ia64 removal (was: Re: lockref scalability on x86-64 vs cpu_relax)

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On Fri, 13 Jan 2023 at 22:06, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
<glaubitz at physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>
> Hello Ard!
>
> > Can I take that as an ack on [0]? The EFI subsystem has evolved
> > substantially over the years, and there is really no way to do any
> > IA64 testing beyond build testing, so from that perspective, dropping
> > it entirely would be welcomed.
>
> ia64 is regularly tested in Debian and Gentoo [1][2].
>
> Debian's ia64 porterbox yttrium runs a recent kernel without issues:
>
> root at yttrium:~# uname -a
> Linux yttrium 5.19.0-2-mckinley #1 SMP Debian 5.19.11-1 (2022-09-24) ia64 GNU/Linux
> root at yttrium:~#
>
> root at yttrium:~# journalctl -b|head -n10
> Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: Linux version 5.19.0-2-mckinley (debian-kernel at lists.debian.org) (gcc-11 (Debian 11.3.0-6) 11.3.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.39) #1 SMP Debian 5.19.11-1 (2022-09-24)
> Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: efi: EFI v2.10 by HP
> Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: efi: SALsystab=0xdfdd63a18 ESI=0xdfdd63f18 ACPI 2.0=0x3d3c4014 HCDP=0xdffff8798 SMBIOS=0x3d368000
> Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: PCDP: v3 at 0xdffff8798
> Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: earlycon: uart8250 at I/O port 0x4000 (options '115200n8')
> Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: printk: bootconsole [uart8250] enabled
> Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: ACPI: Early table checksum verification disabled
> Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: ACPI: RSDP 0x000000003D3C4014 000024 (v02 HP    )
> Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: ACPI: XSDT 0x000000003D3C4580 000124 (v01 HP     RX2800-2 00000001      01000013)
> Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: ACPI: FACP 0x000000003D3BE000 0000F4 (v03 HP     RX2800-2 00000001 HP   00000001)
> root at yttrium:~#
>
> Same applies to the buildds:
>
> root at lifshitz:~# uname -a
> Linux lifshitz 6.0.0-4-mckinley #1 SMP Debian 6.0.8-1 (2022-11-11) ia64 GNU/Linux
> root at lifshitz:~#
>
> root at lenz:~# uname -a
> Linux lenz 6.0.0-4-mckinley #1 SMP Debian 6.0.8-1 (2022-11-11) ia64 GNU/Linux
> root at lenz:~#
>
> EFI works fine as well using the latest version of GRUB2.
>
> Thanks,
> Adrian
>
> > [1] https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/
> > [2] https://mirror.yandex.ru/gentoo-distfiles//releases/ia64/autobuilds/

Thanks for reporting back. I (mis)read the debian ports page [3],
which mentions Debian 7 as the highest Debian version that supports
IA64, and so I assumed that support had been dropped from Debian.

However, if only a handful of people want to keep this port alive for
reasons of nostalgia, it is obviously obsolete, and we should ask
ourselves whether it is reasonable to expect Linux contributors to
keep spending time on this.

Does the Debian ia64 port have any users? Or is the system that builds
the packages the only one that consumes them?


[3] https://www.debian.org/ports/ia64/