Messages

16

User Zone / Re: Configure Xorg for AST2500 max resolution of 1920x1200 on Ubuntu Server 19.10

« on: October 22, 2022, 02:30:27 am »

Filed a bug with Red Hat, feel free to follow along there: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2136950

17

User Zone / Re: Calling for gaming experiences

« on: September 19, 2022, 06:00:47 am »

Added Falcon-mkxp (emulator for RPG Maker XP / VX / VX Ace) to the wiki.  Works great with the AST2500 via LLVMpipe (well over 200 fps in brief testing, even though I had a CPU leak from another process at the time that was eating 90% of my CPU); kind of curious whether anyone else has found games that work well on POWER9 with AST2500.

18

User Zone / Re: Configure Xorg for AST2500 max resolution of 1920x1200 on Ubuntu Server 19.10

« on: September 04, 2022, 02:31:20 am »

I see the same bug on an x86_64 Fedora 36 machine with an ASRock Rack Tommy 90-SC02P1-00UBNZ GPU (AST2510 chipset, 16 MiB VRAM just like the Talos II's AST2500).  Kernel 5.5.17-200.fc31.x86_64 works with 1920x1200 on that machine; Kernel 5.6.0-1.fc33.x86_64 does not (maxes out at 1920x1080).  That's consistent with the Debian results I got on my Talos II, and with the hypothesis that Linux commit 9253f830c9166bfa6cc07d5ed59e174e9d5ec6ca broke this.

19

User Zone / Re: GPU DMA issue diagnoses and impact (missing DMA kernel support beyond 32 bits)

« on: September 02, 2022, 08:49:47 pm »

A few questions about this:

• Does the Linux 5.4 compatibility mode fix all affected PCIe devices, or only AMD GPU's?  If the latter, does it apply to the Radeon driver, the AMDGPU driver, or both?
• If I'm on Linux 5.4 or later, how would I test whether the compatibility mode is in use for a given PCIe device?
• Am I correct in understanding that the compatibility mode is Linux-specific, and thus would need to be re-implemented in other kernels to fix the broken hardware in those kernels?
• Does the compatibility mode make memory allocation behavior for affected PCIe devices more predictable, even slightly?  (E.g. does it artificially restrict the PCIe device's memory space, as seen by the host, to a 40-bit window, rather than the much larger 64-bit window that would otherwise exist?)  If so, doesn't this decrease security (e.g. by making ASLR less effective)?  (I'm not asking if this security degradation is significant to average users, just whether it exists at all.)

20

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Whonix on PPC64el

« on: May 17, 2021, 12:07:54 am »

Hi JeremyRand,

I've just tried but got the same result as before (see below). Any ideas?

claudio@debian10:~$ sudo apt-get install non-qubes-whonix-gateway-xfce
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 non-qubes-whonix-gateway-xfce : Depends: non-qubes-vm-enhancements-cli but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: non-qubes-vm-enhancements-gui but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: non-qubes-whonix-gateway-cli but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: kicksecure-desktop-environment-essential-xfce but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: kicksecure-desktop-applications-xfce but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: whonix-shared-default-applications-gui but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: whonix-gateway-default-applications-gui but it is not going to be installed
N: Ignoring file 'patrick.asc' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

What happens if you pick one of the dependencies (e.g. non-qubes-vm-enhancements-cli ) and try to apt-get install it?  If you get a similar error ("Depends: ... but it is not going to be installed"), keep recursively trying to apt-get install a dependency until you get a different error, and then post that error.

21

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Whonix on PPC64el

« on: May 16, 2021, 02:56:20 am »

Hi All,

I've followed the instructions found on this link https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Whonix

I've created KVM VMs using Debian 10.7 ISO images but when trying to install non-qubes-whonix-gateway-xfce or non-qubes-whonix-gateway-cli I could not solve dependency issues.

Has anyone succeeded creating these VMs?

I have them working on a x86 machine with the same Fedora33 I use on my Blackbird.

Thanks

Can you post the exact output of the apt command that fails?  This sounds similar to an issue that I reported upstream to Whonix, which was subsequently fixed.

Hey Jeremy, this is the output I got:

claudio@debian10:~$ sudo apt-get install non-qubes-whonix-gateway-xfce
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree     
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 non-qubes-whonix-gateway-xfce : Depends: non-qubes-vm-enhancements-cli but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: non-qubes-vm-enhancements-gui but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: non-qubes-whonix-gateway-cli but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: kicksecure-desktop-environment-essential-xfce but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: kicksecure-desktop-applications-xfce but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: whonix-shared-default-applications-gui but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: whonix-gateway-default-applications-gui but it is not going to be installed
N: Ignoring file 'patrick.asc' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

The VM where I've issued this command was created with debian-10.9.0-ppc64el-xfce-CD-1.iso.

Any ideas?

I was able to reproduce.  I've updated the wiki; the instructions should work now.  Let me know how it goes. 

22

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Whonix on PPC64el

« on: March 31, 2021, 12:24:45 pm »

Hi All,

I've followed the instructions found on this link https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Whonix

I've created KVM VMs using Debian 10.7 ISO images but when trying to install non-qubes-whonix-gateway-xfce or non-qubes-whonix-gateway-cli I could not solve dependency issues.

Has anyone succeeded creating these VMs?

I have them working on a x86 machine with the same Fedora33 I use on my Blackbird.

Thanks

Can you post the exact output of the apt command that fails?  This sounds similar to an issue that I reported upstream to Whonix, which was subsequently fixed.

Hey Jeremy, this is the output I got:

claudio@debian10:~$ sudo apt-get install non-qubes-whonix-gateway-xfce
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree     
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 non-qubes-whonix-gateway-xfce : Depends: non-qubes-vm-enhancements-cli but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: non-qubes-vm-enhancements-gui but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: non-qubes-whonix-gateway-cli but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: kicksecure-desktop-environment-essential-xfce but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: kicksecure-desktop-applications-xfce but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: whonix-shared-default-applications-gui but it is not going to be installed
                                 Depends: whonix-gateway-default-applications-gui but it is not going to be installed
N: Ignoring file 'patrick.asc' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

The VM where I've issued this command was created with debian-10.9.0-ppc64el-xfce-CD-1.iso.

Any ideas?

Interesting.  Definitely resembles my recollection of the bug that I got fixed a while back.  I'll see if I can find time to look at this soon, hopefully this weekend.  (Alas, this is not covered by my dayjob, so won't be able to look at it immediately.)

Cheers!

23

User Zone / Re: Configure Xorg for AST2500 max resolution of 1920x1200 on Ubuntu Server 19.10

« on: March 30, 2021, 01:14:37 pm »

On Debian, 1920x1200 support for the Talos II's AST2500 was broken between Linux 5.5.0-2 and Linux 5.6.0-1.  My suspicion is that the breakage is because of Linux commit 9253f830c9166bfa6cc07d5ed59e174e9d5ec6ca.  This commit added a VRAM size check to the ast driver, which considers double-buffering as mandatory.  1920x1080 resolution at 4 bytes per pixel with 2 buffers is 16.6 MB, while bumping that to 1920x1200 results in 18.4 MB.  According to "lspci -v -s 0005:02:00.0", The Talos II's VRAM size is 16 MiB == 16.8 MB, which explains why 1920x1200 no longer works.

I asked on IRC, and dormito pointed out that the AST2500 supports both 16 MiB and 64 MiB VRAM size, and that in both cases, the VRAM is stolen from the BMC's RAM (512 MiB total).  The default configuration is controlled by a hardware pin (no idea why Raptor picked 16 MiB), but dormito thinks it may be possible to reconfigure the AST2500's VRAM size by writing to a register on the BMC (before the host boots).

In the meantime it definitely seems like a Linux bug should be filed about this, since single-buffered 1920x1200 used to work fine but no longer does.

24

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Whonix on PPC64el

« on: March 30, 2021, 01:01:06 pm »

Hi All,

I've followed the instructions found on this link https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Whonix

I've created KVM VMs using Debian 10.7 ISO images but when trying to install non-qubes-whonix-gateway-xfce or non-qubes-whonix-gateway-cli I could not solve dependency issues.

Has anyone succeeded creating these VMs?

I have them working on a x86 machine with the same Fedora33 I use on my Blackbird.

Thanks

Can you post the exact output of the apt command that fails?  This sounds similar to an issue that I reported upstream to Whonix, which was subsequently fixed.