[equalunique]

From the release notes:

> o Support the sun4v hypervisor interrupt cookie API, adding support for SPARC T7-1/2/4 machines.

Who is running OpenBSD on a big expensive SPARC T7 and why? I'm genuinely curious as to what possible use cases there are which make this a desirable combination.

[brynet]

It was probably for testing, but that platform supports partitioning up the hardware through LDOMs, which OpenBSD supports as both a host and guest.

https://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/OpenBSD-on-a-Sun-T5120 (Not expired, Ted runs his own CA)

http://man.openbsd.org/man8/sparc64/ldomctl.8

[captn3m0]

unrelated, but I found his post about running his own CA quite interesting: https://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/moving-to-https

[zaat]

Actually, being special is sometimes just boring and annoying.

>Do we really want an internet where the use of encryption requires authorization?

No, it doesn't require, it provides identification and that's a huge benefit. We are all far better by having it as a standard. Just configure Let's Encrypt and stop annoying your readers.

[nickpsecurity]

For a while, every article from his site on Lobste.rs had someone complaining about that. It got old. I eventually came up with a theory about what the prankster was really up to:

https://lobste.rs/s/rboyfz/books_chapter_nine#c_p7mv5p

[zdw]

In general, OpenBSD support for Sparc helps with testing - the Sparc is architecturally quite a bit different from other CPUs:

https://www.openbsd.org/sparc64.html

"The other architectures that OpenBSD supports have benefited because some kinds of bugs are exposed more often by the 64-bit big endian nature of UltraSPARC."

[ComputerGuru]

That’s the same reason I include Solaris as a target in my automated build system. It’s arcane enough and independently developed enough to expose incorrect assumptions in C code.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Could you say how you do that? Keep an open indiana VM and tell Jenkins it's a build slave?

[KindOne]

Take a look at this, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12526420 (2016)

"SPARC64 is a favorite of this developer because it's some Alice in Wonderland stuff where up is down and left is right compared to other architectures. So it exposes a number of bugs that others don't."

[yellowapple]

I don't know about a SPARC T7, but I do run OpenBSD on my Sun Fire T2000 (UltraSPARC T1) and have been impressed with its LDOM support.

[equalunique]

Thanks for the testimony. :)

Becoming a new SPARC user is becoming more tempting to me now.