RE: Sarge may be last Debian release for 32 bit sparc systems
Hi All,
I saw the following: -
>Reportedly, current 2.6 kernels do not work *at all* on sun4m.
I mailed this list with an update ref: the SPARC 4 sun4m and the
2.6.12-1-sparc32 kernel which Jurij requested people try out. Works
fine on my box, after 1 or 2 issues which were solved quite quickly with
help from Jurij and Google :-)
Its running sarge and I am just doing an update/upgrade on the system,
everything seems to be going ok though.
Just thought I would drop a mail.
Cheers,
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Langasek [mailto:vorlon@debian.org]
Sent: 26 July 2005 03:15
To: debian-boot@lists.debian.org; debian-sparc@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Sarge may be last Debian release for 32 bit sparc systems
On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 02:06:46PM -0700, Blars Blarson wrote:
> In my opinion, we should drop support of all 32-bit sparc systems from
> Etch due to lack of people willing to spend the time to support them.
> This doesn't mean that we should delibaratly break things for them,
> but that the interest in continuing to support them is below what is
> needed to keep them as a viable part of Debian.
> Support of sun4c and sun4d was effectivly dropped from Sarge. The
> only reports trying d-i on this hardware that I remember seeing were
> failures, and noone bother to try to fix it. Upgrades from Woody may
> work, but were not well tested either.
Were there actually install reports on sun4c and sun4d? I don't
remember seeing any. Anyway, AIUI BenC killed these off years ago by
changes to how gilbc was compiled.
> Sun4m is the last supported 32-bit sparc architecture. Reportedly,
> the 2.6 kernel does not work in multi-processor mode on them, and
> dropping support of 2.4 from Etch is being discussed.
Reportedly, current 2.6 kernels do not work *at all* on sun4m. This
according to Jurij Smakov, who appears to currently be the sparc kernel
maintainer in Debian.
> Note that lack of hardware is not the problem, if anyone wants some
> sun4m systems (located in Los Angeles) let me know before they wind up
> in the recycle pile.
I have one here; works fine under sarge with a 2.4 kernel. I have no
intention of spending large amounts of my own time to keep 2.6 viable on
this architecture, though, when as it stands the box I have is only
powered up for use as a porting machine and it can't even be used to
build Debian kernels because depmod bombs out.
--
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer
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