Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 00:01:12 +0100 From: Andreas Tobler <andreast-list@fgznet.ch> To: Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org>, Vusa Moyo <vusa@tuxsystems.co.za>, James Shaw <simba7@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Getting IBM pSeries 520 to boot from FreeBSD disc Message-ID: <52E98838.8020208@fgznet.ch> In-Reply-To: <52E92930.1090801@freebsd.org> References: <e1l3pe4av59seeoyvy62y18y.1391010430186@email.android.com> <52E92930.1090801@freebsd.org>
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On 29.01.14 17:15, Nathan Whitehorn wrote: > We have limited support in -CURRENT (and in 10.0) for IBM hardware. At > least the 520 can be netbooted into -CURRENT and works fine, although > the internal SCSI controller is unsupported. I believe Andreas Tobler is > working on a SCSI driver. Well, I should, but being distracted by job ;) I have an IntelliStation 285 with a POWER5+ which boots over net. This means I have to load the loader/kernel over tftp/nfs. I added a cheap SATA controller with disk to the machine. With this setup I can build pkg's etc. and store it on the SATA Disk. So basic support is here :) But it is not in the 10.0 Release. The minimal requirements are in STABLE/10. But -CURRENT would be better to play with. I'm happy to give a detailed explanation if you want to play. We have not yet a 'Linux Ready Insert CD and Boot' solution. Hopefully soon, but soon can take some months. We're a two/three man show, not like ozlabs ;) > It sounds like there is some issue with the CD setup that needs to be > debugged on certain firmwares. POWER LPARs with VIOS should work with > 10.0 (support may be a little better in -CURRENT) on any POWER system, > up to and including the newest POWER7+ systems, with full support for > storage and network. Advanced features like live partition migration and > hotplug of memory are not currently supported, however. I'll have to debug the CD setup, but I pushed it back so far since I can boot over net and the biggest hurdle is the SCSI driver. > Not a lot of direct testing has been done, but the general situation is > that the PPC64 release should run on all POWER4/970 and newer hardware. > POWER4 whole-machine partitions probably require a new interrupt > controller driver, though LPARs should work (newer machines are all > LPAR-mode, even with only one partition) Earlier machines may or may not > work with the 32-bit release, depending on hardware drivers. Ok, regarding the different flavours of POWER machines I agree, the testing is very limited. But on my setup I was able to run heavy compile jobs over several days w/o hickups. For reference (not just words..), here one of the early dmesg's. In the meantime the machine has 14GB and still runs fine. http://people.freebsd.org/~andreast/dmesg_power5_multiuser-20131121.txt Andreas
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