Re: Help with the arm64 and ppc64el installation-guides needed
On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 08:45:50PM -0300, Thadeu Lima de Souza Cascardo wrote:
> Sorry for jumping in. I would like the chance to complement and clarify
> some things about ppc64el platform.
>
> As Aurelien pointed out, when used in OPAL mode, the system will boot a
> system running petitboot, which is capable of netboot, booting from
> disk, and install media.
>
> So, will it boot from USB media? Yes.
>
> When it comes to IBM latest servers, that are three options for
> platforms: OPAL (powernv in Linux), as PowerKVM guest, and PowerVM LPAR
> (both pseries platform in Linux).
>
> OPAL has petitboot built-in, PowerKVM uses SLOF and PowerVM uses IBM
> Open Firmware. The three are capable of booting from optical media, USB,
> and netboot. With the exception of KVM guests, when a supported
> graphical card is used, graphical installation should be an option as
> well. For KVM guests, there is offb, which should work with VNC. Should
> we enable graphical installation in the media? Or is just netboot images
> missing graphical support on d-i?
So does this mean that PowerVM LPAR is the same as running on the bare
metal (which is the only way I have run debian on IBM pSeries systems,
specifically a p520 power6+ and a p710 power7). Certainly openfirmware
booting with grub2 is the only method I have ever used. IBM support
people sure do seem confused when they hear you have no HMC or VM or
anything else on your pSeries. Just Debian on the bare metal.
> One caveat: I may be mistaken on the current state of support for USB
> and netboot on SLOF. But considering it's a KVM guest using qemu, there
> is much more flexibility, if things are downloaded on the host. I would
> say that is one of the things that we should document on the
> installation-guide. Is that right?
>
> As for wireless network adapters, the systems don't ship with any, and I
> haven't heard of any testing with any drivers. Nonetheless, those
> systems support PCI 3.0 and USB 3.0, so there is no reason those
> adapters shouldn't work, giving enough testing and fixes. But I would
> leave that out.
>
> As for other systems supporting ppc64el, OpenPower members have been
> releasing new systems using Power8 and supporting little-endian from the
> start.
>
> As already mentioned, older IBM systems could be capable as well, but I
> wouldn't say that is supported. As for chips from Freescale, I can't
> tell much. For 64-bit capable old Macs, I suppose firmware could be a
> problem. For those systems, adopting ppc64 (BE) would offer an option.
>
> Why 64-bit? Well, the same answer applies for all platforms. Address
> space. I suppose some people cannot even run web browsers these days
> without 64-bit :-). Of course, that has some disadvantages, like the
> memory footprint because of pointers, that x32 tries to address.
I sometimes wonder if limiting the browser to 2GB of memory is a
convinient way to prevent the leaks from getting out of hand in the
terrible code that is in web browsers.
--
Len Sorensen
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