High load average (~2.0) on an idle PowerPC 64 machine
I there, I've this Quad G5 machine that's sitting pretty much idle with the latest Debian stable installed, and yet it's got an abnormaly high load average. I've detailed the situation over here, maybe you guys will find it interesting or have something to say : http://serverfault.com/questions/251299/high-load-average-over-2-0-on-an-idle-machine The machine doesn't seem to be actually slowed down, it looks more like an incorrect measurement. Thank you very much for any help ! - Romain ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Info : Using a PowerMac G5 as a server
Hi everyone, I've this PowerMac G5 machine I'd like to use as a server. It makes perfect sense to install Linux on it for several reasons : - OS X isn't maintained on this hardware anymore - Those machine are still reasonnably fast. They sure aren't the latest and greatest, but they still do a decent job. - Support of those in other OSes (NetBSD or FreeBSD for instance) is pretty bad (no fan control for example). To make a decent server though, there are two things that are pretty important IMHO : - Being able to boot headless (w/o a screen attached) - Being able to reboot automagically after a power failure Surprisingly, the Linux kernel does a very good job on this machine in terms of hardware support and stability : everything works perfectly. But the global OS fails pathetically in the two said points. Here are my findings so far, I hope it will help people in the same situation : 1/ Booting a PowerMac G5 headless This hasn't so much to do with Linux per se, but rather with Yaboot which seems to be the de-facto standard bootloader on the OpenFirmware platform. For some reason, at some point in the booting process, yaboot relies on a screen being present. If no screen is attached, it will hang. So much for headless booting. Now I've figured out several workarounds : - Fake a screen by plugging in a resistor into your VGA port (or to your DVI port using an adapter). This sure works, but it's rather redneck - For some reason, the part of yaboot that actually depends on the script is the ofboot.b forth script. This scripts' purpose is to give you an option of booting off of a CD. I really don't get it since OpenFirmware itself lets you boot off of a CD just by pressing C on boot. So basically if you skip ofboot.b, you're good to go. When installing yaboot with ybin, ybin sets the boot-device variable in OpenFirmware to point to ofboot.b. So if you point boot-device straight to the yaboo binary, you should be able to boot headless without any issue. Here are several ways to do it : - Go to the OpenFirmware prompt (Command-Option-O-F on boot), and type setenv boot-device=hd:2,yaboot (modify the hd:2 accordingly), then boot - You might be able to achieve the same effect using the nvram tool straight from linux - I think simply removing the magicboot line off of yaboot.conf might fix it as well IOW, it _is_ possible to boot a PowerMac G5 headless on Linux without any hardware modification. 2/ Rebooting automagically after a power failure Now this is less fun : I still don't have any solution to offer. To understand the situation, you should know that this has to be set in the power-management chip. Previous PowerMacs used a PMU chip, which was fully supported. All you had to do was to echo server_mode=1 to /proc/pmu/options. Thing is, G5's use a new chip, named SMU. And AFAIK, there's no such option for those machines… So if anyone ever knows any element of answer on this, I'd be really interested ! Kind regards, - Romain ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: poweroff/suspend problems on PowerMac G5
On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 12:49 AM, Benjamin Herrenschmidt b...@kernel.crashing.org wrote: On Thu, 2010-04-01 at 19:14 +0400, Anton Vorontsov wrote: So CONFIG_HIBERNATION breaks suspend? Hm. How do you try to suspend? echo mem /sys/power/state? Nah, suspend isn't supported on these ( ... yet, I suppose I could implement it one of these days if nouveau can bring back the video card). I think his problem is that CONFIG_HIB* is breaking shutdown. as well as when just trying to shut down the machine. How do try to shut down the machine? halt/poweroff commands? From a brief look, I don't see how CONFIG_HIBERNATION may change halt/poweroff code flow in the kernel... Can you show us a boot log of working and not working kernels? And .config files you use. ..maybe for some reason PMU/SMU modules didn't get loaded? Nah, I doubt it. Smells more like the old crap with broken cpu unplug on shutdown, no ? I'm using a QuadG5 under Debian PPC right now, and indeed, it seems like I have a similar issue (i.e. it takes *forever* for the machine to halt). In my case it does end up powering itself off, but sometimes it even goes in a state where all the fan are running at top-speed. And indeed, I remember having some message in the console about CPUs unplugging themselves. I have one of these guys at work, I can give it a try next week. Great. While you're at it, is there any chance you could try to get server_mode to work for this machine (or any SMU-based machine for that matter). You know, so that the machine reboots after a power failure :-) Thanks a lot Ben ! - Romain Cheers, Ben. ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: Booting headless PowerMac G5
2010/3/25 Michel Dänzer mic...@daenzer.net: On Wed, 2010-03-24 at 11:32 +0100, Romain Goyet wrote: Here's a summary about how to boot a PowerMac G5 without a screen attached. As many people have noticed, default yaboot install won't boot unless a screen is attached. Actually, the workaround is really simple. Thing is, that's the ofboot.b script that messes things up. This script is a bridge, that actually either starts yaboot or let you boot off of a CD. I don't know what's the point, since OpenFirmware already lets you boot off of the CD by pressing C on boot… So basically, to boot headless, all you have to do is to tell OpenFirmware to boot straight off the yaboot binary, and to skip the ofboot.b Just boot into OpenFirmware (Command-Option-O-F), and type : setenv boot-device hd:2,yaboot (where 2 is the number of the partition containing yaboot) boot And here you go, you can unplug that useless monitor :-) References : http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/blog/archive/2005/02/THE_WINE_OF_BOOT.html http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnPowerPC That's good to know, thanks. You're welcome. Actually I also wrote this as a memo for myself :-) By the way, as of writing this, grub2 on PPC from debian gives a out of memory issue. Known bug. That's on the G5? It's working on my PowerBook, but I haven't updated the grub2 binaries on the bootstrap partition in a while... Yeah, that's on a PowerMac QuadG5. I think that's a known issue : http://www.mail-archive.com/grub-de...@gnu.org/msg04455.html However it might be another one since it's working for you. I'm using grub2 from Debian stable. -- Earthling Michel Dänzer | http://www.vmware.com Libre software enthusiast | Debian, X and DRI developer ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Booting headless PowerMac
Most people have had ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Booting headless PowerMac G5
Hi there, Here's a summary about how to boot a PowerMac G5 without a screen attached. As many people have noticed, default yaboot install won't boot unless a screen is attached. Actually, the workaround is really simple. Thing is, that's the ofboot.b script that messes things up. This script is a bridge, that actually either starts yaboot or let you boot off of a CD. I don't know what's the point, since OpenFirmware already lets you boot off of the CD by pressing C on boot… So basically, to boot headless, all you have to do is to tell OpenFirmware to boot straight off the yaboot binary, and to skip the ofboot.b Just boot into OpenFirmware (Command-Option-O-F), and type : setenv boot-device hd:2,yaboot (where 2 is the number of the partition containing yaboot) boot And here you go, you can unplug that useless monitor :-) References : http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/blog/archive/2005/02/THE_WINE_OF_BOOT.html http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnPowerPC By the way, as of writing this, grub2 on PPC from debian gives a out of memory issue. Known bug. ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: SMU-base PowerMac and server_mode
Hi Ben, So, I'm coming back to you about setting server_mode on SMU-based PPC machines. You know, so that the machine reboots after a power failure. Would you have a little time now ? Thanks a lot ! - Romain On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Benjamin Herrenschmidt b...@kernel.crashing.org wrote: On Tue, 2009-10-06 at 12:31 +0200, Romain Goyet wrote: Hi Benjamin ! Actually I saw a post where you mentioned this tool on Google. I then searched it for like an hour or so, but really couldn't find it. That's why I ended up posting on this mailing list. I'm really glad you're on it by the way ! Anyway, like I said : I really looked for this tool, but couldn't find it… Hrm... ok. I'll have to figure it out again. No time right now, but get back to me next month after Kernel Summit and I'll see what i can do. Cheers, Ben. Thanks a lot ! - Romain On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Benjamin Herrenschmidt b...@kernel.crashing.org wrote: On Tue, 2009-10-06 at 11:16 +0200, Romain Goyet wrote: Hi there, I have this Quad G5 here, running GentooPPC64. Runs fine. Had a hard time getting it to boot without a screen attached, but I eventually managed to (yaboot was the culprit). However, this machine is SMU-based, and I couldn't find a way to enable the equivalent of the PMU's server_mode (i.e. automatically reboot after a power failure). Is there any known way to do that ? I'm pretty sure I reverse engineered the necessary command a while back and somebody wrote a userland tool to set it, but I can't find it anymore :-) Google may help. Let me know if you can't find it. Cheers, Ben. ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: SMU-base PowerMac and server_mode
Ahem, that's pretty bad :'( How comes noone uses that ? - Romain On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 6:33 PM, Olof Johansson o...@lixom.net wrote: On Wed, Oct 07, 2009 at 01:25:13PM +0200, Romain Goyet wrote: On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Olof Johansson o...@lixom.net wrote: Yeah, I had one but I have since lost it. I suspect it was on the drive of my second quad that I wiped before I sold it, thinking there was nothing of value on it. :( Ha, that's too bad. Do you know if it might be online somewhere ? Maybe an idea of the right keywords to google ? I searched for it, couldn't find any trace of it anywhere. I know I based my little tool on some small smu example that came from Ben or possibly Segher. I can't even find that any more. It's been a couple of years since I last touched it. :( -Olof ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: SMU-base PowerMac and server_mode
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Olof Johansson o...@lixom.net wrote: On Tue, Oct 06, 2009 at 09:11:22PM +1100, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote: On Tue, 2009-10-06 at 11:16 +0200, Romain Goyet wrote: Hi there, I have this Quad G5 here, running GentooPPC64. Runs fine. Had a hard time getting it to boot without a screen attached, but I eventually managed to (yaboot was the culprit). However, this machine is SMU-based, and I couldn't find a way to enable the equivalent of the PMU's server_mode (i.e. automatically reboot after a power failure). Is there any known way to do that ? I'm pretty sure I reverse engineered the necessary command a while back and somebody wrote a userland tool to set it, but I can't find it anymore :-) Yeah, I had one but I have since lost it. I suspect it was on the drive of my second quad that I wiped before I sold it, thinking there was nothing of value on it. :( -Olof Ha, that's too bad. Do you know if it might be online somewhere ? Maybe an idea of the right keywords to google ? Thanks ! - Romain ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
SMU-base PowerMac and server_mode
Hi there, I have this Quad G5 here, running GentooPPC64. Runs fine. Had a hard time getting it to boot without a screen attached, but I eventually managed to (yaboot was the culprit). However, this machine is SMU-based, and I couldn't find a way to enable the equivalent of the PMU's server_mode (i.e. automatically reboot after a power failure). Is there any known way to do that ? Kind regards, - Romain ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: SMU-base PowerMac and server_mode
Hi Benjamin ! Actually I saw a post where you mentioned this tool on Google. I then searched it for like an hour or so, but really couldn't find it. That's why I ended up posting on this mailing list. I'm really glad you're on it by the way ! Anyway, like I said : I really looked for this tool, but couldn't find it… Thanks a lot ! - Romain On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Benjamin Herrenschmidt b...@kernel.crashing.org wrote: On Tue, 2009-10-06 at 11:16 +0200, Romain Goyet wrote: Hi there, I have this Quad G5 here, running GentooPPC64. Runs fine. Had a hard time getting it to boot without a screen attached, but I eventually managed to (yaboot was the culprit). However, this machine is SMU-based, and I couldn't find a way to enable the equivalent of the PMU's server_mode (i.e. automatically reboot after a power failure). Is there any known way to do that ? I'm pretty sure I reverse engineered the necessary command a while back and somebody wrote a userland tool to set it, but I can't find it anymore :-) Google may help. Let me know if you can't find it. Cheers, Ben. ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: SMU-base PowerMac and server_mode
Hi Michel :-) Acutally I didn't figure it out by myself : http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/blog/archive/2005/02/THE_WINE_OF_BOOT.html However, here's my 2 cents about it : 1/ The fix (removing screen line in ofboot.b on yaboot partition) doesn't work with all versions of the yaboot binary. Works with the one from Debian. Doesn't with yaboot-static on GentooPPC64. But you still can fetch the right binary from the .deb archive 2/ Another possible solution can be to hook up a DVI- VGA adapter, and plug in a resistor between the right pins (don't remember which) so that yaboot thinks a display is plugged in Hope that helps !! - Romain 2009/10/6 Michel Dänzer mic...@daenzer.net On Tue, 2009-10-06 at 11:16 +0200, Romain Goyet wrote: I have this Quad G5 here, running GentooPPC64. Runs fine. Had a hard time getting it to boot without a screen attached, but I eventually managed to (yaboot was the culprit). Out of curiosity, how did you solve this? I still have an unused monitor connected to mine... -- Earthling Michel Dänzer |http://www.vmware.com Libre software enthusiast | Debian, X and DRI developer ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: SMU-base PowerMac and server_mode
Hi again Benjamin ! That's allright, I'll ping you next month ! Thanks for the help ! - Romain On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Benjamin Herrenschmidt b...@kernel.crashing.org wrote: On Tue, 2009-10-06 at 12:31 +0200, Romain Goyet wrote: Hi Benjamin ! Actually I saw a post where you mentioned this tool on Google. I then searched it for like an hour or so, but really couldn't find it. That's why I ended up posting on this mailing list. I'm really glad you're on it by the way ! Anyway, like I said : I really looked for this tool, but couldn't find it… Hrm... ok. I'll have to figure it out again. No time right now, but get back to me next month after Kernel Summit and I'll see what i can do. Cheers, Ben. Thanks a lot ! - Romain On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Benjamin Herrenschmidt b...@kernel.crashing.org wrote: On Tue, 2009-10-06 at 11:16 +0200, Romain Goyet wrote: Hi there, I have this Quad G5 here, running GentooPPC64. Runs fine. Had a hard time getting it to boot without a screen attached, but I eventually managed to (yaboot was the culprit). However, this machine is SMU-based, and I couldn't find a way to enable the equivalent of the PMU's server_mode (i.e. automatically reboot after a power failure). Is there any known way to do that ? I'm pretty sure I reverse engineered the necessary command a while back and somebody wrote a userland tool to set it, but I can't find it anymore :-) Google may help. Let me know if you can't find it. Cheers, Ben. ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
