@oe-host) (gcc version 8.3.0 (GCC)) #1 Fri Jul 19 13:24:42 UTC 2019

But if I enter "cat /etc/os-version", I get:

ID="openbmc-phosphor"
NAME="Phosphor OpenBMC (Phosphor OpenBMC Project Reference Distro)"
VERSION="2.7.0-dev"
VERSION_ID="2.7.0-dev-523-gc5aa0ec48"
PRETTY_NAME="Phosphor OpenBMC (Phosphor OpenBMC Project Reference Distro) 2.7.0-dev"
BUILD_ID="2.7.0-dev"
OPENBMC_TARGET_MACHINE="talos"

If you are in version V2.XX, can you tell me what you have?

3

Firmware / Re: Idenitfy versions of firmwares

« on: October 20, 2024, 04:57:50 pm »

When I tried to update PNOR firmware to V2.00, copying the binary file, I got this error:

$ scp ./talos-ii-v2.00.pnor root@$TALOS_BMC_ADDR:/tmp/
root@192.168.1.xx's password:
sh: /usr/libexec/sftp-server: No such file or directory
scp: Connection closed

Have you already met that?

I don't know what happens ... There is something weird with my config. I don't know what to do.

I looked at the system and its storage organization and capacity:

root@talos:~# df -h
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
dev                     175.9M         0    175.9M   0% /dev
tmpfs                   209.2M     22.8M    186.4M  11% /run
/dev/mtdblock4           19.5M     19.5M         0 100% /run/initramfs/ro
/dev/mtdblock5            4.0M      3.1M    900.0K  78% /run/initramfs/rw

Is it normal to have /dev/mtdblock4 full at 100%?

4

Firmware / Re: Idenitfy versions of firmwares

« on: October 07, 2024, 04:46:12 am »

Analyzing several archives, it appears that these versions reported by lsmcode match with the PNOR firmware V1.05 (from System Package 1.06).

In the OpenBMC shell, dmesg starts with:

Linux version 5.0.7-a8a208fa7346ad643e8f6100c49cb7b8468b6d38 (oe-user@oe-host) (gcc version 8.3.0 (GCC)) #1 Fri Jul 19 13:24:42 UTC 2019

It seems that refers to BMC V2.00, as in its package, I can see:

U-Boot fitImage for Phosphor OpenBMC (Phosphor OpenBMC Project Reference Distro)/5.0.7+gitAUTOINC+a8a208fa73/talos

That seems to be strange because reading again and again several release notes, I understand that BMC V2.xx don't work with PNOR V1.xx ...

5

Firmware / Idenitfy versions of firmwares

« on: September 30, 2024, 02:35:22 am »

I want to update the firmware of my Talos 2 because the machine is really noisy, with fans are permanently running high (ipmitools shows 2 fans at 8800-8900 RPM) ... and I saw that there was changes (a fix) in firmwares 1.0x.

I would like to know the current version of the low-level elements (BMC, firmware ...). I only found the tool lsmcode (from the package lsvpd) that displays a list of elements with their git hash:

Version of System Firmware : 
Product Name          : OpenPOWER Firmware
Product Version       : talos-v1.20-161-g76f78f4
Product Extra         :        skiboot-bc106a0
Product Extra         :        occ-a8d0767
Product Extra         :        hostboot-884b60b
Product Extra         :        buildroot-2017.11.2-8-g4b6188e0f2
Product Extra         :        machine-xml-221192a
Product Extra         :        sbe-a389a5d
Product Extra         :        petitboot-v1.7.1-p836d356
Product Extra         :        linux-v4.15.9-openpower1-p9e03417

In the page that lists the different update files https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Talos_II/Firmware, archiives for BMC, PNOR and FPGA have an associated hash but I can't make them match with anything that I know.

So, are there other solutions to get the version of these elements?

I access BMC with ssh (using the web interface, it refuses to get even a login page): it is possible to get its version and possibly the firmware version from there?

Before upgrading, I just would like to know from where I start.

Please give me some advices: Maybe you will think that I can only update the firmware directly to the latest version (v2.10) whatever are the current element versions ...

6

Third Party CPU Discussion / Why haven't we seen boards with Power9 / MicroWatt?

« on: August 17, 2024, 02:50:33 am »

I have this question that stays in my mind for a long time ...

Power ISA is open, MicroWatt was announced and published in 2019, with the main actor Anton Blanchard saying that "the goal for Blanchard was to see if he could make it, and as a software developer, taking on a very low level hardware project was a challenge" (from Wikipedia but I attended the OpenPower Summit Europe the same year and understood quite the same). That did not reassured me but I had the hope that after the proof of concept, this enabled will be used as a base for real products and for example a small board to allow developers to play with it at low cost, and promote the architecture. And even more after the project evolved enough to make run Linux and Zephyr operating systems.

I think that's very sad that no board was created, that IBM has not officialy adopted this project or allowed resources to help structuring a side organism (OpenPower Foundation, Raptor CS ...) to do that.

What was missing? Why don't we get a board? Who could be interested in doing that? (if it's not too late)

@ClassicHasClass In 2020, you wrote "The possibility of a single-board Microwatt-based system (and fully reprogrammable, too) gets closer every day" so I suppose that you hoped the same.

It seems that the only implementation that went to the end is Kestrel. All other known initiatives seemed to be attempts that led nowhere unfortunately. There is an empty page about PowerPI at OpenPower Foundation (https://openpowerfoundation.org/groups/powerpi/). At Euro BSDCon 2023 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj4Q-m_WEh0&t=220s&ab_channel=EuroBSDcon), there is also a PowerSBC mentioned, for which we find zero information elsewhere ...

7

Legacy POWER Hardware / Running GTA: Vice City on a PowerPC based wireless router

« on: August 15, 2024, 12:37:25 pm »

Hello PowerPC lovers

For people who missed that, earlier this year, I got informed of an article titled "Running GTA: Vice City on a TP-Link TL-WDR4900 wireless router" where the author describes how he hacked a wireless router ... The article is well written and very instructive, describing what was done, and how, step by step. This is another proof that shows that even small PowerPC based machines can achieve really great and surprising things! Let's applause the author who has huge hardware and software skills.

Enjoy at https://kittenlabs.de/real-gaming-router/

8

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Unexpected Surprise, Debian 12 Bookworm

« on: April 25, 2023, 03:12:38 pm »

Pleased to learn that Debian 12 already works well. I stay at version 11 at the moment but of course I will upgrade when it will be official (stable).

9

Applications and Porting / Re: A set of good old games

« on: April 12, 2023, 11:02:31 am »

I'm sorry about that ... it is back online now!

10

Applications and Porting / A set of good old games

« on: April 11, 2023, 03:32:58 pm »

I have tried some games on my Talos 2 and I posted a review there: http://www.powerpc-lab.org/linux/2023/04/11/play-good-old-games-on-power9.html

Some of them are already known to work but that may provide additional information.

About the tested games, they are: ZGloom, SDLPop (Prince Of Persia), REminiscence (Flashback), Hurrican (Turrican), ScummVM, Doom, Quake, Doom 64, sm64 (Super Mario 64) and StarWars OpenJK (Jedi Academy).

11

Applications and Porting / Re: Clion, VSCode, IDE options?

« on: November 23, 2022, 03:19:30 pm »

The only thing I've found not to work is the clangd integration (which needs JetBrain's own) but everything else works great. It's a Java IDE but I guess I have to do something with my CPUs...

So, how did you get clang-tidy inspections (visible on your screenshot) as I understand they use clangd?

I found a ticket in the JetBrains bugtracker to support an ARM64 version of clangd. Someone mentions he made clangd working using qemu but the procedure seems to be too short.
I also found an article about running x86_64 executables on ppc64le but it makes me going too far ... and my Debian still has the default 64 KB pages, so it seems  there is zero chance to make all that working.

But to answer myself or anyone else wondering which native IDEs work on Power9 with Debian: Eclipse CDT and CLion, and so far I'm quite happy with CLion.

Who would not be "quite happy with CLion" :-D

12

Applications and Porting / Re: Clion, VSCode, IDE options?

« on: September 14, 2022, 05:09:44 am »

It was expected as ClassicHasClass reported that IntelliJ was working fine but I confirm it's the same with CLion, my preferred IDE 

About VSCode, I see there that the support of Linux ppc64le was requested without success.

There is a project fork with support of ppc64el but changes were made in 2019 on VSCode 1.41.1. I tried to build but that stops on an error about Python2 syntax 

13

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Debian 11 is out

« on: September 14, 2022, 03:31:36 am »

@ClassicHasClass Thanks! The chassis is a CSE-732 from MicroSemi and I have no fans except HSFs ones and the power supply. I will have to check the firmware version ... I am not yet familiar with all components.
I don't remember who much noise produces my Dual G5 that is side by side with the Talos 2  I will reboot it to install Debian 11 too (don't know when).

@MauryG5 It was reported that the problem was fixed in kernel 5.10.101 and kernel 5.11.12. And this bug was only concerning amdgpu. At the moment, I tried HD6570 that uses radeon driver. Sorry if mentionning RX550 was confusing, let's consider I have not started to test it.

14

User Zone / Re: Radeon HD7750 working on 64K PAGESIZE.

« on: September 14, 2022, 03:26:23 am »

As the topic is about Radeon HD and 64KB page size, I confirm that I have no problem with Radeon HD6570 with a default Debian 11 installation (updated to 11.5, with kernel 5.10.140). To get the display, I had to disable on-board VGA output (with a jumper cap on J10109) and to add "modprobe.blacklist=ast" to the boot commandline. In dmesg, I have the message "radeon: MSI limited to 32-bit".

15

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Debian 11 is out

« on: September 12, 2022, 07:38:30 am »

Finally, I got my Talos 2 (second hand machine) recently so I am not just a dreaming follower anymore 

I successfully installed Debian 11.4 (kernel 5.10.0-17). Hopefully I am quite familiar with Debian installer because its display was partially corrupted with truncated text and unexpected characters (I started installation with a 17" screen, not large enough?).
I tried KDE Plasma and Mate, installed tools, started to compile few programs, used Firefox a bit ... and also got display from a Radeon HD6570 (and I have received a RX550) but details about that will take place in another section of the forum.

I am not able to test audio, I will do that later. And today, I upgraded to Debian 11.5 (available for 2 days).

Everything works well so far. Ready to enjoy my machine. I just would like it to be less noisy (CPU fans).