<quinn>
confused question, am i supposed to put together a boot image from uboot<board>.aarch64-linux, or can i just use nixos.sd_image.aarch64-linux?
<samueldr>
quinn: depends on the board
<samueldr>
depends on how it is configured too
<samueldr>
but generally you need the u-boot for your board in some manner, and the sd_image
<quinn>
samueldr: i'm using a rock64, which does have a (custom?) uboot from ayufan i guess
<samueldr>
"in some manner" means it can be burned into the sd image, or made available through other means like a second storage it boots from, or an on-board Flash for the "bios"
<samueldr>
quinn: you also have to know where it is :)
<samueldr>
if it's on the storage you're gonna erase to put in the sd image, you're back to square one!
<quinn>
samueldr: i'm looking at that page, but i'm not sure how it all fits together. do i dd the install image on first, and then dd the u-boot files with the seek argument?
<samueldr>
that's the usual method
<samueldr>
you might have to first delete the FAT32 partition (first partition) from the sd image
<samueldr>
I'm not sure u-boot fits in the space before it
<samueldr>
that FAT32 partition is *only useful for the raspberry pis)
<samueldr>
*
<quinn>
hmm. i think i get it. instantiating the uboot files is taking forever but i think i'm set, thank you so much
<quinn>
samueldr++
<{^_^}>
samueldr's karma got increased to 241, that's Numberwang!
<lopsided98>
I'd like to add hydra-build-products to U-Boot, so people can download it from the Hydra web interface
<samueldr>
lopsided98: what's stopping us?
<samueldr>
hmmm
<samueldr>
yeah, nothing, except for armv7l
<quinn>
lopsided98: i would like that, i haven't done cross compilation before so my process was. click actions button in upper left on hydra page -> it doesn't work -> try to build pkgs.ubootRock64 -> it doesn't work -> google compiler options to find out i needed to be doing cross compilation -> finally use pkgsCross and then it works
<quinn>
(not absentmindedly complaining, just "marketing"/noob onboarding feedback)
<quinn>
is there a way to select generations on boot with u-boot? i'm using hdmi so maybe it works over serial?
<quinn>
*extlinux i guess
<samueldr>
all "outputs" show the same output
<samueldr>
and yes, serial or hdmi
<samueldr>
and yes, it uses the extlinux file format
<samueldr>
(not the actual extlinux bootloader)
<quinn>
i don't get any HDMI output until partway through user-mode, possibly because the gpu is slow to start. is there generation selection earlier in the process that i'm not seeing?
<samueldr>
possibly
<samueldr>
I don't know if your board (forgot which) has hdmi output in u-boot
<quinn>
it's rock64. i've heard people talk about it being slow to output. do you have an over-under on it giving output pre-kernel with the serial?
<samueldr>
you don't have serial, right?
<samueldr>
oh
<samueldr>
you have serial
<samueldr>
it should give output
<samueldr>
you can also stop the boot and see if hdmi ever gets picked up
<quinn>
yup! serial over gpio. stopping boot is a good idea, is there a keypress for that or do i need to hit jumpers?
<quinn>
jump the gpio*
<samueldr>
press keys when prompted to (or before) on serial
<quinn>
samueldr: is it "press any key"? tried it with random keys and no luck
<clever>
quinn: and the tx->rx is wired properly? can you see boot messages?
<quinn>
no, i can't. i'm on hdmi. i'm trying to trigger u-boot to stop booting so i can see if not seeing hdmi output there is because gpu is slow, or because it doesn't work at all
<quinn>
tx-rx is serial i assume
<samueldr>
ah, if it's hdmi, then you'd need usb, which *that* I don't know if it's supported
<samueldr>
but if you see those messages
<samueldr>
hdmi works on u-boot
<samueldr>
so I think I see what your issue is
<samueldr>
hdmi is on during u-boot, off during early linux boot, and on later during the boot, right?
<samueldr>
if so, you need to add the right (which?) kernel modules to your initrd
<quinn>
i mean the issue is that i want to select generations, so idk if adding kernel modules would help
<samueldr>
as noted, this is not the most minimal list
<samueldr>
ah, no, it wouldn't
<samueldr>
you'll need usb I guess
<samueldr>
now, I don't really know about u-boot for rock64 and usb, sorry
<quinn>
or serial? if that's what i need, that's chill. i'll buy it. i just don't like waste so i wanted to make sure i needed it
<quinn>
"need" i realize you may not know confidently it'll work, but it's worth getting and trying cause this is for semi-production use, don't want to have to wait on the mail to roll back something important
<samueldr>
a way to get serial on such boards is probably one of the most valuable tools you can get
<clever>
when working on the rpi-open-firmware, serial was my ONLY way to talk to the system for months, because usb-host didnt work, and hdmi didnt work
<clever>
without serial, your only way out is log files, and it wasnt even able to run printf at first, lol
<clever>
its rather hard to debug anything when not even printf works!
<samueldr>
I usually say: get at least one (1) good quality serial cable, from a trustable source, and maybe a couple cheap-o ebay ones so you can leave cheap-o ones with a board as an unfinished project without remorse
<clever>
ive got an ftdi i use for everything, and i need more of them
<samueldr>
real ones or cheap-o ones?
<quinn>
haha, i did feel SUPER SOL when i was just screwing with the partition table and it was silently failing to boot. serial does sound really good
<clever>
samueldr: i believe its an authentic ftdi
<samueldr>
it may even be useful for non-SBCs in the future, you never know! (but maybe not)
<clever>
only problem ive had recently, is that the usb layer tends to reconnect sometimes when plugging in the gnd signal
<clever>
i have used the ftdi to get boot logs out of my cable box before
<patagonicus>
Nice, the HC2 finished rebuilding the system in ~10h, I think. Definitely faster than a RPi3. :D
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<fps>
hmm, how would i go about updating the rpi4 firmware to the newest one?
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<clever>
fps: the rpi-eeprom-update script should be in nixpkgs now, by default it shoves some magic files into /boot/ (which must be the fat32 partition), and does the real flashing at reboot, but it also has a flashrom mode to reflash at runtime
<clever>
fps: and start4.elf is updated seperately, not sure what the recommended way is on nixos
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<colemickens>
I booted raspbian on a spare card tbh.
<colemickens>
Though I need to update to stable now that it's out, I could give it a shot since the rpi4 updates have hit unstable.
<patagonicus>
Huh. With my system I recompiled on the HC2 the SATA port doesn't work anymore. I'll need to figure out what's different from the cross compiled installer later, probably some modules.
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<srk>
patagonicus: no need to, I'm happy to help. you can always contribute back via wiki docs, PRs and helping others which is much appreciated because it saves us time :)
<fps>
clever: thanks!
<patagonicus>
srk: Your choice. :P
<patagonicus>
Yeah, I want to add the instructions to the wiki when I have some spare time.
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<patagonicus>
Oh, I didn't notice it earlier, but the old generation now also doesn't recognize the SATA SSD correctly. Maybe it's just that reboot is broken (I've read some things about having to run a command to make HDDs park their heads on shutdown with the HC2, so maybe that's related).
<patagonicus>
Yep. Did a full shut down and replugged the power supply, now the new generation recognizes the SSD. Hmm. That will need some fixing, I want unattended upgrades. :)
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<srk>
[10:16] < patagonicus> Yeah, I want to add the instructions to the wiki when I have some spare time.
<srk>
Top Gu[10:11] < fps> clever: thanks!n
<srk>
[10:16] <patagonicus> | srk: Your choice. :P
<srk>
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<srk>
cat :/
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<patagonicus>
Sigh, choices. I can't decide on what size of HDDs to get for my HC2 setup. And if I want to go with a (basically) RAID5 with 3 disks or a RAID10 with 4 disks. The latter would obviously mean adding one more HC2 into the mix, but compared to the drives they're cheap.
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<patagonicus>
The odroid-xu3-bootloader package is a bit … annoying. It's only available for armv7, which makes a bit of sense, but I think that's only for the u-boot part, because all the bootloader package does is combining the u-boot blob with a few binary files from hardkernel and a shell script that will dd the files to the right place on an sd card. But because you have to install the armv7
<patagonicus>
package the bash script doesn't run on x86.
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<hoverbear>
So, I am very impressed with the aarch64 support for nix. :)
<hoverbear>
Could anyone recommend a nice aarch board with a lot of power?
<samueldr>
no
<samueldr>
because there isn't one that is nice
<samueldr>
:')
<samueldr>
hoverbear: are you budget-constrained?
<gchristensen>
the /topic is useful for experimenting
<hoverbear>
Not at all :)
<hoverbear>
This would be a business purchase for me
<hoverbear>
Well, I can cross compile on x86, so I really just need to test it. I'd be very very interested in dropping a build of my observability router we make onboard a network card....
<samueldr>
and then if it's even accessible to the end-user
<samueldr>
I'm sure a good chunk of the users here would want to drive one of those :)
<hoverbear>
Yeah no I would love to be able to have a dedicated 2 port network card running an embedded aarch vector, wow.
<hoverbear>
That'd be amazing.
<samueldr>
I'm pretty sure other vendors have similar "smart" network cards
<samueldr>
I really don't know what's possible with those though
<samueldr>
but I do agree it looks like a neat solution to just get some aarch64 compute near your desktop
<hoverbear>
Yeah omg thank you very much
<samueldr>
if you do some research about the market, and what you can and cannot do with those, it'd be interesting to see your conclusions, even if inconclusive
<samueldr>
I guess the main points are: how do they boot? do you own the boot flow? what do they boot?
<samueldr>
and maybe attached to this "what's the networking for? how does it interact with the host system?"
<samueldr>
I mean, it's all good questions for your use case!
<gchristensen>
hoverbear: ARM cores are comparatively not very good
<hoverbear>
Yeah, I mostly want a test bed for running my stuff.
<gchristensen>
but they can have way more
<samueldr>
you might want to get a raspi, even if terrible, if it's just to run things
<hoverbear>
samueldr: Could I like strip down an aarch phone?
<samueldr>
maybe
<hoverbear>
Or like an fpga? :laugh:
<gchristensen>
like that emag 8180 has 32 pretty okay cores
<samueldr>
yes, but is the fpga good enough to run aarch64 well? :)
<gchristensen>
vs. the thunderx2 which had like 48 pretty crap cores
<hoverbear>
Since nix is so good at CC I think it's fine if I find something smaller and just CC to it.
<samueldr>
it probably has an ARM (though v7) that does ARM better than the FPGA can!
<samueldr>
and more people are likely to have them
<gchristensen>
you might give the c2.large.arm on Packet a try -- they're the emag 8180
<hoverbear>
samueldr: This looks great
<samueldr>
it has some SFP nonsense
<samueldr>
(meaning I don't know how to make good use of that :))
<hoverbear>
So this mellanox is an armv8? Is that aarch64?
<samueldr>
it probably is
<samueldr>
contrary to what you will find online, no armv8 is not aarch64 only... confusingly enough :(
<hoverbear>
gchristensen: I think it loses the fun if it's a cloud machine. Part of what I want is not to rely on a reliable network connection
<gchristensen>
yeah
<gchristensen>
I'm just saying you might want to try the cores out
<hoverbear>
Maybe! =D I can try
<gchristensen>
because to me you're setting some requirements for what you want and then proposing ideas that don't match what you've said are requiremetns
<hoverbear>
Last time I tried to boot one of them on packet it took an hour though
<hoverbear>
gchristensen: Yes because it's saturday afternoon and I'm rambling. :( Sorry. I have many ideas.
<gchristensen>
no worries
<gchristensen>
I'm not annoyed or anything, I'm just worried about you dropping some money on something and finding it to not match what you think you're getting
<samueldr>
hoverbear: if you want to know if it is aarch64 or not, the Cortex-Axx core name is how would know; it might also not have such a name and use a name specific to the vendor, and that too is how you'd find out
<samueldr>
it's also how you'd find out if it's a 32 bit capable aarch64 device
<hoverbear>
So, my understanding is aarch64 are 64 bit no?
<gchristensen>
there is *so* little consistency in the ARM ecosystem that you have to be very careful, and in general I would caution any idea of "powerful" based on any specific core count
<samueldr>
yes, aarch64 is 64 bit
<hoverbear>
gchristensen: Yes I'm not buying anything today.
<samueldr>
but like x86_64 can do x86 (32 bit), some aarch64 can run in 32 bit mode
<samueldr>
cores are not a good indication of anything without knowing what they are
<samueldr>
like those "octa-core" phones
<gchristensen>
yeah
<samueldr>
they are likely BIG.little, hopefully 4/4
<samueldr>
maybe 2/6
<samueldr>
which means you get 4 lower power (in processing and electricity) and 4 higher power cores
<samueldr>
likely different core types
<samueldr>
e.g. RK3399 has 2 Cortex-A72 and 4 Cortex-A53
<hoverbear>
Right, so what I mostly care abut is "Get packet from in, to out" I don't really care about raw CPU benches etc
<gchristensen>
you don't want to build on it, then?
<hoverbear>
If I can run on a network card all by myself and talk directly to the ports, I am so on board.
<hoverbear>
I think now that I'm confident in the cross compilation, I could compile on like a ryzen and deploy to the aarch
<gchristensen>
I think that is a decent enough idea
<samueldr>
if your clients end up deciding on what it runs, it may end up running on lesser networked hardware like a raspberry pi, so maybe a good idea to have them to test?
<gchristensen>
and if you need, you could rent a powerful aarch64 builder to supplement
<samueldr>
(in addition to better stuff)
<hoverbear>
samueldr: Yes our clients already get a generic one. :) I would love to do a little R&D on my own time with this idea though