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ghaverla

Member

From: Dawson Creek, BC, Canada

Registered: 2017-06-19

Posts: 111  

firmware-amd-graphics

Somewhere I had a message about some hardware problems I was having, and still am.

The 4.19 kernel finally came out, and so I was rebooted this Ryzen-1600 machine which has the idle problem.

In the bootup, there is a message to the effect that polaris11_k_mc.bin is missing.

Debian has 2 bugreports related to this missing firmware in firmware-amd-graphics (most recent build was August I believe).  I've no idea when this package might be upgraded, so that the 4.19 boot finds this file.

So, I did an apt-get source firmware-amd-graphics, which corrects me and just downloads firmware-nonfree.  There is a message to the effect that I should clone the repository at some debian.org address.  Okay, I do that.

There is a README file near the top of this git repository, which seems to say that I need to build a tarball first.  The command is debian/bin/genorig.py

I run that, and it complains almost immediately that there is no debian_linux module to load.

Where is this module?

Looking around a bit, perhaps it is in a package called linux-tools?  But Debian only has linux-tools up to stable.  The package description in stable says this is a translation thing to bring in linux-perf.  Linux-perf is versioned to a kernel.  While the list of files for linux-perl-4.9 has python files (I presume some are modules, in the sense of perl modules), none seem to be named debian_linux.py

How is a person supposed to build firmware-nonfree from source?  Do I have to do this on the hardware that has this idle problem (I can load up BOINC jobs to keep it from needing idle states on the CPU).?

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Gord

ghaverla

Member

From: Dawson Creek, BC, Canada

Registered: 2017-06-19

Posts: 111  

Re: firmware-amd-graphics

If I write back in this post, will it get noticed?

I am still working with problems related to graphics.

I never did get a local version of that amd graphics firmware built.  Debian cascading to Devuan did produce updates.  On the machine I was having problems with, some newer kernels would boot and some wouldn't.  That problem eventually resolved through upgrades to the kernel.

But the problem of the CPU locking up, whether it was lightly loaded, heavily loaded or something else never went away.  The firmware package that is in Devuan, should load the right stuff.  I've upgraded the BIOS to the newest available.  I have tried playing with the various settings on the kernel command line, and while it may change lockups in an hour or 2 to lock ups in several hours, the machine just wouldn't run.

To me, the symptoms looked like the idle lockup, where a CPU core goes to sleep, and never wakes up, and this brings the entire system down at some point.  I don't have sleep or hibernation or anything like that set up (it's a desktop, and if running does BOINC or other stuff).

Oh, about the time I tried the Ryzen 5 2600, I also had purchased a pure sine wave UPS, so it was on better power than before.  I believe the power supply is a Seasonic Focus 80+ Platinum.  Should be good enough components.

That was with a Ryzen 5 1600.  I bought a Ryzen 5 2600 and tried that, and it does the same thing.  This being winter, I had time to work on things, and so I am almost finished replacing the motherboard.

What is left is to remove the CPU/cooler from the old motherboard, clean the two surfaces off (I have the Arctic kit for this) and apply new compound to the CPU/cooler interface before installing the new cooler (factory Wraith) on the CPU.

If the new motherboard works, then I will be happy.  I will report on that.

----

If the new system works, I am going to think that my old CPU is fine.  I have another application where I have a AM4 socket motherboard with the low end A320 chipset.

AMD not too long ago announced some new CPUs.  One of them was a Ryzen 5 2600E - a 45W CPU.  It appears that at least in the near term, this is an OEM chip only.  But some people are thinking that if you devolt the CPU, you probably should be able to get it down to 45W.  The A320 chipset is supposed to not let overclocking (and yet, you can find manufacturers saying how wonderfully their A320 motherboard overclock), but perhaps it will let a person devolt the CPU?  I will report on that at some point.  But, I have another post to make.

ghaverla

Member

From: Dawson Creek, BC, Canada

Registered: 2017-06-19

Posts: 111  

Re: firmware-amd-graphics

Some time ago, I had time to pull the old motherboard (old, it is almost new).  One of the support posts came undone, so that  required a little fiddling.  The odd header in different places between the old ASRock and the new MSI motherboard.  Manufacturers really don't include everything they should in the instructions.

Anyway, I cleaned the old heat transfer fluid off stock wraith cooler and CPU with the Arctic kit (the cooler never did look like a mirror).  I put some Arctic MX-4 on the new (Ryzen 2600) CPU, and re-installed the wraith cooler.  I had problems with the cooler no being coplanar with the CPU, which is aggravated by the screws on the cooler being (IMHO) too short.

As this new motherboard had never been booted before, I had some adjustments to make.  Like different net hardware.  And possibly that SATA1 is not available if you have a nvme SSD (I did); that is poorly documented.  Anyway, Devuan booted.  BOINC ran fine with 3 cores (of 12).  Run more than 3 cores, and eventually it dies.  I thought at first; I've got another dog of a CPU.  Nothing in the logs.  But, run xsensors and the CPU is running too warm.  I think the mounting problem caused much of the thermal compound to get squeezed out.

Why spend time using a stock cooler which suffers from screws being 2mm too short?  So, I bought the AM4 specific Noctua U12 tower cooler.  Wait a while for it to arrive in the mail, and it pops on just fine.  Used the Noctua compound with the Noctua cooler.  I've run it with 3 cores, 4 cores, 5 cores, 6 cores and now 8 cores under BOINC, and the temperatures are sitting in the high 50 to low 60C.  There is a lot of overlap, you couldn't predict number of cores active from the temperatures.

I picked up a _big_ disk (Seagate 8TB NAS) and put it in this machine as well, the idea to try and set it up as documentation server (involving squid) should the Internet go down.  It's on btrfs.  I'm still trying to figure out how to get it to cache things for HTTP and HTTPS.  Essentially I am the only person in the house that uses the computers, so I don't think there are any breaking encryption problems with this.

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This machine was originally a Ryzen 1600, I also have a Ryzen 1600X.  That machine has a not too big RAID-10, and is running BackupPC, mostly to backup my LAN server, which is due for hardware upgrades yet this (almost finished) winter.