lemote/gnewsense 3.14.0-gnu is slow (fix)

[Alexandre Oliva]

I haven't updated the apt metadata in the gnewsense/lemote repo yet, but
it already contains a build of 3.14.0-gnu. Alas, the cpufreq module is
broken upstream, so a machine running this build will be slow and will
freeze upon running cpufreq-info or unloading the module.

If you don't care about cpufreq, you may fix the system by removing
/lib/modules/3.14.0-gnu/kernel/drivers/cpufreq/loongson2_cpufreq.ko

If you do care about saving power by slowing down the CPU when it's not
in use, you may want to download
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/lemote/gnewsense/pool/debuginfo/linux-cpufreq-fix-3.14.0-gnu_0loongsonlibre_mipsel.tar.xz
and follow the instructions in the README.cpufreq-loongson2 in it.

I don't think I'm going to roll out another 3.14.0-gnu build before this
problem is sorted out upstream. If it is fixed shortly, with plenty of
time before 3.14.1-gnu is scheduled upstream, I might roll out a
1loongsonlibre build with the fix. If so, I might even pull the patch
into the loongson-community release of 3.14 for Loongson.


Unfortunately, the unusually large number of releases this week, plus
the amount of work it took to locate this problem (*) means the fix for
GNU Linux-libre bug #1 didn't get much attention. I hope to fix that
shortly.

(*) bisecting that was manually intensive because many patches merged
into 3.14 were originally based on pre-3.13 trees that didn't have the
two patches that fixed an icache issue that made the kernel unbootable
on Loongson2. I had to do a lot of “git bisect skip” before I realized
that this, rather than newer temporary breakage in the tree, was what
caused so many kernels I built to fail to boot.

--
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist|Red Hat Brasil GNU Toolchain Engineer