[gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[znmeb]

I decided to go buy a dual-core machine, so I'm getting an Athlon 64 X2. I'm
planning to run it as bleeding edge as I can, since I have a couple other
32-bit machines happily running Gentoo testing with no major problems. Are
there pre-releases of 2007.0 for AMD64 I can test with?
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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 01:29 -0400, znmeb@cesmail.net wrote:
> I decided to go buy a dual-core machine, so I'm getting an Athlon 64 X2. I'm
> planning to run it as bleeding edge as I can, since I have a couple other
> 32-bit machines happily running Gentoo testing with no major problems. Are
> there pre-releases of 2007.0 for AMD64 I can test with?

There's no pre-releases available, but I have a couple dual-core
machines and can tell you that current releases work quite well.  You
don't need to wait for 2007.0 for dual-core support.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 01:29 -0400, znmeb@cesmail.net wrote:
>   
>> I decided to go buy a dual-core machine, so I'm getting an Athlon 64 X2. I'm
>> planning to run it as bleeding edge as I can, since I have a couple other
>> 32-bit machines happily running Gentoo testing with no major problems. Are
>> there pre-releases of 2007.0 for AMD64 I can test with?
>>     
>
> There's no pre-releases available, but I have a couple dual-core
> machines and can tell you that current releases work quite well.  You
> don't need to wait for 2007.0 for dual-core support.
>
>   
Yeah ... I just picked the box up last night. After struggling with the 
network for a few hours, I finally managed to get DHCP working and I'm 
doing a stage3 stable install at the moment. I am now an Intel-free zone. :)
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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[Stuart Herbert]

On 5/3/07, Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> wrote:
> There's no pre-releases available, but I have a couple dual-core
> machines and can tell you that current releases work quite well.  You
> don't need to wait for 2007.0 for dual-core support.

I can't speak for 2007.0, but I'm seeing nasty race conditions in the
baselayout versions used on both 2006.1 and current stable baselayout
with an AMD64 X2 5200+.  On boot-up, I'm regularly seeing baselayout
fail to remount / as read-write, because other baselayout scripts have
already started running, and I'm seeing the reverse on shutdown, where
/ isn't being remounted read-only because other baselayout scripts
haven't finished running yet.

I do not have baselayout set to run scripts in parallel.

Best regards,
Stu
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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Stuart Herbert wrote:
> On 5/3/07, Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> There's no pre-releases available, but I have a couple dual-core
>> machines and can tell you that current releases work quite well.  You
>> don't need to wait for 2007.0 for dual-core support.
>
> I can't speak for 2007.0, but I'm seeing nasty race conditions in the
> baselayout versions used on both 2006.1 and current stable baselayout
> with an AMD64 X2 5200+.  On boot-up, I'm regularly seeing baselayout
> fail to remount / as read-write, because other baselayout scripts have
> already started running, and I'm seeing the reverse on shutdown, where
> / isn't being remounted read-only because other baselayout scripts
> haven't finished running yet.
>
> I do not have baselayout set to run scripts in parallel.
>
> Best regards,
> Stu
I'm still getting the &$%^ thing up! I have the 4200+ -- couldn't quite 
bring myself to go for the 5200+. :) I was in a hurry, so after living 
with freezes in the 2006.1 Gentoo LiveDVD, I tried Ubuntu Feisty Fawn-- 
which also froze. Debian Etch is the one that seems to be the most 
stable of the pure 64-bit distros out there so far, but it's frozen on 
me too -- while unpacking the 2006.1 AMD64 stage3 tarball, no less. 
Right now the machine is dual-booted Etch and CentOS 5, and if I can get 
the CentOS X configuration straightened out, I'm going to see how long 
*that* one can stay up without freezing.

I can't tell yet whether it's hardware or software, but I'm guessing the 
kernel at this point rather than hardware -- I have some 
/var/log/messages traces that don't look like hardware. Once I get a 
stable OS, I'll load Gentoo from it and do the real debugging. The 
2.4.20 kernel in Gentoo stable has to be better that the 2.4.18s the 
other distros seem to be carrying.
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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> I'm still getting the &$%^ thing up! I have the 4200+ -- couldn't 
> quite bring myself to go for the 5200+. :) I was in a hurry, so after 
> living with freezes in the 2006.1 Gentoo LiveDVD, I tried Ubuntu 
> Feisty Fawn-- which also froze. Debian Etch is the one that seems to 
> be the most stable of the pure 64-bit distros out there so far, but 
> it's frozen on me too -- while unpacking the 2006.1 AMD64 stage3 
> tarball, no less. Right now the machine is dual-booted Etch and CentOS 
> 5, and if I can get the CentOS X configuration straightened out, I'm 
> going to see how long *that* one can stay up without freezing.
>
> I can't tell yet whether it's hardware or software, but I'm guessing 
> the kernel at this point rather than hardware -- I have some 
> /var/log/messages traces that don't look like hardware. Once I get a 
> stable OS, I'll load Gentoo from it and do the real debugging. The 
> 2.4.20 kernel in Gentoo stable has to be better that the 2.4.18s the 
> other distros seem to be carrying.
Well ... progress of sorts. 2007.0 i686 LiveDVD installs without any 
glitches at all and is stable as a rock! So I've pretty much ruled out 
flaky hardware. I haven't been able to get an install to work from the 
2007.0 AMD64 Live CD, but the LiveDVD does work. So it's probably just a 
bad CD writer on the Live CD. 2007.0 looks like a winner!

In any event, 2.6.19 / Gentoo 2007.0 is in better shape on my Athlon64 
X2 4200+ than either Debian's or CentOS' 2.6.18 -- those are flat out 
unstable. By the way, I just love the 2007.0 theme on the Live CD and 
DVD ... is it in Portage?
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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 22:50 -0700, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> In any event, 2.6.19 / Gentoo 2007.0 is in better shape on my Athlon64 
> X2 4200+ than either Debian's or CentOS' 2.6.18 -- those are flat out 
> unstable. By the way, I just love the 2007.0 theme on the Live CD and 
> DVD ... is it in Portage?

There's actually not a gnome theme, at all.  We just set the background.

x11-themes/gentoo-artwork-livecd <--backgrounds
x11-themes/gdm-themes-livecd <--gdm theme
media-gfx/splash-themes-livecd <--splash theme

Be sure to thank blackace if you see him around on IRC.  He did all the
work on making those themes/wallpapers.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[Paul de Vrieze]

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> I can't tell yet whether it's hardware or software, but I'm guessing the 
> kernel at this point rather than hardware -- I have some 
> /var/log/messages traces that don't look like hardware. Once I get a 
> stable OS, I'll load Gentoo from it and do the real debugging. The 
> 2.4.20 kernel in Gentoo stable has to be better that the 2.4.18s the 
> other distros seem to be carrying.

What I find to be a cause of a lot of stability issues. Probably even 
more so on multiprocessor/core systems is preemption. Voluntary 
preemption is OK, but other preemption still seems to be a bit flaky at 
places.

Paul

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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
>> I can't tell yet whether it's hardware or software, but I'm guessing 
>> the kernel at this point rather than hardware -- I have some 
>> /var/log/messages traces that don't look like hardware. Once I get a 
>> stable OS, I'll load Gentoo from it and do the real debugging. The 
>> 2.4.20 kernel in Gentoo stable has to be better that the 2.4.18s the 
>> other distros seem to be carrying.
>
> What I find to be a cause of a lot of stability issues. Probably even 
> more so on multiprocessor/core systems is preemption. Voluntary 
> preemption is OK, but other preemption still seems to be a bit flaky 
> at places.
>
> Paul
>
Yeah ... I'm attempting to do a kernel build with preemption turned off. 
At those processor speeds, I doubt if it's necessary. :)
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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Fri, 2007-05-11 at 10:25 +1000, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> > I can't tell yet whether it's hardware or software, but I'm guessing the 
> > kernel at this point rather than hardware -- I have some 
> > /var/log/messages traces that don't look like hardware. Once I get a 
> > stable OS, I'll load Gentoo from it and do the real debugging. The 
> > 2.4.20 kernel in Gentoo stable has to be better that the 2.4.18s the 
> > other distros seem to be carrying.
> 
> What I find to be a cause of a lot of stability issues. Probably even 
> more so on multiprocessor/core systems is preemption. Voluntary 
> preemption is OK, but other preemption still seems to be a bit flaky at 
> places.

Umm... What?

I use preemption all the time on all of my machines, which are *all*
multi-processor or multi-core.  The kernel preemption works just fine on
all of them.  What tends to be the problem is shoddy APIC or ACPI
implementations on the cheaper (read, not server/workstation class)
motherboards.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-05-11 at 10:25 +1000, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
>   
>> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
>>     
>>> I can't tell yet whether it's hardware or software, but I'm guessing the 
>>> kernel at this point rather than hardware -- I have some 
>>> /var/log/messages traces that don't look like hardware. Once I get a 
>>> stable OS, I'll load Gentoo from it and do the real debugging. The 
>>> 2.4.20 kernel in Gentoo stable has to be better that the 2.4.18s the 
>>> other distros seem to be carrying.
>>>       
>> What I find to be a cause of a lot of stability issues. Probably even 
>> more so on multiprocessor/core systems is preemption. Voluntary 
>> preemption is OK, but other preemption still seems to be a bit flaky at 
>> places.
>>     
>
> Umm... What?
>
> I use preemption all the time on all of my machines, which are *all*
> multi-processor or multi-core.  The kernel preemption works just fine on
> all of them.  What tends to be the problem is shoddy APIC or ACPI
> implementations on the cheaper (read, not server/workstation class)
> motherboards.
>
>   
I'm still testing some things, but there are some bugs in the NVidia 
"sata_nv" part of the AMD64 Linux kernel that have showed up in the 
Debian bug archives. Apparently it worked in older kernels and got 
broken "recently". I haven't found any differences with or without 
either pre-emption, SMP vs. UP, ACPI or APIC. The only thing I've found 
so far is that 32-bit kernels seem to work and 64-bit ones don't. At the 
moment I've only got a gigabyte of RAM in the machine so I'm not losing 
a heck of a lot by running a 32-bit kernel. :)
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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[Andrew Gaffney]

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> I'm still testing some things, but there are some bugs in the NVidia 
> "sata_nv" part of the AMD64 Linux kernel that have showed up in the 
> Debian bug archives. Apparently it worked in older kernels and got 
> broken "recently". I haven't found any differences with or without 

Uhh, how recent? I've been running a 2.6.20-gentoo-r4 kernel for at least 37 
days (current uptime) on my dual-core athlon64 box with nvidia sata (nforce4) 
without any problems.

-- 
Andrew Gaffney                            http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/
Gentoo Linux Developer                                   Installer Project
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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Sat, 2007-05-12 at 12:39 -0700, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> I'm still testing some things, but there are some bugs in the NVidia 
> "sata_nv" part of the AMD64 Linux kernel that have showed up in the 
> Debian bug archives. Apparently it worked in older kernels and got 
> broken "recently". I haven't found any differences with or without 
> either pre-emption, SMP vs. UP, ACPI or APIC. The only thing I've found 
> so far is that 32-bit kernels seem to work and 64-bit ones don't. At the 
> moment I've only got a gigabyte of RAM in the machine so I'm not losing 
> a heck of a lot by running a 32-bit kernel. :)

...and all of the extra general-purpose registers and other 64-bit only
extensions.  AMD64 isn't all about memory access, unlike many other
64-bit platforms.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-releng] AMD64 dual-core testing on 2007.0?

[znmeb]

Quoting Andrew Gaffney <agaffney@gentoo.org>:

> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> > I'm still testing some things, but there are some bugs in the NVidia
> > "sata_nv" part of the AMD64 Linux kernel that have showed up in the
> > Debian bug archives. Apparently it worked in older kernels and got
> > broken "recently". I haven't found any differences with or without
>
> Uhh, how recent? I've been running a 2.6.20-gentoo-r4 kernel for at least 37
> days (current uptime) on my dual-core athlon64 box with nvidia sata (nforce4)
> without any problems.
>
> --
> Andrew Gaffney                            http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/
> Gentoo Linux Developer                                   Installer Project
> --
> gentoo-releng@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

I'll have to go check Google for the exact entry. Meanwhile, I've found a couple
of things and the system is almost stable now with both Fedora 2.6.20 and Gentoo
2.6.21. I can't get it to stay up with any Debian 2.6.18 kernel.

1. The AMD64 install "suggests" the doscsi option on the kernel boot command. It
doesn't seem to be necessary and it may have been causing problems.I'm running
now without it.

2. The default kernel configuration on the AMD64 2007.0 LiveDVD in
/usr/share/genkernel/x86_64/kernel-config-2.6 is for 2.6.17 and may not be
right for my hardware. I started with the configuration I get from booting the
LiveDVD.

3. The install suggests a GCC "march" value of "athlon64" and the Gentoo
documents recommend "k8". I looked at the GCC docs and they appear to be
identical in function, but I can't be sure which one is for Athlon64 X2
processors. I am still using "athlon64".

Once I get the "atlas" library built, which requires turning off the CPU
frequency adjustment logic in the kernel, I'm going to re-enable that and see
if things are more stable that way. But for now, at least I can boot it up,
send and receive email, do genkernels and emerges without constant panics,
crashes, freezes, hangs, oopses and choruses of "your hardware's b0rked" on all
the forums that I've looked in for kernel help. :)
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