Re: [RFC PATCH 01/13] arm: Fix mutual exclusion in arch_gettimeoffset

[Finn Thain]

On Fri, 16 Nov 2018, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:

> 
> The EBSA110 is probably in a similar boat - I don't remember whether it 
> had 16MB or 32MB as the maximal amount of memory, but memory was getting 
> tight with some kernels even running a minimalist userspace.
> 
> So, it's probably time to say goodbyte to the kernel support for these 
> platforms.
> 

Your call.

Note that removing code from mainline won't help users obtain older, 
smaller, -stable kernel releases, free from the bug we were discussing. 
(The bug appeared in Linux v2.6.32.)

BTW, if you did want to boot Linux on a 16 MB system, you do have some 
options.

https://lwn.net/Articles/741494/
https://lwn.net/Articles/608945/
https://tiny.wiki.kernel.org/

Contributing to this kind of effort probably has value for IoT 
deployments. I suspect it also cuts a small amount of bloat from a large 
number of other Linux systems.

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