Re: irc meeting regarding kernel status d-i RC3
On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 05:35:52PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 04:12:06PM +0100, maximilian attems wrote:
> > the kernel team asks for an irc meeting regarding
> > the chosen kernel for the sarge release.
> > the meeting is scheduled for Wednesday 02. Feb 18h UT.
>
> > if that time is very inconvenient for you please speak up,
> > Friday 04. Feb 18h UT would also be possible,
> > but Wednesday would be preferred.
By my calculations that is 3am on Saturday morning in Japan,
I am not sure I will be in an appropriate state to be having meetings
at that time.
That said, my main area of responsibility is in 2.4.X,
and I think 2.4.27 is more or less settled on there, except
for the odd architecture here and there.
> > arch Maintainer please attend, to have your opinion voiced.
> > joey seems needed as representative of the fine d-i folks.
>
> > Current scheduled 2.6.8 kernel for d-i sarge is 1/2 year old,
> > and has may open issues (just naming a few: nfs exports,
> > direct I/O, acpi troubles for newer intel boards, ..)
>
> > looking forward to meet you on #debian-kernel.
>
> To put this in context, this is in response to concerns I had passed on to
> the debian-kernel team on IRC regarding the number of problems reported in
> 2.6.8, including lack of robust support for xfs, one of the journalling file
> systems currently presented as an option in the installer; bugs in the core
> affecting RAID; and bugs that prevent 2.6.8 for booting at all for some
> users who are able to use 2.6.7 or 2.6.10.
>
> While we certainly need to be aware that this may be a "bugs we know for
> bugs we don't" trade, I think there's enough evidence against 2.6.8 that we
> should sit down and have that conversation and make an informed decision.
>
> If Joey is not able to make it for scheduling reasons, we won't be able to
> make any decisions at the meeting, but I'm happy to summarize and/or log the
> discussion and present it to him afterwards if he agrees to this approach.
>
> Who we *do* need to have present at this meeting are kernel people who can
> speak for each of the architectures that are committed to a d-i 2.6 install
> method for sarge: hppa, i386, ia64, powerpc, and sparc. Other archs that
> wish to have a 2.6 kernel shipped with sarge should also be present (alpha,
> s390, m68k, others?), to ensure that any porting concerns they have are also
> taken into consideration.
My 2c worth here is that frankly 2.6 is highly problematic in terms
of trying to stabalise. We clearly have a number of bugs in 2.6.8 that
are unlikely to ever be resolved - e.g. ACPI. And in many cases
2.6.10 is in much better shape. But there is still more or less a flood
of fixes going in to 2.6 upstream, for instance there are any number
of fixes to the network since 2.6.10 (though admitedly probably not
as many as between 2.6.9 and 2.6.10).
So I am definately of the oppinion that we would be trading old bugs for
new. But that may not be such a bad thing. For one, we know some of the
bugs in 2.6.8 that hurt us (xfs, ACPI, ...) are in a better state in
2.6.10 - I am personally running 2.6.10 on systems that I use 2.6 on,
and so are other people I work with, and its because 2.6.8 didn't work
for one reason or another. For another it would be an excellent chance
reduce from 3 (2.6.8,9,10) to one, the number of 2.6 kernels on d.o, and
thus focus our efforts on one 2.6. In fact, if I was asked for one
recommendation that would be it.
The 2.6 development model places the onus of stabalisation much more
firmly on the distributions. I am of the mind that Debian would have
more chance in getting things stabalised if we can focus on one 2.6
kernel. But as I said at the outset, my focus is on 2.4 and this is
just my 2c worth.
--
Horms
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