[PATCH 21/21] ARM: Kirkwood: Remove DT support

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 02:07:40PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:

On Friday 21 February 2014 01:47:31 Ben Hutchings wrote:

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On Thu, 2014-02-20 at 16:19 +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:

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On Thursday 20 February 2014 14:21:10 Ian Campbell wrote:

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For all I know, the only interesting ixp4xx platforms are the consumer
products listed on http://www.nslu2-linux.org/, the other ones you support
are development boards that tend to exist only in very small quantities.

The main limitation would be the amount of installed RAM, which is
either 32MB or 64MB depending on the machine for these. Running a
modern Debian with these constraints is probably possible but
doesn't sound like fun. 

Our most pressing constraint has actually been the size of the kernel
partition in flash, which is only ~1.4 MB on some of the iop32x and
ixp4xx machines (and ~1.5 MB on one of the orion5x machines).  We've
modularised as much as possible and turned off some of the features that
are otherwise standard across all Debian architectures.

Makes sense. I'm impressed you actually manage to get a modern kernel
in 1.5MB and have it boot up a (mostly) full distro. I think we have
in the past dropped a subarchitecture from the kernel when it turned
out its defconfig could no longer fit within the 2MB of flash it
has.

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But I got fed up with trying to make it fit, and no-one else stepped up
to maintain the reduced configurations, so the last time iop32x went
over the limit I removed it.  As Ian hinted, ixp4xx might follow.

Ok. As I mentioned, I believe OpenWRT is really the playground for
the remaining ixp4xx users that are doing new installs.

fwiw, I have two boards for this arch.  NSLU2 and a Gateworks board.
Both are ixp425 and both are gathering dust in a box.  I probably don't
have time to do anything with them.  So, if Kevin or Olof wants to add
them to the boot farm, or someone actually wants to boot test them, I
would be willing to send them where ever.

iirc, there are hacks to upgrade at least the RAM on the NSLU2.  I'm
pretty sure I maxed out the flash and the RAM on the Gateworks board
when I ordered it.  Also, the Gateworks board has 4 mini-pci slots (not
pcie).  Could be interesting.

hth,

Jason.