Re: Kernel 6.9.1 AX.25 Crash

[David Ranch <linux-hams@trinnet.net>]

Hello Lars,

> That's good to know! I based that on the amount of traffic I see here on
> the linux-hams list, and the difficulty in getting anybody to offer an
> opinion (or an alternative to) these changes. If there is a more active
> forum where people are talking about Linux and amateur radio I'm happy
> to join there as well.

Just to name a few, consider joining:

    Direwolf software-tnc:  https://groups.io/g/direwolf

    Raspberry Pi HAM Radio: https://groups.io/g/RaspberryPi-4-HamRadio


> I think this would typically be the job of a subsystem maintainer; this
> is another way in which the lack of a maintainer hurts the
> ax.25 stack.

But since there isn't one.. why are these broken commits still being 
allowed?


> Have you put together an ax.25 test suite? I put together an automated
> test for the particular problem I'm trying to resolve (that was
> necessary in order to successfully use `git bisect run`); collecting
> these sorts of things in one place would be a great step forward.

I've offered to do so but I never received any response.  I need to know 
what is needed here:

    - Just document various testcase scenarios?

    - Create automation to run the test cases?  In what language?  Bash? 
  Python?  Perl?  JavaScript?

    - Create a set of pre-configured inter-connected VM images for 
running automated tests?  If so, what format, what CPU architecture, etc


>> I am hugely grateful to you (Lars) on being able to submit some meaningful
>> fixes and was able to get them committed to the mainline.
>
> Just to clear, that hasn't happened yet! The patch needs to get
> approved first.

Sigh... ok.


>> The next major hurdle that I would love to get feedback on is how to
>> get these new changes but also create a set of backported fixes
>> committed into various Linux distributions kernels that don't strictly
>> follow the mainline kernel.  My personal interest is in the Raspberry
>> Pi OS kernel

My primary focus is on Raspberry Pi as well but also X86 computers too.


> I'm running this patch on kernel 6.6.30 on my Raspberry Pi systems; you
> can find the patch against 6.6.30 here:
>
>   https://github.com/larsks/ax25-debugging/tree/main/patches-for-6.6.30
>
> It's made my Pis much more stable. I think that if the patch gets
> accepted for the mainline kernel it should be relatively easy to get
> into the Raspberry Pi kernel as well.

Are you patching and compiling the Raspberry Pi OS specific kernel tree 
or are you using the mainline Linux-Next or primary Linus tree?

--David
KI6ZHD