Messages

121

User Zone / Re: Calling for gaming experiences

« on: August 11, 2022, 07:54:44 am »

Also, what kind of performance could one expect to get vs x86? would it be sufficient / "good enuff"

A lot would depend on what you're running. I'd have concerns about a lack of VMX/VSX SIMD optimizations within Stalker's physics engine dragging down performance in a worst-case scenario, but for older titles I wouldn't expect Power9 to be at a noticeable disadvantage versus, say, Zen+. We need more data points, and I'm happy to provide mine as time allows. (edit: Looks like someone's already taken the time to incorporate sse2neon for arm64 builds, so we should probably introduce the project to x86intrin.h and other translators, and compare results versus compiling and running on an x86 machine.

Compiled vkQuake with little hassle on Void Linux last night, and other than needing to sanitize my Quake folder's contents to lowercase, it has purred right along with no incident. During compilation DXX-Rebirth seems to have trouble seeing my SDL headers despite having SDL and SDL2 dev libraries installed, so I'm backburnering that for now and turning my attention to GZDoom. After that, I may kick the tires on Void's build of DOSbox before I try to suss out the non-trunk state of x264 on Power... I'd expected progress on VMX/VSX optimizations on that codec to be further along in the official repo than they are by now. Never a dull moment!

122

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Which GPU would *you* choose?

« on: August 10, 2022, 10:12:19 am »

for the least headache, should one go with a wx7100 currently, or would i be okay with an rx 580 or vega 64? looking for the easiest gpu solution. this is for desktop/games not so much workstation stuff.

I wouldn't worry too much, then. RX 580 or Vega should be fine with the amdgpu driver at this point, so long as you're running a 4KB page size kernel. I slapped a little info into a thread that could be useful if you want to boot with integrated skiroot graphics and then switch to your GPU within X/Wayland. Do post in the game thread with whatever results you have - I'm keen to start testing games myself, and will start posting some resources and results there soon.

123

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Necessary firmware for Navi14

« on: August 05, 2022, 07:33:43 pm »

The same is written on the Wiki.
On Void you can choose active Kernels like 5.4 / 5.10 / 5.15 / 5.18.
All needed patches on Void are included. Means you don't need "amdgpu.aspm=0" anymore. Apart from Kernel 5.15.x, IIRC.

Edit: Already added in Kernel 5.15.54. 5.16 and 5.17 are already EOL.

I’ll update my config soon. Thank you!

124

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Necessary firmware for Navi14

« on: August 05, 2022, 09:12:41 am »

I'm going to go ahead and say that I won't personally bother with Navi14 firmware in skiroot. With an HDMI connection to the integrated video and a DisplayPort connection running to my Radeon Pro W5500, I have a nice bifurcation between early boot notifications and my fully functioning Linux environment. After some tinkering, I worked out a solid configuration keeping the instructions here in mind, with the AST video component enabled. Specificallly:

- adding GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="modprobe.blacklist=ast video=offb:off amdgpu.aspm=0" to /etc/default/grub, then running sudo update-grub. From kernel version 5.18 onward, amdgpu.aspm=0 should not be necessary, but my install of Void comes with kernel 5.13, and out of an abundance of caution I've left it in there.
- running lspci to find the PCI addresses for my Radeon and the AST GPU.
- creating the configuration file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/21-gpu-driver.conf with a text editor, in which I placed the following info for easy cut 'n' pasting:

# AST2500
Section "Device"
    Identifier     "GPU0"
    Driver         "modesetting"
    BusID          "PCI:2@5:0:0"
    VendorName     "ASpeed Corporation"
EndSection

# Radeon Pro W5500
Section "Device"
    Identifier     "GPU1"
    Driver         "amdgpu"
    BusID          "PCI:3@0:0:0"
    VendorName     "AMD Corporation"
EndSection

# this is absolutely necessary, it tells xorg which GPU to use for the screen
Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "GPU1"
EndSection

Be 100% certain your PCI address is substituted in for the Radeon, and for the AST in case that's different.

Power the system down entirely for 30 seconds, restore power, let the BMC initialize the system, turn the system on, and you'll hopefully be set.

125

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Which GPU would *you* choose?

« on: August 03, 2022, 09:52:09 am »

How up-to-date is the GPU list? A few of the items have wording like "May need at least linux 4.16", or "A compatibility mode is expected to be included in Linux 5.4 and above that will resolve this issue. ", or requires kernel patches from 3 years ago. I'm considering a Talos II build, but am worried about the GPU issue. Is the 580 still the best working non-pro Radeon? I'm also not familiar with AMD cards, I've always been an Nvidia person, but won't be using one for the Talos due to the many obvious reasons... I'm assuming Void Linux is the best way to go to side-step the 64k kernel page issue, and that this issue is still a problem today?

Hey there! I'll go through these questions in order and give the answers I've found so far.
- The support list is pretty up to date by now. Don't worry about warnings about kernel versions prior to 5.10, you're unlikely to run into a current distro shipping with one. The 5.4 error in particular had to do with DMA handling mostly applicable to Radeons, but that's a settled issue from everything I've heard. Kernel patches are also irrelevant. Everything from PCIe Radeons going back to the Radeon HD 2000 series through pre-Polaris Radeons should be handled by the radeon driver, and everything from the Radeon RX 400 on up should be handled by amdgpu. There are only two caveats: currently nothing newer than the Radeon RX 5500/5700 currently works with ppc64le, and the Radeon HD 7000 series through the Radeon R9 series may work with the amdgpu driver.

- The Radeon RX 500 series should work fine - if you want something a little faster, an RX 590 should also not be problematic. The state of Navi/RDNA1 is also reliable. Consumer Radeon RX 5500 and 5700 cards also reportedly work well, I just wanted a safe bet and lucked into my Radeon Pro W5500 at MSRP during the worst part of the GPU shortage.

- You can always set up your machine with a distribution which uses 64KB kernel pages by default while using the integrated video, recompile your kernel for 4KB pages, install and boot that, and then set to working with 4KB kernel pages. For broader adoption's sake I hope Intel gets up to speed in Linux soon and works better with non-4KB kernel pages, but I am happy with Void despite an initial learning curve.

I'm starting to think there should be a General GPU Troubleshooting thread here, now that Blackbirds are going into a lot of hands. People need a central place to compare notes and discuss procedure and results.

126

User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread

« on: July 31, 2022, 10:17:25 pm »

You have to set the correct time / date.

I’ve been trying, but whether I use date within the skiroot shell to set the date or within Void itself, it doesn’t seem to stick. Forgive me, I’m new to this - can you show me how?

edit: to clarify, date appears to update correctly, but hwclock remains firmly convinced that it is June 8th, and nothing I’ve been able to do disabuses it of the notion. I’ve tried syncing the system time to the hardware clock so they’re at least both wrong to the same extent, but networking still doesn’t work

edit the second: I skipped connecting to the BMC initially, which is where I’m supposed to initially set the date. D’oh. I’ll take care of that this week and pray until then.

The options through BMC can be either NTP or manually set. I'm interested to see what works for you, since I've found both to be a bit fussy.

I ended up doing both: set the time manually, then set a NIST IP address and reset to NTP. Then I selected Both for the clock control after the first time didn’t propagate settings from the BMC/hardware clock to the system clock. I don’t know what the Split option does - anybody have insight there?

127

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Necessary firmware for Navi14

« on: July 28, 2022, 12:34:30 pm »

Hey there! Now that I've got my Blackbird motherboard fully working and functional, I've turned my attention to getting my Radeon Pro W5500 up and running. The Skiroot BOOTKERNFW size is around 1.8MB, which doesn't pose any problems for older Radeons whose firmware fits neatly into that space. However, the full size of Navi14-affiliated files /lib/firmware in my Void install is around 3.8 MB, and there are a large number of files. There are a couple that obviously aren't needed for Skiroot - VCN's tied to the video transcoding engine, MEC(2) is for Micro Engine Compute - but I've had real trouble finding which of these would be needed for Skiroot without overflowing the space. Has anyone else wrestled with this themselves?

128

User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread

« on: July 27, 2022, 07:48:37 pm »

Update: the early batch of Blackbird motherboards apparently had a glitch in their BMC firmware that was supposed to be ironed out prior to manufacture. Support was patient and helpful, and sent me a flashing tool and ROM, and things are now working. I'm glad I wasn't *that* bad at following directions, and thank you so much for trying to help.

129

User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread

« on: July 26, 2022, 01:55:27 pm »

In this case there isn't one - I switched to using a crossover connection between the BMC ethernet port on the Blackbird and the ethernet port on the Ryzen computer sitting next to it, running Ubuntu 22.04 from a thumb drive.

130

User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread

« on: July 26, 2022, 12:01:49 pm »

The onboard networking wasn’t working in its prior DHCP configuration either. You, yourself, told me that I’d need to connect to the BMC in order to accurately set the system time to resolve the issue. The instructions I was given to work with have not worked for me, and Raptor themselves confirmed that they’re investigating an issue suggesting that this is possibly tied to new software work done for the new Blackbird release. arp -a is not showing any IP addresses exposed on the client or server side. I’m just going to wait on Raptor. Thank you for trying to help.

131

User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread

« on: July 26, 2022, 08:35:01 am »

I opened a ticket with Raptor, who reached out last night and indicated that my problems mirror an issue encountered with more new Blackbirds than my own. Quote:

“Quick question -- have you been able to access the network from the installed OS or is that also broken? We're tracking down a potential issue with the new Blackbird programming line, hence the question -- the symptoms match an older issue we had seen and thought was fixed for the production line.”

Also, I swear I didn’t mean to eat this much of the Void Linux thread on what appears to be a Blackbird-specific issue. If these posts could be moved elsewhere, I’d do it.

edit: a USB wireless networking dongle is working well enough for now… so I’m on a path forward, at least. Thanks.

132

User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread

« on: July 25, 2022, 05:58:06 pm »

Just tried that, setting arp for the server/Blackbird’s IP address directly to the Blackbird’s MAC address on the MacBook Pro client, and it’s still timing out. As below:

sudo arp -a 193.168.0.42 [the Blackbird MAC address]

edit: Also repeated the client steps for a USB thumb drive install of Ubuntu booting on my Windows machine, following the Talos II Quick Start directions again. That version of SSH is at least polite enough to indicate that it finds no route to the host in a shorter period of time than macOS's timeout. I don't suppose I need to supply it with a specific port...?

133

User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread

« on: July 25, 2022, 09:47:04 am »

I followed the directions in the link to setup the BMC password for the first time, then used the .42 address to connect. If that’s not the correct IP address, let me know.

134

User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread

« on: July 25, 2022, 07:44:00 am »

I have tried - it just seems to time out. The BMC isn’t holding onto 192.168.1.1 for the gateway IP. I can set it to any other arbitrary IP, but if I set it to 192.168.1.1, it resets to either 0.0.0.0 or the last arbitrary IP I set. I’d like to not have to put in a support ticket, but we will see.

135

User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread

« on: July 25, 2022, 06:13:52 am »

It’s version 2.00, so this shouldn’t apply…