[gentoo-amd64] 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[gentoo-amd64] 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Mark Haney]

I just pulled down 2.6.16 from ~amd64 and now my ndiswrapper doesn't 
work. I rebuilt the module and loaded it, the card is installed and 
driver is present, but it's not allowing me to configure it at all.  Is 
anyone else having this problem.

-- 
Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum

Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
(828) 350-2415

-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Beso]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 585 bytes --]

what driver are you using in ndiswrapper?!

2006/3/25, Mark Haney <mhaney@ercbroadband.org>:
>
> I just pulled down 2.6.16 from ~amd64 and now my ndiswrapper doesn't
> work. I rebuilt the module and loaded it, the card is installed and
> driver is present, but it's not allowing me to configure it at all.  Is
> anyone else having this problem.
>
> --
> Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
>
> Mark Haney
> Sr. Systems Administrator
> ERC Broadband
> (828) 350-2415
>
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>


--
beso

d-_-b

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 910 bytes --]

[gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Michael Rock]

  You can't even set your essid, right?
With ndiswrapper you're at the mercy of your vendor's
drivers.  Unless you've got GOOD 64-bit drivers it's
not going to play.
  I just went through this. Not being a skilled hacker,
I did the troubleshooting thing, swapping out Live CD's
and wireless cards - the winning combination was an
atheros-based Belkin card and the rr64 DVD (gentoo-
based of course!).
  And I think the reasons were:
1) An OLDER version of madwifi (pre-1.2)
2) No acpi support.
 And 'hi" to the list from the new guy!



On 3/25/06, Beso <givemesugarr@gmail.com> wrote:
> what driver are you using in ndiswrapper?!
>
> 2006/3/25, Mark Haney <mhaney@ercbroadband.org>:
> >
> > I just pulled down 2.6.16 from ~amd64 and now my ndiswrapper doesn't
> > work. I rebuilt the module and loaded it, the card is installed and
> > driver is present, but it's not allowing me to configure it at all.  Is
> > anyone else having this problem.
> >
> > --
> > Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
> >
> > Mark Haney
> > Sr. Systems Administrator
> > ERC Broadband
> > (828) 350-2415
> >
> > --
> > gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> beso
>
> d-_-b
>
>

-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Mark Haney]

Michael Rock wrote:
>   You can't even set your essid, right?
> With ndiswrapper you're at the mercy of your vendor's
> drivers.  Unless you've got GOOD 64-bit drivers it's
> not going to play.
>   
It's played great so far with the 64-bit broadcom drivers.  It's just 
with 2.6.16 that it's dying on.  Is there something in .16 that's 
causing the problem?

>   I just went through this. Not being a skilled hacker,
> I did the troubleshooting thing, swapping out Live CD's
> and wireless cards - the winning combination was an
> atheros-based Belkin card and the rr64 DVD (gentoo-
> based of course!).
>   And I think the reasons were:
> 1) An OLDER version of madwifi (pre-1.2)
> 2) No acpi support.
>  And 'hi" to the list from the new guy!
>
>
>
> On 3/25/06, Beso <givemesugarr@gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> what driver are you using in ndiswrapper?!
>>
>> 2006/3/25, Mark Haney <mhaney@ercbroadband.org>:
>>     
>>> I just pulled down 2.6.16 from ~amd64 and now my ndiswrapper doesn't
>>> work. I rebuilt the module and loaded it, the card is installed and
>>> driver is present, but it's not allowing me to configure it at all.  Is
>>> anyone else having this problem.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
>>>
>>> Mark Haney
>>> Sr. Systems Administrator
>>> ERC Broadband
>>> (828) 350-2415
>>>
>>> --
>>> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>> --
>> beso
>>
>> d-_-b
>>
>>
>>     
>
>   


-- 
Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum

Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
(828) 350-2415

-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Karol Krizka]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1904 bytes --]

On Saturday 25 March 2006 11:53, Mark Haney wrote:
> Michael Rock wrote:
> >   You can't even set your essid, right?
> > With ndiswrapper you're at the mercy of your vendor's
> > drivers.  Unless you've got GOOD 64-bit drivers it's
> > not going to play.
>
> It's played great so far with the 64-bit broadcom drivers.  It's just
> with 2.6.16 that it's dying on.  Is there something in .16 that's
> causing the problem?
>
I just updated to the 2.6.16 sources and I use ndiswrapper with the 64-bit 
broadcom driver. I don't have any problems so far. I use ndiswrapper-1.9

> >   I just went through this. Not being a skilled hacker,
> > I did the troubleshooting thing, swapping out Live CD's
> > and wireless cards - the winning combination was an
> > atheros-based Belkin card and the rr64 DVD (gentoo-
> > based of course!).
> >   And I think the reasons were:
> > 1) An OLDER version of madwifi (pre-1.2)
> > 2) No acpi support.
> >  And 'hi" to the list from the new guy!
> >
> > On 3/25/06, Beso <givemesugarr@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> what driver are you using in ndiswrapper?!
> >>
> >> 2006/3/25, Mark Haney <mhaney@ercbroadband.org>:
> >>> I just pulled down 2.6.16 from ~amd64 and now my ndiswrapper doesn't
> >>> work. I rebuilt the module and loaded it, the card is installed and
> >>> driver is present, but it's not allowing me to configure it at all.  Is
> >>> anyone else having this problem.
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
> >>>
> >>> Mark Haney
> >>> Sr. Systems Administrator
> >>> ERC Broadband
> >>> (828) 350-2415
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
> >>
> >> --
> >> beso
> >>
> >> d-_-b
>
> --
> Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
>
> Mark Haney
> Sr. Systems Administrator
> ERC Broadband
> (828) 350-2415

-- 
Karol Krizka

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 191 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-amd64] 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Mark Haney]

Beso wrote:
> what driver are you using in ndiswrapper?!
It's the Broadcom 64-bit driver.  I've not had ANY trouble with this 
driver and ndiswrapper up through 2.6.15-gentoo-r5.  It's worked 
flawlessly every kernel upgrade. 
>
> 2006/3/25, Mark Haney <mhaney@ercbroadband.org 
> <mailto:mhaney@ercbroadband.org>>:
>
>     I just pulled down 2.6.16 from ~amd64 and now my ndiswrapper doesn't
>     work. I rebuilt the module and loaded it, the card is installed and
>     driver is present, but it's not allowing me to configure it at
>     all.  Is
>     anyone else having this problem.
>
>     --
>     Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
>
>     Mark Haney
>     Sr. Systems Administrator
>     ERC Broadband
>     (828) 350-2415
>
>     --
>     gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org <mailto:gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org> mailing list
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> beso
>
> d-_-b 


-- 
Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum

Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
(828) 350-2415

-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Duncan]

Beso posted <d257c3560603250922g1b63d38bv@mail.gmail.com>, excerpted
below,  on Sat, 25 Mar 2006 18:22:21 +0100:

> <br><br>Mark Haney<br>Sr. Systems
> Administrator<br>ERC Broadband<br>(828) 350-2415<br><br>--<br><a
> href="mailto:gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org">gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org </a> mailing
> list<br><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>--
> <br>beso<br><br>d-_-b

Just a reminder request.  Could you please cut the HTML?  As should be
obvious from the quote, it gets a bit irritating.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Mark Haney]

Duncan wrote:
> Beso posted <d257c3560603250922g1b63d38bv@mail.gmail.com>, excerpted
> below,  on Sat, 25 Mar 2006 18:22:21 +0100:
>
>   
>> <br><br>Mark Haney<br>Sr. Systems
>> Administrator<br>ERC Broadband<br>(828) 350-2415<br><br>--<br><a
>> href="mailto:gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org">gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org </a> mailing
>> list<br><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>--
>> <br>beso<br><br>d-_-b
>>     
>
> Just a reminder request.  Could you please cut the HTML?  As should be
> obvious from the quote, it gets a bit irritating.
>
>   
That's interesting.  It was not like that before.  Must be that 
Thunderbird 1.5 didn't keep the default text only option.  I do 
apologize, it was completely unintended.


-- 
Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum

Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
(828) 350-2415

-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-amd64] Re: Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Duncan]

Mark Haney posted <4425A799.9020208@ercbroadband.org>, excerpted below, 
on Sat, 25 Mar 2006 15:27:05 -0500:

> Duncan wrote:
>> Beso posted <d257c3560603250922g1b63d38bv@mail.gmail.com>, excerpted
>> below,  on Sat, 25 Mar 2006 18:22:21 +0100:
>>
>>> <br><br>Mark Haney<br>Sr. Systems Administrator<br>ERC Broadband<br>
>>
>> Just a reminder request.  Could you please cut the HTML?  As should be
>> obvious from the quote, it gets a bit irritating.
>>
> That's interesting.  It was not like that before.  Must be that 
> Thunderbird 1.5 didn't keep the default text only option.  I do 
> apologize, it was completely unintended.

Sorry, should have made clear, that was Beso's quote of your sig, not your
original post.  It's in the attribution correctly, but the snip I chose
/does/ make it look like it was you.  Again, sorry.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Karol Krizka]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 997 bytes --]

On Saturday 25 March 2006 06:35, Mark Haney wrote:
> I just pulled down 2.6.16 from ~amd64 and now my ndiswrapper doesn't
> work. I rebuilt the module and loaded it, the card is installed and
> driver is present, but it's not allowing me to configure it at all.  Is
> anyone else having this problem.
>
I haven't upgraded to 2.6.16 yet as I am waiting for the suspend2-sources to 
be bumped to that version. But I use the same drivers with ndiswrapper, so I 
am interested in hearing how you solve this problem.

Anyways, what ndiswrapper version are you using? I noticed that the latest in 
portage is 1.9, which is quite behind the actual release. ndiswrapper.sf.net 
lists 1.11 as the newest. You might want to try installing that and see if it 
solves the problem.

Also checking the changelog of all the releases I noticed this for the 1.9:
* Added support for latest Windows Broadcom driver.
No idea if it concerns 32 or 64 bit version of the drivers.

-- 
Karol Krizka

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 191 bytes --]

[gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Duncan]

Karol Krizka posted <200603251257.53037.kkrizka@gmail.com>, excerpted
below,  on Sat, 25 Mar 2006 12:57:40 -0800:

> On Saturday 25 March 2006 06:35, Mark Haney wrote:
>> I just pulled down 2.6.16 from ~amd64 and now my ndiswrapper doesn't
>> work. I rebuilt the module and loaded it, the card is installed and
>> driver is present, but it's not allowing me to configure it at all.  Is
>> anyone else having this problem.
>>
> I haven't upgraded to 2.6.16 yet as I am waiting for the suspend2-sources to 
> be bumped to that version. But I use the same drivers with ndiswrapper, so I 
> am interested in hearing how you solve this problem.

I've had more issues with .16 than with anything for awhile, rcs included.
I caught one issue early enough (rc1) that I got it bugged and the
triggering change was rolled back, at least for .16 release.  There's an
earlier thread about it (the one I started, dealing with the dead keyboard
on .16-rcs). They haven't traced why it happened yet, tho, only what
triggered it, only in theory what triggered it shouldn't have anything to
do with it, and release was due, so they rolled back the change, or more 
precisely, it's still there but requires a kernel command line option to
activate, so it won't trigger the bug for anyone without the option, but
those with the issue that lead to the change (generally those running KVM
switches that had mouse issues after switching back to earlier kernels)
can still use the command line option to fix their issue.

I only found another late in the cycle, when I upgraded to 8 gigs of 
memory from 1 gig.  .15 and stable releases thereof work.  .16 doesn't.  I
haven't had time to trace that one further, however, and it's possible I
just don't quite have the kernel configured correctly and .15 just happens
to work anyway.  This issue has to do with SATA, actually, I think SCSI. 
With 8 gig of memory I'd normally configure IOMMU on but that doesn't work
with .15 or .16.  With it off, .15 works, but .16 fails when it tries to
load the (libata based therefore SCSI based) SATA RAID, saying the SCSI
device nodes don't exist!  My root is on RAID so this is early kernel,
where it first tries to load SCSI-then-RAID-then-rootfs-read-only, so it's
well before anything userspace side is running, so it /has/ to be a
kernel issue.  There's a changelog entry saying they eliminated
bounce-buffers for SCSI that I think is the problem, since bounce-buffers
are >4 gig memory related, but as I said, I haven't traced it yet, so I
can't say for sure.  On the one above, I would have guessed something to
do with the keyboard driver changes but to both my surprise and that of
the devs it was the mouse driver changes that did it (I got it down to a
single line, without which it was fine, with which I had no keyboard at
all, and that line was in the psmouse changes, /not/ keyboard), so I'm
being cautious in my attribution of this one.

Of course, from some of the comments I've seen, .15 was the bad one for
others, so who knows, but anyway, I'm not surprised to see that .16 is
causing issues for others, since it has caused me a lot of grief here, as
well.  (This is vanilla Linus mainline kernels off of kernel.org.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2066 bytes --]

On Saturday 25 March 2006 17:37, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote 
about '[gentoo-amd64]  Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper':
> I only found another late in the cycle, when I upgraded to 8 gigs of
> memory from 1 gig.  .15 and stable releases thereof work.  .16 doesn't. 
> I haven't had time to trace that one further, however, and it's possible
> I just don't quite have the kernel configured correctly and .15 just
> happens to work anyway.  This issue has to do with SATA, actually, I
> think SCSI. With 8 gig of memory I'd normally configure IOMMU on but
> that doesn't work with .15 or .16.  With it off, .15 works, but .16
> fails when it tries to load the (libata based therefore SCSI based) SATA
> RAID, saying the SCSI device nodes don't exist!  My root is on RAID so
> this is early kernel, where it first tries to load
> SCSI-then-RAID-then-rootfs-read-only, so it's well before anything
> userspace side is running, so it /has/ to be a kernel issue.  There's a
> changelog entry saying they eliminated bounce-buffers for SCSI that I
> think is the problem, since bounce-buffers are >4 gig memory related,
> but as I said, I haven't traced it yet, so I can't say for sure.

I had something like this happening on my 4GB system.  With IOMMU off, I'd 
only have access to like 2G of memory.  With IOMMU on, I had various 
results, ranging from kernel panic before initrd is loaded to missing 
memory (small, like maybe the size of my PCI IO window?) to a completely 
working system with devices properly mapped to memory addresses beyond my 
physical RAM.  These various behaviors were controlled, oddly enough, by 
my BIOS settings.

I'm running a Tyan Dual-Opteron Dual-PCIe board... If you've got a similar 
board, I can share my BIOS and kernel settings and maybe you can resolve 
your IOMMU issues.

-- 
"If there's one thing we've established over the years,
it's that the vast majority of our users don't have the slightest
clue what's best for them in terms of package stability."
-- Gentoo Developer Ciaran McCreesh

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 191 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[xcourse97]

On Saturday 25 March 2006 17:58, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:

>
> I had something like this happening on my 4GB system.  With IOMMU off, I'd
> only have access to like 2G of memory.  With IOMMU on, I had various
> results, ranging from kernel panic before initrd is loaded to missing
> memory (small, like maybe the size of my PCI IO window?) to a completely
> working system with devices properly mapped to memory addresses beyond my
> physical RAM.  These various behaviors were controlled, oddly enough, by
> my BIOS settings.
>
> I'm running a Tyan Dual-Opteron Dual-PCIe board... If you've got a similar
> board, I can share my BIOS and kernel settings and maybe you can resolve
> your IOMMU issues.

Just out of curiousity, is it the Tyan S2895?

Bill Tetrault
Madison, WI
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 686 bytes --]

On Saturday 25 March 2006 20:27, xcourse97@charter.net wrote about 'Re: 
[gentoo-amd64]  Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper':
> On Saturday 25 March 2006 17:58, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> > I'm running a Tyan Dual-Opteron Dual-PCIe board... If you've got a
> > similar board, I can share my BIOS and kernel settings and maybe you
> > can resolve your IOMMU issues.
>
> Just out of curiousity, is it the Tyan S2895?

Bingo!  (It's freakin' sweet, BTW.)

-- 
"If there's one thing we've established over the years,
it's that the vast majority of our users don't have the slightest
clue what's best for them in terms of package stability."
-- Gentoo Developer Ciaran McCreesh

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 191 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Beso]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 653 bytes --]

the broadcom wireless driver works very clear on my laptop with the
softmac-broadcom43xx driver and only with 2.6.16 and upper.... just go to  *
bcm43xx*.berlios.de/ download the all-in-one patch for you kernel and
compile the kernel with the ieee80211 softmac extensions and the bcm43xx
module.... then you can use your wireless board as a normal eth board with
wireless extensions....
the broadcom 10/100 net drivers should also work flawlessly with linux and
with native drivers.... i haven't tried it, but there are around the
drivers, you just have to look for them....
last thing: try not using ndiswrapper, it's not a real solution....

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 733 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and ndiswrapper

[Arvid Norlander]

Could you please stop using HTML formatting in your emails Beso?
/Arvid

On 26/03/06, Beso <givemesugarr@gmail.com> wrote:
> <p>the broadcom wireless driver works very clear on my laptop with the soft=
> mac-broadcom43xx driver and only with 2.6.16 and upper.... just go to&nbsp;=
>  <font size=3D"-1"><font color=3D"#008000"><b>bcm43xx</b>.berlios.de/ downl=
> oad the all-in-one patch for you kernel and compile the kernel with the iee=
> e80211 softmac extensions and the bcm43xx module.... then you can use your =
> wireless board as a normal eth board with wireless extensions....
> </font></font><br>the broadcom 10/100 net drivers should also work flawless=
> ly with linux and with native drivers.... i haven't tried it, but there are=
>  around the drivers, you just have to look for them....<br>last thing: try =
> not using ndiswrapper, it's not a real solution....
> </p><p><br></p>

-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and >=4G mem (was ndiswrapper)

[Duncan]

Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. posted <200603251758.33840.bss03@volumehost.net>,
excerpted below,  on Sat, 25 Mar 2006 17:58:15 -0600:

> I had something like this happening on my 4GB system.  With IOMMU off, I'd 
> only have access to like 2G of memory.  With IOMMU on, I had various 
> results, ranging from kernel panic before initrd is loaded to missing 
> memory (small, like maybe the size of my PCI IO window?) to a completely 
> working system with devices properly mapped to memory addresses beyond my 
> physical RAM.  These various behaviors were controlled, oddly enough, by 
> my BIOS settings.
> 
> I'm running a Tyan Dual-Opteron Dual-PCIe board... If you've got a similar 
> board, I can share my BIOS and kernel settings and maybe you can resolve 
> your IOMMU issues.

Not the same one, but similar, probably similar enough here to suffice.  I
see you mention the Tyan 2895 below, mine's the 2885, dual Opteron but
PCI-X and 8x AGP, not yet PCI-E.  Mine's the full AMD 8xxx chipset, both
south and north/tunnel.  Tyan is about the best choice there is in terms
of Linux support for Opteron.  Other makers do Opteron boards that do
Linux, but they don't very well actively support Linux, the way Tyan does
-- even to supplying lm_sensors config files and the like.  I've also been
very happy in that my board was like generation 1.3 or 1.5, but Tyan has
fully supported the board with dual-core capable firmware since that came
out with about generation 2.0.  That  is in fact one of the reasons I
upgraded the memory -- I plan on upgrading to dual core in 6 months or so,
to have 2 by dual-core = 4 cores on two sockets, and I don't expect to
grow into the memory until then.
 
The board was $400-some, more than I'd ever paid for a mobo before, but it
has been /well/ worth it, going on 2 1/2 years now, and I'm looking at at
least that long before I upgrade again, so 5 years easily, possibly 7
years, the longest I've ever run on the same mobo by far (I think 3-4
years was the longest previous). I could easily end up having to change
out the battery in the thing, for the first time in my life.  The thing
is, with 8 gigs memory, 4x300gig 5-yr warrantee Seagate SATA drives in
RAID, and 2xdual-cores, even 5 years in (2 1/2 from now), it's going to be
no slouch of a system. It's hard to even comprehend a seven year old
system (well, mobo anyway) being anything but antique, and it'll certainly
be showing it's age by then, but it should still be reasonable.  Consider
what a seven year old system is now, maybe half a GHz Athlon original? The
thing should be far better than that in comparison, considering it'll be 7
years old!

As for the issue at hand, I've had a similar experience.  If I use a mem=
kernel command line between 3 and 5 gig, it sees 2 gig, period.  I haven't
tried over 5 gig, but I was shocked that telling it 5 gig only gave me two.

Setting the BIOS memory hole between contiguous and discrete seems to make
no difference at all.  Setting the other one (I forget what it's called)
gives me 8 gig POST detect, 7-odd gig kernel detect one way, 10 gig POST
detect, the full 8 gig kernel detect, the other.  Naturally, I have it set
to the 10-POST/8-kernel.

With kernel 2.6.15, configuring IOMMU won't let me boot (without a mem=
kernel command line).  Configuring it in but forcing it off (iommu=off on
the kernel command line) gives me some IOMMU needed errors and it still
won't boot (again, without a mem=).  Configuring it out, the system boots
just fine.

With kernel 2.6.16, configuring IOMMU in or out, on or off, won't boot
(without a mem=).

Setting mem=2, 4, or 5 gig, results in 2 gig usable, and IOMMU
automatically turned off as it doesn't need it because it sees only 2 gig
of memory.  The system boots fine, but of course without full memory. 
That's with both kernels.

Writing this, it's obvious I should try mem=8g, just to see what it does,
but I haven't tried that yet.

So... yeah, the combination of BIOS and kernel IOMMU settings that work
for you, particularly if you have libata based SATA or regular SCSI
running fine on kernel 2.6.16, would be very useful.

The other thing I should look at is whether the Gentoo kernel includes any
patches that look apropos to >=4G on amd64, since I've only tried vanilla
kernels.  I know I didn't need anything in the Gentoo patch set before,
but it's possible they have something in there to do with big memory, that
I now need.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and >=4G mem

[Duncan]

Duncan posted <pan.2006.03.26.10.34.46.613270@cox.net>, excerpted below, 
on Sun, 26 Mar 2006 03:34:47 -0700:

> With kernel 2.6.15, configuring IOMMU won't let me boot (without a mem=
> kernel command line).  Configuring it in but forcing it off (iommu=off on
> the kernel command line) gives me some IOMMU needed errors and it still
> won't boot (again, without a mem=).  Configuring it out, the system boots
> just fine.
> 
> With kernel 2.6.16, configuring IOMMU in or out, on or off, won't boot
> (without a mem=).

For those that may be interested, I think I may have a defective hardware
IOMMU.  Setting iommu=soft on the kernel command line works just fine. 
That's a bit disappointing for AMD hardware, where the hardware IOMMU is
supposed to be better, but I guess it's no worse than the Intel chips,
which don't have an IOMMU so emulate it in software.

It's still fairly likely that I have something not quite configured
correctly, however, and that when I figure it out, it'll work the  way
it's supposed to.  I have some research to do tho, to grok that. 
Meanwhile, with the iommu=soft switch, I can run 2.6.16 kernels with full
memory, just as I could .15 kernels.  (The .15 and apparently earlier
kernels had bounce-buffers built-in for SCSI, while .16 took them out
since there's the IOMMU in either software for Intel, or hardware for
normal AMD, anyway.)

BTW, merged KDE 3.5.2 last nite, upgraded from 3.5.1.  That's the first
time I've run a major emerge session with $PORTAGE_TMPDIR on a RAM backed
tmpfs.  VERY NICE! =8^)  I /still/ haven't used the full 8 gigabit yet,
tho.  I got upto 6.5-ish when kmail was compiling, with four other compile
jobs running in parallel (5 total), each of which was running
MAKEOPTS="-j6 -l5".  The -l5 limited load some, and KDE doesn't make as
good a use of multiple compile jobs as it could (the reason I was running
5 in parallel since the -j6 -l5 doesn't work so well with KDE), but I
/was/ running 7-10 load average for several hours (on a dual Opteron 242).
Hopefully by the time I'm compiling KDE4, I'll be doing it with dual
cores, a bit faster than the 1.6 GHz of the Opteron 242s, as well.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: 2.6.16 and >=4G mem

[JimD]

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 09:14:55 -0700
Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:

> Meanwhile, with the iommu=soft switch, I can run 2.6.16 kernels with
> full memory, just as I could .15 kernels.

Do you know of any other issues with memory and or amd64 and the 2.6.16
series?  I have run into a weird issue.

I have an AMD64 3200+ that runs at 2 GHz and runs *very* cool at about
34c.  My motherboard makes it pretty easy to overclock so I have
overclocked the 3200+ to 2.2 GHz and it has been running very stable
and still only around 39c, though a long compile job did get it to 41c.

When I was runing overclocked in 2.6.15 cat /proc/cpuinfo would show:

jim@keelie$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 47
model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 2200.000
cache size      : 512 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr
                  pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2
                  syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow pni
                  lahf_lm ts fid vid ttp tm stc
bogomips        : 4409.17


Now with 2.6.16 it shows:
jim@keelie$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 47
model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 2000.000
                 ^^^^^^^^^^
<snip>
bogomips        : 4409.17


The bogomips are showing the same though the kernel is not reporting
the correct MHz.

Does anyone have a clue what could be causing this?

Jim
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-amd64] Re: Re: 2.6.16 and >=4G mem

[Duncan]

JimD posted <20060329135203.1de782ba@keelie.localdomain>, excerpted below,
 on Wed, 29 Mar 2006 13:52:03 -0500:

> On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 09:14:55 -0700
> Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
> 
>> Meanwhile, with the iommu=soft switch, I can run 2.6.16 kernels with
>> full memory, just as I could .15 kernels.
> 
> Do you know of any other issues with memory and or amd64 and the 2.6.16
> series?  I have run into a weird issue.
> 
> I have an AMD64 3200+ that runs at 2 GHz and runs *very* cool at about
> 34c.  My motherboard makes it pretty easy to overclock so I have
> overclocked the 3200+ to 2.2 GHz and it has been running very stable
> and still only around 39c, though a long compile job did get it to 41c.
> 
> When I was runing overclocked in 2.6.15 cat /proc/cpuinfo would show:
> 
> jim@keelie$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
> processor       : 0
> vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
> cpu family      : 15
> model           : 47
> model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+
> stepping        : 2
> cpu MHz         : 2200.000
> cache size      : 512 KB
> fdiv_bug        : no
> hlt_bug         : no
> f00f_bug        : no
> coma_bug        : no
> fpu             : yes
> fpu_exception   : yes
> cpuid level     : 1
> wp              : yes
> flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr
>                   pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2
>                   syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow pni
>                   lahf_lm ts fid vid ttp tm stc
> bogomips        : 4409.17
> 
> 
> Now with 2.6.16 it shows:
> jim@keelie$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
> processor       : 0
> vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
> cpu family      : 15
> model           : 47
> model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+
> stepping        : 2
> cpu MHz         : 2000.000
>                  ^^^^^^^^^^
> <snip>
> bogomips        : 4409.17
> 
> 
> The bogomips are showing the same though the kernel is not reporting
> the correct MHz.
> 
> Does anyone have a clue what could be causing this?

I'd say look at the changelogs.  If whatever it is isn't extremely obvious
(grep cpu speed or similar), they get rather huge to go thru, so do the
usual binary elimination thing.  If you know .15 did one thing and .16
does another, go download the second rc (the majority of the changes will
be before that) and try it.  Then try either rc1 or rc4 (say), depending
on the results, until you either get a specific rc or get a changelog
that's moderately sized enough to do a better search on.

You can if you wish break it down beyond rcs, into days between rcs, with
the gitX snapshots.  Thus, before rc1, the snapshots would be 2.6.15-git1,
git2, etc, for each day.

...

What I'm suspecting happened is that cpu info is /supposed/ to report what
the CPU says when queried -- that is, what it thinks it is regardless of
the clock rate it's actually running at.  If it's reporting the clock rate
it's actually running at rather than what the CPU actually says, it's
playing into the hands of the counterfeiters that will try to sell you a 2
GHz as a 2.2 GHz.

Somebody probably figured out that it wasn't reporting the right figure,
and  changed it.  The BIOS should say what it's running at boot, and with
the speedstep, coolNquiet, or whatever, I'm guessing the running speed
info is avaiilable from there.  /proc/cpuinfo, OTOH, should report /rated/
CPU info, as burnt into the chip and available with CPUID, /not/ actual
clocked speed, which is available elsewhere.

If that's what it was and it wasn't just a config change on your end
(turning on CPUID in the kernel config, for instance, so it can actually
read it), it should be in the changelog as /something/ related to that.

As for general amd64 issues, remember, the full releases are several
months apart, and Andy Kleen, the kernel AMD64 guy, always has a bit of a
backlog by the time of release and opening up of the tree again to bigger
changes (which are supposed to happen in a  two-week period after kernel
release, before rc1, after which they get stricter about letting in big
changes).  You'll see several AMD64 entries, normally by Andy Kleen, in
every kernel release.  They do try to test them, but if nobody runs the
rcs and gets back to them about their corner case, sometimes regressions
do slip in.  What I'm running is mine, not for some mission critical
application at some corporation, and I enjoy testing, so while I don't hit
every rc, I do try to get at least rc1 or 2, and then one later in the
cycle, say 5-ish.  The .16 cycle was however the first time I actually
filed a bug, as it appeared in rc1 and hadn't disappeared by rc3 or so,
which meant they might not be catching it, and indeed, they weren't, so it
was a good thing I filed it.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list