Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Theo de Raadt]

> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 08:59:34PM -0500, Nick Holland wrote:
> >
> > But why was I running a Sun E250?  What could it do better than anything
> > else for me?  When my E250 did something strange (which it did from time
> > to time), there wasn't much that I (as a non-coder) could do about
> > it...nor was there much interest in "fixing" these power-hungry slugs by
> > those that could.  They didn't have one, and they didn't want one.   How
> > much was I helping OpenBSD by running on an E250?  Close to zero.  Could
> > have helped a lot more if I took the money spent on power and air
> > conditioning my basement and sent it to the group.
> 
> In some markets, the problem is a little deeper: not so long ago, these
> non-x86 platforms used to cost too much. Today, they're almost
> impossible to find, even the not-so-odd platforms like sparc and
> sparc64.

That is correct.

For instance, we just had an SGI Origin 350 die on us.  It takes a lot
of time to diagnose the real failure of such a machine.

We really would like another... you'll note how hard it is to get
another, oh and if you find the current listing on ebay... does that
machine work... do we take the risk?  It'd be nice if we had other
people to take the risk, test it, and if it is good, then ship a working
machine to us :-)

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Theo de Raadt]

> I just noticed that the VAX packages directory was missing on
> openbsd.cs.toronto.edu and the other mirrors I checked.  I searched the
> MARC.info archives and didn't see anything announcing that the VAX was
> going away but perhaps I missed something?

Sorry for the late reply on this.

My main build vax died, and I have no time to inspect it.  I am
probably going to steal one of the two ports vax, and try for 1 more
cycle.

But there are a few changes people want in the tree being held up,
only by the vax.  So maybe it won't last long.

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Daniel Bolgheroni]

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 08:59:34PM -0500, Nick Holland wrote:
>
> But why was I running a Sun E250?  What could it do better than anything
> else for me?  When my E250 did something strange (which it did from time
> to time), there wasn't much that I (as a non-coder) could do about
> it...nor was there much interest in "fixing" these power-hungry slugs by
> those that could.  They didn't have one, and they didn't want one.   How
> much was I helping OpenBSD by running on an E250?  Close to zero.  Could
> have helped a lot more if I took the money spent on power and air
> conditioning my basement and sent it to the group.

In some markets, the problem is a little deeper: not so long ago, these
non-x86 platforms used to cost too much. Today, they're almost
impossible to find, even the not-so-odd platforms like sparc and
sparc64.

Not so long ago, it was common to find 50 MHz sparc machines costing the
same as a decent car, not to say sparc64, even when GHz amd64 were
available.

I still run on a macppc and used to run on a hppa, which I bought cheap,
probably because the guy who sold didn't know what to do with it.

-- 
db

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Nick Holland]

On 01/26/16 05:36, Karel Gardas wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 2:59 AM, Nick Holland
>  wrote:
>> Meanwhile, there ARE platforms that are still borderline useful.
>> MacPPC, Sparc64 need people to RUN them for real life work, and improve
>> them for relevancy, as naddy@ said.
> 
> Another elephant in this thread: would armv8 running in big-endian
> mode with strict alignment checking switched on be kind of possible
> replacement for sparc64 from testing perspective?

Make a port to an armv8 platform, make it far better than our existing
armv7 support is currently, and let's find out.  But it has to be so
good that that people will put it into production.  Otherwise (or if it
doesn't get done), not much value.

Nick.

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Stuart Henderson]

On 2016-01-26, Nick Holland  wrote:
> On 01/26/16 05:36, Karel Gardas wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 2:59 AM, Nick Holland
>>  wrote:
>>> Meanwhile, there ARE platforms that are still borderline useful.
>>> MacPPC, Sparc64 need people to RUN them for real life work, and improve
>>> them for relevancy, as naddy@ said.
>> 
>> Another elephant in this thread: would armv8 running in big-endian
>> mode with strict alignment checking switched on be kind of possible
>> replacement for sparc64 from testing perspective?
>
> Make a port to an armv8 platform, make it far better than our existing
> armv7 support is currently, and let's find out.  But it has to be so
> good that that people will put it into production.  Otherwise (or if it
> doesn't get done), not much value.

First step for this is "integrate libc++/llvm" isn't it?

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

Christian Weisgerber wrote:

Armish, socppc, and sparc are also on their death beds.  I'm not
divulging deep secrets here; you can just check the dates on ftp
and see that no recent snapshots have been built.


I have two sparcstations and it is since 5.7 that building packages has 
been close to impossible. In the absence of packages, I tried to build 
them myself several times, but the kernel is quite unstable on certain 
CPU combinations, sadly, exactly those which I have.
Only the sparcstation 5 seemed to work, but the machine is a tad slow 
and low on ram here.


I remember Miod was looking at it, but the past months I did not check 
lately if there has been progress, had been busy fixing GNUstep "upstream".


I want also to revive my hppa box, if we speak about strange 
architectures, but the HDDs for these old machines are scarce and 
problematic.


Riccardo

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Karel Gardas]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 2:59 AM, Nick Holland
 wrote:
> Meanwhile, there ARE platforms that are still borderline useful.
> MacPPC, Sparc64 need people to RUN them for real life work, and improve
> them for relevancy, as naddy@ said.

Another elephant in this thread: would armv8 running in big-endian
mode with strict alignment checking switched on be kind of possible
replacement for sparc64 from testing perspective?

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Marc Espie]

It's dead Jim.

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Bryan C. Everly]

I'm happy to help as well.


Thanks,
Bryan

On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 5:55 PM, Sebastian Reitenbach <
sebas...@l00-bugdead-prods.de> wrote:

> On 01/24/16 00:23, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>
>> On 2016-01-23, "Bryan C. Everly"  wrote:
>>
>> I just noticed that the VAX packages directory was missing on
>>> openbsd.cs.toronto.edu and the other mirrors I checked.  I searched the
>>> MARC.info archives and didn't see anything announcing that the VAX was
>>> going away but perhaps I missed something?
>>>
>>
>> There hasn't been anything official.
>>
>> Vax is one of several architectures that Theo has had to stop
>> building base snapshots for because the system is too unreliable /
>> the hardware itself is unreliable / the hardware is dead.  The last
>> snapshot is dated Oct 31.  I assume that sebastia@'s cessation of
>> package builds has related reasons.
>>
>
> more or less right. Release builds for VAX usually don't end much
> early before the release. There were already times, where I had to
> stop them, in order to ship. Those two to three months time, it's a lot
> of babysitting. When I'm lucky, DPB just dies, and I get mail and
> restart, if I'm unlucky, it just gets stuck, and I may not recognize it
> for a (few) day(s).
> That's why I mostly concentrate on release builds, only attempt
> builds here and there in between, just to see/test that my
> preparation setup, and DPB stuff still works, or just to improve.
>
>
>> Going by previous experience, it's conceivable that somebody else
>> will step in to build the release and possibly a few packages.
>>
>> Vax has been on life support with ever more perfunctory package
>> builds for years.  Again, from previous experience, it may take
>> several release cycles of hemming and hawing before people face the
>> facts and officially let it die.
>>
>
> When there will be release snapshot for the VAX, I'll be happily
> babysit and build as usual (:
>
>
>
>> Armish, socppc, and sparc are also on their death beds.  I'm not
>> divulging deep secrets here; you can just check the dates on ftp
>> and see that no recent snapshots have been built.

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Ted Unangst]

Christoph R. Murauer wrote:
> Let's say someone will build releases and packages, would the project
> accept this builds or is there the need to host them self (security /
> trust and so on) ?

It takes more than just someone willing to type a few commands. You
have investigate and understand the failures.

If the first reply to this thread was not "hey, I noticed snapshots were
missing too so I started building them on my own, here's a link" then I'm not
very optimistic. Not to be all Debbie Downer, but most problems in OpenBSD
aren't fixed by people who need to be told the nature of the problem.

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Christoph R. Murauer]

> Christoph R. Murauer wrote:
>> Let's say someone will build releases and packages, would the
>> project
>> accept this builds or is there the need to host them self (security
>> /
>> trust and so on) ?
>
> It takes more than just someone willing to type a few commands. You
> have investigate and understand the failures.
>
> If the first reply to this thread was not "hey, I noticed snapshots
> were
> missing too so I started building them on my own, here's a link" then
> I'm not
> very optimistic. Not to be all Debbie Downer, but most problems in
> OpenBSD
> aren't fixed by people who need to be told the nature of the problem.
>

I totally agree. My question was more meaned like, is it worth in
theese days to invest time and money to learn this things on a old
platform like a Sun or SGI or, is it better to buy cheap amd64
hardware and, let it as it is.

Also not meaned as decission what a person should do (code or not
code) - more like, it was good but now it is dead and we go on or as
long, as there are XYZ people out there we keep it alive.

I know, noone could answer that for me ... it was a try, maybe in the
hope, that others had similar minds.

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Christian Weisgerber]

On 2016-01-24, "Christoph R. Murauer"  wrote:

> Quotes taked from Christian Weisgerber :
>
>> It's the comparatively popular platforms like powerpc and sparc64
>> that are in dire need of help if OpenBSD is not to turn into an
>> amd64-only platform.

That was a plea for help.  Well, a pointer to where help would be
actually... helpful.

People need to run these platforms, find problems, and fix them.
However, I'm afraid you'll find that most of the low hanging fruit
has been picked and addressing the problems that matter will require
heavy lifting.

For instance, landry@'s powerpc package builds are crippled by the
unreliability of the build machines.  Given the plural, we don't
think that the hardware is flakey.  Some kernel bug(s) randomly
causes processes to die.  Vague guesses have been offered.  Maybe
it's a pmap problem.  Somebody with considerable time and skill
needs to wade in there.

Or looking a bit into the future, I'll mention the elephant in the
room and say that architectures without clang support are doomed.

>> Going by previous experience, it's conceivable that somebody else
>> will step in to build the release and possibly a few packages.

That was not a plea for help.

I meant to say that some OpenBSD developer may step in and do some
builds on their own hardware.  I think that happened e.g. for
5.8/sparc.  This is really the last stage of an architecture's
death, long after it has ceased to be useful.

> Let's say someone will build releases and packages, would the project
> accept this builds

Would you like the project to accept builds from a random stranger?

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber  na...@mips.inka.de

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Bryan Everly]

Christian,

I am willing to help. My stable of machines includes:

* SunBlade 100 (sparc64)
* HP C3700 (hppa)
* SGI O2 (sgi)
* AlphaStation 500/400 (alpha)
* VAXstation 3100 (VAX) - I can improve this if necessary. I have
found a VAXstation 4000 that is more capable on eBay
* Mac Mini G4 (macppc)
* Thinkpad T21 (i386)

How can I help and make people feel comfortable relative to security?

Thanks,
Bryan

> On Jan 25, 2016, at 5:25 PM, Christian Weisgerber  wrote:
>
>> On 2016-01-24, "Christoph R. Murauer"  wrote:
>>
>> Quotes taked from Christian Weisgerber :
>>
>>> It's the comparatively popular platforms like powerpc and sparc64
>>> that are in dire need of help if OpenBSD is not to turn into an
>>> amd64-only platform.
>
> That was a plea for help.  Well, a pointer to where help would be
> actually... helpful.
>
> People need to run these platforms, find problems, and fix them.
> However, I'm afraid you'll find that most of the low hanging fruit
> has been picked and addressing the problems that matter will require
> heavy lifting.
>
> For instance, landry@'s powerpc package builds are crippled by the
> unreliability of the build machines.  Given the plural, we don't
> think that the hardware is flakey.  Some kernel bug(s) randomly
> causes processes to die.  Vague guesses have been offered.  Maybe
> it's a pmap problem.  Somebody with considerable time and skill
> needs to wade in there.
>
> Or looking a bit into the future, I'll mention the elephant in the
> room and say that architectures without clang support are doomed.
>
>>> Going by previous experience, it's conceivable that somebody else
>>> will step in to build the release and possibly a few packages.
>
> That was not a plea for help.
>
> I meant to say that some OpenBSD developer may step in and do some
> builds on their own hardware.  I think that happened e.g. for
> 5.8/sparc.  This is really the last stage of an architecture's
> death, long after it has ceased to be useful.
>
>> Let's say someone will build releases and packages, would the project
>> accept this builds
>
> Would you like the project to accept builds from a random stranger?
>
> --
> Christian "naddy" Weisgerber  na...@mips.inka.de

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Juan Francisco Cantero Hurtado]

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 12:55:37PM -0600, Adam Thompson wrote:
> On 16-01-23 08:34 PM, Ted Unangst wrote:
> >I will add that one of the reasons we have support for all these museum
> >pieces is that people can build their very own museum and run something
> >interesting on it. But running on emulators doesn't really satisfy that
> >goal. If there are, in fact, no museum pieces left in the world, we no
> >longer need to supply an OS to run on them.
> 
> Huh.  Previous discussions had led me to believe that the OpenBSD project's
> rationale for supporting all these various architectures was that it
> ultimately resulted in much-higher-quality code because platforms like VAX
> and SPARC64 acted as canaries for suboptimal coding practices?  (Endian
> issues, stack issues, framing issues, alignment issues, etc., etc., etc.)

sparc != sparc64

Theo builds regularly sparc64 snapshots.

> 
> Besides, I thought the run-on-everything-and-anything (including the
> verging-on-absurd) was NetBSD's thing, not OpenBSD's?  See
> http://netbsd.org/ports/, make your own opinions on which platforms verge on
> the absurd...
> 
> -Adam
> 

-- 
Juan Francisco Cantero Hurtado http://juanfra.info

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Martin Pieuchot]

On 25/01/16(Mon) 15:24, Bryan C. Everly wrote:
> [...] 
> Please let me know and I'll do what I can do help.

The best advice I can give you is do something that you care about so
that you don't need anybody else to tell you what to do.  If you want
to maintain an architecture you need to run it first then understand
it somehow.

But if you don't know what to do you'll have to find out.

Now taking part of OpenBSD's development process might be a first step.
It is in any case required to contribute.  It's not too hard and well
documented:

  - follow -current
  - reports bugs and/or regressions on bugs@
  - read and tests diff on tech@, ports@ and/or www@

If you keep doing that you'll certainly learn something (I learn a lot
every days) and maybe one day you'll be sending a diff asking for
reviews.

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Christoph R. Murauer]

> Or looking a bit into the future, I'll mention the elephant in the
> room and say that architectures without clang support are doomed.

Sounds realistic.

> Would you like the project to accept builds from a random stranger?

As I am not part of the project / no developer, my personal opinion
about it is not important.

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Adam Thompson]

On 16-01-23 08:34 PM, Ted Unangst wrote:
I will add that one of the reasons we have support for all these 
museum pieces is that people can build their very own museum and run 
something interesting on it. But running on emulators doesn't really 
satisfy that goal. If there are, in fact, no museum pieces left in the 
world, we no longer need to supply an OS to run on them. 


Huh.  Previous discussions had led me to believe that the OpenBSD 
project's rationale for supporting all these various architectures was 
that it ultimately resulted in much-higher-quality code because 
platforms like VAX and SPARC64 acted as canaries for suboptimal coding 
practices?  (Endian issues, stack issues, framing issues, alignment 
issues, etc., etc., etc.)


Besides, I thought the run-on-everything-and-anything (including the 
verging-on-absurd) was NetBSD's thing, not OpenBSD's?  See 
http://netbsd.org/ports/, make your own opinions on which platforms 
verge on the absurd...


-Adam

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Chris Cappuccio]

Adam Thompson [athom...@athompso.net] wrote:
> On 16-01-23 08:34 PM, Ted Unangst wrote:
> >I will add that one of the reasons we have support for all these museum
> >pieces is that people can build their very own museum and run something
> >interesting on it. But running on emulators doesn't really satisfy that
> >goal. If there are, in fact, no museum pieces left in the world, we no
> >longer need to supply an OS to run on them.
> 
> Huh.  Previous discussions had led me to believe that the OpenBSD project's
> rationale for supporting all these various architectures was that it
> ultimately resulted in much-higher-quality code because platforms like VAX
> and SPARC64 acted as canaries for suboptimal coding practices?  (Endian
> issues, stack issues, framing issues, alignment issues, etc., etc., etc.)
> 

These are wonderful reasons, but OpenBSD requires real hardware to run on,
emulators are secondary. There was just _one_ guy who was dedicated to
maintaining development hardware, and even the GCC compiler, for OpenBSD/vax,
and he's no longer dedicated to it. That leaves zero guys and gals left to
maintain it. I don't see anyone stepping up here, only a few people who
would like someone to maintain it for them!

> Besides, I thought the run-on-everything-and-anything (including the
> verging-on-absurd) was NetBSD's thing, not OpenBSD's?  See
> http://netbsd.org/ports/, make your own opinions on which platforms verge on
> the absurd...
> 

NetBSD doesn't actually run on many of these older platforms, hasn't been
tested on real hardware, only emulators. That has been the case for years.
It's not maintained.

If OpenBSD provides a release for a particular architecture, it was actually
booted and compiled on a real machine...and will work on your similar machine.


Chris

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Nick Holland]

On 01/25/16 13:55, Adam Thompson wrote:
> On 16-01-23 08:34 PM, Ted Unangst wrote:
>> I will add that one of the reasons we have support for all these 
>> museum pieces is that people can build their very own museum and run 
>> something interesting on it. But running on emulators doesn't really 
>> satisfy that goal. If there are, in fact, no museum pieces left in the 
>> world, we no longer need to supply an OS to run on them. 
> 
> Huh.  Previous discussions had led me to believe that the OpenBSD 
> project's rationale for supporting all these various architectures was 
> that it ultimately resulted in much-higher-quality code because 
> platforms like VAX and SPARC64 acted as canaries for suboptimal coding 
> practices?

and emulators have little to do with this.
*BOOM* why did it just crash?  bad code?  Bad emulator?  Ah, here's a
fix to stop the crash!  But what did we fix?  Did we just code to the
emulator instead of the hardware?  Real hw often has real bugs.
Emulated hw has ... different bugs.

> (Endian issues, stack issues, framing issues, alignment 
> issues, etc., etc., etc.)

The ultimate rationale is "because people wanted to" -- that meant more
than being able and willing to power up a machine and build stuff, it
meant USING the machines for day-to-day work.

And there's the problem.

It's almost impossible to justify using a SPARC or VAX or most other
non-i386, non-amd64, non-ARM systems anymore.  For a number of years,
and until about six months ago, I used a Sun E250 as my primary
writing/showing (webserver) machine.  It did the job great, and I was
patting myself on the back for "helping the project" by running
something, well, "odd".

But why was I running a Sun E250?  What could it do better than anything
else for me?  When my E250 did something strange (which it did from time
to time), there wasn't much that I (as a non-coder) could do about
it...nor was there much interest in "fixing" these power-hungry slugs by
those that could.  They didn't have one, and they didn't want one.   How
much was I helping OpenBSD by running on an E250?  Close to zero.  Could
have helped a lot more if I took the money spent on power and air
conditioning my basement and sent it to the group.

Yes, running on diverse hw does help improve the portability of code --
IF it doesn't get in the way of other goals.  The slow stuff is
definitely getting in the way of advancing OpenBSD in more important
areas, like amd64 security, these days.  15 years ago, when the
performance difference between the fastest and slowest platforms was
maybe an order of magnitude or so, it wasn't a big deal to drag along
the slugs.  Today, there are several orders of magnitude between the
fastest modern platforms and fastest samples of "relic" platforms (IF
they still run!).  It's a problem.

> Besides, I thought the run-on-everything-and-anything (including the 
> verging-on-absurd) was NetBSD's thing, not OpenBSD's?  See 
> http://netbsd.org/ports/, make your own opinions on which platforms 
> verge on the absurd...

well, perhaps it is appropriate that someone "fork" OpenBSD to do the
same thing, more honestly.  Want to run an MVME88k?  GREAT!  Here's
OpenBSD/mvme88k v5.5.  Mac Quadra 650? Here's OpenBSD/mac68k v5.1.
Amiga?  Here's OpenBSD/Amiga v3.2.  Want to run on an 80386?  Here's
3.3.  pmax?  Here's 2.7.  Not a real fork, in that there would likely be
no (or very minimal) active development, just someone with some
bandwidth and time on their hands to run a website, a support list (NOT
OpenBSD's mail lists!), and a logo (a zombie blowfish?  "uh...
cycles cycles")

Really, if you load OpenBSD on a mac68k, you aren't doing it to WORK,
you are doing it to see a modernish OS on your old relic.  Great, enjoy!
 Don't slow down OpenBSD's security work on relevant platforms for relics.

Meanwhile, there ARE platforms that are still borderline useful.
MacPPC, Sparc64 need people to RUN them for real life work, and improve
them for relevancy, as naddy@ said.

Nick.

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Christoph R. Murauer]

Hello !

I have no VAX but I am interested in the discussion about supporting
old platforms.

Quotes taked from Christian Weisgerber :

> It's the comparatively popular platforms like powerpc and sparc64
> that are in dire need of help if OpenBSD is not to turn into an
> amd64-only platform.

> Going by previous experience, it's conceivable that somebody else
> will step in to build the release and possibly a few packages.

I don't know, which platformes are planned to be supported in the
future but are there enough people out there, to invest time / money
providing missing builds for SUN / SGI ? The question is meaned
serious and not against this platforms.

Let's say someone will build releases and packages, would the project
accept this builds or is there the need to host them self (security /
trust and so on) ?

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Sebastian Reitenbach]

On 01/24/16 00:23, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

On 2016-01-23, "Bryan C. Everly"  wrote:


I just noticed that the VAX packages directory was missing on
openbsd.cs.toronto.edu and the other mirrors I checked.  I searched the
MARC.info archives and didn't see anything announcing that the VAX was
going away but perhaps I missed something?


There hasn't been anything official.

Vax is one of several architectures that Theo has had to stop
building base snapshots for because the system is too unreliable /
the hardware itself is unreliable / the hardware is dead.  The last
snapshot is dated Oct 31.  I assume that sebastia@'s cessation of
package builds has related reasons.


more or less right. Release builds for VAX usually don't end much
early before the release. There were already times, where I had to
stop them, in order to ship. Those two to three months time, it's a lot
of babysitting. When I'm lucky, DPB just dies, and I get mail and
restart, if I'm unlucky, it just gets stuck, and I may not recognize it
for a (few) day(s).
That's why I mostly concentrate on release builds, only attempt
builds here and there in between, just to see/test that my
preparation setup, and DPB stuff still works, or just to improve.



Going by previous experience, it's conceivable that somebody else
will step in to build the release and possibly a few packages.

Vax has been on life support with ever more perfunctory package
builds for years.  Again, from previous experience, it may take
several release cycles of hemming and hawing before people face the
facts and officially let it die.


When there will be release snapshot for the VAX, I'll be happily
babysit and build as usual (:



Armish, socppc, and sparc are also on their death beds.  I'm not
divulging deep secrets here; you can just check the dates on ftp
and see that no recent snapshots have been built.

VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Bryan C. Everly]

Hi everyone,

I just noticed that the VAX packages directory was missing on
openbsd.cs.toronto.edu and the other mirrors I checked.  I searched the
MARC.info archives and didn't see anything announcing that the VAX was
going away but perhaps I missed something?

I also checked the http://build-failures.rhaalovely.net/ site to see if
perhaps there was a failure in the build that I could take a look at but
the VAX directory was missing there as well.

Sorry if I've missed a post but if someone could fill me in, I'd appreciate
it.

Thanks,
Bryan

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Raf Czlonka]

On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 08:00:09PM GMT, Bryan C. Everly wrote:

> Hi everyone,

Hi Bryan,

> I just noticed that the VAX packages directory was missing on
> openbsd.cs.toronto.edu and the other mirrors I checked.

http://openbsd.cs.toronto.edu/pub/OpenBSD/5.8/packages/vax/

Not from where I'm sitting. And 5.9 hasn't been released yet so packages
for it haven't been built.

> I searched the MARC.info archives and didn't see anything announcing
> that the VAX was going away but perhaps I missed something?
>
> I also checked the http://build-failures.rhaalovely.net/ site to see
> if perhaps there was a failure in the build that I could take a look
> at but the VAX directory was missing there as well.
>
> Sorry if I've missed a post but if someone could fill me in, I'd
> appreciate it.
> 
> Thanks,
> Bryan
> 

What gave you that idea?

Raf

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Ted Unangst]

biggran...@tds.net wrote:
> Back in late 2013 or early 2014 a Vax 4000/96 died. I brought up using 
> emulators to build with, but Theo didn't feel it was a good idea (and I 
> agree with his reasons). Here is his quote "We do not wish to use a vax 
> emulator. That will use even more power than the vaxes, and actually we 
> are still looking for someone to pay the power bill around here."

I will add that one of the reasons we have support for all these museum pieces
is that people can build their very own museum and run something interesting
on it. But running on emulators doesn't really satisfy that goal. If there are,
in fact, no museum pieces left in the world, we no longer need to supply an OS
to run on them. 

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Raf Czlonka]

On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 09:33:21PM GMT, Bryan C. Everly wrote:

> I run 5.9-current on my other machines so when i didn't see packages
> in /pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/packages I jumped to that conclusion given
> that the other architectures were under that directory and VAX was
> absent.

As you can see from the primary site[0], there's only a handful of
architectures for which package snapshots are available, i.e. arm is not
amongst them either.

> Glad to hear that isn't the case.

I never claimed to be an authoritative source and that it isn't indeed
the case. I haven't noticed anything bar one comment on cvs@[1] which
would point to that conclusion - and indeed, aviion is gone[2]...

> Any idea why they aren't building packages in 5.9-current snapshots
> for that architecture?

As with anything - time, resources, etc.

Raf

[0] http://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/packages/
[1] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs=144887159202054
[2] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs=144895627013585

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Bryan C. Everly]

I run 5.9-current on my other machines so when i didn't see packages in
/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/packages I jumped to that conclusion given that the
other architectures were under that directory and VAX was absent.

Glad to hear that isn't the case.  Any idea why they aren't building
packages in 5.9-current snapshots for that architecture?


Thanks,
Bryan

On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 3:50 PM, Raf Czlonka  wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 08:00:09PM GMT, Bryan C. Everly wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone,
>
> Hi Bryan,
>
> > I just noticed that the VAX packages directory was missing on
> > openbsd.cs.toronto.edu and the other mirrors I checked.
>
> http://openbsd.cs.toronto.edu/pub/OpenBSD/5.8/packages/vax/
>
> Not from where I'm sitting. And 5.9 hasn't been released yet so packages
> for it haven't been built.
>
> > I searched the MARC.info archives and didn't see anything announcing
> > that the VAX was going away but perhaps I missed something?
> >
> > I also checked the http://build-failures.rhaalovely.net/ site to see
> > if perhaps there was a failure in the build that I could take a look
> > at but the VAX directory was missing there as well.
> >
> > Sorry if I've missed a post but if someone could fill me in, I'd
> > appreciate it.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Bryan
> >
>
> What gave you that idea?
>
> Raf

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Christian Weisgerber]

On 2016-01-23, "Bryan C. Everly"  wrote:

> I just noticed that the VAX packages directory was missing on
> openbsd.cs.toronto.edu and the other mirrors I checked.  I searched the
> MARC.info archives and didn't see anything announcing that the VAX was
> going away but perhaps I missed something?

There hasn't been anything official.

Vax is one of several architectures that Theo has had to stop
building base snapshots for because the system is too unreliable /
the hardware itself is unreliable / the hardware is dead.  The last
snapshot is dated Oct 31.  I assume that sebastia@'s cessation of
package builds has related reasons.

Going by previous experience, it's conceivable that somebody else
will step in to build the release and possibly a few packages.

Vax has been on life support with ever more perfunctory package
builds for years.  Again, from previous experience, it may take
several release cycles of hemming and hawing before people face the
facts and officially let it die.

Armish, socppc, and sparc are also on their death beds.  I'm not
divulging deep secrets here; you can just check the dates on ftp
and see that no recent snapshots have been built.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber  na...@mips.inka.de

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Christian Weisgerber]

On 2016-01-23, Bryan Everly  wrote:

> I hope to add some of my time on these less popular architectures to
> try and fix that.

It's the comparatively popular platforms like powerpc and sparc64
that are in dire need of help if OpenBSD is not to turn into an
amd64-only platform.

I obviously can't tell people how to waste their time, but while
investing in moribund museum architectures may offer personal
satisfaction to some, it does not help in the bigger picture.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber  na...@mips.inka.de

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Bryan Everly]

I'm ready willing and able!

I'm currently trying to port the Linux display driver for the hppa
frame buffer on my C3700 so we can maybe get X on that platform
natively.

I have a PPC Mac Mini and a SunBlade 100 so I will most definitely help.

Thanks,
Bryan

> On Jan 23, 2016, at 6:43 PM, Christian Weisgerber  wrote:
>
>> On 2016-01-23, Bryan Everly  wrote:
>>
>> I hope to add some of my time on these less popular architectures to
>> try and fix that.
>
> It's the comparatively popular platforms like powerpc and sparc64
> that are in dire need of help if OpenBSD is not to turn into an
> amd64-only platform.
>
> I obviously can't tell people how to waste their time, but while
> investing in moribund museum architectures may offer personal
> satisfaction to some, it does not help in the bigger picture.
>
> --
> Christian "naddy" Weisgerber  na...@mips.inka.de

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[Bryan Everly]

Raf,

I hope to add some of my time on these less popular architectures to
try and fix that.

:)

Thanks,
Bryan

> On Jan 23, 2016, at 5:34 PM, Raf Czlonka  wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 09:33:21PM GMT, Bryan C. Everly wrote:
>>
>> I run 5.9-current on my other machines so when i didn't see packages
>> in /pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/packages I jumped to that conclusion given
>> that the other architectures were under that directory and VAX was
>> absent.
>
> As you can see from the primary site[0], there's only a handful of
> architectures for which package snapshots are available, i.e. arm is not
> amongst them either.
>
>> Glad to hear that isn't the case.
>
> I never claimed to be an authoritative source and that it isn't indeed
> the case. I haven't noticed anything bar one comment on cvs@[1] which
> would point to that conclusion - and indeed, aviion is gone[2]...
>
>> Any idea why they aren't building packages in 5.9-current snapshots
>> for that architecture?
>
> As with anything - time, resources, etc.
>
> Raf
>
> [0] http://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/packages/
> [1] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs=144887159202054
> [2] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs=144895627013585

Re: VAX - are we dropping support in 5.9?

[BiggRanger]

>>There hasn't been anything official. Vax is one of several 
architectures that Theo has had to stop building base >>snapshots for 
because the system is too unreliable / the hardware itself is unreliable 
/ the hardware is dead. The >>last snapshot is dated Oct 31. I assume 
that sebastia@'s cessation of package builds has related reasons.



Back in late 2013 or early 2014 a Vax 4000/96 died. I brought up using 
emulators to build with, but Theo didn't feel it was a good idea (and I 
agree with his reasons). Here is his quote "We do not wish to use a vax 
emulator. That will use even more power than the vaxes, and actually we 
are still looking for someone to pay the power bill around here."


I've been running a MicroVax 3100/40, and doing builds with it is 
painfully slow.


Darren Clark