Re: Future of Octeon MIPS hardware support

On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 8:24 PM Ben Hutchings <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> The main Ethernet driver for all Octeon MIPS SoCs has been disabled
> upstream in Linux 5.5, and will be removed in 5.6.  The driver has been
> in "staging" (i.e. it didn't meet the usual standards for kernel code)
> ever since it was added in 2009.  It recently stopped building, and
> didn't have a regular maintainer who could fix it.  (There is a
> separate Ethernet driver for the management port, which seems to be
> still maintained.)
>
> The USB host driver for Octeon CN3xxx and CN5xxx SoCs will also be
> removed for similar reasons.
>
> * DSA: The removal of the Ethernet driver will affect the EdgeRouter
> Pro used for the Debian mips porterbox and some buildds.  These do not
> seem to have any expansion slots useful for alternate network
> interfaces, so they will likely need to be replaced before buster EOL.
>
> * MIPS porters: Given that these SoCs are designed primarily for
> networking and we will no longer support the on-board network
> interfaces, does it make sense to continue building kernel packages for
> them?

Related (or maybe off-topic)...

I have a Cavium Octeon II and Octeon III available for testing. I did
not set them up; they are still in the box.

I can ship them to someone if there is interest in continuing support.
If interested, please contact me.

Jeff