Jens Seidel wrote: > On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 01:30:36PM +0100, Martin Michlmayr wrote: > > Thiemo, Peter, do you have any idea why a 2.6.18 might not work on > > raq1? I don't see why it would work on some Cobalt machines but not > > on the raq1. > > Let me ask a probably very stupid question: > > Why exist so many different kernel image flavours in Debian for Mips? > > Examples: > http://people.debian.org/~ths/d-i/mipsel/images/daily/ > http://people.debian.org/~ths/d-i/mips/images/daily/ > > I know about the endian issue. But apart from it, are the > subarchitectures really so different from each other? > Shouldn't at least all support MIPS 1 ISA?
The matter is most of the time not the CPU capabilities but the different system architectures and firmware environments. > Even if we consider also 32 vs. 64 bit kernels (or can each 64 bit hardware > run a 32 bit kernel?) In theory yes, but they may have registers which need 64 bit wide accesses, or I/O space in the 64bit address range, or have more RAM as a 32bit address space can hold. In short, it is impracticable. > I count only 2*2 = 4 possible combinations. > > Of course it's also possible that some images are very minimalistic > (reduced to bare minimum of driver settings) to be able to run on > limited hardware, is this the case? No, we usually build the full set of modules with standard settings. > I know from Intel architectures that one common kernel together with > a set of kernel modules is sufficent! Only for PC-like architectures, other Intel-based systems are not supported at all (and are out of fashion by now due to the prevalence of the PC). Thiemo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
