Richard Zidlicky
Mon, 15 Dec 2003 15:55:29 -0800
Hi, a short roundup of issues I am messing with:
!!! WARNING !!! Kernel 2.4.18 (probably anything <2.4.21)
will eat filesystems on disks>137GB.
Newer kernels will not eat anything but only use max 137GB
on the Q40. The problem is well understood but not trivial
to fix in a way that preserves compatibility and is clean
enough to get accepted into mainstream. Actually, even
a quick and dirty fix is anything but easy.
Kernel 2.6 didnt boot last time I looked.. problem was probably
introduced around 2.5.99+, appears like an issue with the fragmented
Q40 memory map.
rpm-4.2x works well with a patch ;)
glibc-2.3 works :)
plenty of updated user packages and libs
gcc issues:
- libgcc_so in gcc3.3 is incompatible with previous versions
due to a change (a real improvement actually ;) in m68k exception
handling and version number wasnt bumped accordingly.. this makes
system upgrades not practical for average user.
- patches to improve 68060 performance available (longlong
instructions are most affected)
- ide-cd ICE problem may have been fixed in CVS according to
http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=12008
but I didnt have a chance to test yet. For gcc-3.0 I use
a dirty workaround that simply disables the failing sanity check
- global register variables problem still survives every
attempt to get fixed properly.
http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7871
Current showstopper on the way to an updated distribution
is coreutils - sha1sum produces wrong results and I need
to figure out whether it is gcc or coreutils bug before
proceeding.
On an obscure sidetrack of development, I have a functional
but slightly buggy native ocaml compiler for m68k
(http://www.ocaml.org/).. needed a fast and reliable RAD
language to update the dated, slow and insecure cgi scripts
in the Q40 distribution.
Richard