Re: [gentoo-dev] devfs is dead, let's move on

[Kumba <kumba@gentoo.org>]

Greg KH wrote:
> 
> I understand that other arches need to stay at 2.4 for various reasons.
> Hopefully those issues will be fixed so that this situation doesn't stay
> that way for much longer.

You're not the only one hoping they're fixed soon :)


> I am supprised that Sparc64 is stuck with 2.4, as the main kernel
> developers of that tree work on 2.6 everyday.  As for mips, I thought
> the recent (few kernel versions ago) merge brought you all up to speed?
> 
> Anything that I can do to help this, please let me know.

Yeah, it's a bit surprising really.  It depends heavily on the machine, and upon 
certain options in the machine.  I run a Blade 100 with 1 IDE and 1 SCSI drive, 
and 2.6.7 is the last "good" kernel for me.  2.6.8.1 -> early 2.6.11 apparently 
had something nasty that buggered up the scsi subsystem to the point where heavy 
disk activity brought a system to its knees in minutes.  I haven't tested 
anything newer as I usually wait for a grsec release before building a new 
kernel for my non-mips systems (and they haven't released anything for 2.6.12 yet).

The current issue going on, I haven't followed too closely, but it appears to 
cause various issues on several machines.  In one case, a Netra 1450 with 4x 
CPUs keels over on 2.6.1 and up within several minutes of doing anything on it. 
  squash is going to go back and test all the 2.5.x kernels to try and find the 
point at which it all started happening.

The thread regarding all of this (and has davem participating in) started here:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=gentoo-sparc&m=111967071008611&w=2

As for mips, the only system gentoo-supported that still has a link to 2.4 are 
the old IP22 (SGI Indy/SGI Indigo2 R4x00) systems.  When I run ~2.6.10 on it, I 
can usually hang the box after a couple hours of building something (like 
glibc), whereas geoman can run his Indy for days on 2.6.x w/o incident.  Likely, 
there's probably some tricky bugs left that hinge on a specific CPU revision, 
and I just happen to have the one revision that causes the bug.  I just haven't 
fired the system up and really taken a good look at it.


--Kumba

-- 
Gentoo/MIPS Team Lead
Gentoo Foundation Board of Trustees

"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands 
do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere."  --Elrond
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