Re: No surprise with the boot process on the SPARC S7-2

[Tony Rodriguez <unixpro1970%gmail.com@localhost>]

> On Oct 25, 2026, at 7:10 AM, Dennis Clarke <dclarke%blastwave.org@localhost> wrote:
> 
> On 10/25/26 09:39, Palle Lyckegaard wrote:
>>> On Sun, 25 Oct 2026, Dennis Clarke wrote:
>>> I took a break from the NetBSD experiment and moved over to Gentoo
>>> Linux. Well guess what? It makes a bit of progress and then just locks
>>> up as frozen. Over and over I would reboot and go through the motions
>>> and then Linux would just freeze. So I know this due to the fact that
>>> there are a ton of patches flying about in the wild for modern SPARC.
>>> Those patches are not going upstream or some other such problem. So that
>>> pushed Linux off the table.
>> Have you tried OpenBSD on your S7 system?
> 
> Earlier this year. Back in February I think. It merely locked up frozen
> and I gave up on it.
> 
> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Do the NetBSD people have an IRC channel? I do most things with the
>>> Libera #blastwave channel open in my life and there are a ton of very
>>> sharp IT people that gather. I am certain we have the skill sets in the
>>> aggregate of brains. Who knows, maybe even a documented process that
>>> will work in a deterministic manner on modern SPARC servers. If I get a
>>> larger T7-2 or M8 then NetBSD will be of great value.
>> https://www.netbsd.org/community/
> 
> cool.
> 
> --
> --
> Dennis Clarke
> RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
> UNIX and Linux spoken

Regarding Linux, once gain many of the patches for sparc64 should be in the Linux 7.4 kernel, depending on when Linus merges them. Many were already added/approved into Linux next by various maintainers, at this point we have to wait for Linus and the normal release process. Many have tested with various patches using bare metal sparc64, so it may be helpful to have someone test Linux ldoms. We all appear have more stable systems after applying patches (mainly T5240, T4, S7, and T7 were tested).