Kernel 5.14

Version 5.14 of the Linux kernel has landed. Not much in PowerPC land this time around except for a few bug fixes, although one of the fixes repairs an issue that can hit certain hashtable-based CPUs (though I don't believe the POWER9 in HPTE mode is known to be affected), but there are some privacy-related features including memfd_secret() that creates a tract of memory even a compromised kernel can't look into, a new ioctl for ext4 filesystems to prevent information leaks, and of course core-based scheduling allowing restrictions on what processes may share cores as extra insurance against Spectre-type attacks (at the cost of less effective utilization, so this is largely more of interest to hosting providers rather than what you run on your own box). Other new features of note include a burstable "Completely Fair Scheduling" to allow a task group to roll over unused CPU quota under certain conditions, a cgroup "kill button" feature and some initial infrastructure for supporting signed BPF programs. Expect this version to appear in Fedora and other "leading edge" distributions soon.

OpenPOWER Firefox JIT update

As of this afternoon, the Baseline Interpreter-only form of the OpenPOWER JIT (64-bit little-endian) now passes all of the JIT tests except for the Wasm ones, which are being actively worked on. Remember, this is just the first of the three phases and we need all three for the full benefit, but it already yields a noticeable boost in my internal tests over the C++ interpreter. The MVP is Baseline Interpreter and Wasm, so once it passes the Wasm tests as well, it's time to pull it current with 91ESR. You can help.

Debian 11

Debian 11 bullseye is officially released, the latest stable version and the "other white meat" of the two big distros I suspect are commonly used on OpenPOWER workstations (Fedora being the other, and Ubuntu third). Little-endian 64-bit Power ISA (ppc64el) has been a supported architecture for Debian since 8 jessie. The updates are conservative but important, which is what you're looking for if you run Debian stable, such as kernel 5.10, GNOME 3.38, KDE Plasma 5.20, LXDE 11, LXQt 0.16, MATE 1.24, and Xfce 4.16, plus gcc 10.2 and LLVM 9 (with Clang 11). ISOs are already available on the mirrors. If you've updated, post your impressions in the comments.

Firefox 91 on POWER fur the fowk

Firefox 91 is out. Yes, it further improves cookie isolation and cleanup, has faster paint scheduling (noticeably, in some cases), and new JavaScript and DOM support. But for my money, the biggest news is the Scots support: aye, laddie, noo ye kin stravaig the wab lik Robert Burns did. We've waited tae lang fur this.

Anyway, Firefox 91 builds oot o the kist oa, er, Firefox 91 builds out of the box on OpenPOWER using the same .mozconfigs for Firefox 90; I made a wee change to the PGO-LTO patch since I messed up the diff the last time and didn't notice. The crypto issues in Fx90 are fixed in this release.

Meanwhile, the OpenPOWER JIT is now passing all but a handful of the basic tests in Baseline Interpreter mode, and some amount of Wasm, though this isn't nearly as far along. Ye kin hulp.

Tonight's game on OpenPOWER: System Shock Enhanced Edition

Yeah, I know we're doing a lot of FPSes in this series. It's what I tend to play, so deal. Tonight we'll be playing System Shock, the classic hacker-shooter (seems appropriate), courtesy of Shockolate, which adds higher resolutions, better controls, mouselook and OpenGL support. Our drug dealers at GoG, who don't pay us a cent for this kind of shameless plug and really ought to, make the game files easily available as System Shock Enhanced Edition. However, you can also use the DOS or Windows 95 CD-ROM; I tested with both. (I'll talk about the Macintosh release in a moment.)

Shockolate requires CMake and SDL2, and FluidSynth is strongly advised. Don't let Shockolate build with its bundled versions: edit CMakeLists.txt and change all "BUNDLED" libraries to "ON" (don't forget the quote marks). Once set, building should work out of the box (tested on Fedora 34):

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make -j24 # or as you like
cd ..
ln -s build/systemshock systemshock

(The last command is to make running the binary a little more convenient.)

Now we need to provide the resources. For FluidSynth, you'll need a soundfont (I used the default that comes with Fedora's package). If you have the DOS/Windows CD-ROM, insert it now. We will assume it is mounted at /run/media/censored/EA.

mkdir res
cd res
ln -s /usr/share/soundfonts/default.sf2 default.sf2
cp -R /run/media/censored/EA/hd/data .
cp -R /run/media/censored/EA/hd/sound .
chmod -R +w . # if copying from CD makes things read only
cd data
rm -f intro.res
rm -f objprop.dat
cp /run/media/censored/EA/cdrom/data/* .
cd ../..

Then start the game with ./systemshock. The resolutions and choice of renderer (software or OpenGL) are set from the in-gameplay menu (press ESC). Shockolate also implements WASD motion (as well as the classic arrow keys) and F to toggle mouselook. Note that OpenGL is somewhat darker than software mode. It's not clear if this is actually a bug.

Playing System Shock Enhanced Edition in Shockolate is just a more convenient way to get the DOS assets since Shockolate just uses those and not any of the patches (more about this in a second); gameplay and features are the same. Also, GoG only distributes it as a Windows installer and the file structure is a bit different. Use innoextract to break the installer EXE apart into a separate directory and delete everything but sshock.kpf, which is a cloaked ZIP archive containing the game assets. In your Shockolate source directory (note that this also creates res/, so if you did the steps above delete it first),

mkdir ssee
cd ssee
unzip /path/to/sshock.kpf
cd ..
mkdir res
mv ssee/res/pc/hd/data res
cp ssee/res/pc/cdrom/data/* res/data/
mv ssee/res/pc/hd/sound res
rm -rf ssee # if you want
ln -s /usr/share/soundfonts/default.sf2 res/default.sf2

Then start the game with ./systemshock.

Oddly, although Shockolate was based on the (IMHO) superior Power Mac release, it doesn't seem to properly support its higher-resolution assets (SSEE does and includes a converted set, but the source for that — unlike Strife — isn't currently available). I actually own this version also. One rather unique reason to own it is because the cutscenes and audio files are all playable in QuickTime, so if you don't feel like slogging through the entire game you can just listen to the audio logs or go straight to the ending using a Mac emulator. However, you need to do a little song and dance to mount the HFS volume on Linux (as root):

losetup /dev/loop0 /dev/sr0 # or where your drive is
partx -av /dev/loop0

This will respond with something like

partition: none, disk: /dev/loop0, lower: 0, upper: 0
/dev/loop0: partition table type 'mac' detected
range recount: max partno=2, lower=0, upper=0
/dev/loop0: partition #1 added
/dev/loop0: partition #2 added

and you should see it mount in your desktop environment (note that many applications won't understand the resource fork). Do losetup -D before ejecting the physical disc. As a parenthetical note, since SSEE is presumably derived from the GPL-released Mac source code, you would think it, too, would be GPL. But I'm uncertain of the exact history there.

Salt the fries.