linux-kernel.vger.kernel.org archive mirror
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
To: chase rayfield <cusbrar1@gmail.com>,
	John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de>
Cc: Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-m68k <linux-m68k@lists.linux-m68k.org>,
	Sparc kernel list <sparclinux@vger.kernel.org>,
	Linux-sh list <linux-sh@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Old platforms: bring out your dead
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2021 18:26:38 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1f6e936c-4947-4952-fae2-c05d03e0cd2c@landley.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CACwypyNS+fVoPVspSr36v8YjFbkrnYb+amcYRqVmA2kD2uD1Wg@mail.gmail.com>

On 1/11/21 8:55 AM, chase rayfield wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 3:09 AM John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
> <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
> 
>>
>> I'm not sure I understand the reasoning for doing this. The SPARC architecture
>> isn't going to see any new hardware developments in the future after Oracle
>> let go of most of the SPARC developers. So it's not that we need to make room
>> for new hardware.
>>
> My take is that there *would* be more interest in Sparc sun4m / Sun4d
> from enthusiasts at the very least if it was possible to actually boot
> the bloat hog that is Linux these days in a fully usable configuration
> that probably means some modifications to SILO and Linux required.

You can trim current linux down a bit, it's just non-obvious how. Unfortunately
there's an "expert" menu and CONFIG_EMBEDDED and if you touch anything there's
suddenly a hundred extra options in your config with no explanation of what they do.

At least 50% of what you want is probably disabling the printk strings that
aren't visible at your default verbosity level, but alas you must open pandora's
box to access those options...

> The problem is as I understand it, SILO only sets up a 16Mb mapping
> (either due to having to assume 4MB minimum dram stick size or due to
> mapping limitations not sure, most of these machines have at least
> 16MB in slot one...these days though that wasn't the case for sun4c),
> loads Linux into it and says good Luck. This isn't enough for a modern
> kernel with any  hardware support built in. So you might for instance
> get a kernel to fit but only if you dropped all of networking support
> etc... I'm guessing the fix for this would be to modify silo to map a
> larger amount in a way that Linux expects so it can remap it as it
> likes, or just have SILO map the full memory as Linux would. Anyway
> that is THE main demotivation for these architectures.... otherwise
> they have plenty of ram and performance to do basic router/server
> tasks sans SSL.

A lot of people with hardware like this haven't stopped using it, they've just
stopped fighting with kernel upgrades. (Common issue in the embedded world. Not
really a fun thing for security, but )

> This has been the status quo for since the last of the 2.6 series of
> kernels which it was still possible to just barely squeeze a usable
> kernel out of... If someone wanted to take a few hours and fix this
> issue, and keep these architectures around I'd be happy to "buy them a
> round of pizza", though I recognize that many people that work on this
> already have nice jobs, and just don't have time.

My https://github.com/landley/toybox/blob/master/scripts/mkroot.sh ~250 line
bash script generates the simplest kernel configs for a bunch of platforms to
boot qemu to a shell prompt, but you then have to open the "expert" menu and
_disable_ stuff in order to get the size down from there.

> Also Sparc would probably be a good project for someone to extend/test

Sparc has a runtime relocation I've never understood but did manage to break
once, resulting in a long thread to fix:

http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/aboriginal-landley.net/2011-December/001964.html

Between that and the weird save half the stack register thing with function
calls on some sort of "wheel"... there's a _reason_ I haven't been able to talk
Rich into adding support for it to musl.

> Andi Keen's Linux LTO patch set so we could reduce the kernel binary
> size that way also even if sun4 architectures are dropped, it would
> still be useful for embedded sparc. Also there is a port of Temlib to
> the Mister hardware now, 3 cores roughly equivalent to a mid 90s
> machine, at least 128MB ram is possible ( more if a way to map the ARM
> system memory also 1GB is available there, it would have higher
> latency though).
> 
> It is perfectly viable to build Sparc v7 or v8 32bit binaries in a
> chroot on a fast machine also, and I would recommend this if you wish
> to retain sanity rather than attempting cross compiler voodoo, unless
> that is your thing.

It is, sadly, my thing. The above 250 line bash script builds:

aarch64  armv7l  i686        mips    powerpc      s390x  x86_64
armv4l   armv7m  m68k        mips64  powerpc64    sh2eb
armv5l   i486    microblaze  mipsel  powerpc64le  sh4

That's toybox booting to a shell prompt and a linux kernel configured for qemu
for each target. Adding new targets looks something like:

elif [ "$TARGET" == m68k ]; then
  QEMU="m68k -M q800" KARCH=m68k KARGS=ttyS0 VMLINUX=vmlinux
KCONF=MMU,M68040,M68KFPU_EMU,MAC,SCSI_MAC_ESP,MACINTOSH_DRIVERS,ADB,ADB_MACII,NET_CORE,MACSONIC,SERIAL_PMACZILOG,SERIAL_PMACZILOG_TTYS,SERIAL_PMACZILOG_CONSOLE
elif [ "$TARGET" = s390x ]; then
  QEMU="s390x" KARCH=s390 VMLINUX=arch/s390/boot/bzImage
KCONF=MARCH_Z900,PACK_STACK,NET_CORE,VIRTIO_NET,VIRTIO_BLK,SCLP_TTY,SCLP_CONSOLE,SCLP_VT220_TTY,SCLP_VT220_CONSOLE,S390_GUEST

(Well, modulo thunderbird being unable to an indent a line that goes off the
right edge of the screen. The mozilla foundation somehow managed to spend half a
billion dollars in 2019 but it wasn't on thunderbird, I can tell you that.)

Anyway, I wrote a couple FAQ entries trying to explain the worst of it:

  https://landley.net/toybox/faq.html#cross
  https://landley.net/toybox/faq.html#mkroot

> Anyways it could be that people that want this get around to fixing
> SILO eventually and just sit on this last kernel version... *shrugs*

They're never sitting on the _last_ kernel version. They're generally way back
from there. Been true forever off of x86 (and now arm):

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/201002211025.11588.rob@landley.net/T/

> Chase

Rob

  reply	other threads:[~2021-01-12  0:40 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 122+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-01-08 22:55 Old platforms: bring out your dead Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-08 23:32 ` Steven Rostedt
2021-01-09 22:04   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-08 23:44 ` Thomas Bogendoerfer
2021-01-09  0:16 ` Linus Walleij
2021-01-09 17:32   ` Florian Fainelli
2021-01-09 21:59   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-09  5:56 ` Willy Tarreau
2021-01-09 21:52   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-10  6:21     ` Willy Tarreau
2021-01-10 10:44       ` Russell King - ARM Linux admin
2021-01-11  9:50     ` David Laight
2021-01-13 10:27       ` Andy Shevchenko
2021-01-13 12:02         ` Linus Walleij
2021-01-13 12:17           ` Andy Shevchenko
2021-01-13 12:21             ` Andy Shevchenko
2021-01-15  0:03               ` Bernd Petrovitsch
2021-01-15  0:24                 ` William Breathitt Gray
2021-01-15  8:59                   ` David Laight
2021-01-13 12:30           ` William Breathitt Gray
2021-01-13 12:56             ` William Breathitt Gray
2021-01-13 13:44           ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-02-04 21:01         ` Pavel Machek
2021-02-05  9:13           ` David Laight
2021-02-05  9:29             ` Pavel Machek
2021-01-09 17:34 ` Florian Fainelli
2021-01-09 21:18   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-09 17:43 ` Russell King - ARM Linux admin
2021-01-09 21:34   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-11 20:09     ` Russell King - ARM Linux admin
2021-01-09 20:19 ` Baruch Siach
2021-01-09 21:19   ` Arnd Bergmann
     [not found] ` <67171E13-6786-4B44-A8C2-3302963B055F@gmail.com>
2021-01-09 22:20   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-10 18:12     ` Fabian Vogt
2021-01-10 19:20       ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-10 21:33       ` Linus Walleij
2021-01-11  0:33         ` Russell King - ARM Linux admin
2021-01-11 12:32           ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-11 12:36             ` Russell King - ARM Linux admin
2021-01-09 23:12 ` Andrew Lunn
2021-01-10  8:45   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-10 16:46     ` Andrew Lunn
2021-01-10 17:27       ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-10 19:51         ` Andrew Lunn
2021-01-10 15:51 ` Neil Armstrong
2021-01-10 15:56   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-10 17:35 ` John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
2021-01-10 21:46   ` Sam Ravnborg
2021-01-11  8:05     ` John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
2021-01-11 14:55       ` chase rayfield
2021-01-12  0:26         ` Rob Landley [this message]
2021-01-12  0:50           ` chase rayfield
2021-01-12 14:37         ` John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
2021-01-11 18:09     ` Rob Landley
2021-01-11 15:04   ` Gerhard Pircher
2021-01-12 14:44     ` John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
2021-01-12 22:46       ` Linus Walleij
2021-01-13  8:09         ` Rob Landley
2021-01-13  8:21           ` Geert Uytterhoeven
2021-01-13 13:25             ` Rob Landley
2021-01-13 12:02           ` Andy Shevchenko
2021-01-13  8:15         ` Geert Uytterhoeven
2021-01-13 10:39         ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-14  3:54           ` New platforms: bring out your dead, was " Finn Thain
2021-01-14  9:41         ` John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
2021-01-14  9:48           ` Geert Uytterhoeven
2021-01-14 21:21           ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-14 22:54             ` Undesirable code, was Re: Old platforms etc Finn Thain
2021-01-14 23:09             ` Old platforms: bring out your dead Max Filippov
2021-01-15  8:31               ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-13  0:12       ` Old platforms never die, was " Finn Thain
2021-01-16  6:54         ` Rob Landley
2021-01-16 23:22           ` Finn Thain
2021-01-13 11:47       ` Andy Shevchenko
2021-01-11  1:39 ` Daniel Palmer
2021-01-11  9:15   ` John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
2021-01-11  9:20     ` Geert Uytterhoeven
2021-01-11  9:26       ` John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
2021-01-11  9:36         ` Geert Uytterhoeven
2021-01-11  9:50           ` Greg Ungerer
2021-01-11  9:42     ` Daniel Palmer
2021-01-11 10:13   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-11  8:19 ` Geert Uytterhoeven
2021-01-11  8:59   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-11  9:16     ` Geert Uytterhoeven
2021-01-11 10:28       ` Geert Uytterhoeven
2021-01-11 10:37         ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-11  9:40     ` Thomas Bogendoerfer
2021-01-11 10:34       ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-11  8:40 ` efm32 is dead [Was: Old platforms: bring out your dead] Uwe Kleine-König
2021-01-11 11:10 ` Old platforms: bring out your dead Viresh Kumar
2021-01-11 19:59   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-11 21:15     ` Mattias Wallin
2021-01-11 21:47       ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-11 13:13 ` Marc Gonzalez
2021-01-11 17:29   ` Måns Rullgård
2021-01-11 21:50     ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-12  8:23       ` Marc Gonzalez
2021-01-11 14:22 ` Mark Salter
2021-01-11 15:00   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-11 14:44 ` Alexander Shiyan
2021-01-11 14:58   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-11 16:23 ` Sylvain Lemieux
2021-01-11 22:17   ` Alexandre Belloni
2021-01-11 19:58 ` Thomas Petazzoni
2021-01-11 20:10   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-11 20:25 ` Song Bao Hua (Barry Song)
2021-01-12  8:41   ` Marc Gonzalez
2021-01-13 10:30 ` Andy Shevchenko
2021-01-13 11:02   ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-13 16:14 ` [v2] " Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-13 19:00   ` Krzysztof Hałasa
2021-01-14  8:51     ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-15  7:08   ` Wei Xu
2021-01-15  9:26     ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-15 11:09       ` Leizhen (ThunderTown)
2021-01-15 12:04         ` Arnd Bergmann
2021-01-18 10:46           ` Wei Xu
2021-01-13 22:27 ` Richard Z
2021-02-05 13:37 ` Alexander Lobakin
2021-10-23 17:44 ` Maciej W. Rozycki
2021-01-12  2:05 tedheadster

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=1f6e936c-4947-4952-fae2-c05d03e0cd2c@landley.net \
    --to=rob@landley.net \
    --cc=arnd@arndb.de \
    --cc=cusbrar1@gmail.com \
    --cc=glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de \
    --cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
    --cc=linux-m68k@lists.linux-m68k.org \
    --cc=linux-sh@vger.kernel.org \
    --cc=sam@ravnborg.org \
    --cc=sparclinux@vger.kernel.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).