[Aurora-sparc-user] Wikipedia sparc 32 support.

[Jos van der Ende]

> On Mon, 23 Jul 2007, Chris Andrew wrote:
>> I've just joined the list.  Can I just say thanks very much to Tom
>> _Spot_
>> Calloway, for adding information to the new sparc (32) Wikipedia
>> page<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparc32_linux_distributions>.
>> If anybody wants to add any more content, then please feel free.  I have
>> great concerns that the 32-bit implementation is going to die.
>
>   With no upstream kernel maintainer, things look pretty bleak.  Any bugs
> that pop up need to be dealt with downstream.  It's not easy.

Indeed. The sparc64 people are sometimes nice enough to port whatever they
do to sparc32 as well, but it cannot be counted upon.

Gentoo supported sparc32 up to last year, but they dropped it in their
2007.0 release. I think only Debian supports sparc32 at the moment, and
word is they are about to drop it as well.

I'm currently phasing out all my sparc32 systems. Might keep one or two
around to play with (Gentoo Embedded may still work, I'll try), but I'm
replacing all the serious stuff with sparc64.

>> BTW, has anybody managed to get Aurora to install on an SS20, with 2
>> processors?  If so, can you point me to the ISO you used.
>
>   SS20?  Maybe.  With SMP?  Good luck.  Due to compatibility issues
> between
> sparc32 SMP and 2.6 kernels, it hasn't really been supported since Aurora
> 1.0 (which had a 2.4 kernel).  ISTR people barely getting it to work (by
> compiling their own heavily modified kernels), but I don't believe
> anyone's achieved stability.  UP, however, ought to work, although I
> haven't fired up my SS20 in quite some time to check.

I tried a 2.6 kernel on a SS10 with 2 CPUs last year. The thing crashed
within five minutes, and the later 2.6 kernels don't even compile with
sparc32 SMP support anymore. Something is seriously broken, and as
mentioned above there is nobody to fix it.

Best to stick with a 2.4 kernel if you need to do SMP on sparc32.

Oh, if only I were a kernel hacker... :-)


Jos