linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/6] ARM: ks8695: watchdog: stop using mach/*.h

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Date:   Fri, 3 May 2019 08:16:05 +0100
From:   Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@...aro.org>
To:     Greg Ungerer <gerg@...inux.org>
Cc:     Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, arm-soc <arm@...nel.org>,
        Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@...ux-watchdog.org>,
        Guenter Roeck <linux@...ck-us.net>,
        Linux ARM <linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        LINUXWATCHDOG <linux-watchdog@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/6] ARM: ks8695: watchdog: stop using mach/*.h

On Fri, May 3, 2019 at 8:02 AM Greg Ungerer <gerg@...inux.org> wrote:

> I dug out some old ks8695 based hardware to try this out.
> I had a lot of trouble getting anything modern working on it.
> In the end I still don't have a reliable test bed to test this properly.

What is usually used by old ARMv4 systems is OpenWrt or
OpenEmbedded. Those is the only build systems that reliably
produce a userspace for these things now, and it is also the
appropriate size for this kind of systems.

> Ultimately though I am left wondering if the ks8695 support in the
> kernel is useful to anyone the way it is at the moment. With a minimal
> kernel configuration I can boot up to a shell - but the system is
> really unreliable if you try to interactively use it. I don't think
> it is the hardware - it seems to run reliably with the old code
> it has running from flash on it. I am only testing the new kernel,
> running with the existing user space root filesystem on it (which
> dates from 2004 :-)

Personally I think it is a bad sign that this subarch and boards do
not have active OpenWrt support, they are routers after all (right?)
and any active use of networking equipment should use a recent
userspace as well, given all the security bugs that popped up over
the years.

With IXP4xx, Gemini and EP93xx we have found active users and
companies selling the chips and reference designs and even
recommending it for new products (!) at times.  If this is not the
case with KS8695 and no hobbyists are willing to submit it
to OpenWrt and modernize it to use device tree I think it should be
deleted from the kernel.

Yours,
Linus Walleij