Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2019 09:50:13 -0700 From: Julian Elischer <julian@freebsd.org> To: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> Cc: "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd-rwg@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net>, Lev Serebryakov <lev@freebsd.org>, "freebsd-arch@freebsd.org" <freebsd-arch@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: New CPUTYPE default for i386 port Message-ID: <390dc131-bd71-cba8-76c1-df30ed721f4f@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfr00NFPdbnOdaXoZPbbj%2BVJVRXmQcoD3Y=ewS78wmkL2A@mail.gmail.com> References: <CANCZdfqL2LD_Yu49XMid-G21w-HKSDA4yW4Wi_uEW37rAG9E2Q@mail.gmail.com> <201910060322.x963Mwo1065732@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> <CANCZdfra0r=GYF5KSHqGuhNQq6RTXCBu8r9j3YfGc4iVmTsNag@mail.gmail.com> <89501a69-ea37-7016-5ccb-286ff65b2e2a@FreeBSD.org> <18250.1570457337@critter.freebsd.dk> <CANCZdfr00NFPdbnOdaXoZPbbj%2BVJVRXmQcoD3Y=ewS78wmkL2A@mail.gmail.com>
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On 10/7/19 9:30 AM, Warner Losh wrote: > On Mon, Oct 7, 2019 at 8:09 AM Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> wrote: > >> The 4801s, on the other hand, seems to be indestructible... >> > So the question we need to answer, that Rod brought up, is "Are there > enough machines that can boot FreeBSD release images that would otherwise > fail with some weird error that we need to deploy counter measures"? > > I did a survey of the old 'desktop / server' hardware available on EBAY. If > you look at all Pentiums, then the number of machines that (a) are new > enough to support CDROM booting and (b) have enough memory are << 1% (I > found 1 out of 250 that I looked at). So from that perspective, things are > fine: machines that might be able to boot today's 13 snapshots are quite > rare in this space.... rare enough to not worry apart from release notes. > There's likely some level of error in this survey, but the bound of > uncertainty here is such that more accurate data likely wouldn't change the > conclusion. > > However, there's a number of embedded products that were so popular in the > community that there might be people that want to run 13.0 when it is > released. That's a fair point that I'd not considered. > > The question becomes: are people using only the release images on these > boxes? Or are they rolling their own? > > If they are rolling their own, release notes is all that's needed. > > If they are using the release images, then we may want to give at least > some warning. These machines are MBR/GPT BIOS booted. So we could put a > warning into boot2 (maybe room), gptboot (plenty of room) or cdboot (has > room) that would trigger on 486 and 586 machines. I'd want to turn it off > were I deploying these machines, or off in general outside the release env. > It would limit the amount of code we'd have to compile specially, but would > be the most reliable way of getting a message to any affected user. That's > likely the best we could do here. I think the answer is that as long as we can still generate the images, the default is not so important. But the size of system needed to actually generate such a system with the modern compiler etc may make self hosting a bit of an issue. Unfortunately I deleted the very first post in the thread, so I can't remember the reason he gave but I presume that the usual reasons apply. Compiling as a pre-pentum results in reduced performance for any machine built inthe last 20 years. The only comment that I haven't seen made is that pre-686 class machines are possibly not dropping as a percentage f 32 bit chipsets as nearly all machines sold for desktop/taptop use these days are 64 bit, meaning that 32 bit is limited to embedded, and I can not say what percentage of modern 32 bit systems are the ultra-low power pre-686 types, as I have not been following that market. I run a soekris 5501 but i do have alternatives, and it is running 9.1 I think. I have no real plans to massively upgrade it, and if I did I would not compile on that.. it would take a month including ports. Julian > > Warner > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-arch@freebsd.org mailing list > https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-arch > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-arch-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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