[9fans] NIX: first light

[9fans] NIX: first light

[ron minnich]

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so, this evening, I ran /bin/date on a NIX Application Core (AC) for the
first time in 14 years, on core 1 of my t420s. There are still issues, and
work to do, but ... this was nice to see.

If you want to help, you can pull github.com:rminnich/9front, and do a
rebase on my 9front branch to 9front tip of tree, see if it builds, and see
if it boots. Feel free to submit a PR if you do that.

My qemu command (from a script, hence the $*)
qemu-system-x86_64 -kernel ~/Downloads/9pc64 -smp 4 -nographic -serial
mon:stdio  -cpu qemu64,+monitor -append console=0 -m 16384 $*

Other help: identity good netboot x86 boxes, on which NIX will boot, that
won't break my bank account. Sadly, I've not had time to figure out why my
pc engines won't boot. I am pretty sure it's plan 9 not being happy with
the coreboot RSDT, but ... who knows.

BTW, should the T420s wifi run at 6 Mbps? that seems low.

Thanks to Paul for breaking some things loose.

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Re: [9fans] NIX: first light

[B. Atticus Grobe]

On Fri Feb 28, 2025 at 10:06 PM CST, ron minnich wrote:
> so, this evening, I ran /bin/date on a NIX Application Core (AC) for the
> first time in 14 years, on core 1 of my t420s. There are still issues, and
> work to do, but ... this was nice to see.
>
> If you want to help, you can pull github.com:rminnich/9front, and do a
> rebase on my 9front branch to 9front tip of tree, see if it builds, and see
> if it boots. Feel free to submit a PR if you do that.

ron,

i think you may need to push your local repo to github; the last commit i can
see is from 7 feb, and doesn't build at all even prior to a rebase. it seems to
be missing definitions in headers for the execac syscall. my apologies if i'm
just missing something obvious about building it.

>
> My qemu command (from a script, hence the $*)
> qemu-system-x86_64 -kernel ~/Downloads/9pc64 -smp 4 -nographic -serial
> mon:stdio  -cpu qemu64,+monitor -append console=0 -m 16384 $*
>
> Other help: identity good netboot x86 boxes, on which NIX will boot, that
> won't break my bank account. Sadly, I've not had time to figure out why my
> pc engines won't boot. I am pretty sure it's plan 9 not being happy with
> the coreboot RSDT, but ... who knows.
>

i haven't yet been able to build nix, but 9front runs very well (and netboots
reliably) on HP t620 thick clients; these can be found on ebay for around $30,
usually with a 16GB mSATA SSD and 8G of RAM. most have a quad-core AMD Jaguar
cpu clocked at 1.5GHz, although there is a dual-core variant clocked slightly
higher. obviously, they're not powerful, but they're very inexpensive and very
reliable. they're also passively cooled without any fans or noisemakers. if all
you're looking for is cheap with multiple cores, i'd consider these. i have 4
(of the quad-core variant), and always have to stop myself from buying more. if
you do buy any, ensure they include the power brick. most sellers do so (at that
$30 price point), but if they don't include it you're better of finding another
seller as a replacement is as much as the computer.

> BTW, should the T420s wifi run at 6 Mbps? that seems low.
> 
> Thanks to Paul for breaking some things loose.

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Re: [9fans] NIX: first light

[ron minnich]

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Did you check GitHub/rminnich/9front 9front branch?


On Fri, Feb 28, 2025 at 21:52 B. Atticus Grobe <grobe0ba@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri Feb 28, 2025 at 10:06 PM CST, ron minnich wrote:
> > so, this evening, I ran /bin/date on a NIX Application Core (AC) for the
> > first time in 14 years, on core 1 of my t420s. There are still issues,
> and
> > work to do, but ... this was nice to see.
> >
> > If you want to help, you can pull github.com:rminnich/9front, and do a
> > rebase on my 9front branch to 9front tip of tree, see if it builds, and
> see
> > if it boots. Feel free to submit a PR if you do that.
>
> ron,
>
> i think you may need to push your local repo to github; the last commit i
> can
> see is from 7 feb, and doesn't build at all even prior to a rebase. it
> seems to
> be missing definitions in headers for the execac syscall. my apologies if
> i'm
> just missing something obvious about building it.
>
> >
> > My qemu command (from a script, hence the $*)
> > qemu-system-x86_64 -kernel ~/Downloads/9pc64 -smp 4 -nographic -serial
> > mon:stdio  -cpu qemu64,+monitor -append console=0 -m 16384 $*
> >
> > Other help: identity good netboot x86 boxes, on which NIX will boot, that
> > won't break my bank account. Sadly, I've not had time to figure out why
> my
> > pc engines won't boot. I am pretty sure it's plan 9 not being happy with
> > the coreboot RSDT, but ... who knows.
> >
>
> i haven't yet been able to build nix, but 9front runs very well (and
> netboots
> reliably) on HP t620 thick clients; these can be found on ebay for around
> $30,
> usually with a 16GB mSATA SSD and 8G of RAM. most have a quad-core AMD
> Jaguar
> cpu clocked at 1.5GHz, although there is a dual-core variant clocked
> slightly
> higher. obviously, they're not powerful, but they're very inexpensive and
> very
> reliable. they're also passively cooled without any fans or noisemakers.
> if all
> you're looking for is cheap with multiple cores, i'd consider these. i
> have 4
> (of the quad-core variant), and always have to stop myself from buying
> more. if
> you do buy any, ensure they include the power brick. most sellers do so
> (at that
> $30 price point), but if they don't include it you're better of finding
> another
> seller as a replacement is as much as the computer.
>
> > BTW, should the T420s wifi run at 6 Mbps? that seems low.
> >
> > Thanks to Paul for breaking some things loose.

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Re: [9fans] NIX: first light

[ori]

Quoth ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>:
> so, this evening, I ran /bin/date on a NIX Application Core (AC) for the
> first time in 14 years, on core 1 of my t420s. There are still issues, and
> work to do, but ... this was nice to see.

Congrats.

> Other help: identity good netboot x86 boxes, on which NIX will boot, that
> won't break my bank account. Sadly, I've not had time to figure out why my
> pc engines won't boot. I am pretty sure it's plan 9 not being happy with
> the coreboot RSDT, but ... who knows.

I have a menagerie of ones I use for testing things:

        - thinkcentre m715q
        - elitedesk 705 (note, you'll want the latest kernel to fix the ethernet
          from scribbling over kernel memory when pxe booting)
        - NUC DCCP847DYE and DC53427HYE

and, of course, a variety of used thinkpads.

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Re: [9fans] NIX: first light

[Clout Tolstoy]

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Ron, I have two older 8 core systems that max at 24gb of ram. They are
kinda loud, but you could just have them if you want to pay shipping.
Literally collecting dust. I can get the full specs later if you're
interested.

On Sat, Mar 1, 2025, 8:20 AM <ori@eigenstate.org> wrote:

> Quoth ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>:
> > so, this evening, I ran /bin/date on a NIX Application Core (AC) for the
> > first time in 14 years, on core 1 of my t420s. There are still issues,
> and
> > work to do, but ... this was nice to see.
>
> Congrats.
>
> > Other help: identity good netboot x86 boxes, on which NIX will boot, that
> > won't break my bank account. Sadly, I've not had time to figure out why
> my
> > pc engines won't boot. I am pretty sure it's plan 9 not being happy with
> > the coreboot RSDT, but ... who knows.
> 
> I have a menagerie of ones I use for testing things:
> 
> - thinkcentre m715q
> - elitedesk 705 (note, you'll want the latest kernel to fix the
> ethernet
>   from scribbling over kernel memory when pxe booting)
> - NUC DCCP847DYE and DC53427HYE
> 
> and, of course, a variety of used thinkpads.

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Re: [9fans] NIX: first light

[B. Atticus Grobe]

On Sat Mar 1, 2025 at 9:57 AM CST, ron minnich wrote:
> Did you check GitHub/rminnich/9front 9front branch?
That would appear to be my mistake; I was on the `ron_nix' branch, and only
checked the `front' branch. Thanks for straightening me out!

>
>
> On Fri, Feb 28, 2025 at 21:52 B. Atticus Grobe <grobe0ba@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri Feb 28, 2025 at 10:06 PM CST, ron minnich wrote:
>> > so, this evening, I ran /bin/date on a NIX Application Core (AC) for the
>> > first time in 14 years, on core 1 of my t420s. There are still issues,
>> and
>> > work to do, but ... this was nice to see.
>> >
>> > If you want to help, you can pull github.com:rminnich/9front, and do a
>> > rebase on my 9front branch to 9front tip of tree, see if it builds, and
>> see
>> > if it boots. Feel free to submit a PR if you do that.
>>
>> ron,
>>
>> i think you may need to push your local repo to github; the last commit i
>> can
>> see is from 7 feb, and doesn't build at all even prior to a rebase. it
>> seems to
>> be missing definitions in headers for the execac syscall. my apologies if
>> i'm
>> just missing something obvious about building it.
>>
>> >
>> > My qemu command (from a script, hence the $*)
>> > qemu-system-x86_64 -kernel ~/Downloads/9pc64 -smp 4 -nographic -serial
>> > mon:stdio  -cpu qemu64,+monitor -append console=0 -m 16384 $*
>> >
>> > Other help: identity good netboot x86 boxes, on which NIX will boot, that
>> > won't break my bank account. Sadly, I've not had time to figure out why
>> my
>> > pc engines won't boot. I am pretty sure it's plan 9 not being happy with
>> > the coreboot RSDT, but ... who knows.
>> >
>>
>> i haven't yet been able to build nix, but 9front runs very well (and
>> netboots
>> reliably) on HP t620 thick clients; these can be found on ebay for around
>> $30,
>> usually with a 16GB mSATA SSD and 8G of RAM. most have a quad-core AMD
>> Jaguar
>> cpu clocked at 1.5GHz, although there is a dual-core variant clocked
>> slightly
>> higher. obviously, they're not powerful, but they're very inexpensive and
>> very
>> reliable. they're also passively cooled without any fans or noisemakers.
>> if all
>> you're looking for is cheap with multiple cores, i'd consider these. i
>> have 4
>> (of the quad-core variant), and always have to stop myself from buying
>> more. if
>> you do buy any, ensure they include the power brick. most sellers do so
>> (at that
>> $30 price point), but if they don't include it you're better of finding
>> another
>> seller as a replacement is as much as the computer.
>>
>> > BTW, should the T420s wifi run at 6 Mbps? that seems low.
>> >
>> > Thanks to Paul for breaking some things loose.

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Re: [9fans] NIX: first light

[ron minnich]

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That is OK I can always put them in the garage

On Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 13:19 Clout Tolstoy <tolstoyclout@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ron, I have two older 8 core systems that max at 24gb of ram. They are
> kinda loud, but you could just have them if you want to pay shipping.
> Literally collecting dust. I can get the full specs later if you're
> interested.
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 1, 2025, 8:20 AM <ori@eigenstate.org> wrote:
>
>> Quoth ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>:
>> > so, this evening, I ran /bin/date on a NIX Application Core (AC) for the
>> > first time in 14 years, on core 1 of my t420s. There are still issues,
>> and
>> > work to do, but ... this was nice to see.
>>
>> Congrats.
>>
>> > Other help: identity good netboot x86 boxes, on which NIX will boot,
>> that
>> > won't break my bank account. Sadly, I've not had time to figure out why
>> my
>> > pc engines won't boot. I am pretty sure it's plan 9 not being happy with
>> > the coreboot RSDT, but ... who knows.
>> 
>> I have a menagerie of ones I use for testing things:
>> 
>> - thinkcentre m715q
>> - elitedesk 705 (note, you'll want the latest kernel to fix the
>> ethernet
>>   from scribbling over kernel memory when pxe booting)
>> - NUC DCCP847DYE and DC53427HYE
>> 
>> and, of course, a variety of used thinkpads.
> *9fans <https://9fans.topicbox.com/latest>* / 9fans / see discussions
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Re: [9fans] NIX: first light

[Clout Tolstoy]

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They are old super micro systems, I can post them for more details but that
could take a day to setup at the moment.  Motherboard is a x8sax rev. 2
with procs, power supply and ATX case.

One is max ram (24gb) the other may have 8 or 16gb.

I used to use them as Gentoo Linux build hosts with distcc and ran qemu/KVM
vms.  You can

On Sat, Mar 1, 2025, 2:13 PM ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:

> That is OK I can always put them in the garage
>
> On Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 13:19 Clout Tolstoy <tolstoyclout@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ron, I have two older 8 core systems that max at 24gb of ram. They are
>> kinda loud, but you could just have them if you want to pay shipping.
>> Literally collecting dust. I can get the full specs later if you're
>> interested.
>>
>>
>>
>
> <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T77db1310be5d11a2-M8eb9e32e3398ab79baf59e49>
>

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Re: [9fans] NIX: first light

[tlaronde]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2025 at 08:06:24PM -0800, ron minnich wrote:
> 
> Other help: identity good netboot x86 boxes, on which NIX will boot, that
> won't break my bank account. Sadly, I've not had time to figure out why my
> pc engines won't boot. I am pretty sure it's plan 9 not being happy with
> the coreboot RSDT, but ... who knows.
> 

BTW, the AM08PRO (AMD Ryzne 9, 8 hardware cores (16T)), with 32Gb of
RAM and 512Gb of SSD disk, can be used with the caveat that the BIOS
is an AMI Aptio V "mutilated", without many options, in particular
without the option to disable IOMMU.

With IOMMU on by default, the enumeration of devices goes crazy. This
impacts the USB devices so one has to add:

*nousbxhci=

to plan9.ini.

The thing can be installed on disk with some tweaks (the 9front UEFI
stub doesn't work) or can be UEFI PXE booted (my configuration is, for
now, mixed: the filesystem is on the disk, but I PXE boot the kernel).

I will try to find time on Monday or Tuesday to compile NIX and see
how it goes on this.

For the AMD IOMMU, there is apparently no one silver bullet that can
put the thing of the road: for every device, from a cursory look, the
kernel has to set a bit to 0 so that no translation is done. (Linux
stumbled on the same thing and now the booloader passes option to
allow enabling or disabling intel_iommu or amd_iommu; the USB
symptoms are exactly the ones described by Linux users, so it is
very probably related).

But one has 8 hardware cores for 399 euros or maybe less...

(When my "installation" will be finished---I have searched for ways to
circumvent the IOMMU problem, but the BIOS is at the latest version,
and the update bundles are older, so I fell back to the AMD
spec...---when I have finished, I will explain the procedure and
caveats in the nix-os pages.)
--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ kergis +dot+ com>
                     http://www.kergis.com/ http://kertex.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006
F40C

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Re: [9fans] NIX: first light

[tlaronde]

On Sun, Mar 02, 2025 at 08:08:26PM +0100, tlaronde wrote:
> 
> BTW, the AM08PRO (AMD Ryzne 9, 8 hardware cores (16T)), with 32Gb of
                                                               ^^^^
                                                               16Gb

but extensible.
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ kergis +dot+ com>
                     http://www.kergis.com/
                    http://kertex.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

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