Has anyone ever got Debian to install on an SGI Altix?
I've been looking into trying to install Debian on an SGI Altix (in
this case, a really baby Altix - one of the new Altix 330 machines).
I realise this is probably a forlorn hope, but we'd like to see just
how difficult it is. With most of the SGI-specific stuff now in the
upstream kernel sources, it seems not beyond the realms of possibility.
I'm netbooting the debian installer from EFI in the standard way, and
initial tests look promising. I didn't expect the default kernel
from the Debian installer to work, so I've built a new TFTP kernel on
another IA64 machine (an HP rx4640), using the kernel.org 2.6.12.5
sources. I had to guess some of the configuration, but I basically
opted for "If it mentions SGI in the help for each config option,
compile it in statically" as a starting position. Booting the Altix
into SuSE and looking at the modules loaded and dmesg output has been
helpful too.
Using this kernel, the machine boots a little way so I must have done
*something* right, but I appear to have a console output problem,
since console output stops after:
Uncompressing Linux... alloc.c(line 132):allocator: AllocatePages(2,
2, 3248, 0x4000000) failed (Not Found)
gzip.c(line 436):gzip_ia64 : AllocatePages(3248, 0x4000000) for
kernel failed
gzip.c(line 461):low_addr=0x4000000 new_addr=0x3010000000
offset=0x3010000000
done
Loading initrd SE/initrd.gz...done
Linux version 2.6.12.5 (tjrc@olympic) (gcc version 3.3.5 (Debian
1:3.3.5-5)) #1 SMP Thu Aug 25 11:09:01 BST 2005
EFI v1.10 by INTEL: SALsystab=0x30027c8df0 ACPI 2.0=0x30027c95c0
Number of logical nodes in system = 1
Number of memory chunks in system = 1
Initial ramdisk at: 0xe0000034f5127000 (2613248 bytes)
SAL 2.9: SGI SN2 version 4.30
SAL Platform features: ITC_Drift
SAL: AP wakeup using external interrupt vector 0x12
No logical to physical processor mapping available
ACPI: Local APIC address c0000000fee00000
ACPI: Error parsing MADT - no IOSAPIC entries
register_intr: No IOSAPIC for GSI 52
GSI 52 (level, low) -> CPU 0 (0x0000) vector 48
2 CPUs available, 2 CPUs total
Increasing MCA rendezvous timeout from 20000 to 49000 milliseconds
MCA related initialization done
SGI SAL version 4.30
Virtual mem_map starts at 0xa0007fffd1a70000
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=net0:debian-installer/ia64/SE/vmlinuz
root=/dev/ram init=/sbin/init DEBCONF_PRIORITY=low ramdisk_size=32768
console=ttyS0,38400n8 -- ro
PID hash table entries: 4096 (order: 12, 131072 bytes)
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
The console on these machines is weird, even by SGI Altix standards -
the L2 controller is an embedded Linux system itself, and emulates an
Altix L1 controller in software, as far as I can make out. One
speaks to this controller, which has an external USB interface, by
attaching a USB ethernet adapter, and then connecting to it via telnet.
Judging by what SuSE does, there's some sort of kernel device driver
which presents this as a normal serial port, but it seems that I have
not configured this correctly. Anyone know how to go about doing
this? I'm using the same console= settings as the SuSE boot
parameters. The console should definitely appear as ttyS0, but
perhaps I've missed something when configuring the kernel.
For comparison, the kernel messages when booting the SuSE 2.6.8
kernel are as follows:
I'm alive and well
ACPI: RSDP (v002 SGI ) @
0x00000030027c95c0
ACPI: XSDT (v001 SGI XSDTSN2 0x00010001 0x00000001) @
0x00000030027c9600
ACPI: MADT (v001 SGI APICSN2 0x00010001 0x00000001) @
0x00000030027c9660
ACPI: SRAT (v001 SGI SRATSN2 0x00010001 0x00000001) @
0x00000030027c96c0
ACPI: SLIT (v001 SGI SLITSN2 0x00010001 0x00000001) @
0x00000030027c9750
ACPI: FADT (v003 SGI FACPSN2 0x00030001 0x00000001) @
0x00000030027c9820
ACPI: DSDT (v001 SGI DSDTSN2 0x00010001 0x00000001) @
0x00000030027c97e0
ACPI: DSDT (v001 SGI DSDTSN2 0x00010001 0x00000001) @
0x0000000000000000
ACPI: SRAT revision 0
ACPI: SLIT localities 1x1
Number of logical nodes in system = 1
Number of memory chunks in system = 1
Initial ramdisk at: 0xe0000034f6111000 (3002368 bytes)
SAL 2.9: SGI SN2 version 4.30
SAL Platform features: ITC_Drift
SAL: AP wakeup using external interrupt vector 0x12
No logical to physical processor mapping available
ACPI: Local APIC address 0xc0000000fee00000
ACPI: LSAPIC (acpi_id[0x00] lsapic_id[0x00] lsapic_eid[0x00] enabled)
CPU 0 (0x0000) enabled (BSP)
ACPI: LSAPIC (acpi_id[0x01] lsapic_id[0x01] lsapic_eid[0x00] enabled)
CPU 1 (0x0100) enabled
ACPI: Error parsing MADT - no IOSAPIC entries
register_intr: No IOSAPIC for GSI 52
GSI 52 (level, low) -> CPU 0 (0x0000) vector 48
2 CPUs available, 2 CPUs total
Increasing MCA rendezvous timeout from 20000 to 49000 milliseconds
MCA related initialization done
SGI SAL version 4.30
Virtual mem_map starts at 0xa0007fffd1a70000
On node 0 totalpages: 502599
DMA zone: 502599 pages, LIFO batch:7
Normal zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=dev000:efi\SuSE\vmlinuz root=/dev/
sda3 selinux=0 linux console=ttyS0,38400n8 splash=silent elevator=cfq
thash_entries=2097152 kdb=on ro
PID hash table entries: 4096 (order 12: 65536 bytes)
CKRM Initialization
...... Initializing ClassType<taskclass> ........
...... Initializing ClassType<socketclass> ........
CKRM Initialization done
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
Memory: 7952912k/8041584k available (6199k code, 105264k reserved,
2981k data, 400k init)
McKinley Errata 9 workaround not needed; disabling it
kdb version 4.4 by Keith Owens, Scott Lurndal. Copyright SGI, All
Rights Reserved
kdb_cmd[0]: defcmd archkdb "" "First line arch debugging"
kdb_cmd[6]: defcmd archkdbcpu "" "archkdb with only tasks on cpus"
kdb_cmd[12]: defcmd archkdbshort "" "archkdb with less detailed
backtrace"
kdb_cmd[18]: defcmd archkdbcommon "" "Common arch debugging"
Security Scaffold v1.0.0 initialized
SELinux: Disabled at boot.
Dentry cache hash table entries: 1048576 (order: 9, 8388608 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 524288 (order: 8, 4194304 bytes)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 16384 bytes)
Boot processor id 0x0/0x0
task migration cache decay timeout: 10 msecs.
I'm alive and well
Brought up 2 CPUs
Total of 2 processors activated (4759.08 BogoMIPS).
checking if image is initramfs...it isn't (no cpio magic); looks like
an initrd
Looking for DSDT in initrd ...No customized DSDT found in initrd!
Freeing initrd memory: 2912kB freed
khelper: max 64 concurrent processes
resid is -1 name is io <NULL>
CKRM .. create res clsobj for resouce <io>class <taskclass>
par=0000000000000000
NET: Registered protocol family 16
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20040326
ACPI: SCI (ACPI GSI 52) not registered
ACPI: Interpreter enabled
ACPI: Using IOSAPIC for interrupt routing
PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:01:01.0[A]: no GSI
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:02:01.0[A]: no GSI
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:02:01.1[B]: no GSI
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:d0:02.0[A]: no GSI
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:d0:02.1[B]: no GSI
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:d0:02.2[C]: no GSI
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:d1:04.0[A]: no GSI
perfmon: version 2.0 IRQ 238
perfmon: Itanium 2 PMU detected, 16 PMCs, 18 PMDs, 4 counters (47 bits)
EFI Variables Facility v0.06 2002-Dec-10
PAL Information Facility v0.5
perfmon: added sampling format default_format
perfmon_default_smpl: default_format v2.0 registered
Initial HugeTLB pages allocated: 0
VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
Initializing Cryptographic API
EFI Time Services Driver v0.4
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 4 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 128000K size 1024 blocksize
loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with
idebus=xx
SiI680: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:d1:04.0
PCI: Found IRQ 63 for device 0000:d1:04.0
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:d1:04.0[A]: no GSI
SiI680: chipset revision 2
SiI680: BASE CLOCK == 133
SiI680: 100% native mode on irq 63
ide0: MMIO-DMA , BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
ide1: MMIO-DMA , BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
hda: MATSHITADVD-ROM SR-8178, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
Using cfq io scheduler
ide0 at 0xc0000008c0400080-0xc0000008c0400087,0xc0000008c040008a on
irq 63
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
input: PC Speaker
i8042.c: i8042 controller self test timeout.
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP: routing cache hash table of 131072 buckets, 2048Kbytes
TCP established hash table entries: 4194304 (order: 12, 67108864 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 1048576 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 4194304 bind 65536)
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 8
NET: Registered protocol family 20
resid is -1 name is cpu <NULL>
CKRM .. create res clsobj for resouce <cpu>class <taskclass>
par=0000000000000000
........init_ckrm_sched_res , resid= 5
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Starting udev
Creating devices
Loading kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_mod.ko
SCSI subsystem initialized
Loading kernel/drivers/scsi/sd_mod.ko
Loading kernel/drivers/sn/ioc4.ko
Loading kernel/drivers/ide/pci/sgiioc4.ko
Loading kernel/drivers/scsi/sg.ko
Loading kernel/drivers/scsi/libata.ko
Loading kernel/drivers/scsi/sata_vsc.ko
Loading kernel/drivers/scsi/qla1280.ko
Loading kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_transport_fc.ko
Loading kernel/drivers/message/fusion/mptbase.ko
Fusion MPT base driver 3.02.18
Copyright (c) 1999-2005 LSI Logic Corporation
PCI: Found IRQ 62 for device 0000:01:01.0
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:01:01.0[A]: no GSI
mptbase: Initiating ioc0 bringup
ioc0: SAS1064: Capabilities={Initiator}
Loading kernel/drivers/message/fusion/mptscsih.ko
Fusion MPT SCSI Host driver 3.02.18
scsi0 : ioc0: LSISAS1064, FwRev=00040200h, Ports=1, MaxQ=203, IRQ=62
Vendor: ATA Model: HDT722525DLA380 Rev: A80A
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sda: 488397168 512-byte hdwr sectors (250059 MB)
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
sda: sda1 sda2 sda3
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Attached scsi generic sg0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0, type 0
Loading kernel/drivers/scsi/qla2xxx/qla2xxx.ko
QLogic Fibre Channel HBA Driver
Loading kernel/drivers/scsi/qla2xxx/qla2300.ko
Loading kernel/drivers/scsi/qla2xxx/qla2200.ko
Loading kernel/fs/dmapi/dmapi.ko
Loading kernel/fs/exportfs/exportfs.ko
Loading kernel/fs/xfs/xfs.ko
SGI-XFS CVS-2004-10-17_05:00_UTC with ACLs, security attributes,
realtime, large block/inode numbers, dmapi support, no debug enabled
Waiting for device /dev/sda3 to appear: ok
rootfs: major=8 minor=3 devn=2051
rootfs: /sys/block/sda/sda3 major=8 minor=3 devn=2051
XFS mounting filesystem sda3
VFS: Mounted root (xfs filesystem) readonly.
Trying to move old root to /initrd ... failed
Unmounting old root
Trying to free ramdisk memory ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 400kB freed
INIT: version 2.85 booting
[ rest snipped ]
If anyone has any suggestions where to go from here, I'm all ears...
are there any SGI people reading this list, or are the IA64
developers mostly HP bods?
Thanks very much in advance...
Tim
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