SGI O2

[matt_w]

Any new news about running the Gentoo kernel on the O2?

CPU info:
180 MHz R5K
4.2 GB HD
148 MB RAM


I inquired a few months ago on a seperate thread, but I figured I'd ask if there's been much progress to speak of.

[ciaranm]

Well, the r5k in general is supported by the MIPS port. Dunno about the specific box...

[Kumba]

The O2 can boot and run Linux. However, it is not as easy as booting and running Linux on an SGI Indy is. You can consider the O2 similar in aspects to the Indigo2, in that the system can support multiple CPU types, but only one CPU is currently tested to work well enough for general use. That CPU is the R5000. The R10000 and R12000 CPUs still require some work to be done before they are fully supported.

Other issues of note, you'll have to netboot all your kernels. Booting kernels from the volume header do not work like they do on the Indy, and there is still a bug with a bootloader that'd allow for on-disk booting (arcboot) that needs working out.

I hope to have a netboot for O2 available with the 2004.1 release, and it'll likely require a combination of netboot and NFS mounting, unlike the other netboots. Stay tuned to http://mips.gentoo.org for more information as it becomes available.


---Kumba
_________________
"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic

[dj604]

I've got an r10k o2 that i'm willing to do evil things to and generally sacrifice to "the cause". What can I do to help get gentoo ported to this machine? It looks like there's a kernel on glaurung's page, but admittedly I haven't given it a shot yet.

[Kumba]

R10K and R12K O2 may work a little, but in reality, it needs a workaround often referred to as the "R10K Workaround" due to issues regarding speculative execution and other things. The R12K has a better chance of getting around them temporarily, and I have one report of a netboot actually booting to a busybox shell on an R12K O2 for one person, but they didn't get much farther than that. R10K, I saw a screenshot from a debian user who used used one of the test netboots I had, but I'm unsure how far he got (he was seeking to install debian on it anyways).

I'm unsure when such a "workaround" will be available in the kernel, but hopefully it's not too far off. That said, you can try and build kernels if you want from linux-mips CVS and see how far you get on netbooting them, but I likely won't focus on netboots for them until I get a green light that they work well enough as the R5K's.


--Kumba
_________________
"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic