Fossapup is my new main Puppy, with some hardware issues. solved!

[peppyy]

Thank you for this great distro. I have been a Puppy since 0.7 and in the past have been a contributor until the hardware got too sophisticated. Currently posting from tahr64 on my old comp.

I am currently running Fossa64 9.5 on most of our computers, however I am running into problems with my new build. Long story short.

A friend gave me his motherboard, ram etc. from his old gaming machine and it appears there is a lot of unsupported (new) hardware in linux, (In general). The motherboard is an ASUS m5a99fx pro r2.0 with 32 gig of ram. I don't care that the Ethernet adapter and sound card isn't supported, however I was hoping to get some benefit from the AMD fx6300 six core processor and ATI 2600 pro card. They test well in hard info although in actual applications they are slow and seldom use 10% of the 6 core processor. Things like Blender from the PPM work better on my old HP a512p with a core 2 duo with 4gb.

With 32gb ram I am still testing live with plenty of room for appimages, pups and sfs of which most work out of the box

That being said, I have been shocked with the performance on several other computers. Even the HP touch, all in one screams, and an older dell laptop amazes me with speed and versatility... In fact my wife adopted the HP right away. Fossa64 has tested extremely well on about everything else I have tried.

I have tried finding workarounds for a couple issues however I appear to be chasing dead ends from the proprietary hardware end. Any suggestions would be welcome.

[ozsouth]

@peppyy - welcome back. Tell us about your unresolved issues. New drivers are constantly needed, as you know puppy has always had a small subset. Please also run in a terminal, lspci -nn , & post output. That will let us know what hardware to find drivers for.

[peppyy]

Thanks, I will put a network card in it so I can get online and follow up on that machine.I know the onboard lan is Realtek 8111f and have tried a couple modules to no avail.

[ozsouth]

@peppyy - ok, to get exact info on network card, please run applicable of the following in a terminal & post results:

(for ethernet): lspci -nn | grep thernet

(for wireless): lspci -nn | grep etwork

(for usb dongles - with dongle plugged in): lsusb | grep etwork

Also, your card may be missing firmware, so please also run: dmesg | grep irmware

[peppyy]

The network controller listed is the one I added to get online. The onboard is enabled in the bios but doesn't show up. Here is what I have.

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD9x0/RX980 Host Bridge [1002:5a14] (rev 02)
00:02.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD890/RD9x0/RX980 PCI to PCI bridge (PCI Express GFX port 0) [1002:5a16]
00:04.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD890/RD9x0/RX980 PCI to PCI bridge (PCI Express GPP Port 0) [1002:5a18]
00:0b.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD890/RD990 PCI to PCI bridge (PCI Express GFX2 port 0) [1002:5a1f]
00:0d.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD890/RD9x0/RX980 PCI to PCI bridge (PCI Express GPP2 Port 0) [1002:5a1e]
00:11.0 SATA controller [0106]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [AHCI mode] [1002:4391] (rev 40)
00:12.0 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller [1002:4397]
00:12.2 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller [1002:4396]
00:13.0 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller [1002:4397]
00:13.2 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller [1002:4396]
00:14.0 SMBus [0c05]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SBx00 SMBus Controller [1002:4385] (rev 42)
00:14.2 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) [1002:4383] (rev 40)
00:14.3 ISA bridge [0601]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host controller [1002:439d] (rev 40)
00:14.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge [1002:4384] (rev 40)
00:14.5 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI2 Controller [1002:4399]
00:15.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB700/SB800/SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0) [1002:43a0]
00:15.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB700/SB800/SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 1) [1002:43a1]
00:15.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 2) [1002:43a2]
00:16.0 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller [1002:4397]
00:16.2 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller [1002:4396]
00:18.0 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 0 [1022:1600]
00:18.1 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 1 [1022:1601]
00:18.2 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 2 [1022:1602]
00:18.3 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 3 [1022:1603]
00:18.4 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 4 [1022:1604]
00:18.5 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 5 [1022:1605]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV630 PRO [Radeon HD 2600 PRO] [1002:9589]
01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV630 HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 2600 PRO/XT / HD 3610] [1002:aa08]
05:05.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Lite-On Communications Inc LNE100TX [11ad:0002] (rev 20)
06:00.0 SATA controller [0106]: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1062 Serial ATA Controller [1b21:0612] (rev 01)
07:00.0 USB controller [0c03]: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1042A USB 3.0 Host Controller [1b21:1142]
08:00.0 USB controller [0c03]: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1042A USB 3.0 Host Controller [1b21:1142]

[ozsouth]

@peppyy - Ok, your Liteon controller shows but onboard doesn't. Interesting - hard to chase drivers down for onboard then. Be interesting to see what my last suggested command (firmware) shows.

[peppyy]

dmesg | grep irmware just returns to prompt. I am looking to see if the video card includes audio That may be what is showing up there?

[peppyy]

Pupsysinfo can't find the eithernet controller either however it does find the audio, which I believe is the graphics card.
Audio device
• Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
• VendorID=AMD/ATI RV630 HDMI Audio
• VendorID=Radeon HD 2600 PRO/XT / HD 3610
• VendorID=1002 DeviceID=aa08
• Kernel Driver=snd_hda_intel
• Kernel Module=snd_hda_intel

[ozsouth]

@peppyy - ok so no missing firmware. Despite having been no help on this one, have you other issues that perhaps others may assisit with?

[bigpup]

You are assuming this motherboard has no defects and all hardware is working OK.

First go into the motherboards bios setup and see if it has everything to do with graphics setup correctly.
I can only guess what settings it has.
Look for anything like auto or enable for graphics settings.
Auto usually is safe to select.

May be good to reset the bios to default settings. Should be setting to do that.

ATI 2600 pro card

See what Pup-Sysinfo->Devices->Display->Summary shows for the driver being used?

About processor usage.
menu->System->CPU Frequency Scaling Tool
See what governor is being used.
I suggest setting it to performance.
That should provide max performance of the processor.

Desktop computers do not benefit from ondemand or power save governing.

Well, you do have to be doing something very high demanding to get the processor to use more than 1 or 2 cores.

[peppyy]

I have been sorting through it for a couple days and have found some clues but no real answers yet. I still am getting used to the uefi bios and several other things. My biggest issue is that in realtime applications it isn't using any more than 10% of the systems capacity, i/e processors and video resources. I was hoping to be able to use it for audio and video editing. I will do some more investigation and let you know what I come up with.

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV630 PRO [Radeon HD 2600 PRO] [1002:9589]
Subsystem: VISIONTEK RV630 PRO [Radeon HD 2600 PRO] [1545:3330]
Kernel driver in use: radeon
Kernel modules: radeon

Requested by /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Depth (bits, or planes): 24
Modules requested to be loaded: glx
Drivers requested to be loaded: radeon

[peppyy]

governor is set to "on demand"
I do know the bios has different settings for that, I can check them when I reboot.

I was attempting to create an animated title in Blender and it took about 8 minutes. I got a screenshot while it was crunching with Lite Task Manager appimage that shows the cpu usage but I don't have an image host right now.

[bigpup]

governor is set to "on demand"

Set it to performance!!

what scaling driver is being used?

[peppyy]

OpenGL 2D/3D Rendering:
• Direct Rendering: Yes
• Vendor: X.Org
• Renderer: AMD RV630 (DRM 2.50.0 / 5.4.53, LLVM 10.0.0)
• Version: 3.0 Mesa 20.0.8

VGA controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV630 PRO [Radeon HD 2600 PRO] [1002:9589]
• Kernel Driver: radeon
• Memory Used by Driver: 1308.00 KB
• Path: /lib/modules/5.4.53/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/radeon.ko
• Description: ATI Radeon
• Video RAM: 256M total, 256M prefetchable

It may be the version of blender I installed in PPM that doesn't allow gpu rendering. I will reboot and reset the bios for performance and see what happens.

[bigpup]

I will reboot and reset the bios for performance and see what happens.

You change this in the menu->System->CPU Frequency Scaling tool

[peppyy]

I am gaining! my latest attempt to render a title. I think if I can get the gpu to link up I may have it.

Bear in mind I am running from ram with no save file and appimages.

[peppyy]

Thanks Bigpup, I tried that first and it didn't seem to work until I went to the bios and set performance first. Might be time to find a drive and do a frugal install. Going to have to rob some parts from my other computer though.

[bigpup]

ASUS m5a99fx pro r2.0 motherboard

I would spend some time looking closely at setting options in the UEFI setup of this motherboard.
Like most of the Asus motherboards, there are all kinds of tweaking settings for everything.

I would do a search on the ASUS web site for any UEFI bios updates for this motherboard.
Do not just install an update, but see what it is suppose to provide.
If something you do not need, no need to update.
But sometimes it may fix something you do need and use.

[TorC]

Looks like a fine mobo.
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/Soc ... PRO_R2.pdf
Have fun playing with it!

[peppyy]

I have been plugging away at it, now on a Frugal install. Currently I have my Berringer u-control plugged in for sound and that works for now. Most of my hardware I have in stock is too old for the motherboard, pci vs pcie. I have a nice old soundblaster platinum I will install in the available slot once I remove the temporary nic, the rest are 16x and 1x pcie. Really tempted to wipe the win-x ssd and install on that.

Bios is up to date since the person who gave it to me had it set to auto update.

My old computer has tahr64 6.0.5 on an ssd, might try booting this one on that drive and see what it does. I think the 3.14 kernel might have an issue with some of the hardware though. It appears however the realtek nic on my old one uses the same driver for this one.

I miss (pupscan) on the new one.

[bigpup]

tempted to wipe the win-x ssd and install on that.

If this is saying Windows OS is on the SSD and you maybe want to keep it installed.

Use the lick installer program to install Puppy alongside Windows on the SSD.
https://github.com/noryb009/lick

[bigpup]

I miss (pupscan) on the new one.

Pup-Sysinfo replaced it.
Pup-Sysinfo gives you a lot more information

[peppyy]

Thanks again Bigpup. The problem I have with pupsysinfo is I no longer have the ability to "blacklist" or "add" a module like I used to be able to. I got used to having it in the sys-apps and can't seem to find the same thing (or similar) in the menu. I have to admit I am a little rusty since I started this. I am in my 60s now Guess I will have to back to code.

I also just realized that this forum is a bit different than the last one. Wanted to give you a thanks, then finally found there a place to do that

The installed windows was from another person and although it has the licensee married to the motherboard,I don't plan to use it. I found in the uefi bois a way to choose "other os" and have been able to boot Puppy on another HD just fine. My only worry is that it always says "Windows Boot Manager" as the first option... until I unplugged the drive. Then I was able to drag-and-drop the preferred boot drive. I think I should be able to format it with g-parted and solve the boot issue since fossa-64-.9.5 allows for uefi?

[peppyy]

tempted to wipe the win-x ssd and install on that.

If this is saying Windows OS is on the SSD and you maybe want to keep it installed.

Use the lick installer program to install Puppy alongside Windows on the SSD.
https://github.com/noryb009/lick

I looked at that and it appears that during install you need a fat32 boot partition to install either frugal or full. That is why I grabbed an old sata drive and did it that way. Might have missed something there. It didn't allow me to install to a reserved ntfs partition in frugal so I took the easy route

[peppyy]

Okay, I can't seem to find out what these connectors are for on the GPU. are they for sound? Oh, and I don't have the password for win 10 on the hard drive he gave me. I guess I could reset it and get a MS account but it has been years since I dealt with win.

[peppyy]

Just an update. Puppy had a melt down on the old drive I temporarily added. Found out that the real problem was a stick of ram that wasn't seated correctly.

I found the settings in the bios to disable the onboard nic and audio and reset everything else to where it should have been and I am back-live testing. everything looks much better with only + / - 1% cpu usage instead of the 6% before.

Benchmarks are incredible now, criptohash runs just shy of 800mb/s and fibonacci finishes in 0.73 seconds. Looking forward to getting it finished now.

[allendiggity]

what these connectors are for on the GPU

They're for connection of a crossfire (AMD's SLI implementation) cable for using two GPUs as one.

[peppyy]

Thanks, I had a feeling but I wasn't sure. The mobo is set up for crossfire so if I had another of the same cards I could link them.

[peppyy]

so... I am on my old computer again on my backup drive, on wired Internet. Bit the bullet and installed my wireless card (Intel 5300) which worked fine on the old computer and my ssd with thar 64 6.0.5 which booted right up on the new hardware. For some reason, (possibly bios?) the wifi card is not detected on either fossa or thar. Searched all over and cant get it to work, even on tahr64 which ran the card in the old computer..

Tried grep, nothing and hardinfo, nothing. Is it possible that the new motherboard simply refuses to use wifi?

[mikewalsh]

@peppyy :-

You know what? Unless you really, REALLY need Windoze for anything AT ALL, I'd get rid of the damn thing. It chews up disk space, digs its smelly claws into everything it can find, takes over your computer and generally makes a flamin' nuisance of itself. And that's before you even start to actually use it.....!!

'Twas the very first thing I did when buying this Pavilion tower a year ago. Out came a Slacko 570 CD, and I nuked the Win 10 that was installed on it with extreme prejudice. Runs a quad-core Pentium Gold at nearly 4 GHz, with RAM upgraded from just 4 GB to 32GB over the course of last year; I added a new Nvidia card, gutted my Seagate Expansion desktop drive & and put the 3 TB Barracuda out of it as a second internal drive, giving me around 5 TB storage. Running Puppy, I now have a machine that'll kick sand in Win 10's face, and cock a leg up against it for good measure..!

Haven't had so much fun in years....

(I understand that if you set-up a Windoze 10 install from scratch, so long as you have it registered, and the details stored on MyCrudSoft's servers, you can wipe it off your hard drive. So long as you stay with the same hardware, you can re-install again at any point in the future and you're straight-away 'legal' with it again....)

But if you ask me, that SSD would be put to far better use running Puppy!

<snip>...and fibonacci finishes in 0.73 seconds...</snip>

(BTW, my best Fibonacci result, to date, has been around 0.19 seconds. Straight up! )

Mike.