Messages

496

General CPU Discussion / Re: Ultravisor state and/or FlexVer as a substitute for confidential/trustworthy rem

« on: January 12, 2020, 12:45:10 am »

I'm doing research for a future Talospace article on the ultravisor, but while it should do something conceptually similar I don't think it's an exact replacement for SGX.

Flexver seems to have a little different scope and involves tamper protection as well AIUI, but @madscientist159 could say more about that.

497

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: Ahoy shipmates!

« on: January 08, 2020, 11:56:20 pm »

Yes, guest posts are welcome, subject to editing for accuracy and house style. Do note they would be uncompensated (the money I make basically pays the domain name and defrays a sliver of Floodgap's hosting costs), but your writing would remain yours.

And welcome.

498

User Zone / Re: Rough edges and how I work around them (or not)

« on: January 08, 2020, 11:55:06 pm »

Are you on Fedora? fstrim.timer will become default in F32 (hopefully).

499

User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread

« on: January 04, 2020, 06:28:13 pm »

Excellent!!

500

User Zone / Re: Rough edges and how I work around them (or not)

« on: January 04, 2020, 06:27:29 pm »

When rebooting sometimes restarts without onboard audio available

I haven't observed the lack of onboard audio on reboots, but I usually don't reboot my Blackbird much when it's on. On the other hand, I still occasionally have situations where it won't put video up on HDMI, or at least my home projector won't see it.

VLC sometimes remains "running" after closing out

This is not specific to the Blackbird; I've seen this on the Talos. I haven't figured out why this occurs. A killall -9 will nuke it.

Alternatively, go to the settings and uncheck Allow only one instance. This doesn't solve the problem but it makes it much less annoying, and you can clean up the corpses later.

Large images in GIMP are much slower to work with

I haven't been happy with GIMP on any platform. I use Krita or azpainter.

Some of your other issues sound more software-motivated, but I think that PCIe-NVMe bridge might be a little rickety.

501

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Firefox Status

« on: January 04, 2020, 06:22:25 pm »

With those hints I managed to get it working, two main points:
- Clang doesn't compile it right yet, I had to force using gcc/g++
- Not sure about the selection of a different linker, it did not make any apparent difference.

Yes, clang doesn't work properly. It's possible that gold has been fixed, but I'd still stick to GNU ld (bfd).

I opted to fetch apt-get source firefox and build it with an updated mozconfig.in that sets:
export CC=/usr/bin/gcc
export CXX=/usr/bin/g++
Also had to limit threads to 24, I ran out of RAM on 32 threads.

Successfully running mainline firefox installed through a selfmade deb-package.

I just do -j24 for makes myself, but largely because I want a few threads so I can play Descent. How much RAM is in your system? This machine has 32GB.

502

User Zone / Re: Graphics Card install

« on: January 02, 2020, 11:54:04 am »

After all that, what did you do to fix it?

503

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Firefox Status

« on: January 01, 2020, 10:21:53 pm »

No, Firefox should work and build fine. I haven't done a build against central in a couple weeks, but I'm typing this in Firefox 71 on Fedora 31 on a Talos II, so I know at minimum that mozilla-release works. What does your mozconfig look like? The ones I use are here:

https://www.talospace.com/2019/12/firefox-71-on-power.html

(which uses the same ones as ...)

https://www.talospace.com/2019/05/firefox-67-on-power.html

504

Applications and Porting / Re: MAME for Power

« on: December 23, 2019, 09:24:28 pm »

q66 is the Void Power maintainer, so.

505

Applications and Porting / Re: MAME for Power

« on: December 22, 2019, 10:08:06 pm »

https://www.talospace.com/2018/12/no-love-for-powerpc-from-mame.html

506

User Zone / Re: Fedora Linux Thread

« on: December 16, 2019, 12:16:51 pm »

This I know, thanks.

I'll bug Dan Horak about this, it might be known.

Actually, one last thought: any difference with

Code: [Select]

dnf install @workstation-product-environment

? Or any of the suggestions on https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/switching-desktop-environments/ ?

507

User Zone / Re: Fedora Linux Thread

« on: December 15, 2019, 05:08:14 pm »

Replying to two posts:

Wayland or X? If it's Wayland, that might be your problem. See https://www.talospace.com/2019/11/fedora-31-mini-review-on-blackbird-and.html

Thanks. I will look into it. On the installer, I select "Fedora Workstation". After reboot, I got a blank screen without login window. So I can't choose X or Wayland. Even Ctrl + Alt + F2 doesn't work.

Have you tried installing Server, and then converting to Workstation? This comes up with a text boot, but then you can "startx" to go to GNOME. That's how this T2 is configured.

Still, I agree this sounds like a bug.

Classic excuses a question, or rather 2, in the article dedicated to Firefox 70 advised to tell Firefox that we are using Power 9, can you write the precise syntax of the command to give to get this?  Second question, I'm looking for an application to be able to read Blu-Ray discs correctly, VLC isn't currently on Power, do you know what you can use as an alternative?  Thanks

I mean to tell the compiler you're using POWER9. If you're just running a pre-built version, then it's however it was configured and assuming the autodetect works properly. (It should on the Fedora builds.)

However, VLC is definitely in the repositories. Make sure you have RPM Fusion connected up. https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration

BD playback may require some bits that Raptor may be nervous about us posting, so just read the Arch Linux documentation about that. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Blu-ray

508

User Zone / Re: Fedora Linux Thread

« on: December 15, 2019, 01:47:45 am »

Is there a bug in GNOME? If I select GNOME on the installer, I don't get a login screen after installation. I even can't switch to the console, mouse doesn't react.

Wayland or X? If it's Wayland, that might be your problem. See https://www.talospace.com/2019/11/fedora-31-mini-review-on-blackbird-and.html

509

User Zone / Re: Fedora Linux Thread

« on: December 11, 2019, 05:25:46 pm »

I don't recall doing anything special, tbh. This is on a Talos II; I don't know if it's different for a Blackbird but IIRC it "just worked."

510

Legacy POWER Hardware / Re: Old stuff survey

« on: December 10, 2019, 10:49:49 pm »

The most recent X 5000 has the Freescale P5020 or P 5040 but without Altivec and they are based on Power 8 if I remember correctly ...

POWER7, actually.  They implement Power ISA v2.06 (https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Power_ISA) and are BE only.

Not to be a (terrible) pedant, but while they do indeed implement (at least most of) the later ISA, the QorIQ e5500 microarchitecture doesn't have much in common with POWER7's. It's essentially a 64-bit e500 without the SPE crap and an FPU borrowed from the e600, itself an evolution of the 744x G4. The lack of AltiVec/VMX is a terrible omission, however, and limits its utility for general purpose computing. It's really an embedded part and meant for that application, and I have said in other places how much of a disservice I think running such CPUs in pricey desktops is to the Amiga community.

Confusingly the actual product page (https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/power-architecture/qoriq-communication-processors/p-series/qoriq-p5020-and-p5010-64-bit-dual-and-single-core-communications-processors:P5020) refers to a "P5 platform" which I suspect is not POWER5, but I have no idea offhand what it is.  I do know the 4 core and up chips have a mystery management core of some sort, but then again with pre-OpenPOWER stuff the chips weren't exactly open source firmware across the board regardless of vendor.

P5 just means the Freescale-internal generation; it is not related in any way to IBM POWER generations.