[Arm-netbook] Top Priority Software Tasks

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68


On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 8:51 PM, Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir at cohens.org.il> wrote:

> Originally the issue was that it has failed to boot. Issues with the
> boot loader. What about those? An issue with kernel >= 4.9 or so.

 my understanding was, when i looked at this, was it's something to do
with how old-uboot initialises the processor.... can't remember the
details.  a "fix" was added as a parameter that allowed old-u-boot to
boot newer kernels, and new-u-boot to boot older kernels.

 however.... last year, when investigating, there was *another* issue,
which is that somewhere around... i think it was 4.7rc1 ... it would
systematically and totally unreliably come to a grinding halt at
anywhere between 30 and 180 seconds into the boot.

 i think i maybe did a HUNDRED AND FIFTY separate kernel compiles (git
bisect and other techniques), trying for several DAYS to narrow down
which commit was responsible, but because of the unreliability of the
crashing it was near-impossible to narrow down.  the best / closest i
could get was something like, "4.7rc1 is fine, 4.7rc5 isn't".

 since then whatever underlying bug is there MIGHT have been tracked
down and fixed, as there were people who were vaaaguely aware of the
problem, on other hardware.

l.