Re: Re: compiling a bootable kernel for ia64 (itanium2, mckinley, rx2620)

[Ivan Zakharyaschev]

Hi Jason,

On Sun, 4 Feb 2018, Jason Duerstock wrote:


Does the kernel from here work for you?:

https://people.debian.org/~jrtc27/wheezy-backports-ia64/

Specifically 
https://people.debian.org/~jrtc27/wheezy-backports-ia64/linux-image-3.16.0-0.bpo.4-mckinley_3.16.39-1+deb8u1~bpo70+1+gcc4.4_ia64.deb


Yes, it works for our machine. Thanks!

It's amazing that you came to the same solution as regards the use of 
gcc-4.4 a while ago! If we could find it before, it'd have saved us some 
experiments. (The lack of a working installaton image which is easy to 
find was also discouraging at the first stage.)



On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 7:56 PM, Ivan Zakharyaschev  wrote:



As for gathering information, I can't think of some useful information
from a working system so far. The same applies to testing. We are able to
test it here. Anyway, thanks for your messages, Frank and Daniel! The
remaining useful tasks which I see are:

1) learn how to compile a bootable kernel for this machine and apply this
knowledge to compile a fresh current kernel;

2) understand what goes wrong (by bisecting gcc), suggest a fix. (Before
we understand it, we can't be sure what should be fixed: it's not
necessarily abug in gcc).

So far, we've done a number of attempts to compile and boot a kernel (I'm
going to post the details and the kernels soon), and my conclusion so far is
that the only affecting factor is the version of gcc (even not -O1 vs
-Os/-O2).

gcc <= 4.5.3 produces a bootable kernel (as for
linux-image-3.2.0-4-mckinley, gcc 4.4.7 from wheezy and gcc 4.5.3 from
snapshots produced a bootable one in my experiments);
gcc > = 4.6.3 produces a non-bootable kernel.

So this already gives an initial hypothesis about the solution to 1):

To compile a bootable kernel for this machine, use gcc <= 4.5.3.

Re: Re: compiling a bootable kernel for ia64 (itanium2, mckinley, rx2620)

[Jason Duerstock]

Does the kernel from here work for you?:

https://people.debian.org/~jrtc27/wheezy-backports-ia64/

Specifically 
https://people.debian.org/~jrtc27/wheezy-backports-ia64/linux-image-3.16.0-0.bpo.4-mckinley_3.16.39-1+deb8u1~bpo70+1+gcc4.4_ia64.deb

Jason

On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 7:56 PM, Ivan Zakharyaschev  wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Feb 2018, Ivan Zakharyaschev wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 4 Feb 2018, Frank Scheiner wrote:
>>
>>>  just a quick pointer:
>>>
>>>  I had Debian Wheezy with Linux v3.2.x (vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-mckinley, i.e.
>>>  [this one]) running w/o issues on my rx2620 with two Itanium 2 9040
>>>  (Montecito) both from an on-disk installation and a NFS root FS, but I
>>> ran
>>>  it on bare-metal, not in a VM.
>>
>>
>> Yes, [this one] doesn't boot on our system. It might even be in our case a
>> strange/buggy behavior caused by old firmware for an otherwise correct
>> kernel binary code (or, of course, the code might be not correct). Perhaps,
>> there is a difference between yours and ours machines:
>>
>> root@rx2620:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
>> processor  : 0
>> vendor : GenuineIntel
>> arch   : IA-64
>> family : 31
>> model  : 2
>> model name : Madison up to 9M cache
>> revision   : 1
>> archrev: 0
>> features   : branchlong
>> cpu number : 0
>> cpu regs   : 4
>> cpu MHz: 1600.021
>> itc MHz: 1600.021752
>> BogoMIPS   : 2390.01
>> siblings   : 1
>> physical id: 0
>>
>> processor  : 1
>> vendor : GenuineIntel
>> arch   : IA-64
>> family : 31
>> model  : 2
>> model name : Madison up to 9M cache
>> revision   : 1
>> archrev: 0
>> features   : branchlong
>> cpu number : 0
>> cpu regs   : 4
>> cpu MHz: 1600.021
>> itc MHz: 1600.021752
>> BogoMIPS   : 2390.01
>> siblings   : 1
>> physical id: 1
>>
>> root@rx2620:~#
>>
>> It looks like ours has 2 Madison CPUs (if we are to trust this cpuinfo),
>> which are older than your Montecito ones.
>
>
>>>  [this one]:
>>>  https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/linux-image-3.2.0-4-mckinley
>>
>>
>> As for gathering information, I can't think of some useful information
>> from a working system so far. The same applies to testing. We are able to
>> test it here. Anyway, thanks for your messages, Frank and Daniel! The
>> remaining useful tasks which I see are:
>>
>> 1) learn how to compile a bootable kernel for this machine and apply this
>> knowledge to compile a fresh current kernel;
>>
>> 2) understand what goes wrong (by bisecting gcc), suggest a fix. (Before
>> we understand it, we can't be sure what should be fixed: it's not
>> necessarily abug in gcc).
>>
>> So far, we've done a number of attempts to compile and boot a kernel (I'm
>> going to post the details and the kernels soon), and my conclusion so far is
>> that the only affecting factor is the version of gcc (even not -O1 vs
>> -Os/-O2).
>>
>> gcc <= 4.5.3 produces a bootable kernel (as for
>> linux-image-3.2.0-4-mckinley, gcc 4.4.7 from wheezy and gcc 4.5.3 from
>> snapshots produced a bootable one in my experiments);
>> gcc > = 4.6.3 produces a non-bootable kernel.
>>
>> So this already gives an initial hypothesis about the solution to 1):
>>
>> To compile a bootable kernel for this machine, use gcc <= 4.5.3.
>
>
> Now that we know how to build a bootable kernel for such machines as ours
> (rx2620 with Madison CPU) and probably Daniel Kasza's rx2600, can such an
> update be published for wheezy?
>
> Perhaps, an additional variant of linux-image-mckinley built with gcc-4.4
> (4.4.7) present in wheezy? As a workaround for this bug.
>
> And what about an updated installation image? So that people trying to
> install Debian on such a machine would succeed not only of they take the
> Debian 6 (squeeze) image (which is definitely not the first thing they would
> try when searching for an installation image), but so that Debian 7 (wheezy)
> images (more likely to be found by them) would work for them, too.
>

Re: Re: compiling a bootable kernel for ia64 (itanium2, mckinley, rx2620)

[Ivan Zakharyaschev]

Hello!

On Sun, 4 Feb 2018, Frank Scheiner wrote:


just a quick pointer:

I had Debian Wheezy with Linux v3.2.x (vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-mckinley, i.e. [this 
one]) running w/o issues on my rx2620 with two Itanium 2 9040 (Montecito) 
both from an on-disk installation and a NFS root FS, but I ran it on 
bare-metal, not in a VM.


Yes, [this one] doesn't boot on our system. It might even be in our 
case a strange/buggy behavior caused by old firmware for an 
otherwise correct kernel binary code (or, of course, the code might be 
not correct). Perhaps, there is a difference between yours and ours 
machines:


root@rx2620:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor  : 0
vendor : GenuineIntel
arch   : IA-64
family : 31
model  : 2
model name : Madison up to 9M cache
revision   : 1
archrev: 0
features   : branchlong
cpu number : 0
cpu regs   : 4
cpu MHz: 1600.021
itc MHz: 1600.021752
BogoMIPS   : 2390.01
siblings   : 1
physical id: 0

processor  : 1
vendor : GenuineIntel
arch   : IA-64
family : 31
model  : 2
model name : Madison up to 9M cache
revision   : 1
archrev: 0
features   : branchlong
cpu number : 0
cpu regs   : 4
cpu MHz: 1600.021
itc MHz: 1600.021752
BogoMIPS   : 2390.01
siblings   : 1
physical id: 1

root@rx2620:~#

It looks like ours has 2 Madison CPUs (if we are to trust this cpuinfo), 
which are older than your Montecito ones.


I'm currently running Gentoo on it (with elilo from Debian Wheezy as the 
newer one from Gentoo doesn't work), but can arrange a network boot with 
Debian Wheezy to gather more information if needed.



[this one]: https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/linux-image-3.2.0-4-mckinley


As for gathering information, I can't think of some useful information 
from a working system so far. The same applies to testing. We are able to 
test it here. Anyway, thanks for your messages, Frank and Daniel! The 
remaining useful tasks which I see are:


1) learn how to compile a bootable kernel for this machine and apply this 
knowledge to compile a fresh current kernel;


2) understand what goes wrong (by bisecting gcc), suggest a fix. (Before 
we understand it, we can't be sure what should be fixed: it's not 
necessarily abug in gcc).


So far, we've done a number of attempts to compile and boot a kernel (I'm 
going to post the details and the kernels soon), and my conclusion so far 
is that the only affecting factor is the version of gcc (even not -O1 vs 
-Os/-O2).


gcc <= 4.5.3 produces a bootable kernel (as for 
linux-image-3.2.0-4-mckinley, gcc 4.4.7 from wheezy and gcc 4.5.3 from 
snapshots produced a bootable one in my experiments);

gcc >= 4.6.3 produces a non-bootable kernel.

So this already gives an initial hypothesis about the solution to 1):

To compile a bootable kernel for this machine, use gcc <= 4.5.3. To speed 
up the build and test process, prepare such a cross-compiler on your 
current powerful systems. (I haven't got or tried to use one; Gleb has 
already used a cross-compiler for this tests, though a very recent gcc, so 
that it produced non-bootable kernels.)


--
Best regards,
Ivan

Re: Re: compiling a bootable kernel for ia64 (itanium2, mckinley, rx2620)

[Frank Scheiner]

Hi all,

just a quick pointer:

I had Debian Wheezy with Linux v3.2.x (vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-mckinley, i.e. 
[this one]) running w/o issues on my rx2620 with two Itanium 2 9040 
(Montecito) both from an on-disk installation and a NFS root FS, but I 
ran it on bare-metal, not in a VM.


I'm currently running Gentoo on it (with elilo from Debian Wheezy as the 
newer one from Gentoo doesn't work), but can arrange a network boot with 
Debian Wheezy to gather more information if needed.


Cheers,
Frank

[this one]: https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/linux-image-3.2.0-4-mckinley