Re: Seems I have bad timing with Debian on SPARC.
Bernhard R. Link wrote: * Jurij Smakov ju...@wooyd.org [131005 12:38]: That's the theory. In reality, maintainers of large and complex software projects (like mozilla/firefox) do not really care about fringe architectures, and I don't see why this situation would improve with time. Large and complex software has many bugs so maintainers will not care for all of them equally. Having people care for them because the hit them on their architecture causes them to be fixed before they come back to bite everyone. A pragmatic (but less conceptually-correct) approach would be to convince sparc kernel maintainers to introduce unaligned memory access handling for userspace programs. For me that would make sparc totally uninteresting. Without the ability to find bugs (which sparc was always very good at, even though alignment was even stricter on hppa), sparc would just be another architecture hardly worth supporting at all, especially as the hardware is no more found as commonly as in former times and there is no longer that much a difference in quality so that using has become more a liability than a stability boost. Having the option of raising misalignment traps should be selectable, like (I believe) it is on ARM. I agree that having it is valuable, but it can be an utter pain in the arse when basically you're just trying to do some useful work (e.g. to build software so that you can subsequently test it). KDE on Squeeze and Wheezy is useless, since Konsole crashes whenever it tries to scroll. That also affects xfce, and it's a live bug. There are other issues scattered around, by and large affecting GUI-related stuff or the X infrastructure. But now I find that headless machines, e.g. Netra X1, lock up at inopportune times, e.g. shortly after 06:25 GMT on Sunday morning but also at other times. This is fairly predictable but only affects busy systems, my suspicion is that it happens when a syslog message is processed while the message and/or syslog files are being archived. I'm planning to revert to at least Squeeze (possibly with a kernel upgrade) or maybe even Lenny, which IMO- once some of the early X problems were fixed- was definitely the sweet spot for Debian on SPARC. Yes, I know I should be bug-reporting and I probably will once I've got a bit better handle on the issue, but ultimately I've got a job to do and a life to live and there's limits to the extent that I can get involved with Other Peoples' Projects- particularly when it appears that the ultimate custodians of the architecture prefer messing about in boats to cooperating with what's left of the community. -- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/l2r69q$npg$1...@pye-srv-01.telemetry.co.uk
Re: Seems I have bad timing with Debian on SPARC.
* Jurij Smakov ju...@wooyd.org [131006 01:05]: I really doubt that at this point sparc (well, Linux on sparc) is doing anyone a service by finding bugs. Vast majority of problems we saw in the past are unaligned access problems, which are not really bugs on other architectures - fixing them will probably not make the binary run faster on x86. There is no way a conforming C program can cause unaligned access. Getting unaligned access always means that you run into some undefined behaviour. And undefined behaviour means the compiler is free to assume code never runs into this and can freely optimize assuming that this code will never be executed in this way. So every unaligned access on sparc is a bug in the software and a bug that is likely to eventually bite people on x86 some day once the compiler tries to be more inteligent in that area of the code. Bernhard R. Link -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131006110815.ga2...@client.brlink.eu
Re: Seems I have bad timing with Debian on SPARC.
* Howard Eisenberger howa...@gmx.net [131004 20:20]: (2) Bus error with iceweasel and iceape. I believe it's been like this for a couple of years now. Those are big problems and getting them bug free can be a big task, though sparc is really good to catch the bugs here. A valid C program cannot cause a bus error on sparc and an invalid C program is likely to fail also on other architectures whenever the compiler adds new optimisations. So fixing those bugs will benefit everyone. Bernhard R. Link -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131005095745.ga2...@client.brlink.eu
Re: Seems I have bad timing with Debian on SPARC.
On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 10:57 AM, Bernhard R. Link brl...@debian.org wrote: * Howard Eisenberger howa...@gmx.net [131004 20:20]: (2) Bus error with iceweasel and iceape. I believe it's been like this for a couple of years now. Those are big problems and getting them bug free can be a big task, though sparc is really good to catch the bugs here. A valid C program cannot cause a bus error on sparc and an invalid C program is likely to fail also on other architectures whenever the compiler adds new optimisations. So fixing those bugs will benefit everyone. That's the theory. In reality, maintainers of large and complex software projects (like mozilla/firefox) do not really care about fringe architectures, and I don't see why this situation would improve with time. A pragmatic (but less conceptually-correct) approach would be to convince sparc kernel maintainers to introduce unaligned memory access handling for userspace programs. That would incur a penalty every time an unaligned access happens, but, in my opinion, it's better to have a slow-but-working binary than the one which crashes all the time. The code for handling unaligned memory accesses for kernel code already exists, so I don't think it would be too big of a challenge for someone who knows their way around kernel code. On a related note, I posted a patch to http://bugs.debian.org/674908 (was RC, but eventually got tagged wheezy-ignore) which allowed me to browse some javascript-heavy sites. Bernhard R. Link -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131005095745.ga2...@client.brlink.eu -- Jurij Smakov | ju...@wooyd.org | Key IDs: 43C30A7D/C99E03CC
Re: Seems I have bad timing with Debian on SPARC.
* Jurij Smakov ju...@wooyd.org [131005 12:38]: That's the theory. In reality, maintainers of large and complex software projects (like mozilla/firefox) do not really care about fringe architectures, and I don't see why this situation would improve with time. Large and complex software has many bugs so maintainers will not care for all of them equally. Having people care for them because the hit them on their architecture causes them to be fixed before they come back to bite everyone. A pragmatic (but less conceptually-correct) approach would be to convince sparc kernel maintainers to introduce unaligned memory access handling for userspace programs. For me that would make sparc totally uninteresting. Without the ability to find bugs (which sparc was always very good at, even though alignment was even stricter on hppa), sparc would just be another architecture hardly worth supporting at all, especially as the hardware is no more found as commonly as in former times and there is no longer that much a difference in quality so that using has become more a liability than a stability boost. Bernhard R. Link -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131005203607.ga2...@client.brlink.eu
Re: Seems I have bad timing with Debian on SPARC.
On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 9:36 PM, Bernhard R. Link brl...@debian.org wrote: * Jurij Smakov ju...@wooyd.org [131005 12:38]: That's the theory. In reality, maintainers of large and complex software projects (like mozilla/firefox) do not really care about fringe architectures, and I don't see why this situation would improve with time. Large and complex software has many bugs so maintainers will not care for all of them equally. Having people care for them because the hit them on their architecture causes them to be fixed before they come back to bite everyone. A pragmatic (but less conceptually-correct) approach would be to convince sparc kernel maintainers to introduce unaligned memory access handling for userspace programs. For me that would make sparc totally uninteresting. Without the ability to find bugs (which sparc was always very good at, even though alignment was even stricter on hppa), sparc would just be another architecture hardly worth supporting at all, especially as the hardware is no more found as commonly as in former times and there is no longer that much a difference in quality so that using has become more a liability than a stability boost. I really doubt that at this point sparc (well, Linux on sparc) is doing anyone a service by finding bugs. Vast majority of problems we saw in the past are unaligned access problems, which are not really bugs on other architectures - fixing them will probably not make the binary run faster on x86. So, when we find and file them, typically nobody cares. One spectacular example is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=161826- it took over 7 *years* for this bug to be declared fixed. The fact that the current iceweasel crashes on sparc bug ( http://bugs.debian.org/674908) was open (with grave severity) for almost a year and was eventually tagged wheezy-ignore to prevent it from blocking the last release is an indication that Debian's release managers are adopting a similar attitude - and I don't blame them. Releasing Debian is a huge task, and expecting to delay the release because iceweasel is crashing for a few dozen people who bother running it on sparc is not reasonable. I don't want to discourage you (or anyone else), but I think that sparc as a Debian port is facing some serious problems, which can potentially lead to its demise in not-so-distant future, same way it happened to sparc32. Preventing binaries crashing on unaligned memory accesses would keep if afloat a bit longer (and you can make the behavior configurable, of course) - if I would still be a port maintainer, I would pursue this goal. Bernhard R. Link -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131005203607.ga2...@client.brlink.eu -- Jurij Smakov | ju...@wooyd.org | Key IDs: 43C30A7D/C99E03CC
Re: Seems I have bad timing with Debian on SPARC.
On 2013-10-03, Hartwig Atrops hartwig.atr...@arcor.de wrote: I reinstalled my Ultra 60 some days ago - dual boot Wheezy / Jessie. I used the netinstall CDs. I'm running XFCE4, workes fine so far on both Wheezy and Jessie. Ok, Iceweasel is broken - that's an old problem. And installing Jessie with the XFCE CD ended up in a mixture of XFCE and Gnome - unusable. But starting with the netinstall CD, even Jessie is working without major problems so far. I just fired up my Ultra 60 with Creator card running Wheezy. No desktop manager, startx plus window manager. Everything seems to work, except: (1) No sound with SMP kernel. Non-SMP kernel O.K. (2) Bus error with iceweasel and iceape. I believe it's been like this for a couple of years now. $ uname -a Linux debu60 3.2.0-4-sparc64 #1 Debian 3.2.46-1 sparc64 GNU/Linux $ Xorg -version X.Org X Server 1.12.4 Release Date: 2012-08-27 X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0 Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.32-5-sparc64-smp sparc Debian Current Operating System: Linux debu60 3.2.0-4-sparc64 #1 Debian 3.2.46-1 sparc64 Kernel command line: root=/dev/sdc2 ro Build Date: 17 April 2013 11:30:19AM xorg-server 2:1.12.4-6 (Julien Cristau jcris...@debian.org) Current version of pixman: 0.26.0 Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org to make sure that you have the latest version. $ grep -i sunffb /var/log/Xorg.0.log [ 108.882] (==) Matched sunffb as autoconfigured driver 0 [ 108.882] (==) Matched sunffb as autoconfigured driver 1 [ 108.883] (II) LoadModule: sunffb [ 108.924] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sunffb_drv.so [ 108.938] (II) Module sunffb: vendor=X.Org Foundation [ 109.057] (II) SUNFFB: driver for Creator, Creator 3D and Elite 3D [ 109.071] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for sunffb [ 109.074] (WW) SUNFFB: More than one matching Device section found: Autoconfigured Video Dev [ 109.082] (II) SUNFFB(0): Creating default Display subsection in Screen section [ 109.082] (==) SUNFFB(0): RGB weight 888 [ 109.082] (==) SUNFFB(0): Default visual is TrueColor [ 109.083] (==) SUNFFB(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0) [ 109.083] (==) SUNFFB(0): Using HW cursor [ 109.167] (==) SUNFFB(0): DPI set to (96, 96) [ 109.238] (II) SUNFFB(0): Using XFree86 Acceleration Architecture (XAA) [ 109.239] (==) SUNFFB(0): Backing store disabled [ 109.239] (==) SUNFFB(0): Silken mouse enabled [ 109.242] (==) SUNFFB(0): DPMS enabled [ 109.242] (==) SUNFFB(0): DPMS enabled Regards, Howard E. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/bb8f5ifu58...@mid.individual.net
Re: Seems I have bad timing with Debian on SPARC.
Nice. I'll disable XDM and do a manual startup. Did you write out /etc/X11/xorg.conf? (if not, if there's a chance you could before starting X do an X -configure and post the resulting xorg.conf.new that pops up in your home directory that would be great. I'm going to switch back to wheezy tonight if plans fall through. thanks, u60spitfire On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Howard Eisenberger howa...@gmx.net wrote: On 2013-10-03, Hartwig Atrops hartwig.atr...@arcor.de wrote: I reinstalled my Ultra 60 some days ago - dual boot Wheezy / Jessie. I used the netinstall CDs. I'm running XFCE4, workes fine so far on both Wheezy and Jessie. Ok, Iceweasel is broken - that's an old problem. And installing Jessie with the XFCE CD ended up in a mixture of XFCE and Gnome - unusable. But starting with the netinstall CD, even Jessie is working without major problems so far. I just fired up my Ultra 60 with Creator card running Wheezy. No desktop manager, startx plus window manager. Everything seems to work, except: (1) No sound with SMP kernel. Non-SMP kernel O.K. (2) Bus error with iceweasel and iceape. I believe it's been like this for a couple of years now. $ uname -a Linux debu60 3.2.0-4-sparc64 #1 Debian 3.2.46-1 sparc64 GNU/Linux $ Xorg -version X.Org X Server 1.12.4 Release Date: 2012-08-27 X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0 Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.32-5-sparc64-smp sparc Debian Current Operating System: Linux debu60 3.2.0-4-sparc64 #1 Debian 3.2.46-1 sparc64 Kernel command line: root=/dev/sdc2 ro Build Date: 17 April 2013 11:30:19AM xorg-server 2:1.12.4-6 (Julien Cristau jcris...@debian.org) Current version of pixman: 0.26.0 Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org to make sure that you have the latest version. $ grep -i sunffb /var/log/Xorg.0.log [ 108.882] (==) Matched sunffb as autoconfigured driver 0 [ 108.882] (==) Matched sunffb as autoconfigured driver 1 [ 108.883] (II) LoadModule: sunffb [ 108.924] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/sunffb_drv.so [ 108.938] (II) Module sunffb: vendor=X.Org Foundation [ 109.057] (II) SUNFFB: driver for Creator, Creator 3D and Elite 3D [ 109.071] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for sunffb [ 109.074] (WW) SUNFFB: More than one matching Device section found: Autoconfigured Video Dev [ 109.082] (II) SUNFFB(0): Creating default Display subsection in Screen section [ 109.082] (==) SUNFFB(0): RGB weight 888 [ 109.082] (==) SUNFFB(0): Default visual is TrueColor [ 109.083] (==) SUNFFB(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0) [ 109.083] (==) SUNFFB(0): Using HW cursor [ 109.167] (==) SUNFFB(0): DPI set to (96, 96) [ 109.238] (II) SUNFFB(0): Using XFree86 Acceleration Architecture (XAA) [ 109.239] (==) SUNFFB(0): Backing store disabled [ 109.239] (==) SUNFFB(0): Silken mouse enabled [ 109.242] (==) SUNFFB(0): DPMS enabled [ 109.242] (==) SUNFFB(0): DPMS enabled Regards, Howard E. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/bb8f5ifu58...@mid.individual.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAN-w9fweKSX+8iuZ8Ev7fUa2N+LWbYt=47racrgid6qvjwq...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Seems I have bad timing with Debian on SPARC.
On 2013-10-04, Hartwig Atrops wrote: On Friday 04 October 2013 22:43:43 u60 spitfire wrote: Nice. I'll disable XDM and do a manual startup. Did you write out /etc/X11/xorg.conf? (if not, if there's a chance you could before starting X do an X -configure and post the resulting xorg.conf.new that pops up in your home directory that would be great. My Ultra 60 has a Creator 3D card, too . X worked out of the box here, I did not need to provide an xorg.conf (Wheezy and Jessie). Xdm is in use, too - no problems. Neither local monitor nor XDMCP. No xorg.conf here also. I get 1280x1024 on old Sun (Hitachi?) monitor with VGA adapter on Creator card. Xorg -configure doesn't work, so no /root/xorg.conf.new. I do get a Segmentation fault when I shut down X before powering off. [I have Debian on external SCSI drive. Solaris 10 and OpenBSD on the internal drives. It's a slow machine, so I wouldn't expect too much. Debian on the 1.5MZ, 500MB ram Sunpci card is faster.] Regards, Howard E. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/bb9jlmf6id...@mid.individual.net
Re: Seems I have bad timing with Debian on SPARC.
Hi. On Wednesday 02 October 2013 23:36:40 u60 spitfire wrote: Just signed up for this mailing list; had spent a good amount of time over the last week getting my Ultra 60 up and running again. It's mostly OK...heh...execpt the part about having to reprogram the darn NVRAM every time I turn it on. I got jessie installed (Didn't get far in the stable release; first thing I did was try to open iceweasel and it hit a bus error -- unaligned mem access maybe). Working on getting the framebuffer going and whatnot now, went to the Debian forums and figured I'd try this mailing list after no responses there. After checking the posts for the last few months (only a handful!), they seem all about Helloanybody out there using/maintaining this? or Hey if anyone's using driver X y'all need to maintain it yourself 'cause you're the only one using it, heh. So, realistically*, what's the deal? Any point in trying to get this to work or should I cut my losses now and move to some other distribution or OS? I had thought that maybe there was some interest in the architecture since OpenSPARC was published/available for some time. Anyhow. Advice appreciated in advance. thanks *Yes, I'm not being terribly realistic running anything on this box to begin with. I reinstalled my Ultra 60 some days ago - dual boot Wheezy / Jessie. I used the netinstall CDs. I'm running XFCE4, workes fine so far on both Wheezy and Jessie. Ok, Iceweasel is broken - that's an old problem. And installing Jessie with the XFCE CD ended up in a mixture of XFCE and Gnome - unusable. But starting with the netinstall CD, even Jessie is working without major problems so far. Hm, I didn't use it in real life yet ... Regards, Hartwig -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201310031021.42295.hartwig.atr...@arcor.de
Seems I have bad timing with Debian on SPARC.
Just signed up for this mailing list; had spent a good amount of time over the last week getting my Ultra 60 up and running again. It's mostly OK...heh...execpt the part about having to reprogram the darn NVRAM every time I turn it on. I got jessie installed (Didn't get far in the stable release; first thing I did was try to open iceweasel and it hit a bus error -- unaligned mem access maybe). Working on getting the framebuffer going and whatnot now, went to the Debian forums and figured I'd try this mailing list after no responses there. After checking the posts for the last few months (only a handful!), they seem all about Helloanybody out there using/maintaining this? or Hey if anyone's using driver X y'all need to maintain it yourself 'cause you're the only one using it, heh. So, realistically*, what's the deal? Any point in trying to get this to work or should I cut my losses now and move to some other distribution or OS? I had thought that maybe there was some interest in the architecture since OpenSPARC was published/available for some time. Anyhow. Advice appreciated in advance. thanks *Yes, I'm not being terribly realistic running anything on this box to begin with. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-sparc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAN-w9fwQ7=FhaE3R=o7Ehx7ckMm=cfxuyiixinjcchmttbc...@mail.gmail.com
