hi, I got a SPARCstation 20 two weeks ago (2 Processors(SuperSparc 50), 64M). Now I try to get the most stable combination of a recent debian dist and a kernel. My experience so far is the following:
# debian dist kernel stability 1 woody 2.2.20smp good 2 woody 2.4.21smp good 3 woody 2.4.23pre9smp good 4 testing 2.2.20smp good, but problems with applications 5 testing 2.4.21smp very bad 6 testing 2.4.23pre9smp bad (kernels 2.2.20 and 2.4.21 form debian, 2.4.23pre9 from http://osinvestor.com/sparc/) explanation: #1 works reliable. No Problems at all. #2, #3 seem to work reliable as well (less tested) #4 reliable, but lots of programs die with 'Illegal instruction' on startup (e.g. ps and friends) #5 can't do much before I get something like spin_lock(f01c16a4) CPU#1 stuck at f005c69c... e.g. starting aptitude _always_ causes this. #6 more stable than #5, but gives me lots of these: Unimplemented Sparc TRAP, type = 2b It looks like sparc32/SMP kernels work much more reliable on woody than on testing. Kernel 2.4.23pre9 worked several hours without any problems on woody but crashed _while_ doing 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. I suppose there is a problem with newer versions of glibc. AFAIK some system calls are implemented in a different way in newer versions of glibc ?! That could be the cause of the problems with #4 as well. Can anybody tell me how to get a reliable system of a 2.4 or newer kernel and a recent debian distribution ? Thanks, Olaf -- NEU FÜR ALLE - GMX MediaCenter - für Fotos, Musik, Dateien... Fotoalbum, File Sharing, MMS, Multimedia-Gruß, GMX FotoService Jetzt kostenlos anmelden unter http://www.gmx.net +++ GMX - die erste Adresse für Mail, Message, More! +++
