Re: Current state of the Linux kernel on SPARC
Hi Tony,
On Tue, 2025-08-26 at 15:52 -0700, Tony Rodriguez wrote:
> I was actually part of the Oracle team that helped port Oracle Linux 6
> (OL6) to sparc64 (for T5120, T5140, T3, T4, T5).
Ah, very cool!
> OL6 also supported creating/managing ldoms as well, much like Solaris.
I'm aware of this which is why I mentioned the LDOM patches in Oracle's
UEK kernel. Someone needs to clean those up and send them in for review,
similar to all the other useful patches that add kexec support among
other useful improvments.
> Although I don't currently work for Oracle, I still have an interest
> in helping with various architectures (including sparc64, power be/le,
> arm64, x86, etc). I would definitely enjoy working on this again in a
> full-time capacity, if given an opportunity to do so.
I would say that the kernel on SPARC needs most of the attention at the
moment. So, if you want to help, please review and test the patches posted
on the mailing list.
> Regarding sparc64, I have T5120, T5140, and Oracle S7-2 systems. Last
> time I checked, many months ago Gentoo and Debian both worked on Oracle
> S7-2.
Yeah, the main problems affected the older UltraSPARC CPUs such as I and III.
> Regarding Gentoo:
>
> During the initial bare-metal install on S7-2, it worked but couldn't
> use my ConnectX4-LX NIC. I was blocked from continuing the install.
> Asked the Gentoo sparc team to enable support for ConnectX-4 LX and
> ConnextX-5 based Network Cards. They also updated their ISO images to
> reflect it. I confirmed it worked.
Good to know.
> Regarding Debian:
>
> It worked on S7-2, but can't say it was 100% stable (especially after
> updating packages). The initial bare-metal install was okay, but not
> very stable after updates (panics, etc). When I have time, I will try
> the latest debian ports ISO to see if things are better
> (stability/update wise) on sparc64 (for S7-2 and T5140) and IBM Power7/8.
Must be related to the kernel configuration then or Gentoo has some SPARC-
specific fixes that Debian doesn't have.
> PS - Managed to get XRDP to build/install on Solaris 11.4 for remote
> desktop. Also, just a heads-up, Solaris 11.4 (CBE 11.4.81) doesn't
> install bare-metal on Oracle S7-2. It is a bug, hopefully the next CBE
> release will resolve that issue.
> https://www.oracle.com/solaris/solaris11/downloads/solaris-downloads.html
> Was planning to use CBE 11.4.81 to create ldoms, I had to use an
> earlier version of Solaris 11.4 ISO to work around the bare-metal
> installation problem.
Yeah, I'm aware of that problem. I think you mentioned it on #gentoo-sparc.
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
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