Regarding the situation with kernel 3.8 for sparc no longer found in the Debian repositories, please clarify if Jurij Smakov resigning as sparc port maintainer is pertinent: http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2013/05/msg00008.html In any event, even if it is no longer being maintained, an important package should not be pulled without warning. Cheers, Mitch Halmu