linux-2.2 future?
Quoted 20 lines · Ruben Puettman
Quoted 11 lines · Marc-Christian Petersen
Hi Alan,
Quoted 4 lines · Alan Cox
he 2.2 tree needs a new maintainer, someone who can spend their entire life refusing patches, being ignored by the mainstream (because 2.2 is boring) and by vendors (who don't ship 2.2 any more).
I want to take 2.2.
What's up with linux-2.2 now? Who will do Alan's job in the next year?
Marc is intrested doing this job. I know Marc from linux-2.2.x-secure and from the wolk project, see http://wolk.sourceforge.net. Why not Marc? He can surely differentiate between mainstream and a private kernel fork tree. Or do you think, Marc will merge every single bit out of his kernel tree into mainstream? I bet he won't
Quoted 5 lines
I can't see postings from other people who want to take 2.2.
I think 2.2 is not dead. I often see 2.2 kernels running on systems like wlan access points or dsl routers from different vendors. 2.2 is often used where stability is a must-have. At least security fixes have to go in.
I agree.
Quoted 1 line
What do you think?
Well, I think that 2.2.24 and 2.2.25 kernels are really stable (at least on UP), but that the most weak side is on IDE disk drivers.
They seem to have DMA problems when using recent hard disks (i.e. Maxtor, etc.)
that lead to serious file system corruption problems.
Maybe there are also geometry problems because all troubles have been observed
on disks with more than 32 GB of capacity (i.e. 40 GB).
This is a pity because, up to now, 2.2.x kernels have been a valid choice for small / semi-embedded systems 80x86 (yes, I know that 2.4 should be better, but I'm still waiting for
a stable rock kernel).
In conclusion, I hope that next maintainer will think about these matters:
IDE drivers; security fixes; micro-optimizations; compatibility with newer compilers.
After all if 2.0 seems to be still alive also 2.2 should be.
A. De Faccio
On Friday 22 August 2003 23:27, A.D.F. wrote:
Hi A. De Faccio
Quoted 8 lines
Quoted 4 lines
I think 2.2 is not dead. I often see 2.2 kernels running on systems like wlan access points or dsl routers from different vendors. 2.2 is often used where stability is a must-have. At least security fixes have to go in.
I agree.
Quoted 1 line
What do you think?
Well, I think that 2.2.24 and 2.2.25 kernels are really stable (at least on UP), but that the most weak side is on IDE disk drivers.
My -secure tree is also rock solid on SMP :p
Quoted 8 lines
They seem to have DMA problems when using recent hard disks (i.e. Maxtor, etc.) that lead to serious file system corruption problems. Maybe there are also geometry problems because all troubles have been observed on disks with more than 32 GB of capacity (i.e. 40 GB). This is a pity because, up to now, 2.2.x kernels have been
a valid choice for small / semi-embedded systems 80x86
(yes, I know that 2.4 should be better, but I'm still waiting for a stable rock kernel).
I agree on this. Therefore my 2.2-secure tree has a 2.4 IDE backport from the PLD Project by Krzysiek Taraszka & Krzysiek Oledzki. It's not that up2date like .21 and .22 IDE code is, but it works very very smooth and nice and rock solid. We use the 2.2-secure tree for almost all customers in my company. Biggest harddisk is a 160GB Maxtor IDE disk.
Quoted 3 lines
In conclusion, I hope that next maintainer will think about these matters:
IDE drivers;
ack!
Quoted 1 line
security fixes;
ack! Current 2.2 is missing, for example, hashing exploits in network stack, like 2.4 had some time ago.
Quoted 1 line
micro-optimizations;
also done in 2.2-secure
Quoted 1 line
compatibility with newer compilers.
This might be the hardest job. This is not done in 2.2-secure. I think the effort in doing this is not worth the time it takes.
Quoted 1 line
After all if 2.0 seems to be still alive also 2.2 should be.
I agree 100%. Anyway, no comment from Alan, so I think he don't want to give 2.2 away to me.
P.S.: I've cc'ed Ruben, Alan and Ville.
ciao, Marc
Quoted 3 lines · Marc-Christian Petersen
like .21 and .22 IDE code is, but it works very very smooth and nice and rock solid. We use the 2.2-secure tree for almost all customers in my company. Biggest harddisk is a 160GB Maxtor IDE disk.
The problem is that change breaks stuff. a lot of the 2.2 users will happily trade lack of LBA48 support for stability and predictability. Thats why I took a basically "if its not a serious bugfix its not going in" approach
Quoted 9 lines · Alan Cox
Quoted 3 lines · Marc-Christian Petersen
like .21 and .22 IDE code is, but it works very very smooth and nice and rock solid. We use the 2.2-secure tree for almost all customers in my company. Biggest harddisk is a 160GB Maxtor IDE disk.
The problem is that change breaks stuff. a lot of the 2.2 users will happily trade lack of LBA48 support for stability and predictability. Thats why I took a basically "if its not a serious bugfix its not going in" approach
As a 2.2 user, I have to agree with this sentiment.
Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, 2.2 didn't get as stable as it is overnight. Unfortunately, any change now risks subtley destabilizing 2.2 for some obscure case somewhere. Such destabilization could literally happen overnight {:-(
OTOH, some users may find that the stability of 2.2 combined with some other feature(s) (be it LBA48/IPSec/whatever (in my case it's MPPE from -secure + a timer hack)) works just fine for them.
I.e. we can be well-served by a very stable "official" 2.2 tree which is supplemented by the likes of MCP's -secure patchset, and others.
Perhaps the middle ground is to keep the 2.2 kernel pretty much as-is (modulo bugfixes) and include pointers to optional patch(sets)? That's certainly more palatable than people maintaining patch-reversions to retain their stability!
Worse still, as is too often the case, feature updates may provoke some 2.2 users to NOT upgrade (and hence miss security fixes) lest they compromise stability.
HTH and many thanks for your contributions,
Neale.
On Tuesday 26 August 2003 17:03, Alan Cox wrote:
Hi Alan,
Quoted 4 lines
The problem is that change breaks stuff. a lot of the 2.2 users will happily trade lack of LBA48 support for stability and predictability. Thats why I took a basically "if its not a serious bugfix its not going in" approach
Yeah, I agree with you. Anyway, I've never said I will integrate that IDE stuff when I become the 2.2 maintainer :) ... I just said I'll think about it ;) ... I never ever want to break 2.2, and such an update will definitively break things. 2.2 took a long time to become that stable like it is now and it can be broke within minutes. A no-go!
For users who need/want/experiment with that stuff there is still my 2.2-secure tree.
Anyway, 2.2 needs the hashing exploit fix ASAP ;)
ciao, Marc