most stable kernel for sparc32/SMP ?

["Mika Valtonen" <mvaltonen@gmx.de>]

hi,

I got a SPARCstation 20 two weeks ago (2 Processors(SuperSparc 50),
64M). Now I try to get the most stable combination of a recent debian
dist and a kernel. My experience so far is the following:

#   debian dist    kernel           stability
1   woody          2.2.20smp        good
2   woody          2.4.21smp        good
3   woody          2.4.23pre9smp    good
4   testing        2.2.20smp        good, but problems with applications
5   testing        2.4.21smp        very bad
6   testing        2.4.23pre9smp    bad

(kernels 2.2.20 and 2.4.21 form debian,
2.4.23pre9 from http://osinvestor.com/sparc/)

explanation:
#1 works reliable. No Problems at all.

#2, #3 seem to work reliable as well (less tested)

#4 reliable, but lots of programs die with 'Illegal instruction' on
   startup (e.g. ps and friends)

#5 can't do much before I get something like
   spin_lock(f01c16a4) CPU#1 stuck at f005c69c...
   e.g. starting aptitude _always_ causes this.

#6 more stable than #5, but gives me lots of these:
   Unimplemented Sparc TRAP, type = 2b


It looks like sparc32/SMP kernels work much more reliable on woody
than on testing. Kernel 2.4.23pre9 worked several hours without any
problems on woody but crashed _while_ doing 'apt-get dist-upgrade'.

I suppose there is a problem with newer versions of glibc. AFAIK some
system calls are implemented in a different way in newer versions of
glibc ?! That could be the cause of the problems with #4 as well.

Can anybody tell me how to get a reliable system of a 2.4 or newer
kernel and a recent debian distribution ?

Thanks,
  Olaf

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