September 2002 - coreboot - mail.coreboot.org

Re: General LinuxBIOS Questions
by Christer Weinigel Sept. 20, 2002

Sept. 20, 2002

ollie lho <ollie(a)sis.com.tw> writes: > On Tue, 2002-09-17 at 07:38, Eric W Biederman wrote: > > interesting problem, and hasn't been fully solved yet. Currently I > > connect the serial port to a box with a lot of serial ports, and > > that box is network accessible. > > > > Do you know if there is an KVM switch equivalent for serial > port ?? How do you monitor multiple LinuxBIOS boxes except using many > minicom ?? You get a terminal server such as a Cyclades: http://www.cyclades.com/products/ts_series.php The nice thing about a serial port is that it is realistic to always log everything even from a large amount of machines. So it's quite possible to build a central monitoring application that automatically records oopses that appear on an serial console and forward them to the system administrator, and with the logs the system administrator could see what actions led up to the oops. > How do you connect these 350 nodes "physically" to you console ?? Do you > need many consoles or is there any think like "hub" the LAN ?? With 32-port terminal servers thats just a dozen of them. /Christer -- "Just how much can I get away with and still go to heaven?" Freelance consultant specializing in device driver programming for Linux Christer Weinigel <christer(a)weinigel.se> http://www.weinigel.se

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Re: General LinuxBIOS Questions
by Eric W Biederman Sept. 20, 2002

Sept. 20, 2002

We are down to questions that are definitely appropriate for the list. "Jeffrey B. Layton" <laytonjb(a)bellsouth.net> writes: > Eric W Biederman wrote: > > >"Jeffrey B. Layton" <laytonjb(a)bellsouth.net> writes: > > > > > >>Could you > >>list some pros and cons for a prospective customer that > >>is thinking about switching to LinuxBIOS but they are > >>used to the regular old BIOS? > >> > > > >The quick list. > > > >Pros: > >Better serial console support. > >Better debuggability. > >Better manageability. (You can do everything under Linux) > >Quick boot times. > >Has been tested on big (1000 node) clusters. > >Vendors care about cluster issues. > >You get the source. > > > >Cons: > >Boots differently. > >Harder to find people supporting it. > > > > I've got a question about the serial console support and the better > manageability. With LinuxBIOS can you put BIOS messages > across the network to the master node from power on? Or do > you have to wait until you get to Lilo (and then use something > like netconsole in the kernel)? You can do serial from power on. Over the network is a more interesting problem, and hasn't been fully solved yet. Currently I connect the serial port to a box with a lot of serial ports, and that box is network accessible. NIC hardware is noticeably more complex than serial ports so getting a network console going from power on is still an open issue. I don't know that it has been tested much yet. > As for the manageability issue. How is the cluster more manageable > with LinuxBIOS (I'm not being argumentative, but rather curious)? > > For example, if I have a cluster that's pretty stable where I don't lose > many nodes and I don't need to change the BIOS at all, then what > does LinuxBIOS give me in terms of manageability? Manageability is really about when things fail, and have problems, not when they work. But even when things are mostly working you can set your BIOS options the very first time from Linux, and trust they are getting set the same as every other node. You get a reliable network boot, with etherboot. You get a fast boot. You get messages over the serial console from power on. Maybe some of these things are only really annoying when the don't exist and you have lots of hardware. For me I like the ability to do a full install including flashing the BIOS on 350 nodes in under 10 minutes. But manageability comes down to the fact that the little things are getting fixed in LinuxBIOS so it is not a pain to work with, after the learning curve. Eric

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mptable tested and working
by Ronald G Minnich Sept. 19, 2002

Sept. 19, 2002

I just tested the mptable utility. There is a bit of a hack in there for IOAPICs, but it basically does the right thing for the supermicro p4dpe I'm working with. So the most recent, tested on one motherboard version, is now committed. It generates C code that looks identical (mostly) to the mptable.c code in other directories. ron

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one more memtest question
by Ronald G Minnich Sept. 18, 2002

Sept. 18, 2002

Looks like linuxbios support is in there. Has anyone built from 3.0 for linuxbios? I am assuming you can just built memtest (it's an elf) and use that as a payload for linuxbios. ron

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Any UK DiskOnChip Retailers?
by Lee Sept. 18, 2002

Sept. 18, 2002

Hi, My name is Lee and my machine has a ECS Elitegroup K7S5A motherboard. It has an AMD AthlonXP 1800+ processor and (apparently) a SiS735 chipset. It also has a 2Mb Flash EEPROM for the bios (AMIBIOS right now). Will the BIOS slot take a DoC or should I use regular replacement Flash EEPROM and is it possible to use an EEPROM/DoC with greater capacity than the current EEPROM? I'm also told I should use a Zero Insertion Force socket for the EEPROM. Do you know a UK supplier for the M-Systems DiskOnChip because I've tried Maplin Electronics' website with no avail and google UK has found little of any use. Also, where would you reccomend I get started with LinuxBIOS? Lee Causier, Signing off.

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latest greatest memtest86.ebi
by Ronald G Minnich Sept. 18, 2002

Sept. 18, 2002

What's the absolute path to the absolute latest greatest memtest? I'm trying to see if my smartcore problem is a memory config problem. ron

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util/mptable/mptable.c
by Ronald G Minnich Sept. 18, 2002

Sept. 18, 2002

This now creates code that can be compiled into linuxbios. I have tested building with it but can't try running it just yet. I will test it later today but wanted to put it out for comments and corrections. The code is still ugly, I need to format it, but wanted to let people see it. It is adopted from a freebsd base. I ripped out getopt as getopt now varies too much: it has options on freebsd that appear not to exist on linux. ron

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building MP tables
by Ronald G Minnich Sept. 17, 2002

Sept. 17, 2002

Well I need (for the first time) to build an MP table. Actually just modify one. The ideal case is that somebody write a program like getpir that just dumps the current MP table. Anybody have one :-) ron

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LInuxBIOS on Compaq ds10
by Kurt B Ferreira Sept. 17, 2002

Sept. 17, 2002

All, Quick question here. I am going to be trying my luck at LinuxBIOS on a Compaq ds10L here and I was wondering if I require anything besides the code in the current CVS image. On a first look it seemed that some fo the source has not been checked in for the alpha, but that maybe my newness with the project. Thanks much Kurt

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PCCHIPS M787CL+v3.0 support
by Andrew Ip Sept. 17, 2002

Sept. 17, 2002

Hi, I just got a M787CL+ v3.0(http://www.pcchips.com.tw/M787cl+v30.html) which is as the same as m758lt+ with VIA C3 1GHZ. It works with m758lt+ config without any problem, and it costs only US$15 more than m758lt+. I think it is a very nice alternative to EPIA. -Andrew -- Andrew Ip Email: aip(a)cwlinux.com Tel: (852) 2542 2046 Fax: (852) 2542 2036 Mobile: (852) 9201 9866 Cwlinux Limited Unit 202B 2/F Lai Cheong Factory Building, 479-479A Castle Peak Road, Lai Chi Kok, Kowloon, Hong Kong(SAR), China. Tel: (852)2542 2046 Fax: (852)2542 2036 For public pgp key, please obtain it from http://www.keyserver.net/en.

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