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

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Date:   Mon, 29 Jul 2019 22:53:30 +1000
From:   Greg Ungerer <gerg@...nel.org>
To:     Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
Cc:     Guenter Roeck <linux@...ck-us.net>,
        Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@...aro.org>,
        arm-soc <arm@...nel.org>,
        Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@...ux-watchdog.org>,
        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

Hi Arnd,

On 23/7/19 12:44 am, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Sat, May 4, 2019 at 4:27 PM Greg Ungerer <gerg@...nel.org> wrote:
>> On 4/5/19 3:06 am, Guenter Roeck wrote:
>>> On Fri, May 03, 2019 at 08:16:05AM +0100, Linus Walleij wrote:
>>>> On Fri, May 3, 2019 at 8:02 AM Greg Ungerer <gerg@...inux.org> wrote:
>>>>> 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.
> 
> Looking around on the internet, I found that Micrel at some point
> had their own openwrt fork for ks8695, but I can't find a copy
> any more, as the micrel.com domain is no longer used after the
> acquisition by Microchip.

I build it with uClinux-dist, https://sourceforge.net/projects/uclinux/files/uClinux%20Stable/.
And again I can build for it, it just doesn't currently work
in any sort of reasonable way. So I get the impression it
hasn't worked for a while and nobody has noticed.


> https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Micrel has a list of devices based on
> ks8695, and it seems that most of these are rather memory
> limited, which is a problem for recent openwrt builds.
> 
> Only two of the 17 listed devices have the absolute minimum of 4MB
> flash and 32MB RAM for openwrt, two more have 8/32 and one
> or two have 4/64, but all these configurations are too limited for the
> web U/I now.


>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>
>>> That may be the best approach if indeed no one is using it,
>>> much less maintaining it.
>>
>> Well, I for one don't really use it any more. So I don't have a lot
>> of motivation to maintain it any longer.
> 
> I came across my patches while rebasing my backlog to 5.3-rc1.
> 
> Should I save the (very small) trouble of sending them out again
> and just remove the platform then?

At this time I have no issue with removing it.

Regards
Greg