Re: Future of Octeon MIPS hardware support
On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 8:24 PM Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> wrote:
>
> The main Ethernet driver for all Octeon MIPS SoCs has been disabled
> upstream in Linux 5.5, and will be removed in 5.6. The driver has been
> in "staging" (i.e. it didn't meet the usual standards for kernel code)
> ever since it was added in 2009. It recently stopped building, and
> didn't have a regular maintainer who could fix it. (There is a
> separate Ethernet driver for the management port, which seems to be
> still maintained.)
>
> The USB host driver for Octeon CN3xxx and CN5xxx SoCs will also be
> removed for similar reasons.
>
> * DSA: The removal of the Ethernet driver will affect the EdgeRouter
> Pro used for the Debian mips porterbox and some buildds. These do not
> seem to have any expansion slots useful for alternate network
> interfaces, so they will likely need to be replaced before buster EOL.
>
> * MIPS porters: Given that these SoCs are designed primarily for
> networking and we will no longer support the on-board network
> interfaces, does it make sense to continue building kernel packages for
> them?
Related (or maybe off-topic)...
I have a Cavium Octeon II and Octeon III available for testing. I did
not set them up; they are still in the box.
I can ship them to someone if there is interest in continuing support.
If interested, please contact me.
Jeff
Reply to: