Building CERN ROOT on Arch Linux ARM

Mostly want to document how I'm building ROOT on ARM64 Arch Linux. The process it quite trivial but in case I forgot how to do it in the future. My ARM server runs Arch Linux. Which should come with ROOT in the official repository. But as you guessed, it didn't. Which indicates somehow ROOT builds...

The journey of running Arch Linux as an enterprise production server

So... When my last, recent contract work have reached the deployment phase. We found that our client is the only department in their entire enterprise that runs Windows Servers and Windows Servers only! Yet our code only runs on Linux and FreeBSD (and HaikuOS if you try really hard). We've never expected to have to...

Solving QCA6174 WiFi crashing, high ping, unusable on Linux

One glaring issue I have with my laptop (using a Qualcomm NIC) is the ridiculous high pings while using WiFi. > 400ms for some packets to reach a near by machine and back is totally unacceptable. It makes ssh unusably slow and even mosh on the edge of barely usable. The situation is so bad...

How to run FreeBSD/ARM64 in a VM on an ARM Linux server

COSCUP 2020 just ended and I learned a lot in the two days. One of the many cool things is that I can actually run FreeBSD on my server! So be it inside a VM. Whatever, it is still very cool to have actual UNIX running on ARM. Friends in the FreeBSD community at COSCUP...

HoneyComb LX2K update 1 – after 2 months

It has been 2 month since my last post about my ARM workstation/server. I think it's time for an update for how thing are going and if there's problems. In sort: no. There's not major issus with the board. NXP and SolidRun have done a very good job building it. Performance Without a doubt, the...

Rocking a 16 core ARM workstation for data analysis and NAS – HoneyComb LX2K

I preordered the HoneyComb LX2K workstation board last October and I has finally arrived and I finally got time to build my ARM workstation. The process is challenging and fun! Building of the machine The LX2K is a very capable 16-core ARM workstation board selling at 750$ (550$ when I ordered, early access price). Providing...

CERN ROOT tips and tricks

This is more of a note for myself. Over time, I've learned some useful fact about ROOT that I now wish I have known when I started using ROOT. Hopefully as a ROOT user, you could also find  some of these helpful. Tell ROOT to not show the startup banner You do: user@somepc:~$ root -l...

Hacking code generated from ONNC Cortex-M backend to run on Cortex-A

Brute force software porting time again. This time I'm tasked to port some C generated from ONNC's Cortex-M backend to run on a Cortex A class processor. Sounds like a bad idea? It totally is! But I need that for research purposes - to add support for our academic AI accelerator - and writing and...

SAS vs ROOT. Roasting SAS and comparing to ROOT

Recently, guys from the department of Finance asked on the school's discussion group for someone to help them in a data analysis contest (Hosted by SAS). What can go wrong? I have heard good things about SAS since I'm 10. My mother's company uses SAS extensively. In the worst case we can write ML algorithms...

Why you should build your WebApp on C++

There's a lot of NDA involved, so expect me to gloss through details. My recent work involves writing a custom search engine for a client. It have to search through millions of records in a very short time according to a custom heuristic. Then sort and send the results back to the client. By boss...