Linux on IBM 9076 nodes

Linux on IBM 9076 nodes

[Bill Noffsinger]

Our lab has recently acquired a 48-node IBM SP configuration based on
4-way "Winterhawk-II" Power3-2 wide nodes with 8 GB memory. I see on the
Linuxppc site (boxes) that Linux is known to work on 9076-SP nodes
(ours). How difficult is the port? IBM does not support Linux on the
9076 but does on the newer Power4 pSeries units.

Bill Noffsinger
bnoffsi@ufl.edu


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Re: Linux on IBM 9076 nodes

[linas]

On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 12:33:15PM -0500, Bill Noffsinger wrote:
>
> Our lab has recently acquired a 48-node IBM SP configuration based on
> 4-way "Winterhawk-II" Power3-2 wide nodes with 8 GB memory. I see on the
> Linuxppc site (boxes) that Linux is known to work on 9076-SP nodes
> (ours). How difficult is the port?

Port what?

I've recompiled & run both 2.4-marcelo, 2.4-redhat, 2.4-suse (which
are all very different) and 2.6-torvalds kernels on a 2-way power3 box
and 'it just works'.  I can't imagine why it wouldn't 'just work' on
an SP.

I'm guessing that the hard part for you will be to get the interconnect
between the machines running.  I assume this will need some funny
device driver for whatever the interconnect technology is (which you
didn't mention).

--linas


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Re: Linux on IBM 9076 nodes

[Remco Post]

On Jan 9, 2004, at 18:33, Bill Noffsinger wrote:

>
> Our lab has recently acquired a 48-node IBM SP configuration based on
> 4-way "Winterhawk-II" Power3-2 wide nodes with 8 GB memory. I see on
> the
> Linuxppc site (boxes) that Linux is known to work on 9076-SP nodes
> (ours). How difficult is the port? IBM does not support Linux on the
> 9076 but does on the newer Power4 pSeries units.
>

I guess that, since these boxes are basically just rack-mounted chrp,
rs6k's, getting linux to run is easy. Getting the os on there may
require some creativity, since sp nodes don't come with a removable
media, so you'll have to net-boot&install, but iirc, these boxes
basically do tftp, but I guess you still need a working
control-workstation to be able to set the netboot. (I have never had
the oppertunity to play with an sp-node at this level)

as long as you don't need the sp switch (if you have one) all hardware
is supported, ge, fe and even the scsi are quite common hardware, just
with an IBM sticker&price-tag ;-)

(I wish I had a few spare wh-II's to play with :)

> Bill Noffsinger
> bnoffsi@ufl.edu
>
>
>
>
--
Met vriendelijke groeten,

Remco Post

SARA - Reken- en Netwerkdiensten                      http://www.sara.nl
High Performance Computing  Tel. +31 20 592 8008    Fax. +31 20 668 3167

"I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the
computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the
computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going
to end."                                       -- Douglas Adams


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Re: Linux on IBM 9076 nodes

[Anton Blanchard]

Hi,

> Our lab has recently acquired a 48-node IBM SP configuration based on
> 4-way "Winterhawk-II" Power3-2 wide nodes with 8 GB memory. I see on the
> Linuxppc site (boxes) that Linux is known to work on 9076-SP nodes
> (ours). How difficult is the port? IBM does not support Linux on the
> 9076 but does on the newer Power4 pSeries units.

We've booted linux on winterhawks in the past, there was one weird
problem where we allocated memory for RTAS too high but that should be
fixed.

As pointed out we have no support for the switch unfortunately.

One of our build machines here is a nighthawk (16 way 9076) and it works
nicely in case anyone has a cluster of these lying around :)

Anton

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Re: Linux on IBM 9076 nodes

[Remco Post]

On Jan 10, 2004, at 01:37, Anton Blanchard wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
>> Our lab has recently acquired a 48-node IBM SP configuration based on
>> 4-way "Winterhawk-II" Power3-2 wide nodes with 8 GB memory. I see on
>> the
>> Linuxppc site (boxes) that Linux is known to work on 9076-SP nodes
>> (ours). How difficult is the port? IBM does not support Linux on the
>> 9076 but does on the newer Power4 pSeries units.
>
> We've booted linux on winterhawks in the past, there was one weird
> problem where we allocated memory for RTAS too high but that should be
> fixed.
>
> As pointed out we have no support for the switch unfortunately.
>
> One of our build machines here is a nighthawk (16 way 9076) and it
> works
> nicely in case anyone has a cluster of these lying around :)
>

unfortunately, IBM wanted ours back when it was traded in for 6 32way
p690's.... we had 8 16cpu nodes ;-)

> Anton
>
>
>
--
Met vriendelijke groeten,

Remco Post

SARA - Reken- en Netwerkdiensten                      http://www.sara.nl
High Performance Computing  Tel. +31 20 592 8008    Fax. +31 20 668 3167

"I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the
computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the
computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going
to end."                                       -- Douglas Adams


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how to read/write registers of CPU or Device from user space

[John Zhou]

Hi, all,

when debugging kernel or driver, we need to read/write registers of CPU and devices. I wanna use /dev/mem to do, is it possible? if need to do others things? is it better to write a driver for read/write CPU/device's registers by myself?

Do you have any good advice?

Thanks in advance!
John

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RE: how to read/write registers of CPU or Device from user space

[Muhammad Sarwar]

>From user space access, use mmap.



Regards,
 
Muhammad Sarwar
Mangrove Systems Inc.


-----Original Message-----
From: John Zhou [mailto:zjzhou@newrocktech.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2004 9:20 PM
To: linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org
Subject: how to read/write registers of CPU or Device from user space


Hi, all,

when debugging kernel or driver, we need to read/write registers of CPU and devices. I wanna use /dev/mem to do, is it possible? if need to do others things? is it better to write a driver for read/write CPU/device's registers by myself?

Do you have any good advice?

Thanks in advance!
John


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: how to read/write registers of CPU or Device from user space

[Hollis Blanchard]

On Jan 12, 2004, at 7:48 AM, Muhammad Sarwar wrote:
>
> From user space access, use mmap.

To elaborate a *little* more, you can mmap /dev/mem to get a view onto
the physical address space. (Note that it won't work for RAM, but
that's not what you're trying to do anyways.)

This won't help you to read the CPU's registers, but what are you
looking for there?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Zhou [mailto:zjzhou@newrocktech.com]
> Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2004 9:20 PM
> To: linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org
> Subject: how to read/write registers of CPU or Device from user space
>
>
> Hi, all,
>
> when debugging kernel or driver, we need to read/write registers of
> CPU and devices. I wanna use /dev/mem to do, is it possible? if need
> to do others things? is it better to write a driver for read/write
> CPU/device's registers by myself?
>
> Do you have any good advice?
>
> Thanks in advance!
> John
>
>
>
>
>
--
Hollis Blanchard
IBM Linux Technology Center


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Re: how to read/write registers of CPU or Device from user space

[Hollis Blanchard]

On Jan 12, 2004, at 9:31 AM, Hollis Blanchard wrote:

> On Jan 12, 2004, at 7:48 AM, Muhammad Sarwar wrote:
>>
>> From user space access, use mmap.
>
> (Note that it won't work for RAM, but that's not what you're trying to
> do anyways.)

I misunderstood something here; you can in fact remap RAM via /dev/mem.
This mapping will be done with the VM_RESERVED flag set, which was not
acceptable in the context I heard it discussed, but I guess is ok
generally speaking.

--
Hollis Blanchard
IBM Linux Technology Center


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