x86 SIG / Dropping PAE support
by Jeff Backus
Hi List,
I wanted to reach out to you to let you know that we have established an x86 SIG in an effort to help address x86-related issues in Fedora. To help keep track of such issues, we have two x86-related tracker bugs:
* One for General x86-related issues: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1489998
* One for x86 ExcludeArch-related issues: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=179258
Please feel free to also reach out to us via the x86 mailing list(x86(a)lists.fedoraproject.org) or via the #fedora-x86 IRC channel.
Also, I wanted to let you know that we have decided to drop PAE support. I believe the kernel team has already disabled it for F27. They pointed out that this may affect Anaconda as well. And that the Lorax templates may need to be updated?
Thanks!
jeff
--
Jeff Backus
jeff.backus(a)gmail.com
http://github.com/jsbackus
http://gitlab.com/jsbackus
6 years, 2 months
Real i686 hardware
by Bruno Wolff III
I have a dual socket Xeon Prestonia with 3GB of ram as my main server.
I get hardware checks, so it might not be running real far into the future,
but I can't afford to replace it right now.
I noticed that kernels stopped updating rather than switching over to
non-PAE kernels. That might not be the best user experience, though
there will probably be a surprise either way.
6 years, 2 months
[x86] Target Hardware Discussion
by Jeff Backus
Hi all,
To better focus our efforts and to help us frame conversations with
other groups, we need to define a target set of hardware to support. A
big determinant in this is whether we have enough hardware available
to represent this target, otherwise we can't really support it.
Another big determinant is going to be how many packages won't run on
our target. Hardware that is going to require changes to a significant
number of packages is probably going to be out of our reach.
I have a couple of Pentium-M-based machines with 1GB of RAM available.
Not that old, but I can at least check for AES problems. I'll have to
see if I can scrounge up something older from the beige graveyard at
work.
Do we have any pre-SSE hardware? Also, I'd like to see if we can
support a 512MB minimum, if possible. I'd have to check that in a VM,
though.
Thoughts?
jeff
--
Jeff Backus
jeff.backus(a)gmail.com
http://github.com/jsbackus
6 years, 2 months
x86 Architecture SIG
by Jeff Backus
(Apologies - resending because I wasn't subscribed earlier)
Hi list,
I'm contacting you on behalf of the x86 SIG. Today FESCo approved our request to continue to support Fedora on x86 hardware, provided that we do our part to keep things running.
I encourage you to reach out to us when things do come up. You can find us at x86(a)lists.fedoraproject.org or on #fedora-x86. We will likewise try to be proactive in tracking down and triaging x86-related issues as well as helping test and debug things.
One caveat that FESCo attached to our request is that if you, the kernel team are cleared to treat i686 as any other secondary arch when you run into build issues. That is, you are allowed to ExcludeArch i686 until these issues are resolved. We ask that you block FE-ExcludeArch-x86 so that we can track these issues.
Additionally, FESCo would like us to establish a minimum level of hardware supported. We are working on this list and will follow up with you once we have it completed. In the interim, we did want to address a couple of concerns that were passed along by Stephen Smoogen:
* We have decided to drop support for PAE, so please feel free to disable it on the next build
* We have decided to continue to support pre-SSE2 hardware for the time being
Please don't hesitate to contact us with any questions/comments/concerns.
Thanks!
jeff
--
Jeff Backus
jeff.backus(a)gmail.com
http://github.com/jsbackus
http://gitlab.com/jsbackus
6 years, 2 months
FESCo Agreed to Our Proposal
by Jeff Backus
Hi all,
Good news! FESCo accepted our proposal and is giving us a chance to keep x86 support in Fedora! This is a temporary reprieve contingent upon our staying active and keeping up with the support issues.
FESCo did add two caveats to our proposal, which are:
* If the kernel team experiences build issues, i686 will be ExcludeArched with a block to FE-ExcludeArch-x86 until we can address them.
* FESCo would like to see details on supported hardware soon.
I haven't made it all the way through the logs yet, but I encourage the curious to read more here:
http://meetbot-raw.fedoraproject.org/teams/fesco/fesco.2017-09-08-16.00.l...
Special thanks to alexpl for attending the meeting.
In addition to the FE-ExcludeArch-x86 bug, I have created a general-purpose tracker bug for our purposes:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1489998
I haven't figured out how to add mailing lists to the CC list yet. So until then, I encourage you to add yourself to the CC list.
I'll put together an e-mail to touch base with the kernel team.
jeff
--
Jeff Backus
jeff.backus(a)gmail.com
http://github.com/jsbackus
http://gitlab.com/jsbackus
6 years, 2 months
Contacting desktop environment projects about i686 support
by Alexander Ploumistos
Hello,
As we discussed earlier today, I have contacted several desktop
environments about their plans that might impact i686. So far, I've
written to MATE, LXDE/LXQt, Xfce, Enlightenment and Lumina[0], which I
had never heard of before, but I found through dnf. I also discovered
Hawaii[1] that way, but their website had only x86_64 stuff, so I
didn't bother with them.
Have I forgotten someone?
I've already heard back from Enlightenment, this is their response:
> We have nothing that will make it impractical or impossible to run. We still do
> a lot of work on having EFL and enlightenment run on ARM and ARM is still 99.9%
> 32bit (ARM64 is still not widely spread). We design our code to run in both
> situations.
>
> It MAY be that you hit particular bugs that were missed in testing as 32bit
> installed become far less frequent on x86 (some of them may be interactions
> between other libraries like Mesa and so on), but nothing specifically to make
> it impractical or impossible.
Best regards
A.
0. https://lumina-desktop.org/
1. http://hawaiios.org/
6 years, 2 months
FESCo Proposal
by Jeff Backus
Hi all,
Sorry for just now sending this out. Been a hectic day. I was able to
submit a proposal in the FESCo ticket here:
https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/1737
We're on the schedule for tomorrow. I will try to make the meeting,
but unfortunately something came up at work that will have me tied up
at least until the start of the meeting and may run over.
jeff
--
Jeff Backus
jeff.backus(a)gmail.com
http://github.com/jsbackus
6 years, 2 months
Meeting Minutes
by Jeff Backus
Hi All,
Thanks to all who attended. I goofed with MeetBot and didn't properly
capture action items. I'm listing them here:
* jsbackus - Put together proposal for FESCo and present Friday.
* alexpl - Check roadmaps for desktops officially supported by Fedora.
Specifically looking for switching to GTK3 and other changes that
could severely affect performance on i686 platforms.
* athos - Evaluate whether current 32bit BZ tracker bug is appropriate
for use as the i686 tracker bug. If not, to create one.
Please let me know if I missed anything. Meeting minutes:
======================
#fedora-meeting-2: x86
======================
Meeting started by smooge at 19:00:06 UTC. The full logs are available
at
https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-2/2017-09-06/x86.2017-09...
.
Meeting summary
---------------
* Roll Call (smooge, 19:00:06)
* What does FESCO want (smooge, 19:05:08)
* People who know how to advocate to upstreams (smooge, 19:05:09)
* Advocating does not mean 'whining or begging'. (smooge, 19:05:09)
* Advocating means working with upstream maintainers (kernel-list,
(smooge, 19:05:09)
* Fedora is always moving forward. What does x86_32 have? (smooge,
19:05:10)
* What next? (smooge, 19:49:15)
* Who will advocate? (smooge, 19:49:15)
* Who will fix packages? (smooge, 19:49:16)
* Who will show up? (smooge, 19:49:16)
* Open Floor (smooge, 20:13:38)
* LINK: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/x86 (jsbackus,
20:17:11)
Meeting ended at 20:38:24 UTC.
Action Items
------------
Action Items, by person
-----------------------
* **UNASSIGNED**
* (none)
People Present (lines said)
---------------------------
* jsbackus (86)
* smooge (76)
* alexpl (32)
* asunz (10)
* zodbot (7)
* nb (6)
* athos (6)
Generated by `MeetBot`_ 0.1.4
.. _`MeetBot`: http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot
Full log can be found here:
https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-2/2017-09-06/x86.2017-09...
Regards,
Jeff
--
Jeff Backus
jeff.backus(a)gmail.com
http://github.com/jsbackus
6 years, 3 months