Re: Info : Using a PowerMac G5 as a server
On Mon, 2011-02-21 at 07:05 +1100, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote: > Yes, there is. We reverse engineered that a while back and somebody even > wrote a little tool to control it, though I don't remember where that > can be found... If necessary, we can try to dig again, the RE wasn't > that hard. a quick look seems to indicate that a bunch of the necessary command definitions are present in smu.h already. Search for SMU_POWER_EVENTS and below. You probably need to send a SMU_CMD_POWER_EVENTS_COMMAND with SET_POWERUP_EVENTS and SMU_PWR_WAKEUP_AC_INSERT as arguments. You can find examples of how to send SMU commands there: http://gate.crashing.org/~benh/smu_wink.c Fell free to submit your resulting new utility to powerpc-utils :-) Cheers, Ben. ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: Info : Using a PowerMac G5 as a server
> Surprisingly, the Linux kernel does a very good job on this machine in > terms of hardware support and stability : everything works perfectly. > But the global OS fails pathetically in the two said points. > Here are my findings so far, I hope it will help people in the same situation > : > > 1/ Booting a PowerMac G5 headless > > This hasn't so much to do with Linux per se, but rather with Yaboot > which seems to be the de-facto standard bootloader on the OpenFirmware > platform. > For some reason, at some point in the booting process, yaboot relies > on a screen being present. If no screen is attached, it will hang. So > much for headless booting. > Now I've figured out several workarounds : > -> Fake a screen by plugging in a resistor into your VGA port (or to > your DVI port using an adapter). This sure works, but it's rather > redneck > -> For some reason, the part of yaboot that actually depends on the > script is the "ofboot.b" forth script. This scripts' purpose is to > give you an option of booting off of a CD. I really don't get it since > OpenFirmware itself lets you boot off of a CD just by pressing "C" on > boot. So basically if you skip ofboot.b, you're good to go. When > installing yaboot with ybin, ybin sets the "boot-device" variable in > OpenFirmware to point to ofboot.b. So if you point boot-device > straight to the yaboo binary, you should be able to boot headless > without any issue. Here are several ways to do it : You may want to Tony Breeds. I'm not sure what happen when ofboot.b tries to "fixup" the input/output devices, but we could certainly make it easier for ofboot.b to be optional. >- Go to the OpenFirmware prompt (Command-Option-O-F on boot), > and type "setenv boot-device=hd:2,yaboot" (modify the hd:2 > accordingly), then "boot" >- You might be able to achieve the same effect using the > "nvram" tool straight from linux >- I think simply removing the "magicboot" line off of > yaboot.conf might fix it as well > > IOW, it _is_ possible to boot a PowerMac G5 headless on Linux without > any hardware modification. Yeah but I think OF gets into all kind of funny state if you try to open the graphics device with nothing connected, and that's an OF bug, it shouldn't happen. > 2/ Rebooting automagically after a power failure > > Now this is less fun : I still don't have any solution to offer. To > understand the situation, you should know that this has to be set in > the power-management chip. > Previous PowerMacs used a "PMU" chip, which was fully supported. All > you had to do was to echo "server_mode=1" to /proc/pmu/options. > > Thing is, G5's use a new chip, named "SMU". And AFAIK, there's no such > option for those machines… Yes, there is. We reverse engineered that a while back and somebody even wrote a little tool to control it, though I don't remember where that can be found... If necessary, we can try to dig again, the RE wasn't that hard. Cheers, Ben. > So if anyone ever knows any element of answer on this, I'd be really > interested ! > > Kind regards, > > - Romain > ___ > Linuxppc-dev mailing list > Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org > https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Info : Using a PowerMac G5 as a server
Hi everyone, I've this PowerMac G5 machine I'd like to use as a server. It makes perfect sense to install Linux on it for several reasons : - OS X isn't maintained on this hardware anymore - Those machine are still reasonnably fast. They sure aren't the latest and greatest, but they still do a decent job. - Support of those in other OSes (NetBSD or FreeBSD for instance) is pretty bad (no fan control for example). To make a decent server though, there are two things that are pretty important IMHO : - Being able to boot headless (w/o a screen attached) - Being able to reboot automagically after a power failure Surprisingly, the Linux kernel does a very good job on this machine in terms of hardware support and stability : everything works perfectly. But the global OS fails pathetically in the two said points. Here are my findings so far, I hope it will help people in the same situation : 1/ Booting a PowerMac G5 headless This hasn't so much to do with Linux per se, but rather with Yaboot which seems to be the de-facto standard bootloader on the OpenFirmware platform. For some reason, at some point in the booting process, yaboot relies on a screen being present. If no screen is attached, it will hang. So much for headless booting. Now I've figured out several workarounds : -> Fake a screen by plugging in a resistor into your VGA port (or to your DVI port using an adapter). This sure works, but it's rather redneck -> For some reason, the part of yaboot that actually depends on the script is the "ofboot.b" forth script. This scripts' purpose is to give you an option of booting off of a CD. I really don't get it since OpenFirmware itself lets you boot off of a CD just by pressing "C" on boot. So basically if you skip ofboot.b, you're good to go. When installing yaboot with ybin, ybin sets the "boot-device" variable in OpenFirmware to point to ofboot.b. So if you point boot-device straight to the yaboo binary, you should be able to boot headless without any issue. Here are several ways to do it : - Go to the OpenFirmware prompt (Command-Option-O-F on boot), and type "setenv boot-device=hd:2,yaboot" (modify the hd:2 accordingly), then "boot" - You might be able to achieve the same effect using the "nvram" tool straight from linux - I think simply removing the "magicboot" line off of yaboot.conf might fix it as well IOW, it _is_ possible to boot a PowerMac G5 headless on Linux without any hardware modification. 2/ Rebooting automagically after a power failure Now this is less fun : I still don't have any solution to offer. To understand the situation, you should know that this has to be set in the power-management chip. Previous PowerMacs used a "PMU" chip, which was fully supported. All you had to do was to echo "server_mode=1" to /proc/pmu/options. Thing is, G5's use a new chip, named "SMU". And AFAIK, there's no such option for those machines… So if anyone ever knows any element of answer on this, I'd be really interested ! Kind regards, - Romain ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
