Messages

16

General OpenPOWER Discussion / external oscillator in v1.01 boards - which problems does it aim to resolve?

« on: September 14, 2022, 11:34:52 am »

The wiki mentions that newer boards (v1.01) have an external oscillator for the FPGA

The oscillator is mentioned in this commit

If somebody has an older FPGA, e.g. 1.06 and they have a v1.01 motherboard, is there a pressing reason to upgrade the FPGA to 1.08?

Are there any particular problems that might occur if the user does not upgrade?

17

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: USB keyboards not working in petitboot bootloader environment

« on: September 14, 2022, 07:33:49 am »

It does appear to be related to the jumper

With the jumper installed:
the view of petitboot on the VGA output and in the SSH session are identical.
When I type something in the SSH session it appears on both the VGA and in the SSH console

Without the jumper:
the VGA and USB keyboard act as a terminal together.
The SSH / BMC terminal operates independently, what I type there doesn't appear on the VGA and vice-versa, what I type on the USB keyboard doesn't appear in the SSH view of petitboot

It would be useful to have a note about this in the motherboard manual, to the effect that the jumper impacts the keyboard and not only the VGA

18

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: USB keyboards not working in petitboot bootloader environment

« on: September 14, 2022, 02:18:28 am »

I have the jumper installed for disabling internal VGA, does that also serve to mask the keyboard in some way?

19

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: USB keyboards not working in petitboot bootloader environment

« on: September 14, 2022, 02:07:35 am »

Connecting to the BMC with SSH and accessing the petitboot console with obmc-console-client

In petitboot, I choose the shell option

At the shell, I run dmesg

The dmesg output shows that usbhid is loaded and it shows the keyboard

Code: [Select]

[    6.004628] input:   USB Keyboard Consumer Control as /devices/pci0003:00/0003:00:00.0/0003:01:00.0/usb1/1-4/1-4.2/1-4.2:1.1/0003:04D9:1702.0005/input/input11
[    6.004683] hid-generic 0003:04D9:1702.0005: input: USB HID v1.10 Device [  USB Keyboard] on usb-0003:01:00.0-4.2/input1

The numlock light works on the keyboard too, so it appears to have power to the keyboard

20

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Debian / GNOME default sleep settings: guaranteed crash

« on: September 14, 2022, 01:22:39 am »

If you make a fresh install of Debian with GNOME and then go and look at the default Settings panel for Power, you will see "Power Saving" default setting

The Debian wiki has some notes about systems which should never go to sleep.  In particular, they show some settings in systemd so it seems this can't just be fixed by changing the settings in GNOME

Code: [Select]

sudo systemctl mask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target

This default is one of many ways where systemd appears to diverge from a traditional UNIX-like system.

You can check the current status of a system by checking each of those targets with the status command:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo systemctl status sleep.target
● sleep.target - Sleep
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/sleep.target; static)
     Active: inactive (dead)
       Docs: man:systemd.special(7)

and on a system where the target was disabled:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo systemctl status sleep.target
● sleep.target
     Loaded: masked (Reason: Unit sleep.target is masked.)
     Active: inactive (dead)
[code]

21

Operating Systems and Porting / Debian / GNOME default sleep settings: guaranteed crash

« on: September 13, 2022, 04:10:00 pm »

I did a fresh Debian install on one system and then left it at the GNOME login screen while making a phone call.

When I came back, the screen was frozen, SSH was not working any more but the CPUs and fans still active.

I rebooted it, checked the log and found that it had tried to sleep and managed to become frozen.

It is probably a good idea to track this with bug reports in both Debian and GNOME and change their default settings on ppc64le.

However, is there anything that can be done at a lower level, for example, in the kernel, to reject the sleep attempt rather than letting the system get into this frozen state?  If that could make it appear stable for every OS it would be much better than fixing it in one distribution at a time.

It was kind of obvious to me what had happened before I even looked in the logs but I can imagine some users might get a fright

22

General OpenPOWER Discussion / USB keyboards not working in petitboot bootloader environment

« on: September 13, 2022, 02:59:48 pm »

On one of my machines, I notice that it doesn't respond to the USB keyboard when I am in the bootloader.  I haven't tested the other machine yet.

Normally I control these workstations through SSH to the BMC and it is a long time since I tried using a directly connected keyboard so I don't even remember if this worked before

I tried two different keyboards.  Both keyboards work fine with other workstations.

When Linux and GNOME boots on the Talos II, the keyboard begins working

In the bootloader config, I found an option to choose between hvc0 and tty1 consoles.  I don't know if that should make any difference but I tried both settings and it didn't help.

23

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: suspend, sleep, hibernate and resume?

« on: September 12, 2022, 01:16:41 am »

The Tweet says Blackbird v1.02 motherboard supports it but firmware and kernel changes also required

It would be useful to know which version of the Talos II ( / Lite) supports it, if any

Is there any easy way to identify the motherboard version without opening the machine?  Is it logged at bootup, available in the IPMI API or anything else?  Can we deduce the version from the serial number?

24

Operating Systems and Porting / OpenBSD: Talos II / Xorg / amdgpu Radeon RX 580

« on: September 01, 2022, 04:59:28 am »

I decided to make another test of OpenBSD using the nightly build from 29 August that I found here.

The system is Talos II, dual CPU, 128GB and AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB.  Is this GPU currently supported on OpenBSD ppc?

I looked at the instructions here in the FAQ for X setup

Code: [Select]

# rcctl enable xenodm
# rcctl start xenodm

# pkg_info

amdgpu-firmware-20220708 firmware binary images for amdgpu(4) driver


Looking at the log, the X server is failing to run

Code: [Select]

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log

[    19.833] (--) no aperture driver access: only wsfb driver useable
[    20.049] (EE)
Fatal server error:
[    20.049] (EE) xf86OpenConsole: No console driver found
Supported drivers: wscons
Check your kernel's console driver configuration and /dev entries(EE)
[    20.049] (EE)
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
at http://wiki.x.org
 for help.
[    20.049] (EE) Please also check the log file at
"/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.
[    20.049] (EE)
[    20.050] (EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.



25

Talos II / mixing memory sizes on the same CPU?

« on: August 30, 2022, 03:00:09 am »

I understand that each CPU has four memory channels, therefore, optimum performance is achieved when all four memory banks have an identical size and they are accessed in parallel.

Nonetheless, is it safe or practical to mix memory sizes in the memory banks on the same CPU?

For example, could the user have 2 x 16GB and 2 x 32GB connected to a single CPU?

Would the CPU ignore the extra capacity in the larger modules and use them all as 16GB?  Or would it somehow access the RAM using two channel speeds?

26

Talos II / different memory sizes on each CPU in multi-CPU systems?

« on: August 30, 2022, 02:56:21 am »

For dual CPU systems, is it necessary to have an identical memory configuration on each CPU?

For example, if a user has 4 x 16GB on CPU1 does that mean the user must have 4 x 16GB on CPU2?

Or can the user have 4 x 16GB on CPU1 and 4 x 32GB on CPU2?

27

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: Request for proposals: Who to donate my Blackbird and Power 9 CPU?

« on: August 30, 2022, 02:53:30 am »

If you decide to loan it to hackerspaces that are nearby for me then I'm personally happy to visit them, take it there in person and run a workshop on it.  I would then be willing to go back a few weeks later, collect it and take it to the next hackerspace or post it back

28

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: Request for proposals: Who to donate my Blackbird and Power 9 CPU?

« on: August 28, 2022, 12:02:46 pm »

Why not simply give it to a hackerspace as a gift?

If people see it at the hackerspace they will be more likely to buy one themselves

There is a hackerspace in Locarno, Switzerland, near the Swiss birds of prey park.  Don't leave small children unattended when the Condor is on the loose.

They don't currently have any black birds on their list

29

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: Request for proposals: Who to donate my Blackbird and Power 9 CPU?

« on: August 28, 2022, 01:14:57 am »

1. Debian Germany to use it to set up an additional build server and porterbox for Debian using PowerKVM for PowerPC big-endian Debian ports.

...

Any helpful opinions welcome!

The Debian Project Leader recently commented:

During my 2 terms we went from having around ~$750k in available funds to having about ~$1.25m now. Every time I mention what we've been spending on (like DSA upgrades, hardware for DDs, etc), we get more donations. As long as this is the case, I have no problem with DDs spending any money they want to if it helps them make Debian better. After all, this is literally the only reason why someone donates money to Debian in the first place. So, I don't believe that the Debian funds should be preserved like some kind of treasure. We should make it as easy as possible for people to give us money, and as easy as possible for DDs to spend money, all within our legal and social frameworks, of course.

Therefore, Debian can probably buy a few Blackbirds with funds from that bank account.  Debian paying for some Blackbirds (or bigger Talos II) is probably good business for retailers like Raptor and Vikings.

The Blackbird in question would still be available for somebody else who doesn't have $1 million (or €1 million)

I created a flavor of the Debian kernel package for a 4k page size (Gitlab commit) and nobody has integrated it in the Debian kernel repository.  This isn't a problem for me because I already know how to build a kernel but it would be helpful for other Debian users if they put the politics aside and merge that patch.  Due to the way Debian builds kernels it doesn't have any side effects for the 64k page size kernel packages.  Both types of kernel can coexist in the Debian archive and they can build different permutations of the installer for each of them.

I created a standalone topic for the idea of creating a dashboard or heat map to identify pinch points that can be addressed with donations of hardware or funds.

30

General OpenPOWER Discussion / creating dashboard or heatmap to identify pinch-points in other FOSS projects

« on: August 28, 2022, 01:05:27 am »

This was a comment in the discussion about donating a Blackbird to a worthy cause

It is probably not hard to create a dashboard to scrape or aggregate issues from bug trackers in various free software projects and assemble them into some kind of dashboard or heat map to identify the pinch-points for widespread OpenPOWER use.

Scraping the data is rather easy, most bug trackers have at least one well known API like RSS or iCalendar.

Identifying which issues relate to OpenPOWER depends on how diligent people are in tagging their bugs.

Deciding how to prioritize the issues on a dashboard or heat map may be more contentious as different people have different perspectives about which issues are important.