Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On 06/11/2016 04:15 PM, alexmcwhir...@triadic.us wrote:
> "Pulled the plug" as in future releases of the sparc port ceased in it's 
> current form (64bit kernel 32 bit userland).

Well, we didn't pull the plug on Squeeze. We dropped support for 32-bit SPARC 
with a 64-bit kernel in general, mainly
due to lack of maintainers, hardware falling apart and the lack of upstream 
development. Keeping the port alive would
have been dishonest towards our users. It wasn't something we could ship as 
stable after all. So it had to go.

However, at that point the release team already indicated that SPARC support 
could return in the form of "sparc64" which
is what we are currently working on.

> Gentoo would get you kernel ~4.1 IIRC if you track the stable repository 
> flags. That kernel is leagues ahead of kernel 3.2 as far a stability goes. 
> Not to say
> there aren't bugs, because there are quite a few. As well as applications 
> that don't work and various hacks you'll have to make to the package system 
> to get a
> working current version of gcc to build.

Linux 4.1 wasn't out back then when "sparc" was removed from Debian, if I 
remember correctly.

>>> Granted currently it's still a 32 bit userland as my 64 bit userland 
>>> patches have not hit upstream.
>>
>> Would you mind sharing your patches, please? Those might be useful in
>> Debian, too. Which packages
>> did you fix?
>>
> 
> I'll dig through the relevant one on monday, but 90% of the patches are to 
> the Gentoo package system (which is also the build system) to support 
> compiling
> everything 64 bit.
> 
> Off the top of my head...
> 
> Disable gold for udev as it was broken on sparc with gcc 4.8.5 - probably 
> fixed here as gcc is much newer here

Gold wasn't just broken, it was actually never implemented on SPARC until 
recently when upstream added support
for the STT_REGISTER on SPARC, see:

> https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=19019

> rework glibc building to determine the right cpu flags, had to do the same 
> for openssl. these two apps need to know the actual cpu you're building for - 
> also
> most likely fixed here

OpenSSL never had issues on sparc64, glibc still has. Jose Marchesi from Oracle 
just recently addressed some issues with
unaligned access in one of the string test.

> patch zfs to work on sparc - detailed in my last message. Will get patches.

I cannot comment on ZFS, I haven't done any ZFS tests on Debian yet.

> enable 64 bit in elftoaout - must be fixed here as silo seems to work ok.

I have done the same in Debian. The Oracle guys hinted me at that problem.

> force silo to build 32 bit. Gentoo has old silo, not sure if that's still 
> relevant with newer silo versions?

silo on sparc64 in Debian is fully 64-bit, also thanks to some support from the 
Oracle people. They have quite
a number of patches in silo but last time I checked, none of these had been 
upstreamed to Dave Miller's
repository on git.kernel.org, unfortunately.

The current patches can be extracted from Oracle's silo package:

> http://yum.oracle.com/repo/linux_sparc64/latest/silo-1.4.14-4.0.18.el6.src.rpm

They are also working on adding SPARC support to GRUB, but I have no idea how 
much that has progressed yet.

> fix google's protobuf, for whatever reason it assumes you're running solaris 
> if you have a sparc cpu...

Yup, that was fixed in Debian, too. The same issue affects the embedded 
protobuf in Firefox and Thunderbird, btw.

However, Firefox/Thunderbird still won't build on sparc64, see:

> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1275204

> that's all i can think of for now. Like i said, pretty small stuff. Most of 
> the work was getting the packaging system to work.

Ok, so it sounds we actually patched far more in Debian. But I guess that is 
owed to the fact that we actually try to build
all packages in Debian by default. Gentoo provides only a small set of prebuilt 
packages and the user has to build the rest
from source. However, unless you don't a full archive build on a certain 
architecture, you can never be sure that everything
builds fine on a given architecture.

That's why I'm also not a fan of source-based distributions in general. I have 
seen the same problem on sh4 which Gentoo claims
to support. However, before I actually touched sh4 in Debian, the toolchain was 
quite broken and I filed dozens of gcc and
binutils bugs until everything was shaped up that we were finally able to build 
gcc-5 on sh4. That took over half a year.

>>> The unstable debian sparc64 port does support generic 64 bit sparc. My E6K, 
>>> V210, V215, and Netra X1 are all running it. It may be classified as 
>>> unstable, but i
>>> haven't had a crash occur from system instability yet.
>>
>> There have been recently some issues with kernel 4.6.x, but those have
>> already reported upstream
>> to the kernel developers. See the sparclinux LKML list archives for
>> this month. Otherwise, Debian's
>> sparc64 is working with none or minor 

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[alexmcwhirter]

On 2016-06-11 05:15, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

On 06/10/2016 08:46 PM, alexmcwhir...@triadic.us wrote:
Squeeze may be stable on x86, but it's quite the contrary on sparc. 
Your talking about a release that was so unmaintained on sparc that 
they had to pull the
plug on it afterwards.Squeeze crashes on almost all of my sparc gear. 
This was the reason i gave up on debian and started working on gentoo 
which was much more

stable at the time.


What is that supposed to mean? We "pull plugs" on all old releases.
But that's not related
to SPARC, but just the normal EOL process. Debian's SPARC port called
"sparc" was available
up to including Wheezy. The stability issues that existed were related
to the kernel, not
the whole distribution.

I don't know how switching over to Gentoo would magically fix upstream
kernel problems.



"Pulled the plug" as in future releases of the sparc port ceased in it's 
current form (64bit kernel 32 bit userland).


Gentoo would get you kernel ~4.1 IIRC if you track the stable repository 
flags. That kernel is leagues ahead of kernel 3.2 as far a stability 
goes. Not to say there aren't bugs, because there are quite a few. As 
well as applications that don't work and various hacks you'll have to 
make to the package system to get a working current version of gcc to 
build.


Granted currently it's still a 32 bit userland as my 64 bit userland 
patches have not hit upstream.


Would you mind sharing your patches, please? Those might be useful in
Debian, too. Which packages
did you fix?



I'll dig through the relevant one on monday, but 90% of the patches are 
to the Gentoo package system (which is also the build system) to support 
compiling everything 64 bit.


Off the top of my head...

Disable gold for udev as it was broken on sparc with gcc 4.8.5 - 
probably fixed here as gcc is much newer here


rework glibc building to determine the right cpu flags, had to do the 
same for openssl. these two apps need to know the actual cpu you're 
building for - also most likely fixed here


patch zfs to work on sparc - detailed in my last message. Will get 
patches.


enable 64 bit in elftoaout - must be fixed here as silo seems to work 
ok.


force silo to build 32 bit. Gentoo has old silo, not sure if that's 
still relevant with newer silo versions?


fix google's protobuf, for whatever reason it assumes you're running 
solaris if you have a sparc cpu...


that's all i can think of for now. Like i said, pretty small stuff. Most 
of the work was getting the packaging system to work.


Oracle linux is compiled for sun4v only, so no sun4u support. It's 
behind the times a little, but they are very active in the kernel 
space.


Oracle actively supporting SPARC kernel development is actually one of
the the main reasons
why we have stable Linux support on the hardware. Before Oracle joined
kernel development,
it was mostly David Miller working on the SPARC stuff in the kernel 
alone.




I posted something about the earlier in reply to another list message. 
But yea i definitely agree. Without oracle's contributions there likely 
wouldn't be a sparc64 debian or gentoo port in the works. At least not 
for anything newer than the early sun4v series (and without a lot of 
bugs fixed).


The unstable debian sparc64 port does support generic 64 bit sparc. My 
E6K, V210, V215, and Netra X1 are all running it. It may be classified 
as unstable, but i

haven't had a crash occur from system instability yet.


There have been recently some issues with kernel 4.6.x, but those have
already reported upstream
to the kernel developers. See the sparclinux LKML list archives for
this month. Otherwise, Debian's
sparc64 is working with none or minor issues only.


Yea im keeping track of some of those, luckily i haven't come across any 
of them myself yet.




Adrian

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On 06/10/2016 08:46 PM, alexmcwhir...@triadic.us wrote:
> Squeeze may be stable on x86, but it's quite the contrary on sparc. Your 
> talking about a release that was so unmaintained on sparc that they had to 
> pull the
> plug on it afterwards.Squeeze crashes on almost all of my sparc gear. This 
> was the reason i gave up on debian and started working on gentoo which was 
> much more
> stable at the time.

What is that supposed to mean? We "pull plugs" on all old releases. But that's 
not related
to SPARC, but just the normal EOL process. Debian's SPARC port called "sparc" 
was available
up to including Wheezy. The stability issues that existed were related to the 
kernel, not
the whole distribution.

I don't know how switching over to Gentoo would magically fix upstream kernel 
problems.

> Granted currently it's still a 32 bit userland as my 64 bit userland patches 
> have not hit upstream.

Would you mind sharing your patches, please? Those might be useful in Debian, 
too. Which packages
did you fix?

> Oracle linux is compiled for sun4v only, so no sun4u support. It's behind the 
> times a little, but they are very active in the kernel space.

Oracle actively supporting SPARC kernel development is actually one of the the 
main reasons
why we have stable Linux support on the hardware. Before Oracle joined kernel 
development,
it was mostly David Miller working on the SPARC stuff in the kernel alone.

> The unstable debian sparc64 port does support generic 64 bit sparc. My E6K, 
> V210, V215, and Netra X1 are all running it. It may be classified as 
> unstable, but i
> haven't had a crash occur from system instability yet.

There have been recently some issues with kernel 4.6.x, but those have already 
reported upstream
to the kernel developers. See the sparclinux LKML list archives for this month. 
Otherwise, Debian's
sparc64 is working with none or minor issues only.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[alexmcwhirter]

On 2016-06-10 16:55, Chris wrote:

On 06/10/16 11:26, Hermann Lauer wrote:

Hello Chris,

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 11:00:25AM +, Chris wrote:

I know Debian 7 is unsupported on Sparc and that bugs won't be fixed,
but I don't care. Once the OS is installed and stable, I really don't
need or expect support or patches. Apart from adding a few packages,
nothing is likely to change. All i'm looking for is a stable
OS to run on Sparc h/w, with a gui. I would be quite happy with Sol
10, but Oracle support licenses are too expensive.
Old it may be, but even Squeeze is pretty stable. Just wanted to try
out a later version and afaics, 7.10 was the last supported stable
release.


if netbooting is an option for you, installation report
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=757787 may help you.

Probably the mentioned netbooting stuff is already moved to an debian
archive after the official end of wheezy support now.

Good luck,
   greetings
 Hermann



Herman,

Thanks for the info. Have never used netboot, so will give that a
try, We all get stuck in loops from time to time and I need to test
7.10 and gauge what state it's in to be able to move on.

One of purposes of the exercise is to survey available operating
systems for Sparc. It seems that many Linux distros have ended support
while other OS, for example, FreeBSD is still being developed, but it's
a tier 2 architecture and not as complete out of the box as 386 / amd64
versions. No problem for the experienced user, but steep learning curve
for the less experienced and it's difficult to find the info to solve
problems. More installs are needed to gain the critical mass to
spawn more developers, but unless there are stable versions, how is
that to be encouraged ?,

Anyway, thanks for the help and hope Debian thrives. Don't have the
knowledge base to contribute code at present, but will try to keep up
to date with the list and may be able to contribute something from
time to time...

Regards,

Chris


The main reason most distros removed support is that sparc information 
died right around the time Oracle purchased sun. Oracle stopped 
providing open hardware information. Sun lacked in this department too, 
but at least they made it available. Kernel support stagnated and new 
machines didn't work.


You also had datacenters abandoning sparc gear as fast as possible. A 
lot of open source companies adopted sparc gear to aid with OpenSolaris 
and help port linux. That died as soon as Oracle closed source Solaris 
development.


Only recently has oracle started submitting patches to linux for SPARC 
support (Started around kernel 4.1). Because of that you are seeing a 
few people start working again on porting efforts as we now have some 
decent hardware support in the kernel.


FreeBSD has suffered from the same problems too. sparc support was 
actually being considered to be dropped due to incompatibilities with 
clang. Luckily that was remedied. Even though, FreeBSD still has no 
sun4v support, so any machine newer than roughly ~2008 wont boot 
FreeBSD. OpenBSD has support for these machines, and i've looked at 
porting it in the past, but it will be quite a bit of work to say the 
least. Unfortunately my knowledge of BSD internals lacks compared to 
linux, so i put that project off until a later date. Or unitl someone 
else steps up to the plate.


I wish sparc was better on linux, you're just a little too early to the 
game unfortunately. Only debian and gentoo have anything roughly 
working, it remains to be determined as to whether anyone else will step 
up to the plate.


The good news is that if Oracle Linux makes official releases for sparc 
at some point in the future (very likely), porting CentOS to sparc 
should be quite easy. So i imagine in a year or so there will be quite a 
few more players on the field.

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[Chris]

On 06/10/16 11:26, Hermann Lauer wrote:

Hello Chris,

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 11:00:25AM +, Chris wrote:

I know Debian 7 is unsupported on Sparc and that bugs won't be fixed,
but I don't care. Once the OS is installed and stable, I really don't
need or expect support or patches. Apart from adding a few packages,
nothing is likely to change. All i'm looking for is a stable
OS to run on Sparc h/w, with a gui. I would be quite happy with Sol
10, but Oracle support licenses are too expensive.
Old it may be, but even Squeeze is pretty stable. Just wanted to try
out a later version and afaics, 7.10 was the last supported stable
release.


if netbooting is an option for you, installation report
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=757787 may help you.

Probably the mentioned netbooting stuff is already moved to an debian
archive after the official end of wheezy support now.

Good luck,
   greetings
 Hermann



Herman,

Thanks for the info. Have never used netboot, so will give that a
try, We all get stuck in loops from time to time and I need to test
7.10 and gauge what state it's in to be able to move on.

One of purposes of the exercise is to survey available operating
systems for Sparc. It seems that many Linux distros have ended support
while other OS, for example, FreeBSD is still being developed, but it's
a tier 2 architecture and not as complete out of the box as 386 / amd64
versions. No problem for the experienced user, but steep learning curve
for the less experienced and it's difficult to find the info to solve 
problems. More installs are needed to gain the critical mass to

spawn more developers, but unless there are stable versions, how is
that to be encouraged ?,

Anyway, thanks for the help and hope Debian thrives. Don't have the
knowledge base to contribute code at present, but will try to keep up
to date with the list and may be able to contribute something from
time to time...

Regards,

Chris

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[alexmcwhirter]

On 2016-06-10 07:00, Chris wrote:


Warning, long reply, may need coffee :-)...

I know Debian 7 is unsupported on Sparc and that bugs won't be fixed,
but I don't care. Once the OS is installed and stable, I really don't
need or expect support or patches. Apart from adding a few packages,
nothing is likely to change. All i'm looking for is a stable
OS to run on Sparc h/w, with a gui. I would be quite happy with Sol
10, but Oracle support licenses are too expensive.
Old it may be, but even Squeeze is pretty stable. Just wanted to try
out a later version and afaics, 7.10 was the last supported stable
release. Also sans systemd. I know there are different priorities
for developers and maybe this is the wrong place to ask, but 7.10.0
must have been tested at some stage and really would like to have
it working for evaluation, without being sidetracked into other areas
i'm probably not ready for at this stage.

Ok, one reason for looking at older versions is that i'm not happy
about the current Linux direction. As an engineer, efficiency is
important and mainstream Linux becomes ever more complex and
interdependent. Debian has been the favourite Linux for
years, but the last straw was the systemd saga. If they wanted
a good model for system service management, they could have done a
lot worse than look at the Solaris svcadm, svcs etc, which in the
main, coexists with the existing OS functionality, rather than
making everything else, including non system stuff like gdm,
subservient to it. It's what dec used to call "layered software".
svcadm etc is also transparently easy to use and retains most of
the underlying init and logging structure that we are all familiar
with.

Oracle do have a free Linux / Sparc, but it's still a reference level
design and correct me if wrong, nothing seems to have happened for
some time. Not clear if they are really serious about it. Really
good if they are and it would be a valuable contribution to the
rapidly diminishing Sparc OS gene pool. Hardware is useless without
an OS and it's good to have choices.



Solaris 10 is free for testing / development use.

Squeeze may be stable on x86, but it's quite the contrary on sparc. Your 
talking about a release that was so unmaintained on sparc that they had 
to pull the plug on it afterwards. Squeeze crashes on almost all of my 
sparc gear. This was the reason i gave up on debian and started working 
on gentoo which was much more stable at the time.


Debian is a systemd release plain and simple. I'd really not like to 
debate about systemd or any other init systems. Gentoo is still current 
on sparc and will allow you to use openrc if you wish. Granted currently 
it's still a 32 bit userland as my 64 bit userland patches have not hit 
upstream. However, gentoos inherent complexity may not let you consider 
it a "stable OS to run on Sparc h/w, with a gui".


Oracle linux is compiled for sun4v only, so no sun4u support. It's 
behind the times a little, but they are very active in the kernel space.




Debian may not need the older machines, but have just given a couple of
V240's + configuration help to a FreeBSD developer. Afaics, they have
no plans to drop support for any 64 bit Sparc. Understand that you
have to concentrate efforts with limited resources, but if it doesn't
run on generic 64 bit Sparc, what's the point, unless you are
just aiming at commercial users ?. Heck, i'm still looking for a cheap
M3000 on fleabay, but later machines (ie: supported by Oracle) are
still very expensive. V series machines are more than adequate
for things like software development and are economical or free for
the average enthusiast / hacker. As for reliability, meh. I've had
uptimes of years from U and V class h/w, many of which are still less
than 10 years old. Sun built h/w from that period is very reliable,
with properly designed ventilation and conservative component rating.
They may or may not burn in the boards these days, but far better than
you get from the average cheap pc.

Anyway, thanks for putting up with the post. So how do I get the 7.10
issue resolved and replies to the list to thread properly ?. I see a
mirror of this list on nntp.aioe.org, but seems read only. Is that
correct ?...

Regards & Thanks,

Chris


The unstable debian sparc64 port does support generic 64 bit sparc. My 
E6K, V210, V215, and Netra X1 are all running it. It may be classified 
as unstable, but i haven't had a crash occur from system instability 
yet.


You'll probably never find a cheap M3000, look for M4000's or M5000's. 
Yes they are large and heavy, but i routinely find them for under $100 
USD with free shipping. Don't ask me how that works economically, but 
i've picked up three over the past year or so.


T1 and T2 boxes are EOL but still supported. Oracle still supports every 
sparc machine capable of running at least Solaris 8. Regardless T1 and 
T2 boxes can also be found very cheap on fleabay. T3's usually go for 
around a grand and T4+ machines 

Re: Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[Hermann Lauer]

Hello Chris,

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 11:00:25AM +, Chris wrote:
> I know Debian 7 is unsupported on Sparc and that bugs won't be fixed,
> but I don't care. Once the OS is installed and stable, I really don't
> need or expect support or patches. Apart from adding a few packages,
> nothing is likely to change. All i'm looking for is a stable
> OS to run on Sparc h/w, with a gui. I would be quite happy with Sol
> 10, but Oracle support licenses are too expensive.
> Old it may be, but even Squeeze is pretty stable. Just wanted to try
> out a later version and afaics, 7.10 was the last supported stable
> release.

if netbooting is an option for you, installation report
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=757787 may help you.

Probably the mentioned netbooting stuff is already moved to an debian
archive after the official end of wheezy support now.

Good luck,
  greetings
Hermann

-- 
Netzwerkadministration/Zentrale Dienste, Interdiziplinaeres 
Zentrum fuer wissenschaftliches Rechnen der Universitaet Heidelberg
IWR; INF 205; 69120 Heidelberg; Tel: (06221)54-14405 Fax: -14427
Email: hermann.la...@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On 06/10/2016 01:00 PM, Chris wrote:
> Ok, one reason for looking at older versions is that i'm not happy
> about the current Linux direction. As an engineer, efficiency is
> important and mainstream Linux becomes ever more complex and
> interdependent. Debian has been the favourite Linux for
> years, but the last straw was the systemd saga.

I'm sorry, but I'm not concerned about non-systemd systems and I'm
also not concerned about ancient versions of Debian. There are no
valid technical arguments against using systemd, there are just
crafted arguments to get the own point across.

If you would like to use Debian Wheezy, you are on your own - at least
speaking from my side.

> Oracle do have a free Linux / Sparc, but it's still a reference level
> design and correct me if wrong, nothing seems to have happened for
> some time. Not clear if they are really serious about it. Really
> good if they are and it would be a valuable contribution to the
> rapidly diminishing Sparc OS gene pool. Hardware is useless without
> an OS and it's good to have choices.

That's not a concern for Debian though, so I'm not sure why you bring
this up in this discussion.

> Debian may not need the older machines, but have just given a couple of
> V240's + configuration help to a FreeBSD developer. Afaics, they have
> no plans to drop support for any 64 bit Sparc. Understand that you
> have to concentrate efforts with limited resources, but if it doesn't
> run on generic 64 bit Sparc, what's the point, unless you are
> just aiming at commercial users ?

Where did I say we would drop 64-bit SPARC support? I never said that.
I said that 32-bit SPARC is unsupported.

> Anyway, thanks for putting up with the post. So how do I get the 7.10
> issue resolved and replies to the list to thread properly ?. I see a
> mirror of this list on nntp.aioe.org, but seems read only. Is that
> correct ?...

No idea, you're on your own from here, sorry.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[Chris]

On 06/09/16 09:20, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:


I guess we could probably convince DSA to use T5 machines if someone were
to donate these as long these particular machines have not seen too much
usage yet. I actually don't think that even T5 machines that have seen
some use already would be in anyway problematic. This kind of enterprise
hardware is usually built like a tank.

Adrian



Adrian,

With regard to that, how about M4000 class machines ?. There is
a  job lot of 3 for sale on fleabay uk for just ~300 ukp for the 3.
They do seem more thick on the ground and at reasonable cost generally.
As you say, that class of Sun h/w is built like a brick outhouse and
far better quality than most X86 server kit.

While I don't have the spare cash to buy them, nor the electricity
bills to run them, could get them up and working here in the uk and
provide some support if someone else can host them...

Regards,

Chris

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[Chris]

On 06/09/16 06:50, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

Hello Chris!

Debian Wheezy is already no longer supported, except for the LTS
branch which deals with i386 and amd64 architectures only.

Thus, any issues you may have that are related to bugs will never
be fixed. Plus, since Debian Wheezy, we have fixed a large number
of bugs which affect both sparc and sparc64. In particular, kernel
development has been very active in the past 12 months since Oracle
decided to release their own distribution called "Linux for SPARC".


Warning, long reply, may need coffee :-)...

I know Debian 7 is unsupported on Sparc and that bugs won't be fixed,
but I don't care. Once the OS is installed and stable, I really don't
need or expect support or patches. Apart from adding a few packages,
nothing is likely to change. All i'm looking for is a stable
OS to run on Sparc h/w, with a gui. I would be quite happy with Sol
10, but Oracle support licenses are too expensive.
Old it may be, but even Squeeze is pretty stable. Just wanted to try
out a later version and afaics, 7.10 was the last supported stable
release. Also sans systemd. I know there are different priorities
for developers and maybe this is the wrong place to ask, but 7.10.0
must have been tested at some stage and really would like to have
it working for evaluation, without being sidetracked into other areas
i'm probably not ready for at this stage.

Ok, one reason for looking at older versions is that i'm not happy
about the current Linux direction. As an engineer, efficiency is
important and mainstream Linux becomes ever more complex and
interdependent. Debian has been the favourite Linux for
years, but the last straw was the systemd saga. If they wanted
a good model for system service management, they could have done a
lot worse than look at the Solaris svcadm, svcs etc, which in the
main, coexists with the existing OS functionality, rather than
making everything else, including non system stuff like gdm,
subservient to it. It's what dec used to call "layered software".
svcadm etc is also transparently easy to use and retains most of
the underlying init and logging structure that we are all familiar
with.

Oracle do have a free Linux / Sparc, but it's still a reference level
design and correct me if wrong, nothing seems to have happened for
some time. Not clear if they are really serious about it. Really
good if they are and it would be a valuable contribution to the
rapidly diminishing Sparc OS gene pool. Hardware is useless without
an OS and it's good to have choices.



That depends on what you want to do. Whether it's kernel development,
Debian packaging or improving other upstream projects such as GNOME
or KDE. You need to be more specific.


I guess package building might be the best place to start at newbie
level. There seems to be a lot of infrastructure to become familiar
with before getting into the deep end of kernel development, for
example.



32-bit SPARC hardware is completely unsupported these days. I think
support for that was even dropped in the Linux kernel. You are welcome
to perform test installations on your hardware with the ISO I have
provided and report back any feedback. But we don't need any additional
old hardware. What we need to make "sparc64" an official supported
port in Debian is actual new hardware. This is one of the requirements
by the Debian System Administrators (DSA) as they don't want to deal
with old hardware breaking apart when building packages for a release
architecture.

Adrian



Debian may not need the older machines, but have just given a couple of
V240's + configuration help to a FreeBSD developer. Afaics, they have
no plans to drop support for any 64 bit Sparc. Understand that you
have to concentrate efforts with limited resources, but if it doesn't
run on generic 64 bit Sparc, what's the point, unless you are
just aiming at commercial users ?. Heck, i'm still looking for a cheap
M3000 on fleabay, but later machines (ie: supported by Oracle) are
still very expensive. V series machines are more than adequate
for things like software development and are economical or free for
the average enthusiast / hacker. As for reliability, meh. I've had
uptimes of years from U and V class h/w, many of which are still less
than 10 years old. Sun built h/w from that period is very reliable,
with properly designed ventilation and conservative component rating.
They may or may not burn in the boards these days, but far better than
you get from the average cheap pc.

Anyway, thanks for putting up with the post. So how do I get the 7.10
issue resolved and replies to the list to thread properly ?. I see a
mirror of this list on nntp.aioe.org, but seems read only. Is that
correct ?...

Regards & Thanks,

Chris

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[alexmcwhirter]

On 2016-06-09 05:19, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

Hi Alex!

On 06/09/2016 09:12 AM, Alex McWhirter wrote:
How "new" does a system have to be in order to meet these 
requirements. T-5
machines are probably not too hard to come by, but the starting price 
of a T-7

machine is around 40K USD IIRC.


It doesn't have to be bleeding edge technology like the M7, but just 
just new
hardware in the sense that the machines have not been used for a long 
time

or not used at all. I think even the absolute low-end model that
Oracle currently
offers would be more than enough to be used for Debian, it just should 
be new

or at least refurbished.

The problem with the existing SPARC servers that Debian was running was 
simply
that they were quite old and starting to run into issues. And if we 
want to
convince the DSA team to set up new sparc64 servers, those would have 
to be
new and reliable enough that they can be running for a while without 
any

stability concerns.

The mentioned SPARC T5 machines would be probably perfectly fine. 
Anatoly
Pugachev, who is on this list, is actually hosting such a machine which 
we have
set up as a buildd (with four instances) and a porter box. The machine 
runs
very stable and the integrated remote management mechanisms make it 
very

easy to admin. So, these machines are ideal for Debian purposes.

I guess we could probably convince DSA to use T5 machines if someone 
were
to donate these as long these particular machines have not seen too 
much

usage yet. I actually don't think that even T5 machines that have seen
some use already would be in anyway problematic. This kind of 
enterprise

hardware is usually built like a tank.

Adrian


I do have access to a few T2 / T2+ boxes that are still NIB. They were 
spares for way back when, but with how reliable the ones we still have 
in service have been it might be possible to use them for something like 
this.


Granted T2 boxes are EOL, so i'm not sure. T5 is the oldest you can go 
without being EOL. I can vouch for this gear never dying though. The E6K 
is probably the oldest box i have access too. The only thing ever to go 
bad on it was one of the eight redundant power supplies ~2 years ago.


I feel like i read somewhere that you asked Oracle for donations. I'm 
not sure how that will go, but another avenue may be to get in touch 
with some universities. IIRC, Purdue used to have a lot of SPARC gear. 
Not sure if they still use it, but they might have a few extras lying 
around.

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hi Alex!

On 06/09/2016 09:12 AM, Alex McWhirter wrote:
> How "new" does a system have to be in order to meet these requirements. T-5
> machines are probably not too hard to come by, but the starting price of a T-7
> machine is around 40K USD IIRC.

It doesn't have to be bleeding edge technology like the M7, but just just new
hardware in the sense that the machines have not been used for a long time
or not used at all. I think even the absolute low-end model that Oracle 
currently
offers would be more than enough to be used for Debian, it just should be new
or at least refurbished.

The problem with the existing SPARC servers that Debian was running was simply
that they were quite old and starting to run into issues. And if we want to
convince the DSA team to set up new sparc64 servers, those would have to be
new and reliable enough that they can be running for a while without any
stability concerns.

The mentioned SPARC T5 machines would be probably perfectly fine. Anatoly
Pugachev, who is on this list, is actually hosting such a machine which we have
set up as a buildd (with four instances) and a porter box. The machine runs
very stable and the integrated remote management mechanisms make it very
easy to admin. So, these machines are ideal for Debian purposes.

I guess we could probably convince DSA to use T5 machines if someone were
to donate these as long these particular machines have not seen too much
usage yet. I actually don't think that even T5 machines that have seen
some use already would be in anyway problematic. This kind of enterprise
hardware is usually built like a tank.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[Alex McWhirter]

Just curious,
How "new" does a system have to be in order to meet these requirements. T-5 
machines are probably not too hard to come by, but the starting price of a T-7 
machine is around 40K USD IIRC.
That doesn't count the M series of machines either which has quite a bit 
different hardware.


Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device

 Original message 
From: John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de> 
Date: 6/9/2016  2:47 AM  (GMT-05:00) 
To: Chris <sys...@gfsys.co.uk> 
Cc: debian-sparc <debian-sparc@lists.debian.org> 
Subject: Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems 

Hello Chris!

On 06/08/2016 06:56 PM, Chris wrote:
> Thanks for the reply. I would like to try later builds and get more
> involved with the dev process, but right now, I need to understand
> why 7.10.0 isn't working.

Debian Wheezy is already no longer supported, except for the LTS
branch which deals with i386 and amd64 architectures only.

Thus, any issues you may have that are related to bugs will never
be fixed. Plus, since Debian Wheezy, we have fixed a large number
of bugs which affect both sparc and sparc64. In particular, kernel
development has been very active in the past 12 months since Oracle
decided to release their own distribution called "Linux for SPARC".

> It would be interesting to get a build
> environment running, but are there any resources out there to
> get started ?. There must be an overall dev process involved which
> I need to understand before contributing anything.

That depends on what you want to do. Whether it's kernel development,
Debian packaging or improving other upstream projects such as GNOME
or KDE. You need to be more specific.

> Apart from the usual 32 bit Sparcstation class machines,
> have an Ultra 1, several Ultra II and V240, V215/245, T2000 and
> T5220. Could set any of those up to provide ssh / ftp login,
> whatever, if that would be useful to the group...

32-bit SPARC hardware is completely unsupported these days. I think
support for that was even dropped in the Linux kernel. You are welcome
to perform test installations on your hardware with the ISO I have
provided and report back any feedback. But we don't need any additional
old hardware. What we need to make "sparc64" an official supported
port in Debian is actual new hardware. This is one of the requirements
by the Debian System Administrators (DSA) as they don't want to deal
with old hardware breaking apart when building packages for a release
architecture.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-    GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hello Chris!

On 06/08/2016 06:56 PM, Chris wrote:
> Thanks for the reply. I would like to try later builds and get more
> involved with the dev process, but right now, I need to understand
> why 7.10.0 isn't working.

Debian Wheezy is already no longer supported, except for the LTS
branch which deals with i386 and amd64 architectures only.

Thus, any issues you may have that are related to bugs will never
be fixed. Plus, since Debian Wheezy, we have fixed a large number
of bugs which affect both sparc and sparc64. In particular, kernel
development has been very active in the past 12 months since Oracle
decided to release their own distribution called "Linux for SPARC".

> It would be interesting to get a build
> environment running, but are there any resources out there to
> get started ?. There must be an overall dev process involved which
> I need to understand before contributing anything.

That depends on what you want to do. Whether it's kernel development,
Debian packaging or improving other upstream projects such as GNOME
or KDE. You need to be more specific.

> Apart from the usual 32 bit Sparcstation class machines,
> have an Ultra 1, several Ultra II and V240, V215/245, T2000 and
> T5220. Could set any of those up to provide ssh / ftp login,
> whatever, if that would be useful to the group...

32-bit SPARC hardware is completely unsupported these days. I think
support for that was even dropped in the Linux kernel. You are welcome
to perform test installations on your hardware with the ISO I have
provided and report back any feedback. But we don't need any additional
old hardware. What we need to make "sparc64" an official supported
port in Debian is actual new hardware. This is one of the requirements
by the Debian System Administrators (DSA) as they don't want to deal
with old hardware breaking apart when building packages for a release
architecture.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[Tom Turelinckx]

> on a V210, with gui which is stable. Problem is that none of the
> repositories for Squeeze work any more and it's not clear if they
> are available somewhere else, or have just been deleted ?.

Squeeze has been moved to the debian archive. This sources.list snippet
should work:

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian squeeze main contrib
non-free
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian squeeze main contrib
non-free

Best regards,
Tom

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[Patrick Baggett]

Hey Chris!

Great to hear from a long-time sparc user.

On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 11:56 AM, Chris  wrote:
>>
>> Try our latest sparc64 build. It still has some rough edges, but you should
>> be able to get the system installed. Has a much more recent kernel and 
>> userland:
>
>
> Adrian,
>
> Thanks for the reply. I would like to try later builds and get more
> involved with the dev process, but right now, I need to understand
> why 7.10.0 isn't working.


Just playing the devil's advocate: suppose that the regression has
been fixed in the latest sparc64 set. Do you really _need_ to
understand what combination of problems lead to a regression in 7.10.0
if it is fixed now?

Adrian and others have fixed quite an impressive list of packages and
bugs, including some compiler and kernel bugs, if I recall. It seems
like it would be more relevant if this was still a problem in the
newest images, not in a relatively dormant one.

>
> I want to start with the last stable
> release for Sparc, to establish a baseline.


I think Adrian's goal is to make sparc64 the new stable baseline, but
he's looking for people with hardware to test and report bugs so that
the community can work on fixing it.

--Patrick

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[Chris]

Try our latest sparc64 build. It still has some rough edges, but you should
be able to get the system installed. Has a much more recent kernel and userland:


Adrian,

Thanks for the reply. I would like to try later builds and get more
involved with the dev process, but right now, I need to understand
why 7.10.0 isn't working. I want to start with the last stable
release for Sparc, to establish a baseline. I have Squeeze running
on a V210, with gui which is stable. Problem is that none of the
repositories for Squeeze work any more and it's not clear if they
are available somewhere else, or have just been deleted ?.

A bit of background:

Have been using Sun since Sun 3, the first serious unix machine.
Do electronics / embedded sw here, but have never done any Linux
dev, submitted patches, done system builds etc. Have done kernel
rebuilds on Sun 3 years ago and on Vax 730 BSD 4.3 which took over
3 days to complete :-). It would be interesting to get a build
environment running, but are there any resources out there to
get started ?. There must be an overall dev process involved which
I need to understand before contributing anything.

Apart from the usual 32 bit Sparcstation class machines,
have an Ultra 1, several Ultra II and V240, V215/245, T2000 and
T5220. Could set any of those up to provide ssh / ftp login,
whatever, if that would be useful to the group...

Regards,

Chris

Re: Debian Sparc 7.10.0 Install Problems

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On 06/08/2016 05:02 PM, Chris wrote:
> I've been trying to get Debian Sparc 7.10.0 installed on a Sun
> V215 with an XVR300 graphics card with little success. Wanted
> to try 7.10.0, as it seemsto be the last supported Debian for
> Sparc. I installed Squeeze onto a V210 with XVR100 a few years
> ago and apart from a few config issues, it installed out of the
> box and is stable.

Try our latest sparc64 build. It still has some rough edges, but you should
be able to get the system installed. Has a much more recent kernel and userland:

> https://people.debian.org/~glaubitz/debian-cd/2016-05-04/debian-9.0-sparc64-NETINST-1.iso

At the "boot:" prompt, append the following line:

preseed/url=https://people.debian.org/~glaubitz/preseed-sparc64.cfg

And when installing, please use a minimal setup since the installer has some 
quirks still
and the more packages you are trying to install during installation, the more 
likely you
will run into issues.

Just install the bare minimum, then reboot and install the rest over the net.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913