From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mondschein.lichtvoll.de ([194.150.191.11]:36796 "EHLO mail.lichtvoll.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932487AbaHVRjC convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Fri, 22 Aug 2014 13:39:02 -0400 From: Martin Steigerwald To: Shriramana Sharma Cc: linux-btrfs Subject: Re: Distro vs latest kernel for BTRFS? Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 19:38:59 +0200 Message-ID: <5464164.8Uxj5nlT6d@merkaba> In-Reply-To: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Sender: linux-btrfs-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Am Freitag, 22. August 2014, 17:29:29 schrieb Shriramana Sharma: > Hello. I've seen repeated advices to use the latest kernel. While > hearing of the recent compression bug affecting recent kernels does > somewhat warn one off the previous advice, I would like to know what > people who are running regular distros do to get the latest kernel. > > Personally I'm on Kubuntu, which provides mainline kernels till a > particular point but not beyond that. > > Do people here always compile the latest kernel themselves just to get > the latest BTRFS stability fixes (and improvements, though as a > second priority)? I compile own kernel on my main laptop cause I want to follow kernel development closely for my Linux Performance analysis and tuning trainings and also help a bit with testing things. I don´t compile kernels on any other machines anymore. Instead I use what Debian Sid gives me. On the server VM I use 3.14 Debian Wheezy Backports kernel, an will continue to do so, until I know a 3.16 package with BTRFS fixes hits the backports repo. I recommend against SLES 11 SP 3 stable kernel. Their 3.0 had serious free space issues in one VM after *just* installing OpenLDAP and have snapper continue with the snapshotting. It was still 2GB free, but I was not able to delete files or delete snapshots anymore. I think I also try rebalancing the FS. After a while I gave up and reverted to a previous VM snapshot. I know this is supported officially, but I don´t think this is anywhere near production ready. SLES 12 should be much better as its using a newer kernel. On any account long time enterprise Linux kernels may easily become outdated. I know they are backporting things, but I think for BTRFS its better to follow new kernels as is more timely. With the distros that release all 6 months or so, I think you get recent enough kernel easily. With Debian you can use backport kernels. Some distros have additionally kernel repos for more recent kernels. And I in the end I think you can even install newer kernel packages on enterprise distros, but… you loose support this way. For Kubuntu / Ubuntu I think there even is a daily kernel PPA. I think Phoronix uses it for their daily performance regression testing (and making big noise of regressions even in RC kernels). Ciao, -- Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7