On Tue, Oct 31, 2006 at 03:16:17PM +0100, Frank van der Linden wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 29, 2006 at 02:03:43PM -0500, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> > We ship other kernels which are suitable for small machines.  I propose to
> > remove I386_CPU from the GENERIC and INSTALL kernels.
[...]
> 
> Yes. For example, plain i386 CPUs haven't worked correctly with NFS for
> quite a while now.  Since UBC was merged, to be specific, since the
> lack of protection check on copy to/from user messes up NFS: NFS marks
[...]
> to possible data corruption. The fact that noone had noticed this,
> leads me to believe that noone uses a plain i386 anymore. I threw

I use antique (20MHz cpu, 4-8MB memory) i386 notebooks as serial consoles
quite a bit.  They are tremendously useful for maintenance of headless
servers because of their out-of-the-box nic drivers and networking
applications (telnet, ftp, ping).  The only "free" monitors and keyboards
you'll find to replace them are heavy and bulky (and cost mucho bucks to
throw away in Japan these days).  I have never run, and wouldn't consider
running, NFS (client or server) on machines of this class.  For the most
part, I run 1.4.3 on these machines, and considering their niche usability,
I have no intention to update them (nor would I recommend doing so).

In short, I don't see much sense in supporting these machines anymore
in current, i.e., not only remove I386_CPU and MATH_EMULATE from GENERIC
and INSTALL, but rather drop them altogether.  Instead, keep 1.4.3 or
1.5.2 available for these "curiosity pieces."  Most of the machines of
this class that I use have 120MB hard disks.  1.4.3 fits (no /man) nicely
on these machines, but iirc, 2.0 and above won't without some juggling.
In addition, machines with <4MB memory occasionally have to be installed
using the floppy sets, and of course will always require a floppy install
disk (single-disk image).  Is it really worth maintaining this in current?

$0.02

-- 
henry nelson
  WWW_HOME=http://yuba(dot)ne(dot)jp/(tilde)home/