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Topics - bloudraak

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1
Operating Systems and Porting / Mananging Talos II remotely via BMC.
« on: April 17, 2022, 10:07:17 am »
I'm trying to run BMC commands via SSH to check the power status of the host, turn it on, and turn it off.

I can successfully SSH into the host and run some commands, for example:

Code: [Select]
$ cat /etc/os-release
ID="openbmc-phosphor"
NAME="Phosphor OpenBMC (Phosphor OpenBMC Project Reference Distro)"
VERSION="2.7.0-dev"
VERSION_ID="2.7.0-dev-571-g67efd9872"
PRETTY_NAME="Phosphor OpenBMC (Phosphor OpenBMC Project Reference Distro) 2.7.0-dev"
BUILD_ID="2.7.0-dev"
OPENBMC_TARGET_MACHINE="talos"


I know the BMC versioning is probably out of date, but Raptor isn't making it easy to stay current (neither does Dell and other vendors).

Looking at the documentation, it seems obmcutil would be the right tool for the job, and it gives me some help:
Code: [Select]
obmcutil -h
But when I run one of the commands, I always get an error.

Code: [Select]
$ obmcutil osstate
/usr/bin/obmcutil: line 181: mapper: command not found

Are there any other commands I can run via SSH to check the status of power and power on a device when it's powered off?

For background, I'm using my Talos II for release engineering and running Ubuntu 20.04 and other operating systems under KVM (whichever I can get my hands on). I'm using Jenkins to automate tasks through SSH, especially patching and powering off devices. Power is expensive in California, with the most expensive time to run machines being the evening. Running homelab sets me back around $200+ extra a month. That's a lot of wasted beers -- or 4+ trips to the Zoo with my daughter. So I turn servers off when not in use. My Talos II consumes 85W+, so it doesn't run cheap. I need to figure out ways to power the host on when Jenkins needs it, such as building stuff for POWER and then gracefully power it down when not in use. I can shut down the operating systems via Jenkins but have no way to turn it back on.

I'm exploring how to automatically build and test BMC, which would involve Jenkins uploading and updating it. Since Jenkins (and other CI/CD tools I'm playing with) natively support SSH, I think it may be worthwhile to explore what else I can do when I SSH into the BMC.

2
I'm curious whether anyone has been able to run FreeBSD 12.2 PPC64 as a guest in KVM, running on Ubuntu 20.04 ppc64le (or anything relevant), and how they managed to get it to work. I'm hoping I looked at this problem too long and I'm missing something really simple.

I'm building out a lab of different operating systems and configurations in order to test some software. My Talos II is running Ubuntu 20.04 ppc64le, with KVM installed and configured. I'm already running a few ppc64le and ppc64 virtual machines on the host, including FreeBSD 13 (both ppc64le and ppc64). The issue at hand is specific to FreeBSD 12.02 ppc64. It has 256GB RAM and 24TB storage, which I think is sufficient to build a lab to test various PPC64 and PPC64LE configurations.

I downloaded the FreeBSD 12.2 ppc64 ISO and tried to create the virtual machine as follows:

Code: [Select]
virt-install \
    --name freebsd12-ppc64-01 \
    --memory 2048 \
    --virt-type=kvm \
    --disk pool=default,size=64,format=qcow2 \
    --vcpus=1 \
    --network network=br0 \
    --os-variant freebsd12.2 \
    --graphics none \
    --cdrom /var/lib/libvirt/boot/FreeBSD-12.2-RELEASE-powerpc-powerpc64-dvd1.iso \
    --debug \
    --force

which failed with

Code: [Select]
Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt.
Booting [/boot/kernel/kernel]...               
Kernel entry at 0x102390 ...
panic: Standard large pages (SLB[L] = 1, PTE[LP] = 0) not supported by this system. Please enable huge page backing if running under PowerKVM.
cpuid = 0
time = 1
KDB: stack backtrace:
#0 0xc000000000729964 at ??+0
#1 0xc0000000006c1254 at ??+0
#2 0xc0000000006c1320 at ??+0
#3 0xc000000000b1a764 at ??+0
#4 0xc000000000b0b2ac at ??+0
#5 0xc000000000b04a0c at ??+0
#6 0xc000000000102440 at ??+0
Uptime: 1s

I configured huge pages on Ubuntu using  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM%20-%20Using%20Hugepages. And the output of

Code: [Select]
cat /proc/meminfo | grep Huge
Looks something as follows:

Code: [Select]
AnonHugePages:   2904064 kB
ShmemHugePages:        0 kB
FileHugePages:         0 kB
HugePages_Total:   16384
HugePages_Free:    15360
HugePages_Rsvd:        0
HugePages_Surp:        0
Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
Hugetlb:        33554432 kB

I then tried to create the VM using the following after adding memorybacking argument.

Code: [Select]
virt-install \
    --name freebsd12-ppc64-01 \
    --memory 2048 \
    --virt-type=kvm \
    --disk pool=default,size=64,format=qcow2 \
    --vcpus=1 \
    --memorybacking hugepages=yes \
    --network network=br0 \
    --os-variant freebsd12.2 \
    --graphics none \
    --cdrom /var/lib/libvirt/boot/FreeBSD-12.2-RELEASE-powerpc-powerpc64-dvd1.iso \
    --debug \
    --force

It still failed with the same error.  I requested some help from the FreeBSD forums https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/installing-freebsd-12-2-ppc64-in-kvm-on-power9.83253/, on which there's an interesting comment:

Quote
freebsd kernel reads available page sizes from openfirmware device tree @ibm,segment-page-sizes
if the key is present but it does not report 16MB pages it bombs

The default huge page size is 2M, and no matter what I have tried (kernel args and whatnot), that remains the default. Hugeadm lists 2M and 1G page sizes.

Code: [Select]
$ hugeadm --page-sizes-all
2097152
1073741824

and if I try to create a 16M pool, it barfs:

Code: [Select]
$hugeadm --pool-pages-min 16M:64
hugeadm:ERROR: 16M: unknown page size

What am I missing?


3
Talos II / Resetting Talos II to "Factory Settings"
« on: April 05, 2020, 02:20:08 pm »
Is there an easy way to reset an Talos II back to factory settings so I can go through the setup process again?

I changed the passwords per documentation but can't SSH to OpenBMC, nor use the website to login.

4
Talos II / Building a Talos II computer
« on: March 24, 2020, 02:12:31 pm »
Hello,

I have the following equipment

I'm trying to connect the various components, get Debian installed so I can start virtualize some workloads (mostly for development and testing). There seems to be a disconnect between the Supermicro chassis documentation and that of the motherboard, especially how cables are connected from chassis.

A couple of questions:
  • The backplane SAS-836EL1 comes with an 16 port extender. If I connect it to the HBA, would it be sufficient for the 16 drives?
  • Which cable is used to connect the HBA to the backplane? From the backplane documentation, I'm gathering a SFF-8484 is required but the HBA specification states it has 2 Mini-SAS HD SFF8643 internal connectors. I'm a bit lost.
  • I'm trying to figure out which backplane cables need to go where. See attached picture. I'm not seeing any codes on them and thus can't figure out which cable they are. I have not removed the backplane from the chassis.
  • I'm trying to figure out which power supply cable should be connected where on the motherboard (to be done last).
Are there any videos of folks doing a build or going through the process step by step? I really which Raptor Computing Systems can be a bit more proactive, like doing videos similar to the Dell videos, in particular with Supermicro chassis since they claim some compatibility.


Thanks,
Werner

5
Talos II / Rackmount Server Chassis for Talos II
« on: February 12, 2020, 09:53:48 am »
Hello,

I just purchased the Talos II board with 2xIBM POWER9 v2 CPU (8-Core) and 2U Heatsink Assemblies.  Looking for a rack mountable chassis. I had a look at https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Talos_II/Hardware_Compatibility_List, are there any other Rackmount Server Chassis folks used for Talos II?

I have been looking at variants of the Superchassis CSE-825TQ, such as:

  • SuperChassis 825TQ-R740LPB
  • SuperChassis 825TQ-600LPB

Has anyone tried these before? What are the power supply would you recommend for 2xIBM POWER9 v2 CPU (8-Core), with 8 SAS drives and 256GB memory? I only have an 15A/120V power outlet available.

Thanks,
Werner

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