| 8 Jul 2025 |
 Emantor | I quickly skimmed the articles and it looks like this is a purely FPGA based switch design, so my guess is that the CPU is running within the FPGA if there is need for one. The specs of the FPGA look like it may be barely able to run linux, however I would not bet on that. | 12:59:31 |
| Emantor | If you want something that can run Linux it is a lot easier to look at the switches that OpenWRT recently added. | 13:01:03 |
 hexa (clat on linux when) | or buy one of the funny whitelabel switches that (used to) run cumulus linux | 13:03:44 |
| hexa (clat on linux when) | they come with onie, an installer environment that explicitly supports installing things to it | 13:04:35 |
| hexa (clat on linux when) | fun post wrt that https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/dell-switch-hacking | 13:04:59 |
| hexa (clat on linux when) | the problem will of course be broadcom firmware/drivers in most scenarios 🤪 | 13:05:19 |
 Molly Miller | i was about to say, that trick only works if you have a kernel driver for the asic, right? | 13:05:34 |
| Molly Miller | i have a number of whitelabel onie switches at work but they're all broadcom asics | 13:05:47 |
| hexa (clat on linux when) | the alternative is something from mellanox, but those are sfp+/sfp28 and larger only iirc | 13:05:49 |
| hexa (clat on linux when) | yeah, the mellanox ones have mainline support | 13:06:03 |
| hexa (clat on linux when) | the broadcom ones are fckd | 13:06:13 |
| Emantor | Broadcom, more like: https://github.com/mwarning/chaos-sticker-collection/blob/9f0415d815bbef4a01bf55bc3fe57bb75e4247bd/images/brokencom/brokencom.svg#L4 | 13:06:24 |
| hexa (clat on linux when) | so no copper connections | 13:06:27 |
 emily | yeah I hadn't actually read them when I said that 😆 | 13:06:43 |
| emily | I just saw "managed" | 13:06:47 |
| hexa (clat on linux when) | though you can do dacs and copper sfps | 13:06:49 |
| Molly Miller | short of yanking the cumulus kernel sources package and switchd binary debs from the nvidia mirror and hacking something together | 13:06:55 |
| hexa (clat on linux when) | * though you can do dacs/aocs and copper sfps | 13:06:58 |
| Molly Miller | which, well, probably isn't really worth the effort | 13:07:18 |
| emily | I wish I could justify the price of the https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/sn2010-linux-hacking-switchdev one | 13:07:42 |
| emily | I've looked at the OpenWrt switch support fairly recently but do you have a pointer to what new stuff they added? | 13:08:32 |
 magic_rb | In reply to @emilazy:matrix.org
I've looked at the OpenWrt switch support fairly recently but do you have a pointer to what new stuff they added? Why not the one i found, the onti something something in ali | 13:09:13 |
| magic_rb | In reply to @emilazy:matrix.org
I've looked at the OpenWrt switch support fairly recently but do you have a pointer to what new stuff they added? * | 13:09:20 |
| magic_rb | https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005005777395543.html | 13:09:35 |
| magic_rb | That ^ | 13:09:39 |
| Emantor | In reply to @emilazy:matrix.org
I've looked at the OpenWrt switch support fairly recently but do you have a pointer to what new stuff they added? I tried to find some references, mostly remembered it from the OpenWRT GPN session, let me check… | 13:09:41 |
| emily | well I'm sort of hoping I might get lucky and there'll be something cheap that is not MIPS, because you certainly can't run full NixOS on MIPS. | 13:09:48 |
| magic_rb | Oh lol | 13:10:00 |
| magic_rb | You want nixos on it :P | 13:10:05 |
| magic_rb | Yeah no nixos for me on networking equipment, my flatmate is slightly allergic to nix | 13:10:27 |
