FreeBSD Update for sparc64

[Royce Williams]

Colin Percival wrote, on 3/8/2007 12:50 PM:
> The FreeBSD Security Team has access to some sparc64 hardware and we're debating
> using this to make FreeBSD Update work on the sparc64 platform.  Unfortunately
> the words "fast" and "sparc64" don't seem to go together very well, so FreeBSD
> Update builds take rather longer on sparc64 than they do on i386 or amd64.  In
> many cases, we will not want to delay sending out a security advisory in order
> to wait for sparc64 builds to complete.
> 
> Would you find it useful to have FreeBSD Update working for sparc64 if you often
> had to wait 24 hours or more after a security advisory went out before FreeBSD
> Update could fetch patches for you?

Definitely, in my opinion.  The very fact that the sparc64 systems are
so slow make binary patching very attractive.  I'd be quite happy to
wait until after a security advisory was issued.  If the time was
going to vary widely, it might be helpful if someone (or an automated
method) could post to the list when the updates become available.

Would the security advisories mention binary patching for sparc64 and
the corresponding delay?  This might be a good idea, to head off a FAQ
or two.

I started a thread last month to see if there were any particular
systems, hardware combinations, buildworld options, filesystem
options, etc. that would result in shorter turnaround times for
building binary updates:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-sparc64/2007-February/004599.html


I also started an archive of sparc64 worldstone stats and information,
but have only had one taker so far.

http://www.alaska.net/~royce/freebsd/sparc64/worldstone/


What sparc64 hardware did you get?  If the team could use a donation
of additional/faster hard drives, more CPUs, etc., maybe the list
could take up a collection. :)

Royce

-- 
Royce D. Williams                                - IP Engineering, ACS
personal: [first]@alaska.net                  - PGP: 3FC087DB/1776A531
work: [first.last]@acsalaska.net         - http://www.tycho.org/royce/
"Don't find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain."  - Henry Ford