Re: Discrepancies between i386 port list and package list

On Fri Aug 30, 2024 at 11:56 AM CEST, Stuart Henderson wrote:
> imho you should really be looking for a 64 bit machine if you want to
> run a web browser.

I am aware that this machine is simply unsufficient for web usage. My
personal computer needs are quite small. Base, RSS, groff, mpv, and
links in graphical mode are enough to fulfill my needs.

Still, it works surprisingly well considering that it is a kinda old
beast.

> pandoc depends on ghc, which is amd64 only.

My bad, I operated based on the lists on posts.to but it is
apparently outdated.

> When attempting to build chromium and friends on i386, it usually fails
> for various reasons.
>
> In the most recent attempt, iridium and ungoogled-chromium fail with this
>
> In file included from ../../v8/src/compiler/turboshaft/int64-lowering-phase.cc:9:
> ../../v8/src/compiler/turboshaft/int64-lowering-reducer.h:295:24: error: call to member function 'Word32Constant' is a
> mbiguous
> 295 | new_index = __ Word32Constant(sizeof(int32_t));
> | ~~~^~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How did you get these log messages? I was kinda searching for more
specific infos on the package building process, but I found nothing in
the FAQ nor the man pages (maybe I simply searched badly).

> Many projects are simply not interested in resource requirements during
> compilation.

Yes, that's understandable.

Is there a reason why packages are not built on one powerful amd64 server,
besides the hell of cross-compilation?

> I'm all for running hardware for a long time to get as much use out
> of it as possible. But a new machine costing around GBP/EUR/USD
> 175 (mini desktop, with 16GB ram / 500GB SSD included in that
> price) will run rings round a 2008 i386, use significantly less
> electricity, and if it's an intel >= 11th gen (e.g. intel n100
> which is common in this class of machines - look for "Control-
> Flow Enforcement Technology" in the cpu specs) have a feature
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirect_branch_tracking which is well
> supported by OpenBSD/amd64 (used in the majority of packages) that
> makes some classes of attack very much more difficult. (Though
> simply going to a 64-bit arch with the increased address space,
> on an OS that does ASLR well, is already a big improvement).

Thanks for the valuable information! Are i386 computers more
power-hungry than amd64 ones? I'd be interested if there's an
explanation beyond "old hardware was less efficient with power".
Is it the HDD, the motherboard, the CPU, everything?

Semi-related, but:

I actually have an amd64 laptop, an HP-dbxxxx. I can install OpenBSD on
it, but when I boot with bsd.mp, it crashes because of a
malformed/unknown ACPI command. I'll try to look at it more closely and
send mails with the full information, but I just have one question: how
does one dump kernel crashes in files, so I can actually send emails?

Thank you for your quite thorough answer!

--
Elie Le Vaillant