Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 01:33:24PM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: Package: kernel-image-2.6-686 Version: 2.6.5-2 Severity: normal not one single one of the 2.6 kernels - 2.6.5, 2.6.6, 2.6.7, 2.6.8, 2.6.9, 2.6.10, 2.6.11 nor 2.6.12 - can be installed on a system with less than 48mb of RAM - because of the hungry memory requirements of the initial ram disk. I think this is more a initrd-tools issue, and as initrd-tools is going to go away in the near future ... That said, did you perchance try to set MODULES=dep instead of MODULES=most in /etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf ? I asked for this to be the default on powerpc, since i had the same kind of huge, useless initrd problems, but as it was difficult to get this change in even after asking for it during months and months, i guess it didn't do to do the same for x86. Friendly, Sven Luther -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 03:19:25AM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 05:52:54PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 12:45:48AM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 03:51:22PM -0700, Matt Taggart wrote: for this P120 (whatever) i have *shudder* had to use a 2.2.10-compact-pci kernel. there exists a kernel-image-2.4.18-bf2.4 (which i might try at some point). Uh, 2.4.18-bf2.4 was built solely for use with the woody installer, and is only available in oldstable. If you're considering using it as the kernel on a newly-installed system, only as a drastic desperation measure, as you can see it is a step up from what the machine is _presently_ running... And why are the 2.4 kernel packages in sarge not a better option? -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#319823: Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
My firewall/mail gateway/shell host for 2-3 people is an old P90 with 40 mb of ram. It works well with Debian and I see no reason to upgrade the hardware. Woody installer worked perfectly back in the days and dist-upgrade to Sarge did too. I bet there are tons of home/small office gateways with this kind of hardware, which may have not seen the Sarge or even Woody installers since 'apt-get dist-upgrade' to a newer release works so well. According to Sarge manuals 32 MB of memory is the minimum http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch02s05.html.en so 48 MB should be enough. The default kernel choice is 2.4, so linux26 can have stricter requirements. Those requirements will have to be written down before the next release if 2.4 is dropped, so perhaps someone could know them already. IMO, older installers available from ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian-archive and mirrors can be used for machines with less than currently required amount of RAM memory. (With smaller disk space its a totally different issue, Sarge requires a minimum of 110 MB with normal installer and without hacks.) After installing Woody for example, an 'apt-get dist-upgrade' via network or CDs to Sarge works (ok, some glitches exist but it mostly works). As dist-upgrades are supposed to work only from the previous release, then perhaps a user with 8 MB of RAM could install Slink which requires 4 MB of ram http://www.debian.org/releases/slink/i386/ch-hardware-req.en.html#s2.3 and dist-upgrade with swap enabled via potato and woody to sarge. This of course requires that CPU (i486?), drivers (does ISA bus still work? One old Gravis Ultrasound worked with little tweaking on 2.6.x) and disk space work with all of the releases. (Actually that sounds like an interesting hack for someone and documenting it for Debian installation manual would be great. And I've been around only since late Woody so this might just sound easier than it actually is...) So from my, x86-Debian-user point of view, newer installers don't have to work on the old-but-stil-usable-for-my-needs machines if there is a documented path for running latest Debian stable on it. To me, documentation is sufficient if an 'apt-get dist-upgrade' like upgrade from previous release is supported -- and it is. -Mikko -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
On Tuesday 26 July 2005 02:06, Steve Langasek wrote: I believe Joey Hess is the person who has the best handle on what the actual minimum requirements are for installing sarge. Joey, do you have anything we could add to the sarge release notes for this, if it's not already in there? The drop of subarchs (including real 386) is listed in the Release Notes. The minimum hardware requirements for installing Sarge are listed in the Installation Guide. pgpw30HgwXKTJ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 09:45, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 03:51:22PM -0700, Matt Taggart wrote: It would probably be a good idea to record what ought to work in any given release and maybe have an ongoing idea what it should be. The answer might be architecture specific? ISTR either the d-i team or apt/dpkg/aptitude trying to get sarge systems with 32mb working towards the end of the release. if you really want to try that out, without messing with older hardware, try usin XEN. you will find that XEN guest domains fail to boot in 32mb on a 2.6 kernel. but at least it can be attempted - easily. *another thinks*... for this P120 (whatever) i have *shudder* had to use a 2.2.10-compact-pci kernel. FWIW I was running sarge (kernel 2.6.8) on a P75 with 32mb ram on my home network a couple of months ago. Note that the install was done on a P2 which subsequently died. I was able to simply transplant the disk. Everything worked fine, which was surprising, given that the BIOS was not able to recognise the 6Gb harddisk. Andrew V. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 12:45:48AM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 03:51:22PM -0700, Matt Taggart wrote: It would probably be a good idea to record what ought to work in any given release and maybe have an ongoing idea what it should be. The answer might be architecture specific? ISTR either the d-i team or apt/dpkg/aptitude trying to get sarge systems with 32mb working towards the end of the release. if you really want to try that out, without messing with older hardware, try usin XEN. No need to mess with older hardware *or* Xen. Use the mem=32M (etc.) kernel parameter. -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
Package: kernel-image-2.6-686 Version: 2.6.5-2 Severity: normal not one single one of the 2.6 kernels - 2.6.5, 2.6.6, 2.6.7, 2.6.8, 2.6.9, 2.6.10, 2.6.11 nor 2.6.12 - can be installed on a system with less than 48mb of RAM - because of the hungry memory requirements of the initial ram disk. right at the BEGINNING of the kernel boot, ram disks are allocated. virtual memory cannot solve the problem because no disk access has been set up. see #319823. running a 2.4 kernel is NOT a ing acceptable answer to solving this problem. what happens in a year, two years' time, when 2.4 is no longer supported?? telling people to roll their own kernel (mr horms) isn't an acceptable option, either. i may be able to do that (mr horms) but other people won't be able to. you going (mr horms) to tell me and people like me that i should throw away perfectly good hardware possible solutions: * fix the bloody 2.6 kernel so it doesn't use so much damn memory. * fix the debian-specific, debian-created and debian-responsible initrd ramdisk so it doesn't require so much damn memory. * provide an alternate compact ramdisk if fixing the default ramdisk isn't a viable option. -- System Information: Debian Release: testing/unstable Architecture: i386 Kernel: Linux highfield 2.6.11-1-686 #1 Fri May 20 07:34:54 UTC 2005 i686 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C Versions of packages kernel-image-2.6-686 depends on: ii kernel-image-2.6.5-1-686 2.6.5-4Linux kernel image for version 2.6 -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
On Mon, 25 Jul 2005, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: telling people to roll their own kernel (mr horms) isn't an acceptable option, either. i may be able to do that (mr horms) but other people won't be able to. you going (mr horms) to tell me and people like me that i should throw away perfectly good hardware possible solutions: * fix the bloody 2.6 kernel so it doesn't use so much damn memory. * fix the debian-specific, debian-created and debian-responsible initrd ramdisk so it doesn't require so much damn memory. * provide an alternate compact ramdisk if fixing the default ramdisk isn't a viable option. I would not normally reply to a message written in this tone, so if you would like this discussion to continue, I suggest you cool it down a notch. You are the only person in a long time to complain that 2.6 kernels do not work on low-memory machines, so the niche is not as big as you claim. So, since you are so interested in it, why not look at the solutions, which would actually result in something constructive: * YOU work on fixing the initrd/initramfs for lowmem machines and suggest a solutions to initrd-tools maintainer. * YOU find a config which works on lowmem systems and submit it to kernel team for consideration of a possibility of building a special lowmem flavour using it. * YOU start an alioth project, attract interested people, become a maintainer of a lowmem kernel package and upload it for people to use. Honestly, it's a volunteer project and if you want support for something that's not there, the best way is just to roll up your sleeves. Flaming people will never get you anywhere. Best regards, Jurij Smakov[EMAIL PROTECTED] Key: http://www.wooyd.org/pgpkey/ KeyID: C99E03CC -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#319823: Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
Luke, Sorry for the previous terse replies to your bug reports #319878 and #319823. The debian-kernel team gets a lot of email/bugs and sometimes is quick to response/close bugs without a lot of explanation. I think what horms was trying to say was that your bug report listed 2.6.5 as the kernel version you were reporting against and that Debian no longer supports that kernel. Your second bug report seems to indicate that you've tried 2.6.5-12 so that answers that question. The debian-kernel team could use your help in tracking down the problem. Have you google'd to see if others are having the problem and have found a solution (maybe another distro has solved this?)? Can you try, as horms suggested, to fix it yourself and then let the debian-kernel team know how to fix it so they can try, if possible, to integrate the fix in the generic kernels? I agree with your comment about 2.6 requiring a lot of memory, I guess this is the price we pay for supporting more hardware. Maybe there's a solution that would allow for modular ramdisks or something so that you wouldn't need so much memory if you didn't need all the drivers? Or maybe a special low-mem kernel maintained by the people who needed it? I think at some point the only way of supporting such hardware will be to stay on old releases. You might already have trouble running dselect/apt-get/aptitude on a box with 48mb. Of course as Jurij and Massa bluntly pointed out, the best way to get these things fixed is to do it yourself. But you might consider the return on time invested to fix such a problem compared to putting your time elsewhere. I think this bug should stay open as a place for people to discuss 2.6 memory requirements until it's either fixed, forwarded upstream, or tagged wontfix. Thanks, -- Matt Taggart [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
Jurij Smakov writes... Honestly, it's a volunteer project and if you want support for something that's not there, the best way is just to roll up your sleeves. Flaming people will never get you anywhere. Our priorities are our users and free software The user's original bug report was more reasonable and they didn't resort to flaming until the bug was closed immediately with only a terse explanation. I interpreted the second bug report as frustration from someone who was trying to help by filing a bug report and being told a legitimate problem (even if only a few people care) wasn't a bug and to go away. Instead, how about this as a response, Thanks for your report about 2.6 requiring more than 48mb of RAM. I notice that the version you're reporting against is 2.6.5. This kernel is no longer in Debian and thus not supported, have you tried using a newer kernel currently available in Debian? Assuming the problem still exists in newer kernels (likely) we could use some help tracking down the problem. Is it specific to Debian kernels or does it affect upstream kernels as well? Have you google'd for others with this problem and potential solutions (maybe other distributions have solved this)? Can you try building your own kernel and if you get it to work let debian-kernel know what it took to fix things so that they can consider adding the fixes to the generic kernels (if possible)? Thanks again for reporting, we look forward to any additional information you can provide. That took only slightly longer to write than the other responses and is more likely to result in a user that helps contribute to solving the problem rather than giving up on Debian. Jurij, Some of your comments were constructive, but phrased in a way that is libel to anger the submitter and make them not work on the bug (and not like Debian in general). A slight re-phrase and it would have been fine. -- Matt Taggart [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
hi jurij, i invite you to think ahead to when the 2.4 kernel is no longer maintained. i invite you to consider where debian will stand at that time with respect to older hardware. should debian be possible to install on older hardware in two, three years time, or should people who are not as fortunate and as computer literate as yourself, myself and mr horms, either throw the machine away or utilise an alternative distribution? regarding the tone of my second report: you are entitled to dismiss it, just as mr horms is equally entitled to dismiss my first report. dismissal and blatant disregard of reports, however, does not solve problems. _instant_ dismissal, especially dismissals that contain assumptions that clearly indicate a lack of thought and foresight, are guaranteed to drive me absolutely fucking nuts. l. On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 11:21:29AM -0400, Jurij Smakov wrote: On Mon, 25 Jul 2005, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: telling people to roll their own kernel (mr horms) isn't an acceptable option, either. i may be able to do that (mr horms) but other people won't be able to. you going (mr horms) to tell me and people like me that i should throw away perfectly good hardware possible solutions: * fix the bloody 2.6 kernel so it doesn't use so much damn memory. * fix the debian-specific, debian-created and debian-responsible initrd ramdisk so it doesn't require so much damn memory. * provide an alternate compact ramdisk if fixing the default ramdisk isn't a viable option. I would not normally reply to a message written in this tone, so if you would like this discussion to continue, I suggest you cool it down a notch. You are the only person in a long time to complain that 2.6 kernels do not work on low-memory machines, so the niche is not as big as you claim. So, since you are so interested in it, why not look at the solutions, which would actually result in something constructive: * YOU work on fixing the initrd/initramfs for lowmem machines and suggest a solutions to initrd-tools maintainer. * YOU find a config which works on lowmem systems and submit it to kernel team for consideration of a possibility of building a special lowmem flavour using it. * YOU start an alioth project, attract interested people, become a maintainer of a lowmem kernel package and upload it for people to use. Honestly, it's a volunteer project and if you want support for something that's not there, the best way is just to roll up your sleeves. Flaming people will never get you anywhere. Best regards, Jurij Smakov[EMAIL PROTECTED] Key: http://www.wooyd.org/pgpkey/ KeyID: C99E03CC -- -- a href=http://lkcl.net;http://lkcl.net/a -- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 03:51:22PM -0700, Matt Taggart wrote: It would probably be a good idea to record what ought to work in any given release and maybe have an ongoing idea what it should be. The answer might be architecture specific? ISTR either the d-i team or apt/dpkg/aptitude trying to get sarge systems with 32mb working towards the end of the release. if you really want to try that out, without messing with older hardware, try usin XEN. you will find that XEN guest domains fail to boot in 32mb on a 2.6 kernel. but at least it can be attempted - easily. *another thinks*... for this P120 (whatever) i have *shudder* had to use a 2.2.10-compact-pci kernel. there exists a kernel-image-2.4.18-bf2.4 (which i might try at some point). ... would it not make an inordinate amount of sense to have a kernel-image-2.6.N-bf2.6? l. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#319823: Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 12:03:48PM -0700, Matt Taggart wrote: Luke, Sorry for the previous terse replies to your bug reports #319878 and #319823. The debian-kernel team gets a lot of email/bugs and sometimes is quick to response/close bugs without a lot of explanation. *sigh* yeh i know. used to do that for samba mailing lists if i got too many in a day... I think what horms was trying to say was that your bug report listed 2.6.5 as the kernel version you were reporting against and that Debian no longer supports that kernel. Your second bug report seems to indicate that you've tried 2.6.5-12 so that answers that question. no, i don't believe i've ever installed 2.6.5 - i do not know where that version number comes from. i raised the bug against the 2.6-686 package _not_ a specific version of the 2.6 kernel. The debian-kernel team could use your help in tracking down the problem. Have you google'd to see if others are having the problem and have found a solution (maybe another distro has solved this?)? Can you try, as horms suggested, to fix it yourself and then let the debian-kernel team know how to fix it so they can try, if possible, to integrate the fix in the generic kernels? will give that some thought. I agree with your comment about 2.6 requiring a lot of memory, I guess this is the price we pay for supporting more hardware. Maybe there's a solution that would allow for modular ramdisks or something so that you wouldn't need so much memory if you didn't need all the drivers? Or maybe a special low-mem kernel maintained by the people who needed it? I think at some point the only way of supporting such hardware will be to stay on old releases. You might already have trouble running dselect/apt-get/aptitude on a box with 48mb. apt-get runs fine (but phil hands runs apt-get on a really badly designed P90 machine and it takes forrreeer like twenty minutes to run apt-get update! ) i've never used dselect or aptitude so i couldn't tell you there. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 03:51:22PM -0700, Matt Taggart wrote: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton writes... i invite you to think ahead to when the 2.4 kernel is no longer maintained. i invite you to consider where debian will stand at that time with respect to older hardware. should debian be possible to install on older hardware in two, three years time, or should people who are not as fortunate and as computer literate as yourself, myself and mr horms, either throw the machine away or utilise an alternative distribution? The subject of the minimum system requirements for Debian is probably something the Debian Release team should be tracking if they're not already. I don't know if sarge had minimum system requirements, I didn't find any in a brief scan of the release notes. I believe Joey Hess is the person who has the best handle on what the actual minimum requirements are for installing sarge. Joey, do you have anything we could add to the sarge release notes for this, if it's not already in there? Can a goal be added to the release goals for etch? Obviously supporting 32mb would be nice since a lot of appliance type systems only have that, but 64mb might be a more reasonable goal. In addition to minimum requirements, recommended requirements might be a good idea too. I think 48MB should still be a reasonable goal even with 2.6 kernels, shouldn't it? Whether 32 or 48 is the minimum for etch probably depends on whether we insist on shipping etch as 2.6-only. On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 04:17:10PM -0700, Matt Taggart wrote: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton writes... my bug report invites you to consider the impact that such a policy decision roll your own or install 2.4 on anything with = 48mb of ram, made by mr horms, will have on the debian project. In reality, not much. But the nice thing about Debian is that it's built to be able to support the needs of minority groups, so there could be a solution for this group if there are people motivated to work on and maintain it. It's not clear that there are though :( Curiously, this bug report seems to be about the memory requirements of 2.6 ramdisks. AIUI, it's still the hope that we'll have switched from initrd-tools to an initramfs solution for etch, which should have the effect of dropping the memory requirements significantly. But I don't think it's the responsibility of the kernel maintainers to hold back the hands of time where hardware obsoletion in concerned. If 48MB is the minimum that 2.6 will support, then someone who cares about machines with less RAM than that needs to do the work to lower that bar. Incidentally, I have no idea why this bug was filed against kernel-image-2.6-686; that package does not contain *any* ramdisks, so either Luke is complaining about the ramdisk used by d-i to boot 2.6, or the ramdisk generated by initrd-tools, yes? I can't tell which one, because his bug report is uselessly vague and rant-oriented; otherwise, I'd reassign the bug to the appropriate package. There is an organization in Portland, OR, USA called FreeGeek ( http://freegeek.org ) that recycles computer equipment and turns it into as many working computers as possible (running Debian) and donates them to various groups around the world. They maintain a specification of the minimum requirements for the systems they build. Currently this is, http://freegeek.org/freekbox.php * Pentium III 500 - 566mhz * 128MB RAM * 9 - 10 GB hard drive * 14x - 24x CD ROM drive * Floppy disk drive * 17 inch color monitor * 56k Modem * 10/100 Network card * Keyboard * Mouse * Speakers IMO, at any given time this spec is a good indication of what the minimal system is to even attempt to run Debian on, anything less would be painful. If the debian-release team decides to come up with minimum system requirements for etch, I think a good place to aim for i386 would be slightly less than whereever the freekbox spec is at the time. Oh, well, I still have an AMD K6-450 with 128MB running sarge as my primary mailserver. It creaks under spamassassin's load from time to time, but it's not painful enough for me to deal with trying to swap the hardware out remotely. Maybe this box will still be useful through the etch timeframe. :) -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 05:06:49PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: Incidentally, I have no idea why this bug was filed against kernel-image-2.6-686; ... because i believed it to be a... wossisname... dummy package (2.6.N ... 2.6.NN) oops. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 12:45:48AM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 03:51:22PM -0700, Matt Taggart wrote: for this P120 (whatever) i have *shudder* had to use a 2.2.10-compact-pci kernel. there exists a kernel-image-2.4.18-bf2.4 (which i might try at some point). Uh, 2.4.18-bf2.4 was built solely for use with the woody installer, and is only available in oldstable. If you're considering using it as the kernel on a newly-installed system, then it would seem support isn't of vital importance to you after all. ... would it not make an inordinate amount of sense to have a kernel-image-2.6.N-bf2.6? That wouldn't really be the right name for the flavor (bf refers to boot floppies, the old Debian installer), but I suppose a compact flavor that statically enables a number of modules common to older hardware would be feasible. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#319878: kernel-image-2.6-686: the entire range of 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM
Hi, On Mon, 25 Jul 2005, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: hi jurij, i invite you to think ahead to when the 2.4 kernel is no longer maintained. i invite you to consider where debian will stand at that time with respect to older hardware. should debian be possible to install on older hardware in two, three years time, or should people who are not as fortunate and as computer literate as yourself, myself and mr horms, either throw the machine away or utilise an alternative distribution? I am sure that if you would post a message containing the above three paragraphs to the debian-kernel mailing list, you could have started a nice and constructive discussion. To answer your questions, Debian is dropping support for older hardware all the time. The pure 386 processors are no longer supported. Woody was the last release to support sun4c, older Sun machines, and it looks like support for all 32-bit sparc hardware might be dropped for etch. And there is a chance that for architectures for which 2.6 works well, 2.4 kernel will not be included in it. In the end of the day, it all comes to the question of whether it is worth to jeopardize the interests of majority of the users in favour of a tiny fraction. Old and low-memory hardware definitely can be supported, however that requires interested, skilled and dedicated people to work on it. Given that most members of the kernel team currently have their hands full, there is not much chance that anyone will be willing to do that. Also, considering how laughably small the price of 16- or 32-megabyte memory stick is these days, I see the demands for support of such extremely-low-memory machines pretty egocentric. regarding the tone of my second report: you are entitled to dismiss it, just as mr horms is equally entitled to dismiss my first report. dismissal and blatant disregard of reports, however, does not solve problems. _instant_ dismissal, especially dismissals that contain assumptions that clearly indicate a lack of thought and foresight, are guaranteed to drive me absolutely fucking nuts. This is the quote from your original bug report (#319823): | From: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton [EMAIL PROTECTED] | To: Debian Bug Tracking System [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Subject: kernel-image-2.6-686: 2.6 debian kernels do not install on m/cs with = 48mb RAM!!! | Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 02:30:41 +0100 | | Package: kernel-image-2.6-686 | Version: 2.6.5-2 ^^^ Feel free to verify in the BTS that it is accurate. This clearly indicates that the kernel-image version you are filing report against is 2.6.5-2, which is older than the version in Sarge (2.6.8). So Horms was absolutely correctly telling you that 2.6.5 is not supported anymore. Yes, the explanation accompanying the closing was somewhat terse, but from my point of view your reaction to it was rude and unacceptable. And you have repeated the obviously incorrect version number in your second report too. Best regards, Jurij Smakov[EMAIL PROTECTED] Key: http://www.wooyd.org/pgpkey/ KeyID: C99E03CC -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
