Re: Linux kernels v3.18.x and v4.2.x in sid

[Dmitry Katsubo <dma_k@mail.ru>]

On 2015-10-25 07:11, Adam Borowski wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 10:59:47PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
>> On 24/10/15 22:17, Dmitry Katsubo wrote:
>>> I would be happy to. However it does not allow me to use the latest
>>> kernel from 3.x branch (3.16 is now 1 year old).
>>
>> All Debian stable releases are intended to be used with the latest
>> kernel from the same suite. For Debian 8 that's the 3.16.y series, which
>> has long term support from Canonical, and receives security and
>> stability bug fixes in the Debian stable and security archives.

Hm, kernel.org says that 3.18 is the long-term support kernel.

>> If you have hardware or software requirements that mean the stable
>> kernel is unsuitable for you, then the next most stable option is to use
>> the latest kernel from the corresponding backports repository. For
>> Debian 8 that's jessie-backports, which currently has Linux 4.2.y.

Thanks for the information that 4.2.x is backported. Actually what is
also important for me is the availability of btrfs-tools v4.2.x, which
is now available in sid. Perhaps there are plans to backport btrfs-tools
as well (or how does it happen with kernel-dependant utilities)?

>> Anything in snapshots.debian.org is entirely "as is"; if it has critical
>> bugs, they will never be fixed. Do not use snapshots.debian.org on
>> production systems.
> 
> If you insist on using a 3.* kernel but 3.16 is too old for you, 3.18 _is_ a
> long-term support release, maintained by Sasha Levin until Jan 2017. 
> You'd just need to compile it yourself.  It's available from:
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git
> branch linux-3.18.y.
> 
> To do that, apt-get install kernel-package then:
> cp /boot/config-${your_old_kernel_version} .config
> make menuconfig #edit the config to your heart's content
> make-kpkg --rootcmd fakeroot --initrd -j`grep ^processor /proc/cpuinfo|wc -l` linux-image
> make-kpkg --rootcmd fakeroot --initrd -j`grep ^processor /proc/cpuinfo|wc -l` linux-headers

Compilation of the kernel is an option, but as builds are available in
snapshots, there is no strong need in that. Thanks for advise anyway. I
used to another way of compiling the kernel

$ apt-get source linux-image-3.2.0-4-686-pae; cd linux-3.2.35
$ fakeroot make -f debian/rules.gen binary-arch_i386_none_686-pae

which assures that all Debian-specific patches are applied on the top of
vanilla kernel. I am not sure if that is still preferable for latest
kernels.

-- 
With best regards,
Dmitry