64-bit user-space on G5? Never, soonish, or unknown?

64-bit user-space on G5? Never, soonish, or unknown?

[Mikael Pettersson]

We're considering buying a G5 for porting a compiler/runtime-system
project to PPC and eventually PPC64.

The question is, will Linux ever support a 64-bit user-space
on the G5? From my reading of arch/ppc and arch/ppc64, the
differences seem major so I'm not holding my breath, but perhaps
there is hope.

Or should we just treat the G5 as a faster 32-bitter?

Or should we use some other OS than Linux :-(

TIA,

/Mikael Pettersson
(please cc: me on replies)

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Re: 64-bit user-space on G5? Never, soonish, or unknown?

[Christian Kujau]

Mikael Pettersson wrote:
| We're considering buying a G5 for porting a compiler/runtime-system
| project to PPC and eventually PPC64.
|
| The question is, will Linux ever support a 64-bit user-space
| on the G5? From my reading of arch/ppc and arch/ppc64, the
| differences seem major so I'm not holding my breath, but perhaps
| there is hope.
|
| Or should we just treat the G5 as a faster 32-bitter?
|

there was a thread called "XServe G5 and Linux ?" on this list a few
days ago, maybe this helps answering your questions.


Christian.
- --
BOFH excuse #106:

The electrician didn't know what the yellow cable was so he yanked the
ethernet out.

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Re: 64-bit user-space on G5? Never, soonish, or unknown?

[tom_gall]

On Wednesday, February 11, 2004, at 08:09 AM, Mikael Pettersson wrote:
>
> We're considering buying a G5 for porting a compiler/runtime-system
> project to PPC and eventually PPC64.

Sure, this is a reasonable approach.

> The question is, will Linux ever support a 64-bit user-space on the
> G5?

Yes. gentoo-ppc64 runs exactly in this mode by default. There aren't
livecds quite yet... RSN tho.

> From my reading of arch/ppc and arch/ppc64, the differences seem major
> so I'm not holding my breath, but perhaps there is hope.

Well that's just the kernel.  Remember 64 bit kernels can run both 32
and 64 bit applications side by side at the same time.

> Or should we just treat the G5 as a faster 32-bitter?

All depends on what you want. For instance SuSE SLES8 generally runs as
a 32 bit system but includes (some) 64 bit libraries and such so you
could do 64 bit development.

I think you'll find you have options. You just need to decide what's
right for you.

Tom Gall
gentoo-ppc64 -- God started with stage 1, shouldn't you?
tgall aatt uberh4x0r.org
tom_gall aatt mac.com

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Re: 64-bit user-space on G5? Never, soonish, or unknown?

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 01:09, Mikael Pettersson wrote:
> We're considering buying a G5 for porting a compiler/runtime-system
> project to PPC and eventually PPC64.
>
> The question is, will Linux ever support a 64-bit user-space
> on the G5? From my reading of arch/ppc and arch/ppc64, the
> differences seem major so I'm not holding my breath, but perhaps
> there is hope.
>
> Or should we just treat the G5 as a faster 32-bitter?
>
> Or should we use some other OS than Linux :-(

There is a 64 bits kernel for the G5, it's currently available
on YDL site, though I'll have the whole thing merged with Linus in
a few days (with some luck, 2.6.3 will boot out of the box on those
in both 32 bits and 64 bits versions).

I don't know of a distro that offer 64 bits userland yet, YDL is
working on a bi-arch setup, there are SuSE and RedHat distros for
IBM p/iSeries though those don't support G5s at the moment, but it
may just be a matter of using the right kernel with them and maybe
tweaking the installer...

And you can always build your own toolchain & glibc :)

The 64 bits kernel allow you to run both 32 and 64 bits userland,
the common practice is to have a 32 bit userland with the necessary
libs to be able to build & run _some_ 64 bits executables.

Ben


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Re: 64-bit user-space on G5? Never, soonish, or unknown?

[Anton Blanchard]

> We're considering buying a G5 for porting a compiler/runtime-system
> project to PPC and eventually PPC64.
>
> The question is, will Linux ever support a 64-bit user-space
> on the G5? From my reading of arch/ppc and arch/ppc64, the
> differences seem major so I'm not holding my breath, but perhaps
> there is hope.

Its done, the more important question is when you will port perfctr
to 970 :)

> Or should we use some other OS than Linux :-(

Definitely not :)

Anton

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Re: 64-bit user-space on G5? Never, soonish, or unknown?

[Mikael Pettersson]

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 09:14:02 +1100, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
>> The question is, will Linux ever support a 64-bit user-space
>> on the G5? From my reading of arch/ppc and arch/ppc64, the
>> differences seem major so I'm not holding my breath, but perhaps
>> there is hope.
...
>There is a 64 bits kernel for the G5, it's currently available
>on YDL site, though I'll have the whole thing merged with Linus in
>a few days (with some luck, 2.6.3 will boot out of the box on those
>in both 32 bits and 64 bits versions).

Ubercool! Thanks.

/Mikael

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Re: 64-bit user-space on G5? Never, soonish, or unknown?

[Mikael Pettersson]

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 09:26:40 +1100, Anton Blanchard wrote:
>> The question is, will Linux ever support a 64-bit user-space
>> on the G5? From my reading of arch/ppc and arch/ppc64, the
>> differences seem major so I'm not holding my breath, but perhaps
>> there is hope.
>
>Its done, the more important question is when you will port perfctr
>to 970 :)

Easy: I'll start the port as soon as IBM releases relevant
documentation on the 970.

/Mikael

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Re: 64-bit user-space on G5? Never, soonish, or unknown?

[Albert Cahalan]

Benjamin Herrenschmidt writes:

> The 64 bits kernel allow you to run both 32 and
> 64 bits userland, the common practice is to have
> a 32 bit userland with the necessary libs to be
> able to build & run _some_ 64 bits executables.

You'd better have a 64-bit ncurses. If you don't,
your procps will be compiled incorrectly. Data
will get truncated, mangled, etc. -- assuming you
can even run the tools at all.

The same goes for pretty much any other lib.
If it isn't a package-private lib, you need
it in a 64-bit version. The 32-bit libs can
go in an optional compatibility package.


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Re: 64-bit user-space on G5? Never, soonish, or unknown?

[linas]

Hi Albert,

On Sat, Feb 28, 2004 at 06:16:28PM -0500, Albert Cahalan wrote:
>
> Benjamin Herrenschmidt writes:
>
> > The 64 bits kernel allow you to run both 32 and
> > 64 bits userland, the common practice is to have
> > a 32 bit userland with the necessary libs to be
> > able to build & run _some_ 64 bits executables.
>
> You'd better have a 64-bit ncurses. If you don't,
> your procps will be compiled incorrectly. Data
> will get truncated, mangled, etc. -- assuming you
> can even run the tools at all.

? My ps, top, w all work fine:

linas@panic:~> file /usr/bin/top
/usr/bin/top: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, PowerPC or cisco 4500, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped
linas@panic:~> file /bin/ps
/bin/ps: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, PowerPC or cisco 4500, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

They've been running fine, with all manner of mangled and hacked
2.4 and 2.6 kernels.

--linas

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Re: 64-bit user-space on G5? Never, soonish, or unknown?

[Albert Cahalan]

On Mon, 2004-03-01 at 17:38, linas@austin.ibm.com wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 28, 2004 at 06:16:28PM -0500, Albert Cahalan wrote:

> > You'd better have a 64-bit ncurses. If you don't,
> > your procps will be compiled incorrectly. Data
> > will get truncated, mangled, etc. -- assuming you
> > can even run the tools at all.
>
> ? My ps, top, w all work fine:
>
> linas@panic:~> file /usr/bin/top
> /usr/bin/top: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, PowerPC or cisco 4500, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped
> linas@panic:~> file /bin/ps
> /bin/ps: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, PowerPC or cisco 4500, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped
>
> They've been running fine, with all manner of mangled and hacked
> 2.4 and 2.6 kernels.

Try this:
ps -eo drs,trs,tsiz,dsiz,start_stack,esp,eip,nwchan,wchan

(especially when examining a 64-bit process or when
running on the 2.4 kernel)

By "assuming you can run the tools at all" I mean that
you might end up with 32-bit libraries in /lib64.
If you build on a pure 32-bit system this won't happen.


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