Bug#1016189: RM: memtest86 -- RoQA; obsolete, buggy, alternatives exist

[Chris Hofstaedtler]

Package: ftp.debian.org
Severity: normal
X-Debbugs-Cc: my...@debian.org, fanton...@tiscali.it, fzie...@z-51.de

Dear FTP Masters,

please remove memtest86. As stated by the last maintainer in #969192,
alternatives exist. Actually it appears memtest86+ and pcmemtest have
been merged, and memtest86+ 6.0 will be the pcmemtest code base.
Having an old, unmaintained memory tester which, according to bug
reports, does not even start anymore helps no one. Lets get rid of this
variant.

I'll tag this moreinfo in a moment, so everyone interested has enough
time to say something about this bug. I'll untag it in a month or so.

Best,
Chris

[Felix Zielcke]

AFAIK even the new memtest86+ 6.0, should run fine on old systems.
I'm not sure pcmemtest supports them.

But as soon as the pcmemtest based memtest86+ has been uploaded to
unstable, I'll file a removal request for pcmemtest.

So I don't see either a reason to still keep the very old memtest86 in
Debian.

Regards,
Felix

[Fabio Fantoni]

Thanks for open this, when I started to work on memtest86+ I taken a
look to memtest86 but I thought it was not worth putting in to improve
and maintain also that package as it is no longer maintained upstream
for a long time and I think it would be time to remove it by now (unless
someone has some reason to keep it and wants to maintain it).

memtest86+ v6.00 have beta3 now in experimental and in about a month
there will be the final release and after will be uploaded to unstable,
when memtest86+ v6 will be in testing I think will be good make
pcmemtest as metapackage for transition to memtest86+ (as there are some
users using it) and in a subsequent period then remove that too and then
have a single maintained "memtest" (memtest86+) on both upstream and in
debian with 2 maintainers (me and Felix Zielcke). What do you think?