09 Feb 2024 : seems that the production driver for NVidia on Linux is working well. I have also begun testing with CUDA 12.3 on the test Linux system. See : https://www.genunix.com/dclarke/esther/pentium_G4500_esther/esther_screwed_to_a_wall_with_GP100_m.png Meanwhile testing on FreeBSD 15.0 CURRENT is still up in the air. Which is to say ... I am working on it.

07 Feb 2024 : finally managed to get the recent NVidia driver built into the latest stable Linux kernel with some hackary. The NVidia folks seem to know that their Linux drivers are a borked up stinking mess and are working on it. They say. In the mean time the NVidia devs continue to use APU calls and other internal calls that are just plain wrong. This leads to some sort of breakage every so often. Every other month or so. Anyways I managed to get NVidia 535.154.05 rev driver for Linux built onto a machine with Linux 6.7.4 kernel. At the moment some old binaries I left behind ( compiled with CUDA 11.8 ) seem to at least work. Maybe. The trick, as per usual, is to install the NVidia CUDA compiler stuff that is required as per the NVidia Money Extraction matrix seen in document : https://docs.nvidia.com/deploy/cuda-compatibility/index.html#use-the-right-compat-package There we see that 535.x rev driver demands CUDA 12.2 or 12.3 and thus the usual flail begins.

29 Jan 2024 : the grind continues wherein I shall try to document every itty bitty step that is needed for a FreeBSD server install. The objective is to have two ZFS ZPools where on of them is just for booting the machine and the other is for the heavy duty traffic. When I say traffic here I mean to say virtual machines all under the wonderful control of bhyve(8) and cirrinad which is still in progress. See endless pictures and crud at : https://www.genunix.com/dclarke/freebsd_server/

27 Jan 2024 : The situation with NVMe storage is more complex than I initially expected. At least for FreeBSD where there are two key drivers to expose the NVMe devices. There is nda(4) and also nvd(4) and they provide interesting ( valuable? ) features. A cool introduction was written on the topic by Jim Harris and Warner Losh and it is quite readable to just about anybody. Feel free to give it a read at : https://www.genunix.com/dclarke/freebsd_server/nvme/FreeBSD-and-NVM-Express.pdf The real issue here is that there are two separate ways to deal with the NVMe devices and thus we need to test both. What is the value of the nvd(4) versus the nfa(4)? Well I do not know and likely need to test the hell out of it. Therefore .. I shall.

25 Jan 2024 : Seems I need to update the schedule more often? The objective today is to begin documentation on the FreeBSD server install and configuration procedure. Similar to the stuff I did for FreeBSD install into VMware which you can see at : https://www.genunix.com/dclarke/freebsd_vmware/ However, today it is all about a server install and the real objectuve is to get bhyve to virtualize a Linux vm with PCI device passthru of an NVidia Quadro GPU. This should work based on some previous tests done last week. The real trick is to get NVidia to not be a total jerk about the hypervisor technology and let CUDA stuff run.

10 Aug 2023 : a disaster reovery procedure has been tested with FreeBSD in various configs. All with ZFS. The total migration from hardware over to VMware and then back again has been done over and over. With multiple ZPools. So that is cool. Next on the list is a hand rolled initrd for a Linux server. Why hand rolled? Well, to be fair, getting Linux to run at all on SPARCv9 is a struggle. One must always ask "Why do this?" with the only answer being "because it may work." May. No promise. The Gentoo situation on SPARCv9 is not bad at all. Not great. Certainly not perfect but it works. More or less. Building a custom kernel has been done and that took over four days on an old old Sun Netra t105 type machine that was lovingly called the "flapjack". However there is no obvious way to create a custom initrd and I still do not know if GRUB will do what it should do.

22 Jul 2023 : A pile of work has been happening to sort out a disaster recovery procedure for FreeBSD servers. the key problem here is that we must support ZFS Zpools as well as the UEFI mess that Microsoft shoves down our throats. The need for a circa 1988 MS-DOS filesystem to boot a modern server feels like something being shoved up another orifice. Thank you Microsoft. Not even a kiss on the cheek. Other things on this mess of a website are being actively fixed up as well as still other things passively ignored.

23 Mar 2023 : six hours stream done from 00:00 UTC all about flail with FreeBSD jails That was six hours straight messing with VMware and FreeBSD and a jail on ZFS.

24 Mar 2023 : time to be determined. more flail with jails 23:00HRs UTC - get a FreeBSD 14.0 CURRENT buildworld going - ensure powerd is working ? Note, we see that powerd does in fact work and without it the machine tries to cook itself.

25 Mar 2023 : time to be determined. more flail with jails - bridge stuff and epair stuff and jails ? - small internal DNS server setup perhaps

26 -> 29 March 2023 : mess around with FreeBSD installs into VMware Workstation and then try to document the process.

30 Mar 2023 : capture 300 or more screenshot images to document the install of FreeBSD UNIX and also Devuan Linux into a VMware Workstation virtual machine config. Seems to be done! At least for Linux. See Link on the left side of this page. See --> Linux into VMware Virtual Machine

07 Apr 2023 : The FreeBSD install has a really cool ZFS config! The documentation for that procedure will be very long and full of ZFS Zpool goodness with the LXDE lightweight desktop. At some point I want to cover off the KDE desktop which works great with FreeBSD UNIX. It is a sight to behold!