Re: Current state of the Linux kernel on SPARC

Adrian,

Thanks for the work on bisecting & getting to the bottom to the long 
standing stability issues and the chance for stable, recent Linux Kernels.
Those were a long standing issue for me as I am running a few of the 
heavily impacted systems (UltraSPARC III).

Are there any pre-built images of the kernel available? Preferably SMP.
As far as I know, there are no ("Beta")-install-images yet, which 
hinders testing a bit for me...

I don't have a working build environment atm and am chronically short on 
time due to work,
but I do have test systems for UltraSPARC I, II, III, T1 & T2+
- installing from CD & just swapping the kernel would be possible, as 
I'm really interested in getting this tested & helping getting this into 
official images.

Also, I have multiple early UltraSPARC III system (SunFire 280R) which 
I'm unsure if it works with Linux at all (I seem to remember something 
about the crossbar bus SMP architecture made them crash on early boot 
and the FC-AL Disks are unusable...). Might test as well, if someone can 
provide a prebuilt kernel.

Greetings,

Robin


Am 30.08.2025 um 09:40 schrieb John Paul Adrian Glaubitz:
> On Fri, 2025-08-29 at 18:41 -0400, Dennis Clarke wrote:
>> I will hunt around and see what I have laying about in a back room.
>> I know I have old Netra X1 stuff and maybe a few other units with very
>> old UltraSPARC processors in them. They will be horrifically slow.
>> The SPARC M7 or M8 will be a unicorn. Heard of only in myth.
> While I don't assume you have a SPARC M7-compatible machine, I think
> chances are good you might have a T1 machine. As a bonus, a test on
> an UltraSPARC I or II is very welcome as well.
>
> To clarify this:
>
> The kernel code in question contains optimizations for different CPUs,
> namely:
>
> - UltraSPARC I
> - UltraSPARC III
> - Niagara 1
> - Niagara 2
> - Niagara 4
> - SPARC M7
>
> All but Niagara 2 had bugs which Michael Karcher fixed.
>
> So far, I successfully tested on UltraSPARC III and Niagara 4 as I have
> access to these machines. I also own a Niagara 2 machine, but there is
> no testing necessary as the code was not touched.
>
> I also tested on QEMU which emulates an UltraSPARC II, meaning that the
> UltraSPARC I code was tested (there is no UltraSPARC II code). I used a
> patched kernel to force Niagara 4 to use the Niagara 1 code which worked
> without problems.
>
> Still, it would be nice to have testing on real machines of these types:
>
> - UltraSPARC I or II
> - Niagara 1
> - SPARC M7
>
> Adrian
>