On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 06:40:22PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 08:50:40PM +0900, Roger Shimizu wrote: > [...asking for armel to be retained...] > > One way in which the need to keep armel around would be reduced is if we > could somehow upgrade from armel machines to armhf ones, without > requiring a reinstall. > > After all, armel has been around longer than armhf has, which means that > there may be some machines out in the wild that were installed (and > upgraded) when armel existed but armhf did not yet (or at least, was not > stable yet). Some of those machines might be armv7 machines that would > be perfectly capable of running the armhf port, except that it wasn't > around yet when they were first installed, and switching to armhf > without reinstalling isn't possible. > > I once did try to do a similar migration on my Thecus (from arm to > armel, rather than armel to armhf), but that failed miserably; and since > I hadn't installed the firmware update to be able to access the console > so as to figure out what went wrong, that essentially bricked the > machine. > > If there was a supported and tested way to upgrade older armel > installations on hardware that actually works with armhf, then those > machines wouldn't need to be able to run armel anymore, and part of this > problem would go away...
I actually highly doubt there are that many armv7 boxes running armel. armhf was a nice performance improvement and worth the hassle to reinstall if you had such a box in the first place. I think most armel systems are probably armv5, often the marvell chips. Not sure if anyone is running it on Raspberry pi (Original, not 2 or 3) systems or if those all run Rasbian armhf instead. -- Len Sorensen