Messages

91

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 37 has arrived!

« on: December 22, 2022, 11:58:29 am »

And actually it did it on the Blackbird today when I tried to update it. So I think something regressed.

That’s oddly reassuring, in a way. Glad the regression isn’t somehow isolated to my machine.

92

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 37 has arrived!

« on: December 20, 2022, 07:51:38 pm »

In order for petitboot to see the new kernels you must run the following commands after the update:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo grub2-mkconfig > /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

This situation is due to an error in the /usr/lib/kernel.d/99-grub-mkconfig.install script on lines 28 and 29.
The script expects the Pettitboot version in Num1.Num2.Num3 format and reads the values in CRC1-CRC2 format.

This worked a treat, thank you! Once I'm done with some holiday traveling, I will start writing down some of what I've learned in getting Fedora to go my way. Periodically it wants to take several minutes to shut down, and I haven't had any luck looking at console output to see what's making it spin its wheels... but if that's the only wrinkle I run into, I think I'm okay with it.

93

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 37 has arrived!

« on: December 19, 2022, 10:23:23 am »

I understand that’s an issue, but it isn’t the one I’m running into. dnf has installed multiple kernels, and grubby enumerates them, but only 6.0.7 is enumerated in petitboot, and using grubby to set it to the newest 6.0.12 does nothing. What procedure do I need to follow to get Fedora to enumerate my installed kernels in petitboot?

94

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 37 has arrived!

« on: December 18, 2022, 04:40:42 pm »

How can I ensure my latest installed kernel runs? I’ve installed updates through kernel 6.0.12, but it’s still booting to 6.0.7 with no other versions showing at the petitboot selection. I used grubby as a walkthrough dictated to change the default kernel but that doesn’t seem to have persuaded petitboot to play ball… and I don’t want hassles whenever they push through kernel 6.1. To say I’m eager to pair the Radeon RX 6600 I picked up with my Power9 is an understatement.

95

Blackbird / Re: [changed my mind! keeping] Blackbird, 8 core CPU, 32GB RAM, & Radeon Pro W5500

« on: December 15, 2022, 01:31:44 pm »

Yeah, I am in for the long haul. Closing up shop here.

96

Blackbird / Re: Stereo audio channels swapped?

« on: December 11, 2022, 06:03:35 pm »

In most distros there's a way to solve this by copying the /etc/pulse/default.pa file to ~/.pulse/default.pa, then appending these lines to the end of that file:

Code: [Select]

load-module module-remap-sink sink_name=reverse-stereo master=0 channels=2 master_channel_map=front-right,front-left channel_map=front-left,front-right
set-default-sink reverse-stereo
Save, exit, and execute pactl exit at the terminal to force PulseAudio to restart and enact the changes. You may need to change the master= value if the system default audio device isn't the Blackbird's built-in audio, but this worked without much hassle in Void. I am currently trying to determine the appropriate procedure for Fedora... Red Hat does things a bit differently than I'm used to. That's not bad - I just have to wrap my head around it.

97

Blackbird / Re: [changed my mind! keeping] Blackbird, 8 core CPU, 32GB RAM, & Radeon Pro W5500

« on: December 11, 2022, 06:00:13 pm »

I'm sticking around, don't worry about it.

98

Blackbird / Re: [SELL] Blackbird, 8 core CPU, 32GB RAM, & Radeon Pro W5500

« on: December 10, 2022, 01:16:26 pm »

Sorry to hear that. What didn't meet your needs?

Honestly, it's nearly all been great. Sometimes dealing with snags in video support isn't fun, but I've got it running Fedora 37 with Xfce and a Radeon Pro W5500 with 64KB kernel pages, and it's quite snappy. As I edited the main post to show, I have dealt with a number of stressors IRL that have built to a head, and was thinking of how to apply the money I'd recoup by selling it. But if I did that, I would not only regret it, but the likelihood that I'd be able to revisit owning a piece of Power hardware would be quite low. So I am sticking around, and may ask a few more questions than I have to date. Thanks for checking in!

99

Blackbird / [changed my mind! keeping] Blackbird, 8 core CPU, 32GB RAM, & Radeon Pro W5500

« on: December 07, 2022, 09:23:05 am »

edit: I had hit a stumbling block of frustration after a number of other stressors in my life built to a peak this past week. If I were to sell the Power9 so soon after getting it, I would regret it a lot. This machine's been a wonderful learning experience, and is a lot of fun to use.

After a period of initial experimentation I've come to the conclusion that the ppc64le architecture will not serve my needs the way I had hoped. All my equipment is in perfect working order, and has spent its life under light load and connected to a high quality UPS. Here is what I am offering.

- Blackbird mainboard, v2.00
- 8 core CPU (v2)
- 3U heatsink, with fan direction reversed to work better in most PC cases
- 2x16GiB ECC DDR4 registered memory
- 8GB Radeon Pro W5500 with original box and accessories
- screwdriver for installing the heat sink (optional)

I am in the continental United States - the Dallas area of Texas, specifically - and will pack all items well and securely for shipment. While I would prefer to ship within the U.S. I am not opposed to international shipping; we can work something out. PM me here, or email me at freontrip -at- live -dot- com directly. I have a specific price in mind, but I am willing to keep the graphics card and sell the rest if that works better for you. Thanks for looking.

100

General Hardware Discussion / Re: Could Intel DG2 the missing piece of the puzzle for ppc64le workstation?

« on: November 04, 2022, 05:42:31 am »

As an update, our very own tle attempted to get an A770 working, to no avail. It appears Intel has not refactored the driver for non-x86 platforms yet. They’ve made statements previously about doing so, and it was reported in a quick piece on Phoronix, so let’s hope progress is made there in the near future.

101

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Intel Arc A770 - failed experiment

« on: November 03, 2022, 10:04:54 am »

Thanks for doing so much investigating here. I'm sad to hear Arc isn't working for Power yet, but hopefully Intel's driver team will clean up the issues soon. To contribute a little that I've learned so far:

- ReBAR's reportedly a PCIe 3.0 feature, so I'm a little surprised Blackbird and Talos don't support it. The feature is important for maximizing hardware performance on Arc / Alchemist, but I don't know how drastic a difference it would make for the less game-centric 3D use cases of a typical Power9 build.

- The video encoding and decoding are not impacted by ReBAR at all. The A750 in my Windows machine is able to transcode a 1080p MKV from Blu-ray quality to a rough equivalent of x264's Slow quality at north of 325 frames per second. Better still, the video encoder is a constant for the product line - to my knowledge the A380 is just as proficient for encoding and decoding video as an A770. Given Power9's relatively pokey SIMD and the agonizing wait we've endured to see x264 adopt optimized vector code into the codebase, a $140 USD Arc A380 could improve video encoding on the platform by a factor of ten, and more in the case of h.265 and AV1. Even with ReBAR disabled, that card would probably deliver performance north of a Radeon RX 560.

- Arc also benefits from PCIe link state power management - would you need to pass i915.aspm=0 until someone at Intel manages to get that covered as well?

102

Applications and Porting / Re: Clion, VSCode, IDE options?

« on: September 26, 2022, 09:16:24 pm »

VScode is up-to-date on Void and works
https://github.com/void-ppc/void-packages/tree/master/srcpkgs/vscode

Yep, seconding this - works fine for Python, C, and C++. Only wrinkle was that I needed to enable 2D canvas rendering, otherwise the integrated terminal didn't properly render text. I do hope VSCode continues to be supported with the switch to Chimera.

103

User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread

« on: September 17, 2022, 10:35:56 am »

Just a heads up - it looks like Void Linux ppc64 is winding down, and will be replaced by Chimera Linux going forward. Details outlined here.

104

Talos II / Re: Arctic Tern bracket?

« on: September 11, 2022, 01:18:32 pm »

I don't have an answer for this, but I do wonder if someone's 3D printed a bracket that would work.

105

General Hardware Discussion / Re: Could Intel DG2 the missing piece of the puzzle for ppc64le workstation?

« on: August 28, 2022, 12:16:05 pm »

Unfortunately, as expected, the performance of the card is laughable like any other Intel GPU. The only interesting thing is the price.
https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-arc-a380-linux

I dunno about laughable, it's just inconsistent. These are still raw drivers, especially on the OpenGL side. It's a little startling to see a Radeon 5500XT walk away from it so often - I don't feel bad about running a W5500 in my Blackbird. Nevertheless AV1 encode/decode, out-of-the-box OpenCL, raytracing support, and the low price point are pretty appealing. Maybe I'll stash one of these in a testbed x86_64 machine I'm thinking of putting together later this year and putting it through its paces in Linux.