RE: List active ?

RE: List active ?

[Oliver Pitzeier]

Hi George!

> On Friday 10 October 2003 11:17 pm, Alan Bort wrote:
> > And lets be realistic, there are not many Alpha left in this world, 
> 
> There are many Alphas remaining.  Many that run Linux.  Many 
> more that run Tru64 and OpenVMS.  You can still buy shinny new
> alpha systems. 

But what for should anyone buy alphas today? If they need 64-bit, they buy Itanium, which is cheaper... If they need good performance, they buy a four-way-Xeon-system - which _is_ faster than a ES45 for example....

> Alpha is  going away, but it is not gone yet.

HP is letting Alpha die... They didn't annouce the newest alpha-chip a few months ago (EV78!?)...

[ ... ]
> or they have service agreements with HP.

Or still some old Compaq service level agreements... :-P But they do not know much about Linux on Alpha... At least here in Austria......

[ ... ]

> I do like low volume lists, but the volume is so low at 
> times, I tend to miss most of the messages.

Yes, but now there _is_ traffic... :-P

Best,
 Olive

Re: List active ? should be ALPHA alive

[Thomas Steudten]

>>>And lets be realistic, there are not many Alpha left in this world, 
>>
>>There are many Alphas remaining.  Many that run Linux.  Many 
>>more that run Tru64 and OpenVMS.  You can still buy shinny new
>>alpha systems. 
Oh man, we´re not dead ;-) Ok, my SX164 board with the 21164pc is going slower in the last days
with the x86 cpus reaches the 1giga herz and more. But alpha is still 64bit, still resident
for viruses and worms and .. a lot of fun with booting with milo or srm .. with fix bugs
from developers who don´t imagine, that a long is really 64bit.

>>Alpha is  going away, but it is not gone yet.
I do think so, too.
> 
> 
> HP is letting Alpha die... They didn't annouce the newest alpha-chip a few months ago (EV78!?)...
>>or they have service agreements with HP.
> Or still some old Compaq service level agreements... :-P But they do not know much about Linux on Alpha... At least here in Austria......
HP?
Oh man, they try their 4th reassambly, nobody here in switzerland knows any "old" person, what he/she did, or whatever.
The old contacts are gone. And they really know nothing about alpha or linux.. :-(
And somebody told me, that´s the same in good old germany.

--
Tom

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ALPHA Problem please give info..

[Thomas Steudten]

Hi

I got a strange oops from the 2.6.0-pre7 kernel on alpha.
Can anybody who uses this kernel, an alpha cpu, the md/ raid1
drivers give me the following info please:

- output /proc/cpuinfo or more..
- disassembly of read_balance() function in raid1.o or from the
   kernel. The gcc options use to compile from "make V=1 boot".
   You can generate a new raid1.o with.
   1. cd ./linux
   2. rm drivers/md/raid1.o
   3. make V=1 drivers/md/raid1.o
   4. look at the gcc line
   5. Add -g and -fverbose-asm to the end of the gcc line.
   6. copy paste the gcc line and execute it.
   7. objdump -S -D -l drivers/md/raid1.o > /tmp/A
   8. send the disassembly from read_balance from /tmp/A
      to alpha@steudten.com.

Thanks in advance..

Regards
Tom

Re: List active ?

[Jan-Benedict Glaw]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1590 bytes --]

On Sat, 2003-10-11 14:41:59 +0200, Oliver Pitzeier <oliver@linux-kernel.at>
wrote in message <200310111244.h9BCi7QD021471@indianer.linux-kernel.at>:
> Hi George!
> 
> > On Friday 10 October 2003 11:17 pm, Alan Bort wrote:
> > > And lets be realistic, there are not many Alpha left in this world, 
> > 
> > There are many Alphas remaining.  Many that run Linux.  Many 
> > more that run Tru64 and OpenVMS.  You can still buy shinny new
> > alpha systems. 
> 
> But what for should anyone buy alphas today? If they need 64-bit, they buy Itanium, which is cheaper... If they need good performance, they buy a four-way-Xeon-system - which _is_ faster than a ES45 for example....

Try to get a SMP box in the *really* high performance area. A 32 CPU
Itanium (is something like that available) won't for sure outperform
today's fastest Alpha. At some time, price isn't a question. Only raw
performance... Then, you buy Alpha, MIPS, UltraSparc, PA-RISC.

> > Alpha is  going away, but it is not gone yet.
> 
> HP is letting Alpha die... They didn't annouce the newest alpha-chip a few months ago (EV78!?)...

Indeed. Alpha is dieing. However, HP is quite in problems there.
Nowadays, they have i386, Itanium, Alpha and their own processor,
PA-RISC...

MfG, JBG

-- 
   Jan-Benedict Glaw       jbglaw@lug-owl.de    . +49-172-7608481
   "Eine Freie Meinung in  einem Freien Kopf    | Gegen Zensur | Gegen Krieg
    fuer einen Freien Staat voll Freier Bürger" | im Internet! |   im Irak!
   ret = do_actions((curr | FREE_SPEECH) & ~(NEW_COPYRIGHT_LAW | DRM | TCPA));

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: List active ?

[George France]

On Saturday 11 October 2003 08:41 am, Oliver Pitzeier wrote:
> Hi George!
>
> > On Friday 10 October 2003 11:17 pm, Alan Bort wrote:
> > > And lets be realistic, there are not many Alpha left in this world,
> >
> > There are many Alphas remaining.  Many that run Linux.  Many
> > more that run Tru64 and OpenVMS.  You can still buy shinny new
> > alpha systems.
>
> But what for should anyone buy alphas today? If they need 64-bit, they buy
> Itanium, which is cheaper... If they need good performance, they buy a
> four-way-Xeon-system - which _is_ faster than a ES45 for example....
>

I think you might want to recheck those benchmarks. :-)

> > Alpha is  going away, but it is not gone yet.
>
> HP is letting Alpha die... They didn't annouce the newest alpha-chip a few
> months ago (EV78!?)...
>
> [ ... ]
>
> > or they have service agreements with HP.
>
> Or still some old Compaq service level agreements... :-P But they do not
> know much about Linux on Alpha... At least here in Austria......
>

You can purchase a support contract today from HP.  If you have any problems 
doing so, please let me know.  I would be happy to contact my service 
Representative and get you the proper paperwork.  :-)  It may be true that in 
Austria, that they do not know much about Linux on Alpha, but if you have a 
service agreement, you can have your service request pushed up to the next 
higher level.  Eventually your issue will reach Nashua, NH in the USA were 
there are people that know about Linux and the Alpha Architecture.

Best Regards,


--George

Re: ALPHA Problem please give info..

[George France]

Hello Tom,

It is probably the well known compiler bug.  Which is just my wild guess since, I
do not konw anything about the toollchain that you are using.  I would guess that you 
should either use a different toolchain or raid1.c patch below.

I hope this helps.

--George

diff -urP old/drivers/md/raid1.c new/drivers/md/raid1.c
--- old/drivers/md/raid1.c      Tue Jun 25 04:01:48 2002
+++ new/drivers/md/raid1.c      Mon Oct  7 15:22:39 2002
@@ -473,6 +473,12 @@
                goto rb_out;
        
 
+#if defined(CONFIG_ALPHA) && (__GNUC__ == 2) && (__GNUC_MINOR__ == 96) 
+       /* Work around a compiler bug in gcc 2.96 20000731
+          (Red Hat Linux 7.1 2.96-102) */
+       new_disk = *(volatile int *)&new_disk;
+#endif
+
        /* make sure that disk is operational */
        while( !conf->mirrors[new_disk].operational) {
                if (new_disk <= 0) new_disk = conf->raid_disks;
@@ -526,6 +532,11 @@
        
        /* Find the disk which is closest */
        
+#if defined(CONFIG_ALPHA) && (__GNUC__ == 2) && (__GNUC_MINOR__ == 96) 
+       /* Work around a compiler bug in gcc 2.96 20000731
+          (Red Hat Linux 7.1 2.96-102) */
+       disk = *(volatile int *)&disk;
+#endif
        do {
                if (disk <= 0)
                        disk = conf->raid_disks;



On Saturday 11 October 2003 09:18 am, Thomas Steudten wrote:
> Hi
>
> I got a strange oops from the 2.6.0-pre7 kernel on alpha.
> Can anybody who uses this kernel, an alpha cpu, the md/ raid1
> drivers give me the following info please:
>
> - output /proc/cpuinfo or more..
> - disassembly of read_balance() function in raid1.o or from the
>    kernel. The gcc options use to compile from "make V=1 boot".
>    You can generate a new raid1.o with.
>    1. cd ./linux
>    2. rm drivers/md/raid1.o
>    3. make V=1 drivers/md/raid1.o
>    4. look at the gcc line
>    5. Add -g and -fverbose-asm to the end of the gcc line.
>    6. copy paste the gcc line and execute it.
>    7. objdump -S -D -l drivers/md/raid1.o > /tmp/A
>    8. send the disassembly from read_balance from /tmp/A
>       to alpha@steudten.com.
>
> Thanks in advance..
>
> Regards
> Tom
>
> -
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