Discussion:
To be retired soon...
Warner Losh
2018-01-10 03:52:30 UTC
Permalink
About 18 months ago, there was a thread that talked about retiring older
storage devices and some ISA devices that have outlived their usefulness.

Here's the list that John Baldwin posted.

- Older storage adapters:
- aha (ISA)
- adv (ISA / PCI)
- adw (PCI)?
- bt (ISA / PCI)
- aic (ISA / PCCard)
- dpt (ISA / PCI)
- ncv (PCCard / PCI)
- nsp (PCCard)
- stg (ISA / PCCard / PCI)
- mse(4) (ISA-only non-PS-2, non-serial mouse)
- joy(4) (ISA-only, was on various Sound Cards, etc., but I haven't seen
a "game port" on a modern box in a long while)

I plan on marking these drivers with a new API (
https://reviews.freebsd.org/D13818) in the coming days saying they will be
removed in 12.x (meaning not in 12.0 or later). Man pages will be updated
as well. I then plan to MFC all this code to 11 shortly after. Current
users will start to receive warnings. I get that we should have done this
sooner given our loosely observed deprecation practices in the past, but
we're doing it now (which beats how we've done this in the past, which is
why I'm adding the gone_in() to allow things we plan on retiring in 13
before 12-stable is branched). In about a month (sometime after Feb 15th),
I plan on removing these from FreeBSD, absent any actual users reporting
that recent FreeBSD 12 systems work. There are a number of special cases in
CAM that be removed once these are gone, as well as code that's only used
by these drivers.

I've spoken to Scott Long about these drivers, and he's 100% on-board with
retiring them. As far as he knows, the only parallel SCSI driver that works
is mpt with LSI 2x320 cards, so these cards are (a) too slow to even be
remotely relevant (b) have all kinds of problems that haven't been resolved
in 5-ish years of reports of malfunction. mse/joy are also at least 15
years past their even marginal relevance.

Comments?

Warner
Mark Linimon
2018-01-10 04:06:59 UTC
Permalink
Post by Warner Losh
- aha (ISA)
- bt (ISA / PCI)
Oh no, how am I ever going to go back to the 1990s now?

Uh, wait. Actually, I hated that decade's music.

So, forget it.

mcl

(yes, there are probably one of each in the junkbox still ...)
Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2018-01-10 06:45:04 UTC
Permalink
Post by Warner Losh
About 18 months ago, there was a thread that talked about retiring older
storage devices and some ISA devices that have outlived their usefulness.
Here's the list that John Baldwin posted.
...
I plan on marking these drivers with a new API (
https://reviews.freebsd.org/D13818) in the coming days saying they
will be removed in 12.x (meaning not in 12.0 or later).
Is that "not" intended? 12.x sounds very much like 12.0 or later. Or
is it maybe "not in 12.0, but later in 12"?

Greg
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Jamie Landeg-Jones
2018-01-10 13:03:58 UTC
Permalink
Post by Greg 'groggy' Lehey
Post by Warner Losh
I plan on marking these drivers with a new API (
https://reviews.freebsd.org/D13818) in the coming days saying they
will be removed in 12.x (meaning not in 12.0 or later).
Is that "not" intended? 12.x sounds very much like 12.0 or later. Or
is it maybe "not in 12.0, but later in 12"?
Ah, the wonders of the English language!

I read it in another alternative way: that they'd be removed whilst
12 was still CURRENT i.e.: ".... will be removed in 12.x (meaning they
will not exist in 12.0 or later)"

cheers, Jamie

Mike Karels
2018-01-10 06:24:44 UTC
Permalink
Post by Warner Losh
About 18 months ago, there was a thread that talked about retiring older
storage devices and some ISA devices that have outlived their usefulness.
Here's the list that John Baldwin posted.
- aha (ISA)
- adv (ISA / PCI)
- adw (PCI)?
- bt (ISA / PCI)
- aic (ISA / PCCard)
- dpt (ISA / PCI)
- ncv (PCCard / PCI)
- nsp (PCCard)
- stg (ISA / PCCard / PCI)
- mse(4) (ISA-only non-PS-2, non-serial mouse)
- joy(4) (ISA-only, was on various Sound Cards, etc., but I haven't seen
a "game port" on a modern box in a long while)
I plan on marking these drivers with a new API (
https://reviews.freebsd.org/D13818) in the coming days saying they will be
removed in 12.x (meaning not in 12.0 or later). Man pages will be updated
as well. I then plan to MFC all this code to 11 shortly after. Current
users will start to receive warnings. I get that we should have done this
sooner given our loosely observed deprecation practices in the past, but
we're doing it now (which beats how we've done this in the past, which is
why I'm adding the gone_in() to allow things we plan on retiring in 13
before 12-stable is branched). In about a month (sometime after Feb 15th),
I plan on removing these from FreeBSD, absent any actual users reporting
that recent FreeBSD 12 systems work. There are a number of special cases in
CAM that be removed once these are gone, as well as code that's only used
by these drivers.
I've spoken to Scott Long about these drivers, and he's 100% on-board with
retiring them. As far as he knows, the only parallel SCSI driver that works
is mpt with LSI 2x320 cards, so these cards are (a) too slow to even be
remotely relevant (b) have all kinds of problems that haven't been resolved
in 5-ish years of reports of malfunction. mse/joy are also at least 15
years past their even marginal relevance.
Comments?
Warner
Agreed. But for the future, note that mpt is used in VMware ESXi emulation
when FreeBSD/amd64 is selected (I think also for i386). VMware tends to
emulate rather old hardware. We should retain drivers commonly used
in virtual environments too.

Mike
Warner Losh
2018-01-10 06:53:59 UTC
Permalink
Post by Warner Losh
About 18 months ago, there was a thread that talked about retiring older
storage devices and some ISA devices that have outlived their usefulness.
Here's the list that John Baldwin posted.
- aha (ISA)
- adv (ISA / PCI)
- adw (PCI)?
- bt (ISA / PCI)
- aic (ISA / PCCard)
- dpt (ISA / PCI)
- ncv (PCCard / PCI)
- nsp (PCCard)
- stg (ISA / PCCard / PCI)
- mse(4) (ISA-only non-PS-2, non-serial mouse)
- joy(4) (ISA-only, was on various Sound Cards, etc., but I haven't seen
a "game port" on a modern box in a long while)
I plan on marking these drivers with a new API (
https://reviews.freebsd.org/D13818) in the coming days saying they will be
removed in 12.x (meaning not in 12.0 or later). Man pages will be updated
as well. I then plan to MFC all this code to 11 shortly after. Current
users will start to receive warnings. I get that we should have done this
sooner given our loosely observed deprecation practices in the past, but
we're doing it now (which beats how we've done this in the past, which is
why I'm adding the gone_in() to allow things we plan on retiring in 13
before 12-stable is branched). In about a month (sometime after Feb 15th),
I plan on removing these from FreeBSD, absent any actual users reporting
that recent FreeBSD 12 systems work. There are a number of special cases in
CAM that be removed once these are gone, as well as code that's only used
by these drivers.
I've spoken to Scott Long about these drivers, and he's 100% on-board with
retiring them. As far as he knows, the only parallel SCSI driver that works
is mpt with LSI 2x320 cards, so these cards are (a) too slow to even be
remotely relevant (b) have all kinds of problems that haven't been resolved
in 5-ish years of reports of malfunction. mse/joy are also at least 15
years past their even marginal relevance.
Comments?
Warner
Agreed. But for the future, note that mpt is used in VMware ESXi emulation
when FreeBSD/amd64 is selected (I think also for i386). VMware tends to
emulate rather old hardware. We should retain drivers commonly used
in virtual environments too.


Agreed. mpt is not in danger. Nothing on this list goes that description.

Warner
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