[PlanetCCRMA] no supported simd instruction sets

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 16:32 -0700, jonathan segel wrote:
> On May 1, 2007, at 3:55 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-04-30 at 17:47 -0700, Jonathan Segel wrote:
> >> On Apr 30, 2007, at 4:54 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> >>>> On Mon, 2007-04-30 at 16:42 -0700, jonathan wrote:
> >>>> i was having  a problem with freqtweak, but now i'm realizing that
> >>>> the problem is much bigger.
> >>>> this is in fc6, on a pentium III sharp laptop, i've been bouncing
> >>>> installs back and forth between the two large drive partitions,
> >>>> presently one is fc6 and one is fc5.
> >>>> fc5 is fine.
> >>>> booting jack in fc6, i get the "No supported SIMD instruction sets
> >>>> detected" in the message box of qjackctl.
> >>>
> >>> Could you copy the output of "jackd -d alsa -d hw" into an email?  
> >>> (and
> >>> "rpm -q -i jack-audio-connection-kit"?) This is probably related to
> >>> another bug/feature someone else found when trying to use a Duron
> >>> processor. When there's no SIMD instructions it should just use the
> >>> normal copy/add functions.
> >>
> >> hmm. it isn't finding hardware now, only the modem is listed in the
> >> qjackctl  hardware availability...
> >
> > Yes, there's something else wrong in your setup. I exhumed a very old
> > machine from our hardware graveyard (PIII based) and went through the
> > "install fc6 and jack" there. It is apparently working fine.
> >
> > The "No supported SIMD instruction sets detected" is normal, it means
> > the CPU does not have sse2, 3dnow, etc and jack cannot use the vector
> > based assembler speedup routines for copying or adding buffers  
> > together.
> > But it does work normally after that, at least in my machine.

I may add this was with the regular Fedora kernel. At this point I am
not building a regular i586 kernel on Planet CCRMA for fc6. Was this on
fc5 or fc6? Which kernel? ("uname -r" to know). 

> i see. doing a little research i discovered sort of the same things,  
> reading about people doing video stuff with pIII machines.
> well, what's weird is that supercollider is saying the same thing  
> when i try to boot a server, it shows up for a second in qjackctl  
> then dies.

Are you using emacs?

> if i boot in a regular non-rt non-planet kernel, my regular hardware  
> shows up at least, the intel 810 set. same problem with SC though.

Yes, I just tried sc and it does not boot on a piii machine (after I
changed the selinux preference to allow text relocations), this is with
the regular Fedora kernel but the Planet CCRMA pam installed to get
realtime priority access by default. I would not be surprised if it
requires sse2 or something that a piii can't provide. 

> anyway. is there a relatively easy way (command wise) to reinstall  
> the entire fc6 and keep my home directory? or reinstall the entire  
> thing and not keep /home and then just copy what i need from  
> elsewhere...?

Hmmm, too many questions at once :-)

The easiest way to deal with home directories is to set up a partition
for /home when you do the initial install. Then you could do multiple
installs using the same /home partition as long as you choose to not
format it (and only format "/" in the reinstall). You could also set up
a separate partition to "backup" home back and forth between installs. 

> or wait to do that with fc7...?

I don't anticipate fc7 to be different from fc6 in the areas you are
having problems with. 

> or get a new machine one of these days?

That is probably going to be necessary at some point in the near future,
sorry to say :-)

I'm testing this stuff in a dual 600MHz PIII with 256M of ram (an HP
Kayak) and it is already swapping with only a few programs running.
Linux has become bloated with age :-)

-- Fernando