Hi Uwe, On Sat, Apr 02, 2005 at 02:04:12PM +0200, Uwe Schindler wrote: > >> Before I build myself a custom kernel does anyone have any suggestions > >> on whether I should go with 2.4 or 2.6? Is 2.6 stable on an alpha and > >> would it probably be slower on such old hardware? > >2.6 currently has problems with support for a number of common (on alpha) > >qlogic chips. The corresponding driver is quite stable in 2.4.27. > >I've also found that I can't run hotplug on my alpha when running 2.6, as > >some miscellaneous driver that's loaded causes a kernel panic. Haven't > >tracked it down yet -- since I'm not running serial console, the details of > >the crash scroll off the screen and are lost. > I have a Alphastation 500/500 (== Alcor) with kernel 2.6.8-2_generic and > 2.6.10 runnig without any *driver* problems. The qlogicisp driver is in the > debian 2.6.8-2 kernel replaced by qla1280 (in pristine kernel in 2.6.10 - > debian backported the qla1280 extension for ISP cards) (be careful when > hotplug tries to load the older driver - two scsi drivers for the same card > crash...: Then this is a hotplug bug or kernel bug, I guess; has anyone filed a bug report against hotplug asking for it to point to the new driver for 2.6? > The Tulip driver works here fatastic with 2.6.8, but de4x5 also works (if > hotplug is used, blacklist tulip and enable de4x5 for your card). In some cases, de4x5 is reported to fail horribly; c.f. bug #294867. > The only problem with 2.6.8 and 2.6.10 here was a problem with irq > handling. In idle mode the kernel crashes sometimes in function > handle_IRQ_event (not in a driver!). Looking into the code I find out that > alpha was the only platform where this function diffs from all other > architectures (relict from 2.4.x?). After replacing the C code in this > function with the x86 code the kernel runs fine (file: > arch/alpha/kernel/irq.c). Ah, that sounds like the crash I was seeing, though it triggered only when running hotplug. Do you have a patch for this that could be sent to the Debian kernel maintainers? Cheers, -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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