On Thu, 2014-02-20 at 16:19 +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > On Thursday 20 February 2014 14:21:10 Ian Campbell wrote: > > On Thu, 2014-02-20 at 14:53 +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > > > On Thursday 20 February 2014 12:51:04 Ian Campbell wrote: > > > * ixp4xx is too different from the others and I don't think it's > > > possible to turn it over to multiplatform. > > > * I see a iop32x_defconfig in svn that you didn't mention here, > > > but it's basically the same problem as ixp4xx. > > > > This is only in Wheezy and not in trunk (which will become Jessie). AIUI > > support for these has been dropped for the next version of Debian so > > Wheezy is the last one and we don't need to worry about upgrade for > > these. > > Ok, I see. > > > TBH I'm not sure that ixp4xx isn't in the same boat, I suppose we'll > > see. > > For all I know, the only interesting ixp4xx platforms are the consumer > products listed on http://www.nslu2-linux.org/, the other ones you support > are development boards that tend to exist only in very small quantities. > > The main limitation would be the amount of installed RAM, which is > either 32MB or 64MB depending on the machine for these. Running a > modern Debian with these constraints is probably possible but > doesn't sound like fun. ;-) Our most pressing constraint has actually been the size of the kernel partition in flash, which is only ~1.4 MB on some of the iop32x and ixp4xx machines (and ~1.5 MB on one of the orion5x machines). We've modularised as much as possible and turned off some of the features that are otherwise standard across all Debian architectures. But I got fed up with trying to make it fit, and no-one else stepped up to maintain the reduced configurations, so the last time iop32x went over the limit I removed it. As Ian hinted, ixp4xx might follow. > Also, the upstream kernel port isn't that well maintained, a lot > the development seems to have happened in OpenWRT and not mainlined, > including a dozen new machines that were already ported in 2009. > > Then again, Martin Michlmayr has instructions for running Wheezy > on the 32MB nslu2, and I guess as long as he's interested in the > hardware, new versions of Debian will keep running on it. [...] Martin is not currently active in Debian kernel maintenance. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. - Adlai Stevenson
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