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From: Russell King - ARM Linux admin <linux@armlinux.org.uk>
To: Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>
Cc: "Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@kernel.org>,
	"Baruch Siach" <baruch@tkos.co.il>,
	"Geert Uytterhoeven" <geert+renesas@glider.be>,
	"Neil Armstrong" <narmstrong@baylibre.com>,
	"Viresh Kumar" <viresh.kumar@linaro.org>,
	"Linus Walleij" <linus.walleij@linaro.org>,
	"Daniel Tang" <dt.tangr@gmail.com>,
	"Jamie Iles" <jamie@jamieiles.com>,
	"Krzysztof Adamski" <krzysztof.adamski@nokia.com>,
	"Alexander Shiyan" <shc_work@mail.ru>,
	"Michael Ellerman" <mpe@ellerman.id.au>,
	"Yoshinori Sato" <ysato@users.osdn.me>,
	"Wei Xu" <xuwei5@hisilicon.com>,
	"Oleksij Rempel" <o.rempel@pengutronix.de>,
	"Alex Elder" <elder@linaro.org>,
	"Marc Gonzalez" <marc.w.gonzalez@free.fr>,
	"Hans Ulli Kroll" <ulli.kroll@googlemail.com>,
	"Uwe Kleine-König" <u.kleine-koenig@pengutronix.de>,
	"Steven Rostedt" <rostedt@goodmis.org>,
	"Vladimir Zapolskiy" <vz@mleia.com>,
	"Lubomir Rintel" <lkundrak@v3.sk>,
	"Koen Vandeputte" <koen.vandeputte@ncentric.com>,
	"Linux ARM" <linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org>,
	"Barry Song" <song.bao.hua@hisilicon.com>,
	"Thomas Bogendoerfer" <tsbogend@alpha.franken.de>,
	"Linux Kernel Mailing List" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	"Jonas Jensen" <jonas.jensen@gmail.com>,
	"Hartley Sweeten" <hsweeten@visionengravers.com>,
	"Mark Salter" <msalter@redhat.com>,
	"Shawn Guo" <shawnguo@kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Old platforms: bring out your dead
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2021 10:44:30 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20210110104430.GE1551@shell.armlinux.org.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210110062113.GA2912@1wt.eu>

On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 07:21:13AM +0100, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 09, 2021 at 10:52:53PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> (... i486 ...)
> > As with the other older platforms, the main question to ask is:
> > Are there users that are better off running a future LTS kernel on this
> > hardware than the v5.10.y version or something older?
> 
> I think this is the most important part of the question. Because the
> possible use case I've described actually doesn't correspond to a
> "prod" machine but to a machine that's powered on every 5 years for
> some old data recovery. In such a case users just start with an old
> system (possibly the one that's still on them if present), and this
> doesn't warrant an up-to-date OS.
> 
> Moreover, just as I experienced when maintaining 2.4, there's a point
> where support for old stuff starts to break again by lack of testing.
> And just because of this, users shouldn't always expect to see their
> old machines boot fine on a recent kernel. Sometimes there may even be
> difficulties setting up a compatible toolchain.
> 
> So actually the question shouldn't be "does anyone want such old
> machines to still be supported" but "does anyone *need* them to be
> supported". And I suspect that for most of them the response is "no",
> it's just a convenience.

What about feature obsolescence?

Consider that old ssh (supporting only the v1 protocol) will no longer
connect to new sshd (supporting only the v2 protocol) or older NFS
supporting UDP only trying to connect to new NFS supporting only TCP.
Or older NFS that does buggily support TCP and won't talk to newer
machines.

At one time, the suggestion would've been to use a DOS formatted
floppy to transfer the data... but modern machines tend not to have
floppy drives. USB pendrive? Maybe the older machine doesn't have USB.

I suppose you'd have to resort to FTP at that point to move data off
the old machine, or via email if you have email setup on it.

Having a machine that's able to boot an old installation just means
it can run, but it doesn't guarantee that it will be useful once
booted to move old data onto newer machines.

Over Christmas, I booted my Acorn A5000 (the very first machine to run
Linux on ARM) to retrieve some old data off it - thankfully I still
have an Acorn Ether1 card with an AUI interface and a 10baseT MAU to
connect to my network.  Sadly, support for running Linux on it has
long since passed - with only 8MB and 32KiB pages, modern Linux would
struggle with it, which is really the reason why support was dropped.
Linux outgrew the hardware.

-- 
RMK's Patch system: https://www.armlinux.org.uk/developer/patches/
FTTP is here! 40Mbps down 10Mbps up. Decent connectivity at last!

  reply	other threads:[~2021-01-10 10:46 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 [this message]
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
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

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