Re: (Open-)Solaris on Soekris

On Mon, Dec 10, 2007 at 06:36:29PM +1100, Darren Reed
wrote:
> William Wanders wrote:
> >On Wed, Dec 05, 2007 at 10:54:12PM +0100, William
Wanders wrote:
> >  
...
> >>The Soekris net4526 makes use of an
> >>Geode SC1100 (NSC model 540) which supposedly
has a broken
> >>TSC. I will try disabeling this feature with 
> >>cpuid_feature_edx_exclude=0x10
> >>on one of the next reboots.
> >>    
> >Although I could see the TSC feature got disabled
this approach did not
> >get me very far. The system hangs just after
initializing the pci0 root.
> >
> >After reading some more info about the Geode SC1100
it looks like the
> >"broken" TSC is not really that broken.
When the Geode SC1100 is in
> >the halted state the processor powersaving features
prevent the
> >TSC from being incremented at a reasonable rate.
Which makes it not
> >very usable as a hires timer. Disabling the use of
hlt to idle the cpu,
> >fixed nearly all problems (added "set
idle_cpu_use_hlt=0" to /etc/system).
> >  
> 
> Nice one.
> Thanks for following that through!
> 
> Are you able to observe any side effects of this,
> such as idling doesn't drop the power use as much
> as it does on (say) a laptop?
The PoE injector that i'm using to power this net4826 feels
hotter than usual when it is running pfSense and drives 2
Atheros WiFi (100mW) cards. I guess it substantially harms
the powersaving features :(. The BSD based OS-es (like
pfSense)
use an other hardware timer source. After getting a
reasonable
featured OpenSolaris install onto the onboard flash i'll
have to
take a closer look into this.

William.
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On Mon, Dec 10, 2007 at 11:06:14AM +0100, William Wanders
wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 10, 2007 at 06:36:29PM +1100, Darren Reed
wrote:
> > William Wanders wrote:
> > >On Wed, Dec 05, 2007 at 10:54:12PM +0100,
William Wanders wrote:
> > >  
> ...
> > >>The Soekris net4526 makes use of an
> > >>Geode SC1100 (NSC model 540) which
supposedly has a broken
> > >>TSC. I will try disabeling this feature
with 
> > >>cpuid_feature_edx_exclude=0x10
> > >>on one of the next reboots.
> > >>    
> > >Although I could see the TSC feature got
disabled this approach did not
> > >get me very far. The system hangs just after
initializing the pci0 root.
> > >
> > >After reading some more info about the Geode
SC1100 it looks like the
> > >"broken" TSC is not really that
broken. When the Geode SC1100 is in
> > >the halted state the processor powersaving
features prevent the
> > >TSC from being incremented at a reasonable
rate. Which makes it not
> > >very usable as a hires timer. Disabling the
use of hlt to idle the cpu,
> > >fixed nearly all problems (added "set
idle_cpu_use_hlt=0" to /etc/system).
> > >  
> > 
> > Nice one.
> > Thanks for following that through!
> > 
> > Are you able to observe any side effects of this,
> > such as idling doesn't drop the power use as much
> > as it does on (say) a laptop?
> The PoE injector that i'm using to power this net4826
feels
> hotter than usual when it is running pfSense and drives
2
> Atheros WiFi (100mW) cards. I guess it substantially
harms
> the powersaving features :(. The BSD based OS-es (like
pfSense)
> use an other hardware timer source. After getting a
reasonable
> featured OpenSolaris install onto the onboard flash
i'll have to
> take a closer look into this.

A little status update on my OpenSolaris experiments with a
Soekris net4826 (SC1100 266Mhz, 128mb ram, 61mb flash).

Current state:

- full boot upto console login of OpenSolaris onnv-gate (9
dec 2007)
  from the onboard flash
- a working DP838916A 10/100 NIC offering ipv4 and ipv6
connectivity
- 2 working Atheros mini-PCI cards (client mode only :()
- telnet login over the network
- 71mb free memory after full boot and first console login
- 1.2mb free on onboard flash

Encountered hardware related problems / workarounds:

- SC1100 has no SSE feature
  Workaround: elfedit -e 'cap:hw1 -and -cmp sse'
/lib/libc.so.1
- SC1100 TSC problem: TSC does not work when processor is in
hlt mode
  Workaround: Disable use of hlt in idle loop
              (/etc/system: set idle_cpu_use_hlt=0)
- Default LBA mapping leaves only 52mb of usable filesystem
space on flash
  Workaround: Force geometry of flash to 977 cylinders, 4
heads and 32s/t
              should leave about 56mb of usable filesystem
space
              (was needed to fit the boot_archive onto the
onboard flash)

To accomplish the above I mainly used:

- a dhcpserver/tftp to PXE boot the net4826
- x86.miniroot from snv77 as a base to layout a trimmed
  x86.miniroot and a minimal boot_archive
- a stock build onnv-gate (non-debug)
- two small scripts to aid in trimming/updating the
compressed
  x86.miniroot and minimal boot_archive
- a small script to update x86.miniroot content directly
from the
  onnv-gate proto directory
- strip/gzexe to trim down the final space use

The feature wishlist is growing:

- backup/restore onboard flash
- ipf/ipnat on sfe0/ath0/ath1
- temperature/voltage monitoring
- hostap feature on atheros drivers
- hardware watchdog timer support
- support for Geode CBA/GPIO
...

Regards,

William Wanders
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