Messages

1

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Irish elections, CPU manufacturing, multinationals and the IPFS in elections

« on: November 28, 2024, 09:03:46 am »

Irish elections are tomorrow and one of the big issue is the state dependency on tax revenue from multinationals

There are many discussions that can be started about multinationals but the one topic I want to mention here is the presence of Intel's CPU manufacturing plant on the edge of Dublin and the supply chain that supports them.

People are asking how Ireland can broaden its revenue streams by having a more diverse range of companies.  Nonetheless, it makes sense to have companies that use the existing supply chains and skills.  This gives more options for tech workers when they want to change jobs.

Has anybody heard anything recently about anybody other than IBM wanting to engage in OpenPOWER chip production?

Does anybody have any general comments on the possibility of somebody producing RISC V in Ireland or is RISC V still a pipe dream?

At the same time, there is a a new category on my blog for IPFS and some posts about how this tool has been used and useful in elections.

2

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: for sale: two workstations, Talos II dual CPU / Radeon RX580 8GB

« on: October 30, 2024, 06:00:02 pm »

The 8-core CPU/HSF/motherboard/RAM combination has been sold

The case from the 8-core system is still available, along with PSU, riser for a GPU, a SATA 4-way cable and a SATA HBA

The Noctua fans have been sold

The other system is still available.  I could move the motherboard with 4-core CPUs into the Fractal case if that is the case you prefer.

One very interesting possibility with the dual 4-core system: you could buy another motherboard, either Blackbird or Talos II Lite, directly from Raptor and then move one of the CPUs to that other motherboard.  Then you have two 4-core systems.

4-core systems are interesting because they use less electricity, generating less heat and less noise but they still give very good performance and they are completely open.

3

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Debian 12 status?

« on: October 29, 2024, 03:27:25 pm »

Daniel I was also thinking of taking the problem directly to the Debian forums at this point, can you tell me which are the main forums where I can write and bring the problem?

Please join the debian-devel mailing list.  That has always been the main place to communicate about issues that span multiple architectures.

From what I understand the problem is not only for us on Power but also on other architectures they are having problems with Debian 12 on the new Kernels... This problem must be solved once and for all because it is absurd not to be able to use the new Kernels on the latest version of Debian and then on the old Debian instead everything works perfectly it makes no sense... I updated because now on 11 they do nothing anymore and they don't update almost anything anymore and we are left behind. I like Gnome 3.38 better than 3.4X but unfortunately now we have to use this but at least everything works damn it...

If you search the Debian Bug Tracking System (BTS) for all the reports about Debian installation failures and Debian upgrade failures you will see that I personally spend time testing the upgrades and installations during the freeze process before every release and I share all my feedback about bugs.

Now that Debian has become so political they reject legitimate bug reports without even looking at them.  Even if a found a zero-day security issue, the political filters would block me reporting that.  One bug report from an experienced developer might avoid problems for another 10,000 anonymous users who don't know how to report bugs.

There have been various reports and surveys in 2024 revealing that young people are not getting involved and the existing developers are getting older

Personally, I feel the Code of Conduct gaslighting is a big factor in that.  When young people go out to the pub on a Saturday night, the last thing they hope to see are their parents, their professors or their boss in the same pub.  Yet when you see some reference to Code of Conduct for a weekend event like FOSDEM, it is not a real weekend any more.  If they want to have people behave like their boss is around all the time, why not move FOSDEM to a weekday so more people can ask their company to pay them for the time we spend there?

When people see lawsuits, they don't always know who is right or wrong but they just go somewhere else.

When people see the press team writing statements to denounce a volunteer, people subconsciously reduce their effort to do testing or reporting bugs during the pre-release freeze.

Therefore, the quality of the software declines and we risk getting into some kind of death spiral where the politics pushes some people away and then the lack of reliability pushes even more people away and it becomes harder and harder to recover.

They are always talking about having a "safe space".  If they push everybody out so it is just 15 or 20 core members of the cabal then I'm sure they will feel safe but they won't have a real distribution any more.

4

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Debian 12 status?

« on: October 28, 2024, 05:01:21 pm »

It is really important for somebody to raise this topic on the relevant Debian mailing list for ppc64 porting

Given that I did the work to get the 4k discussion started for both Debian and Fedora I would like to raise the topic in the Debian list but some of the non-developing/non-uploading developers are censoring my messages there due to the Debian politics.

It is really sad that so many people are suffering because of the politics in Debian.  It is really bad for people who spent money on the Raptor hardware and it is also really bad for my family, friends, neighbors and many other people who had these political problems forced upon them by the social media set.

5

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Problems with new Kernels on Debian 12

« on: October 22, 2024, 02:36:51 am »

Back in July I made a series of posts in this thread about the kernel on Debian 12

I did not find a quick solution so I am running my patched 5.10.0-8-powerpc64le-4k kernel package on Debian 12

The 6.x kernels were giving problems as described in the other thread.  The 5.10.x kernel has been stable for me.

6

General OpenPOWER Discussion / the Swiss harassment judgment, how it actually started

« on: October 21, 2024, 03:50:51 am »

After I made the post about selling my Talos II workstations, I received more queries about how the rumors about a harassment judgment really started back in 2018.

Therefore, I have now published the judgment and recordings from the trial in Zurich

One thing that is clear, the harassment was sometimes occurring when I was not even there.  I would sometimes be away for 1 or 2 weeks with my work. Carla would be alone with the cats and this racist Swiss landlady would make them feel really bad with her paw behavior.  My absences at the time are actually confirmed by the lawyers from the other side, they thought they had to harass Carla because I was not there and difficult to contact.  It is really incredulous that Debian people intruded and starting spreading rumors about harassment after this happened.

7

General OpenPOWER Discussion / for sale: two workstations, Talos II dual CPU / Radeon RX580 8GB

« on: October 04, 2024, 08:49:29 am »

Hi all,

My Talos II systems have worked very well for a number of years

I recently had some experiences with BIOS updates on hardware from another vendor.  The vendor requires people to have accounts, support contracts and running a specific operating system to run some utilities.  As the hardware had a very old BIOS firmware it couldn't update directly to the current version.  It was a huge hassle and it reminded me of the benefits of having things like petitboot and open source BIOS code.

Nonetheless, it feels foolish for me to spend time testing the platform and creating patches when some people are undermining collaboration in larger Linux distributions.

With that in mind I'm looking to sell the two workstations.  I will probably spend more of my time on other areas of open source.  By purchasing the workstations, you are indirectly supporting my work in other areas.

I can sell them whole or to reduce shipping costs I could remove them from the cases and sell the combination of motherboard/CPU/heatsink/memory without case/GPU.

Full specifications and proposed prices below.  Offers will be considered.

Regards,

Daniel



Workstation B, build price approx EUR 5,400, sell for EUR 3,500, buy only Talos II motherboard/two CPUs/HSF/RAM only EUR 2,900 :

Motherboard/Dual CPU/HSF bundle	Raptor	T2P9D01	1
Heat sink fan (HSF) – 3U	IBM	01KL960	2
CPU in bundle – 4-core POWER9 3.8GHz	IBM	CP9M01	2	dual CPU
SATA controller			1
CD/DVD ROM drive			1
RAM ECC 16GB DDR4-2666			8	(total: 128GB, spread over all eight channels for maximum performance)
Case	Corsair	Carbide Series Air 540 Cube	1
PSU	Seasonic	Prime TX 850	1
Fans	Noctua	NF-A14 chromax black swap	3
GPU	AMD / Saphhire	Radeon RX580 8GB	1

(SOLD) Workstation A, build price over EUR 6500, sell for EUR 4,500, buy only Talos II motherboard/two CPUs/HSF/RAM only EUR 3,800 (SOLD):

Motherboard/Dual CPU/HSF bundle	Raptor	T2P9D01	1
Heat sink fan (HSF) – 3U	IBM	01KL960	2
CPU - 8-core POWER9 3.8Ghz	IBM	CP9M32	2	dual CPU
RAM ECC 16GB DDR4-2666	Samsung	M393A2K40CB2-CTD	8	(total: 128GB, spread over all eight channels for maximum performance)
Case	Fractal	Define 7 XL	1
PSU	Seasonic	Prime TX 850	1
GPU	AMD / Saphhire	Radeon RX580 8GB	1
GPU riser	Fractal		1

8

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Debian 12 status?

« on: July 30, 2024, 03:13:41 am »

I put some of my observations in this blog post

The BtrFs issue is particularly annoying if you create a BtrFs using 4k on an external drive or USB stick and you want to attach that drive to a host running the 64k page size.

They made some improvements to BtrFs in more recent kernels but last time I looked at it they still said the combination of 64k page size with 4k BtrFs block size is experimental.  Then again, they still tell us the BtrFs itself is experimental.

Porting applications to POWER and porting to 64k are two different problems.  Trying to solve them both at the same time in an environment where at least some people are here as hobbyists may be asking too much.

9

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Debian security standards, deflecting questions about SSH2 issue

« on: July 29, 2024, 06:22:35 am »

It is not just about me.  It is a whole history of the group treating people badly for 30 years.  Each case was different.  That is why I wrote up the history step by step.  This type of step-by-step document, in date order, makes it easier to troubleshoot the Debian group.

Every week I get messages of support from people who are afraid to talk publicly now.  There was a wave of fresh interest in the cabal phenomena recently due to the Sonny Piers case at GNOME.

But one of the common pieces of feedback is that some companies have told their employees not to communicate with any open source groups.  Nobody knows which developer will be the next target.  Remember they went after Dr Norbert Preining for using the wrong pronoun.  In most companies, if an employee made a mistake like that, and it doesn't look deliberate, the company would try to resolve it over a coffee or something, they wouldn't waste thousands of emails nitpicking it.

Companies want their employees to rest on the weekends and at Christmas.  When they look at all the messages from Christmas 2018, most employers don't know who was right or wrong but they know this group has too much stress and not enough respect for volunteers, personal time and families.

10

General Discussion / Re: HP printers and the hplip plugin

« on: July 05, 2024, 02:50:40 pm »

As I mentioned earlier, the M479fdn did seem to work partially with single-sided ADF scanning using Debian bullseye but it stopped working with Debian bookworm.  Maybe it is a regression in hplip or they shifted more logic from hplip to their closed-source plugin.

I tried another printer now, the HP M227sdn, same problems trying to use the ADF, it did not work at all.

11

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Debian security standards, deflecting questions about SSH2 issue

« on: July 05, 2024, 02:48:40 pm »

Andreas Tille - Can it be inferred that his intentions with his time as project leader are malicious? What kind of negative changes, impacting Debian security, would one anticipate being made during this time?

I do not know how much comes from his own personal intentions and how much he is manipulated to behave rudely to my family and I.

When people see the negative attacks on my family, they do not want to join Debian or associate with Debian people

Some people already decided to leave.  You can read some of the historic resignations here.  There have been more.

The FSFE also had a lot of resignations, nobody was ever expelled.  Some of them wrote their reasons publicly.

Therefore, the composition of the Debian organization after 12 months of the current leader will be a reflection of his leadership behavior.

Imagine if you go on holiday and you arrive in the destination and you find the people in that place are eating somebody, a cannibal feast.  If you are a cannibal too you might stay in that village for your holiday.  But if you are not a cannibal you will probably change your vacation plans and go somewhere else.  If they eat somebody every weekend in that village then sooner or later anybody who is not a cannibal has probably been eaten or moved elsewhere and the only people left are cannibals.

Having less skilled people in Debian will mean less eyes on security problems, slower responses to security alerts and various other consequences.

(unrelated, we don't know if the German cannibal case is connected or not)

12

General Discussion / Re: HP printers and the hplip plugin

« on: July 04, 2024, 10:16:02 am »

It depends on the version of hplip and the printer model

E.g. for me, using Debian bullseye / hplip 3.22.6+dfsg0-1 the printer in question was working with the ADF for one-sided scanning.  Duplex scanning was not working.  It is M479fdn.

After upgrading to Debian bookworm / hplip 3.22.10+dfsg0-2 the ADF does not work at all

I have an x86 system running Debian bookworm connected to the same printer.  If the HP plugin is installed on the x86 system then the ADF works and it works for both sides in a single pass, full duplex scanning.

It seems that I can print without the hplip plugin, the problems only arise when scanning with the ADF

I have two other HP printers here that I can try.

13

General Discussion / HP printers and the hplip plugin

« on: July 04, 2024, 04:32:20 am »

Some HP printers need a binary plugin

The hplip (open source package) tool can download the plugin directly from HP

The plugin is an x86 binary

At some point HP added support for ARM

In some cases, the printer and flatbed scanner will work fine without the plugin but to use more advanced features, e.g. the ADF duplex mode, you need to have the plugin.

Does anybody have any experience with this issue, for example:

- is there any printer/scanner/ADF setup that gives a completely or as much as possible free experience?

- can the plugin be executed with an emulator?

- did anybody already raise a support request with HP for a ppc64el binary of the plugin?

14

Operating Systems and Porting / Debian security standards, deflecting questions about SSH2 issue

« on: July 03, 2024, 11:38:27 am »

The Talos II and Blackbird have been marketed as a platform for security-minded users and many people have purchased the platform with that in mind.

Security is only as good as the weakest link in the chain.  It is no good having the most secure hardware if there are regular defects in the OS or web browser or some other level in the stack.

I've recently started blogging about Debian's handling of security issues.

This is not a new concern: in 2008, it was the OpenSSL random number generator and some people still have vulnerable keys in use today, 16 years later.

The new revelation is that in March 2000, Edward Brocklesby took over the SSH2 package and uploaded new binaries into Debian

Six weeks later and in April 2000 Brocklesby was secretly expelled for hacking

The Debian Social Contract, point 3 tells us "we won't hide problems".  I felt the social contract compelled me to bring this SSH2 affair into the public domain at the beginning of June 2024.  Andreas Tille has made four more "Statement on Daniel Pocock" insult responses in barely four weeks, two of them on web sites and two by spam emails.  Somebody commented that Debian never had such a big hissy fit.

Nonetheless, these hissy fits reveal a lot about the culture.  I made a chronological review of the culture so people can see it is not about me, the series of suicides and other deaths, with evidence, suggest it is about the mindset of the group.  For people who have to answer everything with a new "Statement on Daniel Pocock", what we see is that being stubborn is more important than being secure.

The Brocklesby affair may be 24 years ago but it actually reveals a continuity.  We can measure subsequent security incidents against the Brocklesby affair and see that each time Debian is tested, the responses are lackluster.

15

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Debian 12 status?

« on: July 03, 2024, 11:16:52 am »

I took the 6.7.12-1 backport for bookworm and applied the 4k page size patch.

It has the same problem with amdgpu that I saw using the 6.1 kernel with 4k patch.  Errors about "Not enough memory for command submission!" and eventually Firefox and the whole desktop freeze.

I pushed each of my branches for anybody else who wants to try it.  Maybe it is fine with other GPUs

This is the 4k patch against the 6.7.12-1 kernel on the branch for unstable and testing

The same patch backported for the 6.7.12-1 kernel on bookworm-backports

The 6.1 standard kernel branch for bookworm with the 4k page size patch

There are various other web sites discussing the error message.  Some of them suggest that the amdgpu firmware needs to be updated.

One of them points to a new version of the amdgpu firmware that appeared in the upstream kernel tree in June 2024

At present, the Debian firmware package still has older amdgpu firmware from 2023 - you can see the current versions here, even unstable hasn't been updated since June 2023.

Here is the packaging repository on Debian Git (Salsa), we can't clearly see the actual versions of the amdgpu firmware files