• Upgrading beyond Buster on Cavium ThunderX?

    From Steffen Grunewald@21:1/5 to All on Mon Nov 11 12:30:01 2024
    Good morning all,

    for quite some time I've been trying to upgrade an "old" (purchased in 2018) Cavium ThunderX-based machine (a Gigabyte R120-T35), from Debian Buster:

    root@beeblebrox:~# uname -a
    Linux beeblebrox 4.19.0-25-arm64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.289-2 (2023-08-08) aarch64 GNU/Linux
    root@beeblebrox:~# lscpu
    Architecture: aarch64
    Byte Order: Little Endian
    CPU(s): 32
    On-line CPU(s) list: 0-31
    Thread(s) per core: 1
    Core(s) per socket: 32
    Socket(s): 1
    NUMA node(s): 1
    Vendor ID: Cavium
    Model: 1
    Model name: ThunderX 88XX
    Stepping: 0x1
    BogoMIPS: 200.00
    L1d cache: unknown size
    L1i cache: unknown size
    L2 cache: unknown size
    NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-31
    Flags: fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 cpuid

    According to "lshw", the CPU is a "CN8880-1800BG2601-CP-Y-G".


    Since I'm used to installing via FAI over PXE, I consequently tried to run FAI in "sysinfo" mode first, but could never get the system up, neither with Bullseye nor with Bookworm. (5.x kernels may have dropped this piece of hw,
    but I couldn't find any release notes backing this guess...)
    As a result, there are also no log files :( - the machine is sitting in a hidden spot and even connecting a keyboard and screen becomes a challenge :/

    Before I start more attempts, and think about using the BMC to eventually capture some log (or at least some error messages):
    Is there someone around who got past this point, and actually runs Bullseye
    or newer on this CPU (and maybe similar hardware), willing to share some
    ideas and tips?

    Thanks,
    Steffen

    (If you're curious, the machine's name is about that _extra_arm_ of the President of the Galaxy.)

    --
    Steffen Grunewald, Cluster Administrator
    Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)
    Am Mühlenberg 1 * D-14476 Potsdam-Golm * Germany
    ~~~
    Fon: +49-331-567 7274
    Mail: steffen.grunewald(at)aei.mpg.de
    ~~~

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