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Re: Current state of the Linux kernel on SPARC



Hi Adrian,
thank you, will do.

Is there any preferred stresstest to run?

I'll set up the machines to the end of the week and test.

UltraSparc II might be earlier, I have one Netra T1-105 sitting on my desk atm, just have to pin a console adaptor :)

Robin


Am 30.08.2025 um 11:51 schrieb John Paul Adrian Glaubitz:
Hi Robin,

On Sat, 2025-08-30 at 11:36 +0200, Robin Cremer wrote:
Thanks for the work on bisecting & getting to the bottom to the long
standing stability issues and the chance for stable, recent Linux Kernels.
Those were a long standing issue for me as I am running a few of the
heavily impacted systems (UltraSPARC III).
Indeed, newer kernels were nearly unusable on UltraSPARC III.

Are there any pre-built images of the kernel available? Preferably SMP.
As far as I know, there are no ("Beta")-install-images yet, which
hinders testing a bit for me...
Sure, here you go:

https://people.debian.org/~glaubitz/sparc64/

Both UP and SMP kernel packages are available. Let me know if it works for you.

I don't have a working build environment atm and am chronically short on
time due to work,
but I do have test systems for UltraSPARC I, II, III, T1 & T2+
- installing from CD & just swapping the kernel would be possible, as
I'm really interested in getting this tested & helping getting this into
official images.
Yes, this kind of testing would be highly appreciated as I don't have access
to all kinds of SPARCs. The kernel packages above contain the fixes for all
CPU types except for M7 but I have a separate test kernel for that.

When reporting back, please reply to the separate messages on the kernel
mailing list thread and add your

	Tested-by: Robin Cremer <robin.cremer@medicem.de>

If you're not on the sparcspalinux kernel mailing list, you can import the
thread by downloading the mbox file and opening it in the email client of
your choice.

See: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250826160312.2070-1-kernel@mkarcher.dialup.fu-berlin.de/

Please add a Tested-by note for the individual machines. Thus, if you're
testing on an UltraSPARC I or II, please reply to the UltraSPARC-I-specific
patch, if you're testing on UltraSPARC III or IV, please reply to the
UltraSPARC-III-specific patch.

Keep in mind, that there are no CPU-specific implementations for all SPARC
variants.

We have:

- UltraSPARC I
- UltraSPARC III
- Niagara 1
- Niagara 2
- Niagara 4
- SPARC M7

Thus, in order to test the UltraSPARC I code, you would need to test on UltraSPARC I
or II, but not on UltraSPARC III or newer. Same applies to the Niagara machines,
testing on Niagara 4 would trigger the Niagara 4 code, testing on Niagara 3 the
Niagara 2 code and testing on Niagara 1 the Niagara 1 code.

If you can, please test on everything you have.

Also, I have multiple early UltraSPARC III system (SunFire 280R) which
I'm unsure if it works with Linux at all (I seem to remember something
about the crossbar bus SMP architecture made them crash on early boot
and the FC-AL Disks are unusable...). Might test as well, if someone can
provide a prebuilt kernel.
Let's focus on the machines first which are known to be supported as we would like
to know first whether the patch series by Michael is okay and does not introduce
any new regressions.

Adrian


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