Re: Regarding older Sparc hardware (32-bit)
On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 07:52:09PM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:
> On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 01:37:46PM -0500, Dan Oglesby wrote:
> > Does Debian need/want more testers for older Sun systems like the IPC,
> > SPARCStation 1/2/5/20? I have a handful of older systems and a small
> > pile of SBus cards, all in working order, and didn't know if setting
> > these systems up for testing would be useful or not.
>
> As far as I'm aware, Debian does not support 32-bit SPARC system since
> lenny. Apparently, there is nobody working on the upstream kernel for
> 32-bit SPARC machines. It's also my understanding that jettisoning the
> 32-bit systems allows Debian to compile for SPARC v9 systems, which can
> provide significant performance benefits.
>
> So, probably not.
Upstream kernels do actually receive fairly regular testing, so it might
well be possible to get something done, but you have to install using an
older release and then upgrade only those parts that aren't sparc64-specific
(e.g. I don't know if the current libc6 still works on sparc32).
--
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