Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > linux.debian.user > #188635 > unrolled thread

Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ?

Back to article view | Back to linux.debian.user

Contents

  Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org> - 2017-11-05 23:00 +0100
    Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? Rick Thomas <rick@kptz.org> - 2017-11-07 12:10 +0100
      Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? Christian Seiler <christian@iwakd.de> - 2017-11-07 12:50 +0100
        Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? Rick Thomas <rick@kptz.org> - 2017-11-07 13:10 +0100
      Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? Tixy <tixy@yxit.co.uk> - 2017-11-07 13:30 +0100
    Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? Héctor Orón Martínez <hector.oron@gmail.com> - 2017-11-07 13:50 +0100
      Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> - 2017-11-07 14:00 +0100
      Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org> - 2017-11-07 20:10 +0100
        Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? gregor herrmann <gregoa@debian.org> - 2017-11-07 23:30 +0100
    Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? Thomas Goirand <zigo@debian.org> - 2017-11-07 14:20 +0100
      Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? Marcin Juszkiewicz <marcin@juszkiewicz.com.pl> - 2017-11-07 15:50 +0100
    Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org> - 2017-11-20 11:10 +0100
    Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? Lars Brinkhoff <lars@nocrew.org> - 2017-11-20 11:30 +0100
      Re: Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ? lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Lennart Sorensen) - 2017-11-20 16:30 +0100

#188635 — Anyone using stretch/buster/sid on ARMv4t ?

Hi,

for the armel port in buster the question of raising the baseline came up.

20 years ago you could go into a shop and buy a mobile phone
with a CPU supported by the armel port in stretch.

Roger Shimizu is doing a great job on ARMv5 hardware and I've seen bug 
reports from users on ARMv5 hardware in stretch, so it is clear that
ARMv5 should stay supported (and of course also ARMv6 and ARMv7).

But while it was mentioned that there exists ARMv4t hardware that works 
with current mainline kernels [1], it is not clear whether there are any 
actual users left - and without users we might not even notice if the 
port is broken on the baseline.

If anyone is running stretch, buster or sid on ARMv4t hardware,
then please let us know what device and kernel you are using
and whether you intend to use buster.

cu
Adrian

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2017/08/msg00046.html

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

[toc] | [next] | [standalone]

#188673

How do I know if a machine is ARMv4t?  I have a sheevaplug and a couple of openrd machines (one “client”, the other “ultimate”) that are still doing useful work.  Are they v4t?

Thanks,
Rick

> On Nov 5, 2017, at 1:32 PM, Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> for the armel port in buster the question of raising the baseline came up.
> 
> 20 years ago you could go into a shop and buy a mobile phone
> with a CPU supported by the armel port in stretch.
> 
> Roger Shimizu is doing a great job on ARMv5 hardware and I've seen bug 
> reports from users on ARMv5 hardware in stretch, so it is clear that
> ARMv5 should stay supported (and of course also ARMv6 and ARMv7).
> 
> But while it was mentioned that there exists ARMv4t hardware that works 
> with current mainline kernels [1], it is not clear whether there are any 
> actual users left - and without users we might not even notice if the 
> port is broken on the baseline.
> 
> If anyone is running stretch, buster or sid on ARMv4t hardware,
> then please let us know what device and kernel you are using
> and whether you intend to use buster.
> 
> cu
> Adrian
> 
> [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2017/08/msg00046.html
> 
> -- 
> 
>       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
>        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
>       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
>                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
> 

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#188675

Hi,

Am 2017-11-07 11:49, schrieb Rick Thomas:
> How do I know if a machine is ARMv4t?  I have a sheevaplug and a
> couple of openrd machines (one “client”, the other “ultimate”) that
> are still doing useful work.  Are they v4t?

cat /proc/cpuinfo should do the trick. It might not show the 't'
after the 4, but it should definitely show whether it's an ARMv4
or not. (And Debian's armel doesn't support any non-'t' ARMv4
CPUs, so if it's ARMv4 and running Debian's armel port, it's
ARMv4t.)

Regards,
Christian

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#188678

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 3:27 AM, Christian Seiler <christian@iwakd.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Am 2017-11-07 11:49, schrieb Rick Thomas:
>> How do I know if a machine is ARMv4t?  I have a sheevaplug and a
>> couple of openrd machines (one “client”, the other “ultimate”) that
>> are still doing useful work.  Are they v4t?
> 
> cat /proc/cpuinfo should do the trick. It might not show the 't'
> after the 4, but it should definitely show whether it's an ARMv4
> or not. (And Debian's armel doesn't support any non-'t' ARMv4
> CPUs, so if it's ARMv4 and running Debian's armel port, it's
> ARMv4t.)

Thanks!  It looks like my machines are all 5TE — or maybe v5l ??  In any case, not v4t.

> rbthomas@client:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
> processor	: 0
> model name	: Feroceon 88FR131 rev 1 (v5l)
> BogoMIPS	: 1191.93
> Features	: swp half thumb fastmult edsp 
> CPU implementer	: 0x56
> CPU architecture: 5TE
> CPU variant	: 0x2
> CPU part	: 0x131
> CPU revision	: 1
> 
> Hardware	: Marvell Kirkwood (Flattened Device Tree)
> Revision	: 0000
> Serial		: 0000000000000000

All three show the same output.

Enjoy!
Rick

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#188680

On Tue, 2017-11-07 at 02:49 -0800, Rick Thomas wrote:
> How do I know if a machine is ARMv4t?  I have a sheevaplug and a
> couple of openrd machines (one “client”, the other “ultimate”) that
> are still doing useful work.  Are they v4t?

They're ARMv5 (so still need armel). I too have similar devices running
Debian and in constant use.

-- 
Tixy

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#188683

>>>[+debian-embedded, feel free to adjust CC'd mailing lists on reply]

Hello,

  Thanks for bringing up this discussion! And apologies for adding
more complexity to the initial question.
  Find few comments inlined below,

2017-11-05 22:32 GMT+01:00 Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org>:

> for the armel port in buster the question of raising the baseline came up.

That has been a recurring question over the time, the reason to
maintain ARMv4t instruction set was OpenMoko mobile phone, which lot
of people was using back in the days.
I am unsure that is still relevant. However there are industrial
products based on old ARM CPU, but they are probably good to bump to
ARMv5tel.

> Roger Shimizu is doing a great job on ARMv5 hardware and I've seen bug
> reports from users on ARMv5 hardware in stretch, so it is clear that
> ARMv5 should stay supported (and of course also ARMv6 and ARMv7).

There are important issues to keep the port going forward, and it has
been flagged as deprecated in last couple DebConf's ARM BoF meetings:
  https://gobby.debian.org/export/debconf17/bof/ARM%20ports
  https://gobby.debian.org/export/debconf16/bof/arm-ports
  https://gobby.debian.org/export/debconf15/bof/state-of-the-arm

Also build daemons are aging, those were initially donated by Marvell
(some development boards) which then they replaced with other
development boards. We have been unable to find suitable hardware to
build armel port and current ARMv8 server class instruction set lacks
few instructions and we have been advised to not build armel ports in
such hardware.
  Current build daemons got into production in 2010 --
https://blog.einval.com/2010/09/27
We have no current replacement for that hardware, which it's already 7
years old and still needs to keep up running for Stretch life cycle
(and maybe LTS).
There might be other issues, as upstream support in few other projects, etc...

(For build daemon issue discussion, please feel free to fork the
thread and discuss at debian-arm mailing list.)

Having outlined few part of current issues, we had a proposal in dc16:
 >>>  * Partial armel architecture?
            No clear plan for how to create and maintain a partial
architecture, let alone releasing.
            Drop desktop tasks and dependencies.
            Keep web server and mail server - trivial in comparison.
            Lack of video use cases.
            Headless partial arch for armel?
            Build daemons would be a problem, so let armhf buildds do
the builds. Can't do that on ARMv8 (which can do armhf).
            Kernel helper to emulate barriers but hardware support can
be lacking on ARMv8 hardware.

>>> * Update from v4t to v5tel and go headless?
          No kernel support for exclusive v4t.
          Openmoko would be ruled out of this partial arch.
          Kirkwood and Orion can be maintained.
          openssl and other updates would be useful within stretch.
          Propose to keep in stretch and go to v5tel partial arch after stretch.
          Not clear how much work it is.
          Packages would have to specify armel or it will not build.


In other words, as I see it, there are few tasks we could work on
(with added problem of lack of resources):

A) Select a package set to provide headless support, not only for
armel, but also for powerpc and other non-existent Debian
architectures.
B) Setup cross build daemon and cross build such set of packages,
provide build logs and fixes to package maintainers.
C) Follow up on bootstrapping work and make sure we are able to sanely
bootstrap architectures from cross built packages or bootstrap it from
sources.
D) Talk to release team and other involved teams and design a way to
support (cross built) partial architectures in official Debian.

Note that the above can be huge amount of work and it might need
skilled people as well as funding to become a reality.
In a way that's my personal vision to keep aged architectures around
supported in Debian and dropping our hardware dependency, and getting
also nice features that other parties might find interesting such
cross building support and bootstrapping.

(For technical discussion on cross building, please fork the thread
and CC debian-embedded.)

Regards,
-- 
 Héctor Orón  -.. . -... .. .- -.   -.. . ...- . .-.. --- .--. . .-.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#188684

On Tue, Nov 07, 2017 at 01:43:50PM +0100, Hector Oron wrote:
>
>Also build daemons are aging, those were initially donated by Marvell
>(some development boards) which then they replaced with other
>development boards. We have been unable to find suitable hardware to
>build armel port and current ARMv8 server class instruction set lacks
>few instructions and we have been advised to not build armel ports in
>such hardware.
>  Current build daemons got into production in 2010 --
>https://blog.einval.com/2010/09/27
>We have no current replacement for that hardware, which it's already 7
>years old and still needs to keep up running for Stretch life cycle
>(and maybe LTS).
>There might be other issues, as upstream support in few other projects, etc...

Not quite - those are the old machines that we already replaced. The
current builders for armel are Marvell Armada XP GP dev boards,
commissioned in early 2014.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
"Because heaters aren't purple!" -- Catherine Pitt

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#188707

On Tue, Nov 07, 2017 at 01:43:50PM +0100, Héctor Orón Martínez wrote:
>...
> 2017-11-05 22:32 GMT+01:00 Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org>:
> 
> > for the armel port in buster the question of raising the baseline came up.
> 
> That has been a recurring question over the time, the reason to
> maintain ARMv4t instruction set was OpenMoko mobile phone, which lot
> of people was using back in the days.

A prerequisite for using buster would be a non-ancient kernel,
which rules out most hardware including OpenMoko.

>...
> Having outlined few part of current issues, we had a proposal in dc16:
>  >>>  * Partial armel architecture?
>...
> >>> * Update from v4t to v5tel and go headless?
>...
> Note that the above can be huge amount of work and it might need
> skilled people as well as funding to become a reality.
>...

It would be a huge amount of work with zero benefits.

Status quo is a full port that is overall in a good shape,
so what would be the point in spending a huge amount of
work on castrating that port?

> Regards,

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#188723

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Tue, 07 Nov 2017 20:44:08 +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:

> > > for the armel port in buster the question of raising the baseline came up.
> > That has been a recurring question over the time, the reason to
> > maintain ARMv4t instruction set was OpenMoko mobile phone, which lot
> > of people was using back in the days.
> A prerequisite for using buster would be a non-ancient kernel,
> which rules out most hardware including OpenMoko.

Even stretch's libc6 is too new for the "newest" OpenMoko kernel I'm
aware of. De facto Debian on the OpenMoko seems to be dead already,
unless I'm missing something. (And I'd love to hear the opposite.)
 

Cheers,
gregor

-- 
 .''`.  https://info.comodo.priv.at/ - Debian Developer https://www.debian.org
 : :' : OpenPGP fingerprint D1E1 316E 93A7 60A8 104D  85FA BB3A 6801 8649 AA06
 `. `'  Member of VIBE!AT & SPI, fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe
   `-   NP: JBO: Symphonie der Verstopfung

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#188686

On 11/05/2017 10:32 PM, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> 20 years ago you could go into a shop and buy a mobile phone
> with a CPU supported by the armel port in stretch.

I didn't know Stretch was released 20 years ago. :)

Cheers,

Thomas Goirand (zigo)

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#188687

W dniu 07.11.2017 o 14:11, Thomas Goirand pisze:
> On 11/05/2017 10:32 PM, Adrian Bunk wrote:
>> 20 years ago you could go into a shop and buy a mobile phone
>> with a CPU supported by the armel port in stretch.

> I didn't know Stretch was released 20 years ago. :)

Stretch maybe not. But ARMv4t was ;D

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189143

On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 09:37:10AM +0000, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
> Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > If anyone is running stretch, buster or sid on ARMv4t hardware, then
> > please let us know what device and kernel you are using and whether
> > you intend to use buster.
> 
> My StrongARM-based Netwinder machine has been lying dormant for a while,
> but I was planning to bring it back up.  It's ARMv4 without Thumb.

Non-Thumb ARMv4 was never supported by the armel port,
it used to be supported by the arm port.

The last Debian release with the arm port was lenny in 2009.

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189145

Adrian Bunk wrote:
> If anyone is running stretch, buster or sid on ARMv4t hardware, then
> please let us know what device and kernel you are using and whether
> you intend to use buster.

My StrongARM-based Netwinder machine has been lying dormant for a while,
but I was planning to bring it back up.  It's ARMv4 without Thumb.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189154

On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 09:37:10AM +0000, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
> My StrongARM-based Netwinder machine has been lying dormant for a while,
> but I was planning to bring it back up.  It's ARMv4 without Thumb.

Does a netwinder have enough ram these days to run the installer (or
much of anything really)?

-- 
Len Sorensen

[toc] | [prev] | [standalone]

Back to top | Article view | linux.debian.user

csiph-web