[Pc_Support] It's here!

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Fri, 2005-11-04 at 21:22 -0500, Austin Denyer wrote:
> Hi Guys.
> The nice FedEx man delivered my new workstation today.
> Tyan K8WE MoBo, Dual-Opteron246 CPU, 2GB RAM, 2x200GB SATAII HDD, EVGA
> GeForce 6600GT, Thermaltake XaserIII V1000A case.
> It ROCKS!!!!!

Glad to hear!

Remember to update to the latest BIOS on those mainboards.  There was
some issues a few months back with Cool'n Quiet reliability under Linux
(and Windows Server 2003) until a BIOS update.

> I used a modified version of the Debian AMD64 netinstall CD, as the
> standard one used the 2.6.8-2 kernel, which has limited hardware
> detection.  This had the 2.6.12 kernel (thanks to Len Sorensen
> over on the Debian-AMD64 list), and installed fine with the exception of
> the network drivers - it only found/loaded drivers for the firewire
> networking, which I don't use.  By continuing with the install and
> rebooting, the forcedeth drivers loaded fine.

The forcedeth drivers seem to be good for GbE performance now.  As
someone corrected me on the Fedora development list about 3-4 months
ago, nVidia's legal shackles have been off for the last 12+ months.
While they still offer the closed source "nvnet," the have had active
people on the GPL "forcedeth" driver since 2004, including full
disclosure.

> A quick hack of the
> network config files and I was up and running. I then just upgraded to
> the 2.6.14-2-amd64-k8-smp kernel and I was good to go.  (There is a bug
> in the Opteron CPU that causes issues when running in SMP mode, and the
> work-around was only just included in that kernel.)

Which bug was that?  I know there many errata coming out all-the-time
with the Opteron's compatibility modes (i.e., so the Linux kernel can
treat it like a "front-side bottleneck" processor, instead of its true
NUMA/multi-point calling).

> Two gotchas.  
> 1. When I installed X/KDE it swapped my NICs around (?!?!?).

Interesting.  The PCI bus order is defined by the APIC/ACPI, typically
at POST.  You're going to experience the greatest number of busses
you've ever seen -- the sucker has 3 different HyperTransport tunnels,
the nForce Pro 2200 and 2050 (20 PCIe channels _each_) and the AMD8131
(2 PCI-X channels).

> 2. I haven't managed to get the nVidia video drivers working yet.  The
> official nVidia drivers will not load on X startup (although they did
> appear to compile OK, and modprobe doesn't barf on them), and the nv
> driver causes display corruption after a few mins. I'm running the vesa
> driver right now without issue.

Is the new Debian using udev?  If so, that's the issue.  The devices
need to be created.

What do you see in /proc/driver/?  If the nVidia driver loads
successfully, then you will see it there.  Cat those files if they
exist.  In that case, it's definitely the lack of udev devices, which
you'll need to create.

As far as corruption on the "nv" driver, what Xorg version?  If it's an
older version, then yeah, that's your problem.  Although the older Xorg
release for NV3x (FX) will still drive NV4x (6xxx) series cards, you're
going to have issues.

> As far as (2) goes, I've heard that the nVidia drivers don't yet work
> with kernels > 2.6.12, but I need the 2.6.14-2 kernel for SMP.
> Can anyone confirm/deny/provide pointers for a workaround?

Interesting.  Do you have links to this information?  Frankly, I think
nVidia is lax in getting the latest Forceware 75 drivers over to Linux,
probably because they have been so focused on Forceware 80 for Windows.

> Anyhoo, the thing FLIES!
> OpenOffice2 (run from a 32-bit chroot) loads in 3 secs.
> The Gimp loads in under 1 sec.
> I've only carved up one disk so far - I'm considering going to RAID-1
> at some stage.
> I've tacked a few stats at the end to get the juices going...
> Many, MANY thanks to all who provided input and convinced me to buy
> this kit.
> dev05:/home/adenyer# cat /proc/cpuinfo
> model name      : AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 246
> cache size      : 1024 KB

The design of the Opteron at 2.0GHz with 1MiB L2 (and 64+64KiB L1) is
like having a 4.0GHz Pentium 4 with 1MiB L2 (and it's measily 16KiB +
8Kops L1).

> flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge
> mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext lm
> 3dnowext 3dnow

No SSE3 for programs that Intel has tricked people into such lossy math.
Oh well, it looks like the older Rev. D, but that's not really an issue
in Linux.

> fdisk /dev/sda
> Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Yep, the first "nv_sata" device.

> fdisk /dev/hdb
             ^^^ typo?
> Disk /dev/sdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> top - 16:49:15 up 56 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.82, 0.70, 0.49
> Tasks:  97 total,   2 running,  95 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
> Cpu(s): 13.5% us,  6.7% sy,  0.0% ni, 69.1% id,  7.8% wa,  1.2% hi,
> 1.7% si
> Mem:   2059056k total,  2047008k used,    12048k free,     4096k buffers
> Swap:  3903752k total,        0k used,  3903752k free,  1786264k cached

No games above 1GiB, you have full access to the entire 40-bit space of
the EV6 address model.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The best things in life are NOT free - which is why life is easiest if
you save all the bills until you can share them with the perfect woman