On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 12:26:02PM -0400, Jesse Dougherty wrote:

Hi, I'm Jesse.. I work for a company that sells HP hardware. We sell HP Itanium servers. I have a user that wants to buy a few servers and have Debian loaded on them.

It's... let's say unexpected.

Can you tell me what versions of Debian are supported on ia64 / HP
Itanium server platforms?

No versions of Debian supporting ia64 have security support so the answer
is in practice "none".
The last Debian version supporting it was wheezy, as you can see on https://www.debian.org/ports/ia64/. I wouldn't recommend using it.

--
WBR, wRAR

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQJhBAABCgBLFiEEolIP6gqGcKZh3YxVM2L3AxpJkuEFAmMk3NMtFIAAAAAAFQAP cGthLWFkZHJlc3NAZ251cGcub3Jnd3JhckBkZWJpYW4ub3JnAAoJEDNi9wMaSZLh nWcP/i82J6dPaGFiNpcosmZib++RSMfF5/1uAN8fYAe9XtF0L9KBJQiJD4DdpFKV hkE7XO4n0IcZtJelCWLG6sGI1fYuqk8BipJR0ZxwIjR3RHMs0fMVB4gjxXNZ2OtP lAzyZTKjwUyY/LZMWp9SyU5YXepWm/syN2KOZc3s/XUcIHOxlD6L1m4Tf3qNk+OV 6VlrHMPnOn7mwu7OdzNJuyGCueyW2A73bt9Tq8KQqvgtogeapccxIUL6EHG5OWAZ uA52fv83fzca5tXjhdFWsdix7SqXlAE+L2oRJqWFTvXrrD1VD8QQJqh3jwrhVekG XrebBs5WKamHdKIGu2dKTdykuIpgBpANg3bfWw47FISyePWkJ9YGftCpw9pclISO qDNwfjrqdkSvdvLlMoSJ5vcqQvKkJqQ1kRLYP36luzj0KdGYi6GDbnvBj68SzVC0 +3ZiOD7nXeY6wrAiC5fz8qaYv6WKL1ZJBFaXuMk5UxUcnIieznDMXivnwx2UBVFl yYAUi5B4E6hVjNs/vm039vkwbR10UsTRzAMyIyq9YKXGj489kHVKVmi77M0jJx5J LemE4CMRfKftx2v1s64egs83Ye65Xt4btX1eGUEhucZSMG+x9uUp5TMw3zmfOYDT caBhOTItW4nRUHUk8aykjZuVRksrUSYU0fD5JY4p2eW4Gugx
=j+Lt
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi Jesse,

Jesse Dougherty, on 2022-09-16:

Hi, I'm Jesse.. I work for a company that sells HP hardware. We sell HP Itanium servers. I have a user that wants to buy a few servers and have Debian loaded on them. Can you tell me what versions of Debian are supported on ia64 / HP Itanium server platforms?

Short answer: none.

To the best of my knowledge, there is still a port alive of
Debian for ia64 architecture[1,2], but support is not official
in the sense of a "Release architecture"[3,4] for contemporary
Debian version 11 bullseye. Given that we lost support for ia64
on kernel side[6], I don't expect future Debian versions will
support officially this CPU architecture again.

I believe the last Debian version to have had support for ia64
as release architecture was Debian 7 wheezy[6]. This version is
unmaintained for years, so wouldn't recommend it for any serious
use as it misses many security fixes. Other option would be to
try to put a Debian unstable station together with resources
made available via ports[1,2]. None of these options sound
exactly suitable for sales, except to hobbyists knowing what
they are doing perhaps.

[1]: https://www.ports.debian.org/
[2]: https://wiki.debian.org/Ports/ia64
[3]: https://release.debian.org/testing/arch_qualify.html
[4]: https://release.debian.org/testing/arch_policy.html
[5]: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=228345bf98cd78f91d007478a51f9a471489e44a
[6]: https://release.debian.org/wheezy/arch_qualify.html

In hope this helps nonetheless,
--
Étienne Mollier <[email protected]>
Fingerprint: 8f91 b227 c7d6 f2b1 948c 8236 793c f67e 8f0d 11da
Sent from /dev/pts/2, please excuse my verbosity.
On air: Porcupine Tree - Buying New Soul

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQIzBAABCgAdFiEEj5GyJ8fW8rGUjII2eTz2fo8NEdoFAmMk33wACgkQeTz2fo8N EdpNxBAAsKnBgU5Swg2uKSG3Y0yBiV36G255DtbK2TFlg8i6x+F4Ni7/cyHw0a9k tdcmVlarwq+q9OavqDrF+i1gPEzzwaEgkXOmuDqRCV2BnYXQilIFAqqSakyzfk6v o3FPOkMsULFM8nce3JBrE5utCdLN8LPaInkV2I9+hnYVATlHxW4o4XzaUJqVdF1w Cb9EpdUWpN2zIJZKGo07Du577xEFz03fV9g6A0ZKI9ONAtNStDKbxANk7V6RUSZ7 +8aoz1wj6My+JPCYkRcCCTNOieFqWzrG3sxuWswRI+qZnQdg9U4RAn0fA5cSfEJt nid0ROBIcWuvI5GdgVuRvsEejVCrWFHaMx1Kc3iCoLW2e9CbXJP7JTuB/RsNcYMK pjeLg+yZiBKnOEWxhNPe6ZJ9u8gc6JbeiHJy6424u4G39zC35Gw7OdPp+D82Bfzu klaSaGo8SmrkJZ8MLine5MzdEv89vzDkCQCeIcuZJ/aQUd4aKdycxYSJrpHHlH4a cHQyzJACLTOr5EbNpQpkhy/BfTjskILIfD/mqL0KhObASKTd//k6oMGtsDgc79XL GvMdAmfJjP+8njDqaxgFo1lw0v7MDvgDOwpSBQ+7qlBlTO2hZQUpCllkLrRTJa5Z odVQ+rqYyVdgJY09OLuGBbTtkNZNsgctxWJ67q2Z8yF0PxNKm2s=
=qK

On Fri, 2022-09-16 at 22:41 +0200, Étienne Mollier wrote:

To the best of my knowledge, there is still a port alive of
Debian for ia64 architecture[1,2], but support is not official
in the sense of a "Release architecture"[3,4] for contemporary
Debian version 11 bullseye.

Due to the Itanium hardware ecosystem no longer producing newer CPUs,
ia64 likely could never become an official port again, but some of the unofficial Debian ports may at some point get unofficial releases
as part of the proposed tier system for Debian architectures. That
requires infrastructure changes and probably won't happen soon though.

https://debconf22.debconf.org/talks/47-investigating-a-tier-system-for-release-architectures/
https://gobby.debian.org/export/debconf22/bof/tier-architecture-system

I expect that the folks working on the unofficial Debian ia64 port
would welcome donations of extra hardware for build/porting servers,
please contact the debian-ia64 mailing list if you can do that.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-ia64/

In case you would like to contribute to the unofficial Debian ia64
port, probably a lot of the steps in the new port document need to
be re-done or polished for ia64.

https://wiki.debian.org/PortsDocs/New

--
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQIzBAABCgAdFiEEYQsotVz8/kXqG1Y7MRa6Xp/6aaMFAmMlNV4ACgkQMRa6Xp/6 aaPl+g/+KCXs6IOjrLwhmgBrAYnB+dWJUvwC4ibdHLJ+didFOt9xo9pYvVMK6vcX nvm8JMkt9iwXHudJ3MgYngMshVjPGcHVrL8uq5JrCKaaPsgSA0DuYwLEhOISwnNl D6+oNSnG3pyL+ptqSUi30eawdAugt0PrRF1JdcvvG2yz+eycccZDicpdxF1DfY/h LzwvO1JOa8OwyvwZqCaEHmR+jPRqWESsaY5VYfN8pZMhOh0HxQSjuW5LZA6L3BE3 qUQSxaT22KmM+328dFVY4wnBx8ia1u0yc6MjZSlcgXo7eTDOavJMCL9gUDeH+Gsf Ki6FLh+uGU8T6DaOOMibUOJZF3DQNs0ROc6xbPgckTdWen2D4h1OJprBMB5Uq0gL mEUUBCusfmiENR7a8K09ZcPKMcIBa9Mg+feyE9qKTabaF3DmSPmaxVGdoEvEOH5A PLQY1A91z4WdXHy3YzzcqA0YjFoOWLoZVV5aYoEt3mZwW9sS2DMOvYAlw2JqElAK EY1x5JybhvdUoI6be3DnBVI8gawwiteVAMoYO0Rj0YDrQfwgn7FUYqJGf6vIgNj7 8PGA5Ge27vwLVG8yPpvevrRVt6X0LuTPSLKhLKm+8jYVtKnzYmeMqrDrod7pwwqx 3Q8dLxJFI5Rq69H5xJBx/XrVMriaE1hVyCD2Ko49wy3hmDVsWvo=
=XTex
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)