Fwd: Need X testers on Alpha. I think we've got it this time.

> From: Matt Turner <mattst88 <at> gmail.com>
> Date: October 7, 2009 6:52:11 PM EDT
> To: "X.Org Devel List" <xorg-devel <at> lists.freedesktop.org>, gentoo-alpha <at> lists.gentoo.org 
> ,  Linux on Alpha processors <axp-list <at> redhat.com>
> Subject: Need X testers on Alpha. I think we've got it this time.
>
> Hi,
> I need a few people to test X on Alpha. Michael Cree found what we
> believe is the commit that broke X and also provided a patch to fix
> some undefined references. We just need to confirm that these changes
> make X work again and then we'll get them pulled into master and the
> 1.7 branch in time for 1.7.1
>
> I'd especially like testers for:
> - Radeon, varying generations, both user mode setting and kernel  
> mode setting
> - Matrox
>
> Testers on non-BWX alphas would also be quite nice, since the last
> round of email seemed to show that you do in fact exist.
>
> My xserver repo is available at
> http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~mattst88/xserver/ and contains the
> patches we think will fix it.
>
> Hats off to Michael Cree. :)
>
> Thanks,
> Matt Turner
>

Re: Fwd: Need X testers on Alpha. I think we've got it this time.

Yes we exist, especially since FreeBSD dropped Alpha (Boo Hiss!), I think 
NetBSD gained a few more hobbyists.

I can try that on ev4 (mustang) with a pci 8600gs (evga) and a pci ati 
4350 (his) later this weekend. Possibly also on ev67 if I can figure
out why the es40 won't boot netbsd off the cd any more with 5.x where 4.0 
did so I can upgrade the netbsd disk (VMS still runs fine).

Might take a while to build.

--
  --
  Al Boyanich
  adb -w -P "world> " -k /dev/meta/galaxy/ksyms /dev/god/brain

On Wed, 7 Oct 2009, Michael wrote:

>> From: Matt Turner <mattst88 <at> gmail.com>
>> Date: October 7, 2009 6:52:11 PM EDT
>> To: "X.Org Devel List" <xorg-devel <at> lists.freedesktop.org>, 
>> gentoo-alpha <at> lists.gentoo.org,  Linux on Alpha processors 
>> <axp-list <at> redhat.com>
>> Subject: Need X testers on Alpha. I think we've got it this time.
>> 
>> Hi,
>> I need a few people to test X on Alpha. Michael Cree found what we
>> believe is the commit that broke X and also provided a patch to fix
>> some undefined references. We just need to confirm that these changes
>> make X work again and then we'll get them pulled into master and the

Alpha gear (ES40, AlphaPC 164) in San Francisco

As my kids get larger, the amount of stuff I can justify keeping  
around for that proverbial rainy day gets smaller.  I have a couple  
Alpha boxes in my garage in SF which both worked last I tried them  
(about 1.5 years ago), and various other bits which might be of  
interest.

- Compaq-branded Alpha ES40 with 4 processors and 4GB RAM
- SCSI 9-disk shelf for the above
-AlphaPC 164

These are located at my house in SF.  I'm not willing to ship them  
(please don't ask), but if anyone's interested in picking them up from  
me, let me know.  If I get no takers in the next 3-4 weeks or so,  
they're going to the recyclers.

I've also got a few very old sparc and amiga bits for anyone  
interested.  (Sparc 2, a couple SS20-era CPUs)

+j

Re: Alpha gear (DS20E, AlphaPC 164) in San Francisco

CORRECTION (I don't know what I was thinking)

It's not an ES40 with 4 CPU, it's a DS20E with 2 CPU and 4GB RAM.

+j

On Oct 21, 2009, at 12:05 PM, Jeff Rizzo wrote:

> As my kids get larger, the amount of stuff I can justify keeping  
> around for that proverbial rainy day gets smaller.  I have a couple  
> Alpha boxes in my garage in SF which both worked last I tried them  
> (about 1.5 years ago), and various other bits which might be of  
> interest.
>
> - Compaq-branded Alpha ES40 with 4 processors and 4GB RAM
> - SCSI 9-disk shelf for the above
> -AlphaPC 164
>
> These are located at my house in SF.  I'm not willing to ship them  
> (please don't ask), but if anyone's interested in picking them up  
> from me, let me know.  If I get no takers in the next 3-4 weeks or  
> so, they're going to the recyclers.
>
> I've also got a few very old sparc and amiga bits for anyone  
> interested.  (Sparc 2, a couple SS20-era CPUs)
>
> +j
>

ES40 bombing now

Greetings,

I have an ES40 which I love dearly. It runs NetBSD pre-4.0 very nicely and 
VMS 8.3 dual booted from SRM. I'd like to install a newer kernel + OS land 
and instead of building it from scratch as is per the usual giggles, I 
wanted to boot off CD, clobber the existing install and go from scratch.

Okay, my config is currently dual ev67/2gb ram, Elsa Gloria video (and 
later try a radeon and nv 8600 in it), intel pro100 and three disks in 
spud brackets. VMS works flawlessly. 3.99 NetBSD works flawlessly. NetBSD 
4.0/5.0/5.0.1 and openbsd 4.6 refuse to boot from CD, tape or mopd. In 
each case I receive:

NetBSD/alpha 4.0 ISO 9660 Primary Bootstrap
Jumping to entry point...

NetBSD/alpha 4.0 Secondary Bootstrap, Revision 1.13
(builds <at> wb27, Sat Dec 15 21:19:56 PST 2007)

VMS PAL rev: 0x4006800010162
OSF PAL rev: 0x400690002015c
Switch to OSF PAL code succeeded.

Boot flags:
9062112/
halted CPU 0

halt code = 2
kernel stack not valid halt

Re: ES40 bombing now

On Thu, 22 Oct 2009, ..I'd rather be coding ASM! wrote:

> Ideas? Url? I've been trolling google for a few days and it seems a fairly 
> common problem.

   You might try copying a 4.0 or 5.0 kernel onto your 3.99 root and boot 
that kernel.  If that does boot, then out can put the installation kernel
(alpha/installation/instkernel/netbsd.gz) and boot from that kernel.  That
would give you an installation kernel same as you would get booting from 
the CD.  If that boots, you should be able to install from the sets on the 
CD.

--
Michael L. Hitch			mhitch <at> montana.edu
Computer Consultant
Information Technology Center
Montana State University	Bozeman, MT	USA

Re: ES40 bombing now

G'day Michael,

*nod* will do a re-install off the 3.0 cd tonight. I still have
that somewhere tonight then see if I can do as you've suggested.
See how that goes.

Regards,
Al.

On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Michael L. Hitch wrote:

> On Thu, 22 Oct 2009, ..I'd rather be coding ASM! wrote:
>
>> Ideas? Url? I've been trolling google for a few days and it seems a fairly 
>> common problem.
>
>  You might try copying a 4.0 or 5.0 kernel onto your 3.99 root and boot that 
> kernel.  If that does boot, then out can put the installation kernel
> (alpha/installation/instkernel/netbsd.gz) and boot from that kernel.  That
> would give you an installation kernel same as you would get booting from the 
> CD.  If that boots, you should be able to install from the sets on the CD.
>
>
> --
> Michael L. Hitch			mhitch <at> montana.edu
> Computer Consultant
> Information Technology Center
> Montana State University	Bozeman, MT	USA
>

Please test a GENERIC.MP kernel for me

Greetings happy Alpha people --

While working on some changes to subr_pool.c recently, I discovered a bug in the L1 page table allocation
code in the Alpha pmap.  However, since I don't have any Alpha hardware anymore, I can't test the fix myself. 
I would greatly appreciate it if someone could test out a GENERIC.MP kernel for me (built from -current
sources a couple of days old):

    ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/thorpej/netbsd-alpha-mp.gz

For the curious, attached is the diff that you're being asked to test.

Index: alpha/pmap.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/src/sys/arch/alpha/alpha/pmap.c,v
retrieving revision 1.244
diff -u -p -r1.244 pmap.c
--- alpha/pmap.c	21 Oct 2009 21:11:58 -0000	1.244
+++ alpha/pmap.c	23 Oct 2009 19:29:28 -0000
 <at>  <at>  -144,6 +144,7  <at>  <at>  __KERNEL_RCSID(0, "$NetBSD: pmap.c,v 1.2

 #include <sys/param.h>
 #include <sys/systm.h>
+#include <sys/kernel.h>
 #include <sys/proc.h>
 #include <sys/malloc.h>
 #include <sys/pool.h>
 <at>  <at>  -358,14 +359,13  <at>  <at>  static struct pmap_asn_info pmap_asn_inf
  *	  There is a lock ordering constraint for pmap_growkernel_lock.

Re: Please test a GENERIC.MP kernel for me

On Fri, 23 Oct 2009, Jason Thorpe wrote:

> While working on some changes to subr_pool.c recently, I discovered a bug in the L1 page table allocation
code in the Alpha pmap.  However, since I don't have any Alpha hardware anymore, I can't test the fix myself. 
I would greatly appreciate it if someone could test out a GENERIC.MP kernel for me (built from -current
sources a couple of days old):
>
>    ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/thorpej/netbsd-alpha-mp.gz

   This kernel fails to boot on my ES40, presumably because since I've 
added drives to the iop(4) raid adapter, it seems the kernel needs to be 
loaded at a higher memory address.  I was also unable to boot a kernel 
from my -current tree - it kept crashing after calling the 
iop_config_interrupts() routine.  I then applied Jason's diffs to my 
netbsd-5 tree and that kernel booted and ran no worse that before.  There 
were some pool cache invalidation changes Jason made that weren't in the 
netbsd-5 branch, so I tried to add those diffs and got a kernel that 
didn't do so well.  I then added the other pool cache invalidation changes 
and got a kernel that seemed to work no worse than before.

   I was also able to finally get a -current kernel booting and running (no 
idea why I was having the problems in iop_config_interrupts() before). 
That also seems to run no worse than before.

   Both my netbsd-5 and -current kernels still run into problems once in a 
while.  I get segment violations in a couple of the build tools (install, 
and I think grotty), and have had some kernel memory trap panics.

--
Michael L. Hitch			mhitch <at> montana.edu

Re: Please test a GENERIC.MP kernel for me

On Oct 26, 2009, at 11:58 AM, Michael L. Hitch wrote:

>  This kernel fails to boot on my ES40, presumably because since I've added drives to the iop(4) raid
adapter, it seems the kernel needs to be loaded at a higher memory address.  I was also unable to boot a kernel
from my -current tree - it kept crashing after calling the iop_config_interrupts() routine.  I then
applied Jason's diffs to my netbsd-5 tree and that kernel booted and ran no worse that before.  There were
some pool cache invalidation changes Jason made that weren't in the netbsd-5 branch, so I tried to add
those diffs and got a kernel that didn't do so well.  I then added the other pool cache invalidation changes
and got a kernel that seemed to work no worse than before.

Yes, I was mostly validating that my changes didn't make anything worse... But before those fixes, there
was an opportunity for some user pmaps to NOT have the entire set of kernel L1 PTEs entered into them correctly.

>  I was also able to finally get a -current kernel booting and running (no idea why I was having the problems in
iop_config_interrupts() before). That also seems to run no worse than before.
> 
>  Both my netbsd-5 and -current kernels still run into problems once in a while.  I get segment violations in a
couple of the build tools (install, and I think grotty), and have had some kernel memory trap panics.

There are some bugs in the current Alpha pmap wrt. TLB shootdown and I-stream sync.  I'm working on them now.

> 
> --
> Michael L. Hitch			mhitch <at> montana.edu
> Computer Consultant
> Information Technology Center
> Montana State University	Bozeman, MT	USA

-- thorpej