Hello debian-alpha! I started being more active in alpha port, becuase I now own about 12 Alpha machines which was going to be thrown away. I was using before this some DEC and Compaq alpha machines from time to time, but mostly using Tru64 UNIX. Now is time to run them on my own, using best opearting system (Debian). I'm still fighting with some hardware issues on few of them, but after some workaraound, everything works using Debian Lenny. Few of this computers I own now, will be as used as workstations (webbrowser, openoffice, ssh, etc., X connections to other hosts), as well as remote shell servers on which students can easly test portability and performance of their programs. Information about lack of squeezy for Alpha, made me look more into some fundamental aspects of Alpha, like kernel, libc, and other bugs. I'm investigeting this bugs now, like zdump bug, eglibc failures, kernel problems, udma problems. I also would like to test gcc-4.6 more (already do this on i386), and gdc, llvm and ldc compilers. I will also build debian-installer and installer images for alpha, and look what problems are present. I'm also going to try build and porting AdvFS [4] to recent kernels or fuse. I program personally and profesionally, in various programming languages in various areas, so hope I will stress an alpha port in wide way. I also started monitoring linux-alpha mailing list. Today i read FTPmaster notes [1] that alpha architecture, is going to be completly removed from Debian. :( I really would like to have wheezy for Alpha, as this machines are still pretty good and I really like them. (stability, simplicity of architecture, performance). I know one day alpha will be removed from Debian for good, becasue i know it is dead architecture (unfortunetly), and it will be never be back. But still want to prolong removal for more some more time. How I can help? What are most needed problems to be solved? If this will help, i can easly turn two machines into buildd, and thrid as porterboxes. I have 10Mbps network connectivity (IPv4 and IPv6), and local Debian mirror (including alpha and source) accesible using 100Mbps connection (using FTP/HTTP/NFS). Machines have 1GB of memory, and multiple SCSI disk each. I can try putting more into single box easly (like 2GB of memory, and lots of SCSI disks). I'm administrating multiple machines and networks so have expierience in this matter. Personally beyond hardware I have mostly time for testing, and some basic fixes, and eventually finding deeper a source of problem, becasue currently do not have time for really developing alpha port. My other question is how much debian developers, and other users wants to help to keep alpha port still live? Popularity contest isn't very promising indicator [3]. Extrapolation gives 0, in year 2013. :( I do not think recent drop can be explained by lack of squeezy release. Part of drop can be explained by the fact that many servers were running Debian Etch, and people stoped using this machines entirely (and now probably tries to sell them on eBay) after upgrades. IMHO alpha is still present in some industry areas, but most of them run Tru64 or OpenVMS. They will use alpha for some more time (mabe even a decade), but they cannot run Linux anyway. Faster they will switch to software alpha emulation using Intel Core2 or Intel/HP Itanium. But alpha is also quite present in academia and many people at universities (like me), had or have access to the Alphas, and would like to run something still maintained and open-source. [*] Another thing to consider is Debian Archive criteria [2], states that "If an architecture fails to be included in 2 successive official releases, it is moved out of the official archive (...)" so essentially and formally, we should aim at being included in wheezy. :) If somebody interested about Alpha and do not own hardware, or want some more, i can arrange some almost free hardware for one or two persons. I can deliver it in Poland, and probably Czech Republic or Slovatia. Another interesting aspect to be consider is that, similary to me, some other hobbysts can now cheaply own some used AlphaServers and AlphaStations, and in most cases they would like to use Linux instead of Tru64 or NT. So it is possible that actually some users will come. Regards, Witek [*] PS. If you use alpha and do not have popularity-contest package installed or enabled, do it now. :) If you can do not use noatime on /usr filesystem, to make popularity-contest even more accurate. [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/03/msg00015.html [2] http://ftp-master.debian.org/archive-criteria.html [3] http://popcon.debian.org/stat/sub-alpha.png [4] http://advfs.sourceforge.net/ -- Witold Baryluk JID: witold.baryluk // jabster.pl
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