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GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: powerxcell 8i
« on: January 14, 2020, 11:31:27 pm »
For future generations, attaching the manual that I've been referencing this whole time.
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GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: powerxcell 8i
« on: January 14, 2020, 11:09:26 pm »
PXCAB is the IBM reference design that the card was derived from, so that should work perfectly.
Unicamp has a mirror of drivers for the PXCAB, which match some of the bits from the manual's Appendix A; http://ftp.unicamp.br/pub/linuxpatch/pxcab/Fedora7/ppc64/
I believe Appendix A is only necessary if you'd rather run Fedora 7 or another Fedora 7 derivative instead of YDL... which is itself a Fedora/RHEL derived distro. I'd imagine YDL is better supported for the card, as Fixstars bought the Yellow Dog folks, but you never know...
EDIT: It also looks like pxcab-pcie-driver-1.1.0-0.src.rpm from the Unicamp mirror has all the GPLed source code for PCIe drivers mentioned in Section 7 (apnet and axon via triblade), so I guess I was mistaken! There might be a shot at getting all this running.
Unicamp has a mirror of drivers for the PXCAB, which match some of the bits from the manual's Appendix A; http://ftp.unicamp.br/pub/linuxpatch/pxcab/Fedora7/ppc64/
I believe Appendix A is only necessary if you'd rather run Fedora 7 or another Fedora 7 derivative instead of YDL... which is itself a Fedora/RHEL derived distro. I'd imagine YDL is better supported for the card, as Fixstars bought the Yellow Dog folks, but you never know...
EDIT: It also looks like pxcab-pcie-driver-1.1.0-0.src.rpm from the Unicamp mirror has all the GPLed source code for PCIe drivers mentioned in Section 7 (apnet and axon via triblade), so I guess I was mistaken! There might be a shot at getting all this running.
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GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: powerxcell 8i
« on: January 14, 2020, 09:48:11 pm »
Tiny follow up that I'm repeating for the public, as it looks like Fixstars moved the site they reference for manual Section 4.10; https://us.fixstars.com/products/ydl/support/solutions/ydel-6x/ydel-configure-host-nohd/
This is the "Installation of Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux" section, for hardware that has no hard drive, like that card. It's essentially a recipe for Netboot.
As I mentioned in that follow up PM, I doubt you'll be able to interact with the card through PCIe instead of gigabit ethernet. Best thing I recommend is to keep the card in an eGPU box, and use ethernet for all communications. That'll save you a PCIe slot, and keep your future Blackbird happy.
This is the "Installation of Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux" section, for hardware that has no hard drive, like that card. It's essentially a recipe for Netboot.
As I mentioned in that follow up PM, I doubt you'll be able to interact with the card through PCIe instead of gigabit ethernet. Best thing I recommend is to keep the card in an eGPU box, and use ethernet for all communications. That'll save you a PCIe slot, and keep your future Blackbird happy.
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GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: powerxcell 8i
« on: January 14, 2020, 07:21:25 pm »
Sent a PM with some relevant historical resources.
The manual for this card doesn't appear to reference any DVD besides YDL, and the Fixstars site indicates that YDL 6.x should support that card. That's about as much as I think we are likely to find.
The manual for this card doesn't appear to reference any DVD besides YDL, and the Fixstars site indicates that YDL 6.x should support that card. That's about as much as I think we are likely to find.
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User Zone / Re: Graphics Card install
« on: December 21, 2019, 10:32:41 pm »
Stepping in...
As stated before, it would help if you took the time to just go through a book or a tutorial on using a shell like bash on Linux to help with these matters.
make -j`nproc`
That's with backticks, as in the character to the left of a 1 and above the "tab" key in a USA QWERTY keyboard layout. Not apostrophes. These mean different things.
Backticks can be used to execute the command in between before executing the outer command in shells like zsh.
nproc returns the number of available processing units. This tutorial explains how; https://www.howtoforge.com/linux-nproc-command/
So that's equivalent to:
make -j12
On a computer with 12 logical cores.
Either way, you don't really need the -j argument for make. It's to run your build in parallel, to make it faster.
As stated before, it would help if you took the time to just go through a book or a tutorial on using a shell like bash on Linux to help with these matters.
make -j`nproc`
That's with backticks, as in the character to the left of a 1 and above the "tab" key in a USA QWERTY keyboard layout. Not apostrophes. These mean different things.
Backticks can be used to execute the command in between before executing the outer command in shells like zsh.
nproc returns the number of available processing units. This tutorial explains how; https://www.howtoforge.com/linux-nproc-command/
So that's equivalent to:
make -j12
On a computer with 12 logical cores.
Either way, you don't really need the -j argument for make. It's to run your build in parallel, to make it faster.
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Legacy POWER Hardware / Re: Old stuff survey
« on: December 09, 2019, 09:06:56 pm »
Count me in the "old Apple stuff" camp.
An aluminum PowerBook G4 sometimes acts as a tinkering machine.
A 1.33 GHz iBook G4 is seeing active usage by my significant other, as a "portable" laptop that's less of a luggable than her ThinkPad P50.
Both run 10.5 Server quite well.
Older bits (like a B&W) are currently out of commission and need servicing.
I'd love to have a PReP ThinkPad, but that's well out of my budget for new old things!
An aluminum PowerBook G4 sometimes acts as a tinkering machine.
A 1.33 GHz iBook G4 is seeing active usage by my significant other, as a "portable" laptop that's less of a luggable than her ThinkPad P50.
Both run 10.5 Server quite well.
Older bits (like a B&W) are currently out of commission and need servicing.
I'd love to have a PReP ThinkPad, but that's well out of my budget for new old things!
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Blackbird / Re: Keyboard unresponsive at boot menu (Petitboot)
« on: December 09, 2019, 08:55:19 pm »
How are you observing Petitboot, if not through the HDMI output that you have disabled by setting the VGA disable jumper?
Are you observing Petitboot through the serial console?
Are you observing Petitboot through the serial console?
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Blackbird / Re: HDMI output for mother board
« on: December 03, 2019, 01:48:15 am »
Could you link to these discussions with Raptor, where they've confirmed that there's a problem somewhere? I'm still having trouble following along with your progress.
For what it's worth, I don't have any of the problems you've described with the HDMI on the Blackbird, stock firmware.
My Blackbird's motherboard HDMI permanently drives a tiny screen made for a Raspberry Pi to see Petitboot before handing off display duties to the AMD WX5100 connected to a proper widescreen monitor for Debian 10.2.
You will probably want a screen that's higher resolution. I originally bought that for a Mac Pro 6,1 running ESXi to see the console, only to find that ESXi doesn't support any of its preferred resolutions.
For what it's worth, I don't have any of the problems you've described with the HDMI on the Blackbird, stock firmware.
My Blackbird's motherboard HDMI permanently drives a tiny screen made for a Raspberry Pi to see Petitboot before handing off display duties to the AMD WX5100 connected to a proper widescreen monitor for Debian 10.2.
You will probably want a screen that's higher resolution. I originally bought that for a Mac Pro 6,1 running ESXi to see the console, only to find that ESXi doesn't support any of its preferred resolutions.
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User Zone / Re: Graphics Card install
« on: December 01, 2019, 02:21:56 pm »
I'm concerned about offering more advice when you don't seem to know how to get logs out of your system to confirm the problems that we are trying to diagnose.
I've tried giving links on how to use the dmesg command line app from a shell. I'm not certain where you are stuck, or if you are at a point where using the shell is completely foreign to you.
Modifying the bootloader arguments is only a small step up from that in difficulty. If you're going to have trouble using a text editor as root to modify a configuration file, we'll have to direct you towards being more familiar with a Linux shell before offering more advice.
I suggest referencing Zed Shaw's command line crash course and getting familiar with that before we try to get your GPU up and running with Fedora 31. You can find a PDF of that over here; https://www.computervillage.org/articles/CommandLine.pdf
I've tried giving links on how to use the dmesg command line app from a shell. I'm not certain where you are stuck, or if you are at a point where using the shell is completely foreign to you.
Modifying the bootloader arguments is only a small step up from that in difficulty. If you're going to have trouble using a text editor as root to modify a configuration file, we'll have to direct you towards being more familiar with a Linux shell before offering more advice.
I suggest referencing Zed Shaw's command line crash course and getting familiar with that before we try to get your GPU up and running with Fedora 31. You can find a PDF of that over here; https://www.computervillage.org/articles/CommandLine.pdf
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User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread
« on: November 30, 2019, 11:48:50 pm »
That's fair. Benchmarks can be deceiving as they are further isolated from their original context.
POWER is one of those ABIs that I hadn't had much experience in. Based on your reference to SVR4, found this 2014 slide deck introducing ELFv2 in the context of what came before and the default 64-bit Linux POWER ABIs (ELFv1 for be, ELFv2 for el) in the GCC compiler options.
This clears things up, thanks.
POWER is one of those ABIs that I hadn't had much experience in. Based on your reference to SVR4, found this 2014 slide deck introducing ELFv2 in the context of what came before and the default 64-bit Linux POWER ABIs (ELFv1 for be, ELFv2 for el) in the GCC compiler options.
This clears things up, thanks.
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User Zone / Re: Void Linux thread
« on: November 30, 2019, 11:04:43 pm »
q66, thanks for all the work to get Void working on POWER. I really enjoyed your talk on the challenges of porting the distro, along with exactly what pieces work and why.
I'd like to give it a try with WindowMaker and dmenu, after being somewhat convinced of dmenu's seaworthiness with this Void Linux setup guide. With that, it should resemble an old FreeBSD desktop I used to have.
Also, props for having bpftrace on all platforms. That will easily make me miss dtrace less.
Since it's mentioned as a distinguishing factor in this port, are there benchmarks showing the impact of ELFv2 on ppc64be or ppc32?
I'd like to give it a try with WindowMaker and dmenu, after being somewhat convinced of dmenu's seaworthiness with this Void Linux setup guide. With that, it should resemble an old FreeBSD desktop I used to have.
Also, props for having bpftrace on all platforms. That will easily make me miss dtrace less.
Since it's mentioned as a distinguishing factor in this port, are there benchmarks showing the impact of ELFv2 on ppc64be or ppc32?
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Operating Systems and Porting / Re: FreeBSD - Unfortunately not very TALOS-focused
« on: November 30, 2019, 10:10:07 pm »I've considered once I get a POWER board on doing a fork of FreeBSD for POWER64el, but another consideration has been just doing that for illumos or something.
Probably going to just end up running Debian, in all likelihood until a BSD or illumos is available that is little-endian.
That's probably wise. I have a soft spot for minority operating systems. Those tend to be dominated by, what they have hardware available to do, and what their maintainers are interested in supporting.
In a past life, I expressed an interest in FreeBSD. The opinionated CTO (at a startup) shot that down pretty quickly on the grounds that I needed to have what their core contributors were using as daily drivers for it to be useful as a desktop OS. Which is fair.
FreeBSD has also had a stigma stated in the past by co-founder Jordan Hubbard of supporting hardware platforms that aren't "genuinely relevant in terms of mass appeal" (YouTube link, 2014). Not a problem for a platform like Linux with many heads, many hands floating around the space, where support for minority platforms comes with corporate sponsorships and a bigger community of volunteers.
Whether those factors work for or against POWER9 and 10, I don't know exactly. It sounds like they're some ways away from solid GPU support for OpenPOWER platforms.
Debian's nice. I'll probably give Fedora a try sometime down the road. If a smaller OS can be convinced that OpenPOWER is worthwhile, that'd be great.
besides, i see no reason to kill off older hardware that still serves its purpose perfectly fine for many people - doing otherwise just reeks of planned obsolescence
there's a sizeable community of people running older ppc machines who often couldn't afford buying a blackbird or whatever in the first place
Indeed. From a hobbyist PoV, the first computer I bought without borrowing credit was an old, beat up Macintosh Quadra to help learn the ins and outs of a system. I didn't have to worry about breakages from system updates, nor did I have to worry about accidentally junking the system when the whole shebang cost less than $50 to replace.
I'd say that basing your product roadmap off of yesterday's baggage isn't the wisest. However, if the only person really pushing to do the porting work for (XXX) OS gratis happens to do so because they really love their AmigaOnes. And nobody else is stepping up to that plate? Well, we can't be surprised with the outcomes.
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User Zone / Re: Graphics Card install
« on: November 30, 2019, 06:43:32 pm »I also imagined that Fedora 31 already had something pre-installed since the card is recognized perfectly, the problem is that I don't know how to activate it, I can't understand how to make it operational ...You need to share some logs before we can help triage this.
madscientist159's suggestion to share dmesg output (tutorial) which you can pipe to a file, and share with us via a link with a service like dpaste would be a good start.
Quote
Raptor says that from the next firmware of the Blackbird, it will be possible to activate it but they also say that we have to wait for the Q1 of 2020 which I think is a bit long to wait and so I wanted to understand if it was possible to do it already without the need to wait for the new firmware ...
Slow down a bit. It sounds like you're talking about the bootloader, aka petitboot, which starts before you load Linux. It sounds like you really want to get the GPU working on Fedora. These are two different problems.
For yourself and future visitors, there is a Wiki for troubleshooting GPU problems on Talos and Blackbird hardware. That's a good place to check for specific issues you come across, and tips to diagnose.
I've found that this page is a little Debian/Ubuntu focused at the moment, owing to many users of Raptor hardware being users of Debian, though the advice should be applicable for all Linux distros.
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User Zone / Re: Graphics Card install
« on: November 30, 2019, 11:55:40 am »
I don't really know what you're working with, where you are or what instructions you're following. I am also not an expert on this subject. However, with help from the IRC channel, I do have an AMD GPU working with my Blackbird. To help everyone:
Which walkthrough/instructions are you following? Link?
Which distro of Linux are you using? (Typically the Linux distro will have a set of packages available with GPU drivers that you can set up, which can save you significant work in getting that part set up, or at least get you 90% of the way there. Some like Debian will separate that package from the default set of package repositories, as Debian does with "non-free" packages.)
Are you comfortable with using gnome-terminal or xterm?
Which walkthrough/instructions are you following? Link?
Which distro of Linux are you using? (Typically the Linux distro will have a set of packages available with GPU drivers that you can set up, which can save you significant work in getting that part set up, or at least get you 90% of the way there. Some like Debian will separate that package from the default set of package repositories, as Debian does with "non-free" packages.)
Are you comfortable with using gnome-terminal or xterm?
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Talos II / Re: Talos User's Survival Kit/New Talos User's Shopping List
« on: November 29, 2019, 06:43:48 pm »(I also owe a deep debt of gratitude to the rest of the IRC channel for helping me through it)Seconding this.
I don't have any of these tools yet. I have a Blackbird, which is mostly kept as-is with a WX5100 as the GPU and no other expansion cards.
Something that would act as an intro-ish level guide to dealing with the SPI programmer with maybe some links to recommended kit to buy would be very nice to have, for want-to-be advanced users.
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