Re: moving affs + RDB partition support to staging?
(adding debian-68k) Hi Matthew! On 04/26/2018 12:28 PM, Martin Steigerwald wrote: You probably put your stick into a cave with ancient sleeping dragons :) Indeed. Added in linux-m68k mailing list, as they likely have an opinion on how to treat affs + RDB partition support. Also added in Jens Axboe about patching that RDB support broken with 2 TB or larger harddisks issue which had been in Linux kernel for 6 years while a patch exists that to my testing back then solves the issue. The answer is that we are still very much actively using RDB and AFFS supoort in the Linux kernel and if you were to remove it, you would directly hit users. I know it may sound crazy, but the Linux/m68k port (Atari, Mac, Amiga etc) is a very actively used and maintained port which just recently received three new drivers: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mkp/scsi.git/commit/?h=4.18/scsi-queue&id=3109e5ae0311e937d49a5325134e50b742ac5f4a https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net-next.git/commit/?id=861928f4e60e826cd8871c0c37f4b3d825b8d81d https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/drivers/ata/pata_gayle.c?id=9ab27d1d35fda0c5fce624083e92546a8545e7e5 The community around the m68k CPU is constantly developing new hardware (new accelerator boards, networking cards, IDE controllers etc for the Amiga and so on). So, the community and the port are anything but dead. Yeah, it's pretty sad how few commits some of these filesystems have had in recent years. One can argue that they're stable and don't need to be fixed because they aren't broken, but I find it hard to believe that any of them were better-implemented than ext2 which still sees regular bugfixes. Exactly. It works fine as is: root@elgar:~> uname -a Linux elgar 4.16.0-rc2-amiga-16784-ga8917fc #650 Mon Mar 5 15:32:52 NZDT 2018 m68k GNU/Linux root@elgar:~> mount /dev/sda1 /mnt -taffs root@elgar:~> ls -l /mnt | head total 0 drwx-- 1 root root 0 Mar 30 2001 Alt -rw--- 1 root root 1352 Mar 27 1997 Alt.info drwx-- 1 root root 0 Nov 16 14:39 C drwx-- 1 root root 0 Mar 27 1997 CS_Fonts drwx-- 1 root root 0 Mar 27 1997 Classes -rwx-- 1 root root 1132 Aug 14 1996 Classes.info drwx-- 1 root root 0 Feb 10 2004 Commodities -rw--- 1 root root628 Jan 14 2002 Commodities.info drwx-- 1 root root 0 Apr 10 1999 CyberTools root@elgar:~> mount |grep affs /dev/sda1 on /mnt type affs (rw,relatime,bs=512,volume=:) root@elgar:~> There is nothing at the moment that needs fixing. Regarding affs there is a severe issue which is not in affs itself but in the handling of Rigid Disk Block (RDB) partitions, the Amiga partitioning standard, which is far more advanced than MBR: It overruns for 2 TB or larger drives and then wraps over to the beginning of the drive – I bet you can imagine what happens if you write to an area larger than 2 TB. I learned this with an external 2TB RDB partitioned harddisk back then, which I used for Sam440ep (a kind of successor for old, classic Amiga hardware) backup + some Linux related stuff in another partition. The usecase for RDB-partitioned disks larger than 2 TiB is rather obscure, so I don't really consider this a problem. Amigas running Linux can use GPT for the other disks. Joanne Dow, a developer who developed hdwrench.library which HDToolBox uses for partitioning in AmigaOS 3.5/3.9, provided a patch back then, but never officially put it officially through upstreaming as I offered to make a good description and upstream it through Jens Axboe. Could be an idea to do that. I may take this as a reason to… actually follow through this time, hopefully remembering all the details in order to provide a meaningful patch description – but I think mostly I can do just careful copy and paste. Even tough I believe Joanne Dow´s fix only fixed my bug report 43511, but not 43511 which is more about a safeguarding issue in case of future overflows, I still think it would be good to go in in case affs + RDB stays in their current places. That would be cool. Let me know whether you need real Amiga hardware for testing. We have plenty available. However, in case you move affs to staging, I may be less motivated to do so, but then I suggest you also move RDB partitioning support to staging, cause this is the one that is known to be dangerously badly for 2 TB or larger disks. And yeah, I admit I did not follow through with having that patch upstreamed. Probably I did not want to be responsible in case my description would not have been absolutely accurate or the patch breaks something else. I do not have that 2 TB drive anymore and don´t feel like setting one up in a suitable way in order to go about this patch, but my testing back then was quite elaborate and I still feel pretty confident about it. I wholeheartedly object to move RDB and AFFS to staging and I guess the Linux/m68k and Debian/m68k community agrees
Re: moving affs + RDB partition support to staging?
On 04/26/2018 12:59 PM, David Sterba wrote: The answer is that we are still very much actively using RDB and AFFS supoort in the Linux kernel and if you were to remove it, you would directly hit users. Based on that I think removing affs will not happen, but the upstream maintenance status should be updated accordingly. As a fellow SUSE employee, I'm very happy to hear that someone from SUSE is picking up the work <3. FWIW, Andreas Schwab from SUSE maintains an internal port of openSUSE for m68k :). Exactly. It works fine as is: ... There is nothing at the moment that needs fixing. So, I'm willing to act as upstream maintainer for affs, send pull requests with fixes if you ever need that (unless you find someone else). Thanks a thousand times. If we happen to meet at a SUSE event, I'll invite you to beverage of your choice ;-). Thanks! Adrian -- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
Re: moving affs + RDB partition support to staging?
On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 12:45:41PM +0200, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > (adding debian-68k) > > Hi Matthew! > > On 04/26/2018 12:28 PM, Martin Steigerwald wrote: > > You probably put your stick into a cave with ancient sleeping dragons :) > > Indeed. > > > Added in linux-m68k mailing list, as they likely have an opinion on how > > to treat affs + RDB partition support. Also added in Jens Axboe about > > patching that RDB support broken with 2 TB or larger harddisks issue > > which had been in Linux kernel for 6 years while a patch exists that to > > my testing back then solves the issue. > > The answer is that we are still very much actively using RDB and AFFS > supoort in the Linux kernel and if you were to remove it, you would > directly hit users. Based on that I think removing affs will not happen, but the upstream maintenance status should be updated accordingly. > I know it may sound crazy, but the Linux/m68k port (Atari, Mac, Amiga etc) > is a very actively used and maintained port which just recently received > three new drivers: > > > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mkp/scsi.git/commit/?h=4.18/scsi-queue&id=3109e5ae0311e937d49a5325134e50b742ac5f4a > > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net-next.git/commit/?id=861928f4e60e826cd8871c0c37f4b3d825b8d81d > > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/drivers/ata/pata_gayle.c?id=9ab27d1d35fda0c5fce624083e92546a8545e7e5 > > The community around the m68k CPU is constantly developing new hardware > (new accelerator boards, networking cards, IDE controllers etc for the > Amiga and so on). So, the community and the port are anything but dead. > > > > Yeah, it's pretty sad how few commits some of these filesystems have > > > had in recent years. One can argue that they're stable and don't need > > > to be fixed because they aren't broken, but I find it hard to believe > > > that any of them were better-implemented than ext2 which still sees > > > regular bugfixes. > > Exactly. It works fine as is: ... > There is nothing at the moment that needs fixing. So, I'm willing to act as upstream maintainer for affs, send pull requests with fixes if you ever need that (unless you find someone else).
Archiving the attic folders from d-i for ports
(Re-send because I forgot debian-ports-devel@alioth is dead, please reply to debian-boot@) Hi! I was pointed at Steve's mail yesterday mentioning that he moved the non-attic repositories of debian-installer to salsa [1]. Since there are still some repositories that we need for debian-ports in the attic, I was wondering whether we should take care of the attic stuff and move it over to salsa or github. FWIW, we are in the progress of moving the sparc* and ppc* ports which aren't on GRUB yet fully over. In fact, GRUB works fine on all SPARC boxes we have tested so far, so at least silo-installer won't be needed anymore in the future. Still, I think we should archive everything. Adrian > [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2018/04/msg00253.html -- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
Re: Archiving the attic folders from d-i for ports
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 05:37:25AM +0200, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > Since there are still some repositories that we need for debian-ports > in the attic, I was wondering whether we should take care of the > attic stuff and move it over to salsa or github. Could you show a list? Just migrate them the same way. >Still, I think we should > archive everything. The complete content of alioth is going to be archived, so this is covered. Bastian -- We do not colonize. We conquer. We rule. There is no other way for us. -- Rojan, "By Any Other Name", stardate 4657.5
