NFSroot & Power4 (was Re: Debian non-x86 kernel arches)
On Sun, May 23, 2004 at 06:53:04PM +0200, Jens Schmalzing wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Troy Benjegerdes writes:
>
> > > Have you tried running the 2.6.6 kernel-image packages on them?
> >
> > No, all of them have > 4GB of memory, and a 32 bit kernel is quite
> > useless. Thus my strong interest in ppc64 gcc/glibc/etc ;)
>
> Fair enough :)
>
> Can you still give it at least a try? From 2.4 to 2.6, the
> Debian/PowerPC kernel-image packages changed quite radically, and we
> haven't had any reports on non-Apple machines so far. Not counting
> Sven's Pegasos, of course.
>
> Regards, Jens.
Our environment at the lab is a netboot+nfsroot setup... Is there a
reasonable way to make a debian kernel image nfsroot? You probably don't
want to include every network driver needed in-kernel, and include
nfsroot.
What is the state of initramfs? Is it at all useable?
The additional problem is I believe the pSeries firmware we have will
only netboot a zImage.. it can't use yaboot, etc, which means the zImage
would have to have a ramdisk image packed up with it. (FYI, pSeries is the
new name for rs6000, iSeries is the name for the old AS400)
Also, would it make more sense to have '-g5, -g5-smp, -pSeries-smp,
-iSeries-smp' kernels instead of power3 and power4 non-smp variants? Are
there any single-cpu power3/power4 machines?
My other hesitation to use 2.6 ppc32 power3/power4 kernels is that I'm
not aware of anyone at IBM actually maintaining the kernel source for a
32 bit kernel anymore.. all the work has gone to 64 bit kernels.
Personally, I'd be happy with completely depracating the -power3 and
-power4 kernels until we have a 64 bit biarch compiler package.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Troy Benjegerdes 'da hozer' hozer@hozed.org
Somone asked my why I work on this free (http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/)
software stuff and not get a real job. Charles Shultz had the best answer:
"Why do musicians compose symphonies and poets write poems? They do it
because life wouldn't have any meaning for them if they didn't. That's why
I draw cartoons. It's my life." -- Charles Shultz
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