SGI: Hardware

Howdy All,

I remember people running Linux on Indy systems in the past. I was wondering if any was able to get Linux working on an Octane? If you were, how difficult was it?

Thank you

Steve

sbget wrote: Howdy All,

I remember people running Linux on Indy systems in the past. I was wondering if any was able to get Linux working on an Octane? If you were, how difficult was it?

Thank you

Steve

Last time I tried, all it had was a busybox console. No support for just about everything. I would describe the endeavor as difficult and pointless.

IRIX works fine though.

We've had gentoo going on them a while back at the computer club at school. X works, but with no acceleration.

I was able to dupe one of the boot disks to get it working on my octane, of course I had no root password so I didn't get too far...

I gotta agree on VP in this one.
You can get Linux to work but it is rather useless and crippled.
If you can get hold of a copy of Irix (not here though) you will be better off.

pentium wrote: I gotta agree on VP in this one.
You can get Linux to work but it is rather useless and crippled.
If you can get hold of a copy of Irix (not here though) you will be better off.

I should add, anything you would want to do in linux you can do better in irix.
But you CAN run linux on an octane, complete with xorg. I can't remember if the sound works or not, I don't think we ever had speakers on them.

Seriously, why the Linux hate? Yes, I'll third that the Octane's hardware works much better under IRIX and that any of the really unique stuff like video capture and accessories probably don't. However, the original question was has anyone gotten Linux to work on their Octane. The answer is yes, I have. Kumba (the Gentoo-MIPS lead) and Frapazoid are two other forum members who I know have as well.

The Octane isn't quite as crippled under Linux as some posters have suggested. Impact based cards have some degree of X acceleration. The VPro cards don't, however. The audio works, onboard SCSI works, the Octane tape drive works, and PCI shoehorns and card cadges work (and support a large amount of hardware IRIX doesn't like USB cards). I'm not 100% sure on the status of the XIO peripherals, some cards work (anything that internally uses a PCI bridge) including SCSI, Gigabit, and Fibre Channel. The only other thing I remember testing was the SCSI floppy, which didn't work. (Actually caused constant printks so I had to pull it).

Somewhat unfortunately, all of the support is currently only in Gentoo. I highly suggest the Gentoo SGI Live CD. If you have a SCSI CD-ROM, just burn it and boot. If you like what you see, you can go from there. http://dev.gentoo.org/~kumba/mips/livecd/x-rc6/ Actually read the readme since its not a normal ISO image.

Getting the kernel patches into Linux-MIPS and mainline is a goal of one of the developers on the mailing list who recently added a lot of SGI support (audio drivers for O2, Indy, and Indigo 2, among other things). Also, I'd like to point out that 2.6.27/28 will likely make the VPro issue moot as Linux will get kernel mode setting. That means Radeon X1550s (or whatever's the best PC PCI video card with Linux drivers around) for our SGIs. I'm fairly sure an X1550 is better than a V12 for the vast majority of video tasks.

Anyway... the point is that Linux support for SGIs is being worked on and will get better as time goes on.

tillin9 wrote: The Octane isn't quite as crippled under Linux as some posters have suggested.

Passive aggressive post of the month award goes to you.

tillin9 wrote: Impact based cards have some degree of X acceleration. The VPro cards don't, however.

So, works better on low end Octanes? I did not know that.

tillin9 wrote: ...That means Radeon X1550s (or whatever's the best PC PCI video card with Linux drivers around) for our SGIs. I'm fairly sure an X1550 is better than a V12 for the vast majority of video tasks.

Have you tried that yet? sounds interesting. If it truly works as well as you claim, it could be worth the switch later.

tillin9 wrote: Anyway... the point is that Linux support for SGIs is being worked on and will get better as time goes on.

It has and will, I never said it wouldn't. Don't read between my lines, I am neither subtle or wise.

I tried to install Debian GNU/Linux on my Octane2 but I obtained several crashes booting from network (bootp).

I have read that Octane support is experimental, if somebody knows how to get it working please post it.

Edit:
I have found on Google several references about Gentoo working on Octane machines, but you can still find some suprises about stability:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~redhatter/mips/h ... 4/o32.html

I don't like Gentoo, you need too much time to get a system functional.

There is not hate on Linux going on. It's just that Irix works better and I can't think of single thing you can do in Linux you can't do with Irix (I mean, besides USB Mass storage support).

Sorry, I think I overdid it.

Yea, even though I have a V12, I was looking around for an MXE for awhile for the sole fact that its the fastest card with Linux acceleration.

As far as the kernel mode setting, I haven't gotten that working on an SGI. Actually, the only really working support (as in testable with a released distro) right now is Intel's integrated graphics. If Intel actually releases Larabee, that should work too. Open source radeon support is going to be included in kernel 2.6.27 or .28 (I know the devs. that are working on the ATI side - and have told them about my plans to put a card in an O2) but the current stable linux release is 2.6.25 so we're a few months off. When I get it working, I'll let everyone here know.

@Chatuser - Yea, Debian's kernel is based on either Linux-MIPS or the mainline tree and hence won't work on an Octane. As I said, the necessary patches are in Gentoo's repositories. You can use a Gentoo kernel with Debian, but actually getting it on the Octane would be a little tricky. I'd recommend doing something like installing on an O2 or Indy (which Debian supports very well) then compiling a Gentoo kernel for the Debian disk and transplanting it into your Octane.

tillin9 wrote: @Chatuser - Yea, Debian's kernel is based on either Linux-MIPS or the mainline tree and hence won't work on an Octane. As I said, the necessary patches are in Gentoo's repositories. You can use a Gentoo kernel with Debian, but actually getting it on the Octane would be a little tricky. I'd recommend doing something like installing on an O2 or Indy (which Debian supports very well) then compiling a Gentoo kernel for the Debian disk and transplanting it into your Octane.

mmm ... nice experiment

I have an external disk with Debian for my Indy, I could test this installation with a new Gentoo kernel on my Octane.

It sounds like a Frankenstein film, you try to make a functional body using several parts of another bodies.

I'll just reply to the thread title and say: no. I can't get it working. I booted Gentoo's netinstall image on my Octane, partitioned disk, did a regular install (pretty used to Gentoo installs by now), built kernel, and installed bootloader. I just can't get the bootloader working though--it says booting system, but nothing happens. It is the same result whether I'm trying to netboot my kernel, boot from volume header, or from an ext2 partition. I even tried two kernel versions: the current stable mips, 2.6.22 I think, and the current ~mips 2.6.24.
It is really weird, because the netboot image works so well. I've even accidentally booted into my installation using the netboot kernel, and it works well.

pip wrote: I just can't get the bootloader working though--it says booting system, but nothing happens.

double check your prom settings. That's what I kept having issues with. I tried it at least a year ago, though, and with a gentoo boot disk probably from 2005. So I don't remember much, or how much it has changed.

@pip - Seems like an arcload issue. I also couldn't get arcload (Gentoo's choice of bootloader) working, so I used arcboot (Debian's choice of bootloader) instead. Arcload is technically better, but more difficult to configure. The config file needs lots of nested { and } at the right places. At the time the nice wiki and help entries didn't exist, so you might have more luck now using the live cd and fiddling with the config.

Howdy All,

Thank you all for replying.

Steve

I use on my Octanes. I just yank the linux disk and move it around. I have a bit of a problem in that i was netbooting off my old ibook, but i don't have that machine anyone near the Octanes at the moment.

tillin9 wrote: As far as the kernel mode setting, I haven't gotten that working on an SGI. Actually, the only really working support (as in testable with a released distro) right now is Intel's integrated graphics. If Intel actually releases Larabee, that should work too. Open source radeon support is going to be included in kernel 2.6.27 or .28 (I know the devs. that are working on the ATI side - and have told them about my plans to put a card in an O2) but the current stable linux release is 2.6.25 so we're a few months off. When I get it working, I'll let everyone here know.

You're a little overconfident, to say the least. There are no definitive plans for Radeon kernel modesetting. It'll happen, yes. But currently, there is no timeline. Jerome Glisse is the person to talk to about kernel modesetting for radeon. I suggest you talk with him, as what you say about .27 and .28 is simply not the case as far as I can see. His modesetting code is available in his personal git repository ( http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=users/ ... ;a=summary ) but it hasn't been touched since December 2007.

Also, kernel modesetting is useless if the card cannot be initialized (POST'd) first. It's not as easy as finding a PCI Radeon and throwing it in a MIPS box, or an HPPA box, or SPARC, or PPC. They all have different ROMs with the code for the appropriate architecture's initialization. This is why ATI produces FireGL cards for HP's PA-RISC workstations and Radeons for PPC Macs. They contain code specific to the platform for which they're intended. The HP C8000 can be equipped with FireGL cards. Unfortunately though, there is still no DRI support for them under Linux/HPPA. I'm not sure X11 works on the C8000 under Linux in any case, actually.

Now, assuming you could get an X1550 (or even a Radeon 9100) with the appropriate MIPS initialization ROM, which, mind you, wouldn't be possible since there were never any Radeons made for MIPS boxes, Linux isn't guaranteed to work. For instance, I've got an Alphaserver DS20L. The good engineers at Digital were kind enough to implement an x86 BIOS emulator into SRM so that x86 add-on cards could easily work in Alpha systems even without the appropriate ROMs. The card works with xf86-video-radeonhd and crashes with xf86-video-ati. It's quite possible that whatever causes xf86-video-ati to crash has been fixed in more recent versions. Unfortunately, more recent versions of X11 require libpciaccess which in turn requires the kernel to allow access to PCI resources through sysfs. This feature has never been needed on Alpha, and is therefore not implemented. ( Kernel Bug Report )

All in all, it's not as easy to get a graphics card to work with strange hardware as it is to plug on into the strange hardware. I'm also not sure you've got any of your facts straight.

The only way I can see to use an x86 graphics card in a MIPS box is to find one that doesn't have an initialization routine. Matrox and Voodoo 3s come to mind.

i put creamed corn on my Octane, and.... it didn't work.

As a follow up, David Airlie said just a minute ago on #xorg-devel on Freenode

<airlied_> mattst88: we haven't got radeon modeseting written yet..
<airlied_> it might make .28, but it more likely will be Fedora first.
<airlied_> I'm writing it as fast as I can.

mattst88 wrote: Now, assuming you could get an X1550 (or even a Radeon 9100) with the appropriate MIPS initialization ROM, which, mind you, wouldn't be possible since there were never any Radeons made for MIPS boxes

I think the correct statement should be "there were never any PCI Radeons made for MIPS boxes" as the Onyx4 G2 brick was basically made of two AGP FireGL X1/X2
But for sure, this does not change anything to our modesetting matter on O2 / Octane