User:Ajak/Raptor

The Raptor is a 2U server chassis built around a 32 core ARM64 processor, the APM883832-X3, which is the only processor in the X-Gene 3 line according to Wikichip.

I received three different kinds of firmware that need to be updated on the system. Two (BMC, UEFI) can be updated via the web interface (or probably even the IPMI interface). I was never able to get the other firmware (which is only labeled "firmware") updated via the web interface or via ipmitool. Instead, I used a proprietary AMI tool called YafuFlash. Note that if you try to flash both firmwares and something goes wrong, you will brick your Raptor. You might be able to flash the firmware chips directly using a dedicated flashing tool. When I broke my Raptor in this way, I tried using an EZP2019 SPI Programmer to do this but I was never successful in flashing the chips. I only recovered it by sourcing flash chips with updated firmware.

Once all of the firmwares are updated, the system should be able to install Gentoo from any Linux live system that boots with UEFI on ARM64.

By default, all 8 of the case fans run at 100%, which is very loud for a residential setting. Due to not wanting to disturb those who I share housing with, I have not extensively tested the exact way to fix this, but I do have a "shotgun" approach to set the fans to ~30%:

I have not explored a way to automatically ramp up fan speed to deal with higher temperatures. It was suggested in #gentoo-arm on IRC that using both power supplies (which I generally don't do due to a lack of necessity and lack of available sockets) and disabling manual fan control (the "shotgun" above) would solve this problem, but i have not tested this enough to confirm.

With this configuration and with an ambient indoor temperature of around 73°F, my Raptor idles around 50°C:

Unfortunately, when the case is shut the power supply fans will now be the biggest source of noise. I haven't found a way to get them to spin down any lower than ~10k RPM (seemingly ~50% of their max), despite the fact that their temperature is relatively low: