From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1A3231381F3 for ; Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:30:47 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id CBD3721C0BF; Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:30:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-bk0-f53.google.com (mail-bk0-f53.google.com [209.85.214.53]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 6D5DE21C051 for ; Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:28:43 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-bk0-f53.google.com with SMTP id j5so1823487bkw.40 for ; Fri, 14 Dec 2012 08:28:42 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=Mia7vqkUI21ForMVRNlNU9nJkRiYIUMLxyj+Qn5Wzow=; b=zzi+b1pmH189lUrKbuK0MFO9KxPIVYzCZrx/iLXkt20av5dDxGwyVcS3Htu0cLQBzl Dg+/un/At+xkDrzh8DbE/GSL1P13/4waAEaAp6eeanZLHbzI+grudlforH15RA4d4vAP pC3a/jaykpMazL2l20uRLSR/I3k9WGGRKH9FKxhLuvjQiszF6OXiTecQyvQmb3/zBvVk b40Pk8fNbNoNqKgC2+OiQFsBW2VoPyD2V5zpZAgPnl2qGmAA4STnuDs5GUKckIMSK1+a sGHyT+9wLIy/J1dFb2EoODm1a4s5cFAd3m1E011lveZAw2suMggRQiGXDQJX8bbo+imx YOeA== Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.204.3.205 with SMTP id 13mr3005337bko.38.1355502521971; Fri, 14 Dec 2012 08:28:41 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.204.224.74 with HTTP; Fri, 14 Dec 2012 08:28:41 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <20121214161821.GA19095@crowfix.com> References: <20121214161821.GA19095@crowfix.com> Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:28:41 -0500 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] ~amd64 compatibility with modern cpus From: Michael Mol To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Archives-Salt: 3ef95a32-f754-4fff-bd40-f69100d41148 X-Archives-Hash: 02b7816c5451d1ab7da6ba642567b3d2 (Admittedly quick and dirty response) On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 11:18 AM, wrote: > Something went haywire with my 8 or 9 year old dual Opteron ~amd64 system= last night. I may have a bricked system. I haven't given up yet, but I m= ay have to buy a replacement system. I have external USB drive backups, bu= t the only other computer I have right now is an old Mac laptop which can't= read Linux LVM partitions. > > Questions: > > 1. I don't remember, and can't look up, the make.conf processor flag= s I emerge with. But it is dual Opterons, and ~amd64. How compatible coul= d that be with modern Intel CPUs? I know Intel adopted the extra registers= of the AMD64 instruction set, but are there other differences which would = prevent an Opteron system from running as is under an Intel processor? May= be AMD still sells Opterons, and I will be stuck with building a system. I'm not aware of any currently-sold AMD or Intel x86 processors (except, *maybe* Atom) which don't handily support x86_64. You should have no problem here. > > 2. Is it feasible to buy some commodity box, like from Dell, with an= Intel processor, and plug in my two SATA SSD drives and get a console boot= ? I don't give a fig right now about any GUI interface, and even Internet = is not the problem. If it will boot and run emerges, I can import the sour= ce files for X and Ethernet and other peripherals via USB stick. But SATA = drivers ... Depends on if you have the necessary drivers installed, but yes, it's a recoverable scenario. You might need to boot a live CD and compile and install a kernel with the right drivers. It'd be like installing Gentoo fresh, but skipping 95% of the handbook. > > 3. My kernels always have just about every driver compiled in as mod= ules, an old habit from when I used to swap in PCI cards like crazy. I don= 't remember now how many SATA drivers are built in and how many are modules= ; if the commodity box needs SATA drivers which aren't built in, that could= get tricky. Are there boot command line options to preload certain module= s? Might not do me any good. I think I could scrape by with USB modules, = but not SATA. NAFAIK. I'd just use the Gentoo live CD image. > > For the curious, here is wat happened. When I left off last night, the U= SB keyboard was only recognized when I unplugged all other USB devices, and= the system hung at the grub point, with a blank screen. > > A reboot failed because it couldn't find the root=3D/dev/sde drive. = But the USB keyboard was working because I used it in grub to select a new = 3.7.0 kernel (had been running 3.6.8). > > A second reboot ignored the USB keyboard and generated an ATA error I= had never seen before for every ATA drive and some I don't have, all the w= ay up to ATA13 before I rebooted it again. I haven't got it to boot even t= his far since, so I can't regenerate that error. There was a 5 second or s= o delay between these errors, making me think the ATAnn designator might no= t be different drives, just retries. > > It booted a rescue DVD, but without the keyboard it was kind of point= less, and it hung after showing two lines which I believe are unrelated oth= er than a place marker (generating xxx key, generating RSA key). > > The keyboard wasn't even recognized by the BIOS. I finally disconnec= ted every USB device, all the ubs, and then the keyboard worked. > > But when I left it last night, it wouldn't even bring up the grub scr= een. All the BIOS screens show the usual disk drives. > > The system was working perfectly fine before all hell broke loose. The k= eyboard was recognized during grub the first time, but after that only if a= ll other USB devices were disconnected. The disk drives acted funny during= the boot, first with the unknown root- device error, then with the funky A= TA errors, and finally with not even bringing up grub. > > I will try some more desperate tricks today, like reconnecting the USB pi= le to see if it at least boots the disks again - is my choice between disks= and keyboard? I will find out. My best guess right now is that booting 3= .7.0 is what clobbered things; whether I added a option which loaded bad fi= rmware, or 3.7.0 is broken, I have no idea. It could well be something unr= elated to 3.7.0. My goal for today is to try to get keyboard and disk work= ing, then boot with 3.6.8. Pull out an old PS2 keyboard. Sometimes, that's the easiest way to get things going. -- :wq