What follows is a discussion I just had with George France about the
status of the linux kernel for alpha. They (He, Richard Henderson, Ivan
Kokshaysky, and HP) are maintaining it for the RedHat 7.2 release for
alpha. They are still working on 2.4.18.
He is the "technical liason" to RedHat and SUSE for HP on alpha. As
such he is the best place for debian to get up-to-date patches for the
kernel on alpha. (see URL below)
Now, are these patches in the debian kernel? Is there anywhere within
debian to get them? (i.e. a kernel-source-alpha package as there is for
HPPA and ia64 or a kernel-patch package)
Perhaps there is a fix in here for the mysterious ethernet hang that
several people have seen...and the poor scheduler and vm behavior that
plauges me daily...
Cheers,
-- Bob
----- Forwarded message from George France <france@handhelds.org> -----
> From: George France <france@handhelds.org>
> To: Bob McElrath <bob+debian-alpha@mcelrath.org>
> Subject: Fwd: Re: Alpha kernels
> X-Spam-Level:
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded Message ----------
>
> Subject: Re: Alpha kernels
> Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 15:50:55 -0400
> From: George France <france@handhelds.org>
> To: Helge Kreutzmann <kreutzm@itp.uni-hannover.de>,
> debian-alpha@lists.debian.org
>
> On Saturday 19 April 2003 07:36 am, Helge Kreutzmann wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 01:49:25AM -0500, Bob McElrath wrote:
> > > Where does one go to find *current* *working* alpha kernels?
>
> ftp://alpha.crl.dec.com/pub/linux/people/france/kernel-2.4.18/
>
> These are the bits that we are currently testing at HP. These bits are very
> stable except for a few issues on higher end systems that are being
> addressed. We hope to have most of these bits into 2.4.22 and 2.5.70. There
> are still some bits / drivers that will never be in the stock kernel.org
> kernels. This includes but is not limited to the ferel driver and the
> forward port of 2.4.3 tulip driver. I would suggest that when 2.4.18-27 for
> RH-7.2 for alpha is offically available for download, that you download the
> src rpm and dig through the patches. All of the patches from us should have
> 'hp' in the file name. Yes, these files are rpms and you are going to need
> to extract the kernel and the initrd for use on Debian systems. Maybe, one
> of these days, if I get a spare moment, I will port some of the patches to
> the Debian kernel, but I would not wait for me..........
>
> > ftp.xx.kernel.org, replace xx by your country, i.e. de for germany. If
> > you need certain enterprise features or have a little supported
> > machine, then you should download the latest kernel from HP
> > (search on the RedHat axp-list for details) and apply the appropriate
> > patches -- but almost everything should work out of the box.
> >
> > > Who is the maintainer of the alpha arch?
>
> At kernel.org in the MAINTAINERS file, linux-2.5.68:
>
> ALPHA PORT
> P: Richard Henderson
> M: rth@twiddle.net
> S: Odd Fixes for 2.4; Maintained for 2.5.
> P: Ivan Kokshaysky
> M: ink@jurassic.park.msu.ru
> S: Maintained for 2.4; PCI support for 2.5.
>
> > There is no "maintainer" as far as I know. Various people contribute
> > to the alpha relevant bits. Alpha is rather closly tied in the kernel
> > itself (the original port was made by Linus himself) and has been
> > working very good for ages now. There are only some enterprise
> > features (high load on some network cards, large memory configuration
> > and similar things) "not yet merged".
> >
> > > Is there anyone maintaining a tree specifically for alpha?
>
> yes, HP currently maintains and updates RH-7.2 for Alpha.
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> Best Regards,
>
>
>
> --George
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
>
----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from George France <france@handhelds.org> -----
> From: George France <france@handhelds.org>
> To: Bob McElrath <bob@mcelrath.org>
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Alpha kernels
> X-Spam-Level:
>
> Your welcome.
>
> I do try to get most of the bits back into the kernel.org kernel. Ivan and
> Richard are both very helpful. Most of our customers use RH-7.2, which has
> a very stable 2.4.9 kernel, so there is almost no need for them to use a
> kernel from kernel.org, as these customers are more interested in using their
> systems than having the latest kernel. In the next couple of weeks, I hope
> to release the HP version 2.4.18-27 for RH-7.2. (yes, I maintain RH-7.2 for
> Alpha, as part of the contract that HP has with RedHat)
>
> Best Regards,
>
>
> --George
> george.france2@hp.com
> Technical Liaison to RedHat and SuSe for HP on the Alpha Architecture
>
>
> On Wednesday 23 April 2003 04:04 pm, Bob McElrath wrote:
> > Thank you! This is the answer I was looking for!
> >
> > Please please please feed these back to the kernel folks. There have
> > been many, many problems in the stock linus 2.4 kernel.
> >
>
----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from George France <france@handhelds.org> -----
> From: George France <france@handhelds.org>
> To: Bob McElrath <bob@mcelrath.org>
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Alpha kernels
> X-Spam-Level:
>
> On Wednesday 23 April 2003 04:39 pm, Bob McElrath wrote:
> > George France [france@handhelds.org] wrote:
> >
> > Well, at this point there is a significant community using linux on old
> > multia's, alphastations, and LX/SX machines. Most of us have migrated
> > to debian since without a support contract from HP, redhat appears to be
> > a dead-end.
> >
> > Even with a support contract from HP, alphas are a dead end. So for
> > most of us, community support (i.e. debian) is the only option.
> >
> > RedHat is up to version 9 now... I had no idea 7.2 was still being
> > maintained by anyone.
>
> ftp2.compaq.com and alpha.crl.dec.com has 3 or 4 security updates and / or
> bugfixes every week. Maybe this is something that should be discuss on the
> mailing list??
>
> Best Regards,
>
> --George
>
> >
> > I will take a look at the patches in your kernel.
> >
> > Thanks again,
>
> Your Welcome,
>
>
> --George
----- End forwarded message -----
Bob McElrath [Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison, Department of Physics]
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the
freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
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