On Wed, 15 Nov 2023 at 22:30, James Addison <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Nov 2023 at 21:57, Ray Kinsella <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > Thanks for this - you are kind to look at this issue. > > You're welcome - I enjoyed learning a bit about the Quark hardware, > and the esoteric lock bug. A shame I didn't learn about it five years > ago I suppose, but there we are. > > I spent a not insignificant amount of time devising this solution, to get "Debian Support" After a few false starts and missteps, eventually I came up with LibX1000 which was a pretty effective fix IMHO. When I started sharing it around with the Debian & Kernel folks - the response was pretty clear. "This is a mess, Intel should just fix the bug ... " - which honestly in retrospect was the right thing to do. > > It's been a long time since Intel manufactured the X1000 / Quark, I am > not sure how many are left in the wild. > > Do you think this is something that Debian might want to package and > ship? > > I should admit that I'm not a Debian maintainer or developer, just a > passerby who attempts to make progress on bugs that interest to me > (possibly to the annoyance of actual DMs/DDs), so my opinion is > somewhat external (i.e.: take with a grain of salt). Thrilled that you reached out about it. > It's entirely > possible that the maintenance for an additional package wouldn't be > worthwhile -- and in general, 32-bit x86 support in Debian does tend > to be dwindling. Basically: someone has to be motivated about it > enough to be responsible for the package. > [SNIP] > Do you know whether Intel shipped many Quark units? I see that > manufacturing stopped in Y2019, which isn't too long ago, but I don't > know much about how widely-adopted they were. There were a few micro[processors,controllers] shipped under Quark. My memory is that the X1000 didn't last long beyond 2017. I remember seeing stacks of them (Galileo Boards) sitting gathering dust in Frys and Maplin. So I couldn't say how many are in the wild being used. It was the > energy-efficiency focus of them that gathered my interest in the first > place, FWIW. > > Boards like the Up-board (https://up-board.org/) and its successors really filled this gap more effectively > > On Wed, 15 Nov 2023 at 12:27, James Addison <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> Followup-For: Bug #738575 > >> X-Debbugs-Cc: [email protected] > >> > >> If I understand correctly, then Ray's libx1000 library[1] provides a > way to > >> work around this in software. It uses some LD_PRELOAD magic, and from > what I > >> remember, it's worth being careful when using that approach. > >> > >> I opened an RFP[2] for libx1000 earlier this year, and took another > look at the > >> Debian packaging metadata in the codebase today, resulting in a few > suggested > >> edits as a pull request on GitHub - cc'ing you to notify you about > that, Ray. > >> I'm unsure whether some of the proposed postinst steps are required, > and will > >> ask you about those upstream too. > >> > >> [1] - > http://ashroe.eu/x1000/2016/10/21/fixing-lock-prefix-on-x1000.html > >> > >> [2] - https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1037070 >
