Re: Dropping sparc32 for lenny

[BERTRAND Joël <joel.bertrand@systella.fr>]

Mark Morgan Lloyd a écrit :
> BERTRAND Joël wrote:
>
> > 4/ The last 2.4 kernel that is _usable_ is the 2.4.21 if I remember. All
> >   releases after this kernel are not usable for production workstations
> > (on sparc32 [that randomly crash with 'watchdog error'] _and_ sparc64
> > [that randomly freeze without any message]). I haven't found any stable
> > kernel between 2.4.21 and 2.6.21-rc7. Thanks to Davem to the IOMMU/Sbus
> > patch.
>
> I suspect that that is critically dependant on the version of the compiler (and
> possibly other toolchain elements) used for the kernel. Your earlier comment
> about optimisations might be relevant- has something changed in the compiler
> defaults or SPARC code generation during Sarge's lifetime?

	Maybe compiler version was critical. But since 2.4.21, I have tried all 
release between gcc-3.3 and gcc-4.1 without any success (and on several 
SS20 SMP with SM71 or RT626). X tough a lot of time to be initialized 
and randomly crashed when fb was leo or SX. CG6 was more stable.

	If I remember, 2.4 serie run fine until modifications made to support 
the new glibc (2.4.22 ?). After this kernel and even I use 2.4.27 
shipped by debian, I have seen a lot of random crashes on all my SS20's 
running X (freezes, watchdog reset...).

	That being said, 2.6 is better than 2.4 on sparc32 UP (on SMP, kernel, 
it remains a bug with pipe()).

	Regards,

	JKB