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iMike
Apprentice
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Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Posts: 217
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

PostPosted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 4:19 pm    Post subject: SGI O2 gottchas? Reply with quote

In my recent attempt to build gentoo on an SGI O2, somethings have gone more smoothly than about a year ago when I did this, and some more difficult. First, the manual updates and the livecd--I use the latest rX (r5, I guess, don't have it here right now)--along with arcload are absolutely wonderful! Thanks so much for the good work! :D

The tougher sailing I've had could be because I am trying to do things a little "smarter" than before. This is where I could use some advice on whether I am asking for trouble and any other "SGI O2 gottchas" I should be aware of.

A. Know problems I could use some help with:

1. The 2.6.22.6-mipsgit-20070902 kernel appears to dump a TON of messages of the form:
Code:
Jan  7 16:25:50 louie CRIME memory error at 0x3e0a59e0 ST 0x02010000<INV,GBE,NONFATAL>
to syslog. Anyone already know the variable to shut this off?

2. According to the emerge message with the above kernel:
Code:
*       - X support is limited to the generic fbdev driver.  No X gbefb
*         driver exists for O2 yet.  Patches are welcome, however :)

I interpreted this as meaning I should have
Code:
# CONFIG_FB_GBE is not set
in my kernel config; however, with this I get no console messages when booting, which could be helpful. Note I do have
Code:
CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_DUMMY_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE=y


B. Am I shooting myself in the foot with these?

1. I use CCACHE
2. I use the "update" script as described in this associated thread.
3. I would like to use DISTCC (with faster non-mips machine in the build farm, but have not dared yet)
4. The above all concern a standard one-disk system. On the other O2 I am building I use RAID 1 mirrored over two same-sized, same-characteristic, disks. (BTW, I got about as far with this update as with my one that failed previously, making me suspect it is something other than a hardware error.) Any reason to completely stay away from RAID? If I recall correctly, someone once in this forum said Kumba had used it successfully.

Thanks for any tips.
/iMike
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Redhatter
Retired Dev
Retired Dev


Joined: 20 Sep 2003
Posts: 548
Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia

PostPosted: Sat Jan 12, 2008 7:24 am    Post subject: Re: SGI O2 gottchas? Reply with quote

iMike wrote:
In my recent attempt to build gentoo on an SGI O2, somethings have gone more smoothly than about a year ago when I did this, and some more difficult. First, the manual updates and the livecd--I use the latest rX (r5, I guess, don't have it here right now)--along with arcload are absolutely wonderful! Thanks so much for the good work! :D

The tougher sailing I've had could be because I am trying to do things a little "smarter" than before. This is where I could use some advice on whether I am asking for trouble and any other "SGI O2 gottchas" I should be aware of.

A. Know problems I could use some help with:

1. The 2.6.22.6-mipsgit-20070902 kernel appears to dump a TON of messages of the form:
Code:
Jan  7 16:25:50 louie CRIME memory error at 0x3e0a59e0 ST 0x02010000<INV,GBE,NONFATAL>
to syslog. Anyone already know the variable to shut this off?


AFAIK some O2 systems may generate quite a few of these messages, but they aren't the end of the world. I have no idea how to disable them.

Quote:
2. According to the emerge message with the above kernel:
Code:
*       - X support is limited to the generic fbdev driver.  No X gbefb
*         driver exists for O2 yet.  Patches are welcome, however :)

I interpreted this as meaning I should have
Code:
# CONFIG_FB_GBE is not set
in my kernel config; however, with this I get no console messages when booting, which could be helpful. Note I do have
Code:
CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_DUMMY_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE=y



No, you should interpret that as:
Code:
VIDEO_CARDS="fbdev"

in /etc/make.conf
and appropriate settings in /etc/X11/xorg.conf ... if you intend to use X.

It's worth noting that no MIPS-based SGI system has a VGA compatible graphic card, thus CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE will never do anything useful on such machines. ;-)

Quote:
B. Am I shooting myself in the foot with these?

1. I use CCACHE


As do I... that should be fine

Quote:
2. I use the "update" script as described in this associated thread.


I've never tried that update script... assuming it doesn't try to merge stuff that's particularly experimental however, I don't see this being the problem.

Quote:
3. I would like to use DISTCC (with faster non-mips machine in the build farm, but have not dared yet)


Doable, but not trivial.

Quote:
4. The above all concern a standard one-disk system. On the other O2 I am building I use RAID 1 mirrored over two same-sized, same-characteristic, disks. (BTW, I got about as far with this update as with my one that failed previously, making me suspect it is something other than a hardware error.) Any reason to completely stay away from RAID? If I recall correctly, someone once in this forum said Kumba had used it successfully.


RAID does work ... but obviously for that to work correctly, the underlying hardware has to work correctly.
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Stuart Longland (a.k.a Redhatter, VK4MSL)
I haven't lost my mind - it's backed up on a tape somewhere...

Gentoo/MIPS Cobalt developer, Mozilla herd member.
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Galahad
Tux's lil' helper
Tux's lil' helper


Joined: 12 Feb 2003
Posts: 126

PostPosted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 12:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

cross platform distcc is not hard to do, there's a howto somewhere around in a gentoo wiki
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