ARMv5 support dropped in Arch Linux ARM

[Varti]

Unfortunately it seems that ALARMZ won't see any update anymore, as support for ARMv5 (and v6) has been dropped in February:

https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15721

"Starting in February 2022, support for ARMv5 and ARMv6 architectures will be ended in Arch Linux ARM.

Reasons for this include:
1. There is very little, if any, new hardware being made for these architectures.
2. Looking at mirror traffic, ARMv5 and ARMv6 account for 1% and 5%, respectively. These numbers have been steadily declining, with v7 and v8 splitting the rest about equally.
3. Keeping packages building for these architectures has become an outsized effort given their usage with respect to v7 and v8, and there are already large chunks of packages that aren't building for them.
4. More focus and time can be put into ARMv7 and AArch64, where over 90% of the user base is."

This is sad news, although it was expected to be happening sooner or later. Alarmz is more resource hungry than Voidz, but on the other side it was much easier to maintain since all the packages were already available as armv5 binaries. Thanksfully we still have Voidz for our Zauruses.

Varti

[greguu]

Thanks Varti,

I lost a bit track of this.  :'(
We should clone the last available armv5tel feed from ALARM and back it up at least.
It may disappear from their CDN at some stage. It would be quite valuable for some years to come, not just for Zaurus users.

Cheers!

[greguu]

I forgot we still got http://tardis.tiny-vps.com/aarm/packages/   
Apart from the offical alarm feed, this appears to be the last snapshot for armv5tel : http://tardis.tiny-vps.com/aarm/repos/2022/01/08/arm/
This one does not seem to host a rootfs, but hopefully we can find the last official one somewhere ...

[yatli]

First, thank you for your efforts for keeping Zaurus alive!

I've been able to find some copies on Wayback Machine, starting here: https://web.archive.org/web/20151001000000*/http://archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-armv5-latest.tar.gz
It will be redirected (302) to different locations in different snapshots.

Cloning the tardis repo. Maybe I should host it somewhere.

Update: mirroring complete. See: https://alarmz.yatao.info:10443/

[greguu]

Another mirror is fantastic.  Thanks for that !
The last rootfs snapshot is possibly the only one needed.

[greguu]

just for reference, does anyone got some mirror links ?
tardis and yatli are dead  :'(

[Varti]

I can now open both tardis and yatli's mirror, maybe it was a temporary ISP problem? I'll now mirror tardis as well and host it here, just in case.

Varti

[Varti]

Tardis' mirror, including a copy of ArchLinuxARM-armv5-latest.tar.gz:

https://www.oesf.org/repository/websites/tardis.tiny-vps.com/2022.01.08_arm/

Varti

[CommanderB]

Would it be feasible to just rebuild all the recent packages for ARMv5 and host them somewhere else?

[greguu]

Not really, at least not all packages. Its quite a bit of work, not to mention the compile times / power usage.
Hence the void linux port, that focuses only on the packages that make sense for the Zaurus platform and as well those requested by the community.
Debian does still offer an armv5tel option I think, but I have not used it for a decade, so I do not want to comment on performance & usability.
But I can confirm another user had success using a recent void kernel with the debian rootfs.