Re: Releasability of the HPPA port
On Fri, 6 Aug 2010 11:30:41 am Philipp Kern wrote:
> Dear HPPA porters, dear HPPA port users,
>
> the Release Team is currently wondering if it makes sense to release with
> HPPA as a regular stable architecture with squeeze. It might be that
> it is not up to the standards of a regular Debian release. We seem to
> chase random segmentation faults, causing multiple give-backs to eventually
> yield a built package.
>
> Especially this is also causing concerns from a security building point of
> view, as autobuilding has to work for this.
>
> If it's not entirely up to our standards, would a separate suite, like it
> has been done in the past for etch-m68k, help having some sort of release
> that can be updated independently from the main stable release? Such a
> suite could also be useful to land larger changes than normally allowed for
> stable and maybe to continue the hppa port from a stable foundation for
> some time.
>
> I think we do agree that it will be included into stable for the last time.
>
> Kind regards,
> Philipp Kern
Hi Phillipp et al,
I have a few points that I would like to put forward with respect to this
issue.
I have two hppa boxes, a C3700 (32 bit Debian "stable") and an RP5470 (64 bit
SMP Debian "stable"). Both are stable and reliable. In hardware terms both
are built like brick outhouses!
Both have done "large" software builds (BrlCAD) without trouble.
I have both running BOINC/Seti@home so they both run at 100% CPU load 24/7
when they are powered up.
The RP5470 is a headless box with 4 processors and 12 Gb of RAM. All admin
and software loading has to be done via either the serial port(s) or the
network. The initial boot/install was done using the Debian stable netboot
image. This was fast and painless, contacts (of contacts) at HP didn't
believe I'd tried it. I was able to set the box up to serve a remote desktop
in 24 bit colour. From this point it behaved like any other Debian/KDE
machine I've seen.
This e-mail is coming to you from the C3700. The only thing that I have seen
stressing this box is my SPAM filter :-).
According to the HP documents that I have been able to read the USB ports on
the C3700 are intended for keyboard and mouse ONLY. I have a 4 port hub
plugged into one port. I have the mouse plugged into this hub. The mouse and
any other USB device I have tried has been reliable.
I have no experience of the older hppa hardware. Outside of hppa my first
computers were an Amiga 500 and an 8086 laptop acquired in the early 1990's.
Short version of all of the above ramble ? From a user viewpoint both of the
hppa boxes I own are effective and they "just work".
I don't use the RP5470 much so I am prepared to risk it carrying out tests if
the Debian/hppa world should need this.
Cheers, Geoff.
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