Re: DSA concerns for jessie architectures

Martin Zobel-Helas <[email protected]> writes:

> [please consider replacing debian-ports@ldo with the appropriate port
> specific list when replying.]
>
> Comrades!
>
> At our recent Essen sprint, DSA went through the release qualification
> matrix (for wheezy, as there isn't one for jessie, yet) and defined a
> set of requirements that we consider necessary for us to support a port
> for the next stable release.
>
> We have limited these requirements to whether DSA can support a port
> well or not, and we wanted to establish these requirements early in the
> release cycle so that our concerns can be addressed.
>
> Our requirements for machines are not new; they are:
>
> * reliability - The stable release manager requires that we operate
>   three machines for each port: two buildd machines in different
>   locations and one porter machine.  These machines must be reliable
>   (see mips for counterexample).
> * out of band management - We require the ability to manage the machines
>   independently of their primary network interface: serial console or
>   better, remotely-controllable power.
> * supportability - We require that the machines be commercialy available
>   (within financial constraints) and that they be supportable through a
>   warranty or post-warranty support or are otherwise easy to replace.
> * stability - We require that the machine's architecture have an
>   actively-maintained stable kernel in the archive.
> * environment - We require that packages critical for DSA operations be
>   available: puppet, samhain, syslog-ng, ferm/pf, etc.
>
> Historically, we have not been enforcing these requirements strictly
> and this has caused / continues to cause us significant operational
> challenges resulting in our inability to render the service levels that
> should reasonably be expected of us. Therefore, we believe it is
> important that all debian.org machines meet these requirements.
>
> Based on the list of requirements enumerated above, we currentlty are
> concerned about the following architectures from the perspective of
> using them as debian.org machines:
>
> * armel: no remote management (being worked on); no archive kernel for
>   the machines we use.


afair buildd are:
marvell DB-78x00 -> should be supported by armel kernel flavour mx78xx0
thecus n2100 -> should be supported by armel kernel flavour iop32x

Please, can you explain what's exactily missing on kernel support
side ?

thanks,
Arnaud