[BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Natalie Protasevich]

This is the listing of the open bugs that are relatively new, around
2.6.22 and up. They are vaguely classified by specific area.
(not a full list, there are more :)

The good part is that reporters of the bugs below are still around and
haven't dissipated, or disposed of their hardware, so it is a good
time to get the bugs.
Those bugzillas that have been started as regressions on Rafael's list
are not mentioned here so far, since they are being tracked as new
regressions already.

It would be appreciated if the corresponding maintenance team could take a
look, close off any which are fixed and see if they can fix any which aren't.

NOTE: when replying to this email, please add the bug number to the Subject in
the form [Bug 1234] so that bugzilla will capture the discussion.
Thanks.

ACPI====================================================================

System does not load without acpi=off ide=nodma noapic
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9358
Kernel: 2.6.23.1

ACPI Error attaching device data
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9354
Kernel: 2.6.24-rc2

/proc/acpi/battery displays Incorrect voltages
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9341
Kernel: 2.6.23.1

PATA scan: ACPI Exception AE_AML_PACKAGE_LIMIT... is beyond end of object
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9320
Kernel: 2.6.24-rc2
(Tejun: calling _GTF without calling _STM first.  _GTM doesn't have any
prerequisite (it can't).  Can someone familiar with ACPI tell me why the method
is failing?  At any rate, libata should work fine regardless of ACPI failures.
Maybe it's time to start blacklist to skip ATA-ACPI for some boards to avoid
those annoying messages during boot)

ACPI Battery Info in /sys but not /proc/acpi
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9183
Kernel: 2.6.23-rc8-mm2

When using ACPI on a Compaq Presario V6221EU the laptop goes into
deadlock after a random amount of time
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9118
Kernel: 2.6.23-rc6

ACPI video driver should validate brightness level before setting it via _BCM
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9277
Kernel: 2.6.23

VIDEO/DVB

dvb driver reboot system
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9357
Kernel: 2.6.21.5


PLATFORM===============================================================

xipImage is built so that uBoot cant run it (ARM)
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9356
Kernel: 2.6.21

Samsung R20 - ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)	
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9339
Kernel: 2.6.24
(boot is very long
..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
then the boot stop at :
ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)
(during 3 minutes, and boot continue)

system_64.h: switch_to inline asm should be more robbust wrt optimizations
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9302
Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1

with CONFIG_NO_HZ and/or CONFIG_HPET_TIMER set kernel 2.6.23 doesn't
boot (ARM, Timer)
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9229
Kernel: 2.6.23

NETWORKING===========================================================

RTNLGRP_ND_USEROPT does not report ifindex (IPv6)
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9349
Kernel: 2.6.24+

a kernel error happend in the func: __skb_dequeue when using in
pfifo_fast_dequeue
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9342
Kernel: 2.6.11.1 - reporter asked to try recent kernel

e100 does not work after boot
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9336
Kernel: 2.6.23.1

2.6.23.1-smp kernel panic (network-related)
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9318
Kernel: 2.6.23.1
Infiniband panic

sundance -> 4port D-Link System Inc DFE-580TX -> Log errors
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9311
Kernel: 2.6.22.9

via-rhine driver stalls with: PHY status 786d, resetting...
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9300
Kernel: 2.6.23+


Weird network problems with 2.6.23-rc2
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9080
http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/11/40 - description

rt2500pci: low TCP throughput (wireless)
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9273
Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1
This is a regression

Unable to build wifi network between zd1201 and b43
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9237
Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1

Crash after module unload in b43 (wireless)
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9233
Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1

(net typhoon) "no descs for cmd, had (needed) 0 (1) cmd, 31 (7) resp"
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9225
Kernel: 2.6.23.1


IDE/SATA=========================================================

pata_pdc202xx_old excessive ATA bus errors
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9337
2.6.24-rc2

Drive seagate ST380011AS needs to be blacklisted
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9309
Kernel: 2.6.22.X

DVD-RAM umount and disk free bug
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9265
Kernel: 2.6.15  (asked to try current kernel)

FILE SYSTEMS=======================================================

ext4: delalloc space accounting problem drops data
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9329
Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1

POSIX Access Control Lists cause bogus file system check errors
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9241
Kernel: 2.6.23.1

MEMORY MANAGEMENT================================================

My system hangs when it has no more free memory to allocate via malloc()
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9316
Kernel: 2.6.23
User program, "My system hangs when it has no more free memory to
allocate via malloc()"

BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address
26121228/kswapd0[231] exited with preempt_count 1
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9305
EIP is at free_block+0x6d/0xe4
Kernel: 2.6.22.6

POWER MANAGEMENT==================================================

IBM X41 looses time after Suspend2Disk
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9314
Kernel: 2.6.23

Suspend to RAM resume hangs on a tickless (NO_HZ) kernel
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9275
Kernel: 2.6.23
This is HP notebook nc6320 T2400 945GM


VIDEO DRIVERS========================================================

No text consoles with FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_DETECT_PRIMARY
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9310
Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1
This is a regression


PARALLEL PORT========================================================

LPC IT8705 POST port making noise on parallel port
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9306
Kernel: 2.6.16+


I/O STORAGE===========================================================

kernel bug from pktcdvd
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9294
Kernel: 2.6.23

After pci-e video card was installed, pci add-on usb card & firewire card fail
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9223
Kernel: 2.6.20 (testing of latest kernel requested)

SCSI==================================================================

qla2xxx: driver initialization does not complete when booting with
Port connected
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9267
Kernel: 2.6.23.1

SOUND ALSA============================================================

Unable to load snd-hda-intel module: Unknown symbol in module, or
unknown parameter
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9242
Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1

usbaudio microphone: regular sound distortion on several Logitech Webcams
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9230
Kernel: 2.6.22.9

HID====================================================================

Kernel NULL pointer dereference at :usbhid:hiddev_ioctl+0x2f/0xabc
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9216
Kernel: 2.6.23.1
Looks like this is a regression

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Andrew Morton]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:42:32 -0800 "Natalie Protasevich" <protasnb@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is the listing of the open bugs that are relatively new, around
> 2.6.22 and up. They are vaguely classified by specific area.
> (not a full list, there are more :)
> 
> The good part is that reporters of the bugs below are still around and
> haven't dissipated, or disposed of their hardware, so it is a good
> time to get the bugs.
> Those bugzillas that have been started as regressions on Rafael's list
> are not mentioned here so far, since they are being tracked as new
> regressions already.

Thanks.

> It would be appreciated if the corresponding maintenance team could take a
> look, close off any which are fixed and see if they can fix any which aren't.
> 
> NOTE: when replying to this email, please add the bug number to the Subject in
> the form [Bug 1234] so that bugzilla will capture the discussion.
> Thanks.

You're optimistic.



> ACPI====================================================================
> 
> System does not load without acpi=off ide=nodma noapic
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9358
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1

One response from a developer

> ACPI Error attaching device data
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9354
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc2

Zero responses from developers

> /proc/acpi/battery displays Incorrect voltages
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9341
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1

Zero responses from developers

> PATA scan: ACPI Exception AE_AML_PACKAGE_LIMIT... is beyond end of object
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9320
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc2
> (Tejun: calling _GTF without calling _STM first.  _GTM doesn't have any
> prerequisite (it can't).  Can someone familiar with ACPI tell me why the method
> is failing?  At any rate, libata should work fine regardless of ACPI failures.
> Maybe it's time to start blacklist to skip ATA-ACPI for some boards to avoid
> those annoying messages during boot)

Tejun doing stuff

> ACPI Battery Info in /sys but not /proc/acpi
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9183
> Kernel: 2.6.23-rc8-mm2

Marked as a duplicate of an already-resolved bug.

> 
> When using ACPI on a Compaq Presario V6221EU the laptop goes into
> deadlock after a random amount of time
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9118
> Kernel: 2.6.23-rc6

Someone called Jike Song is trying to help out.  Regular developers awol.

> 
> ACPI video driver should validate brightness level before setting it via _BCM
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9277
> Kernel: 2.6.23

Zero responses from developers

> VIDEO/DVB
> 
> dvb driver reboot system
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9357
> Kernel: 2.6.21.5

Mauro thinks it might be bad hardware

> 
> PLATFORM===============================================================
> 
> xipImage is built so that uBoot cant run it (ARM)
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9356
> Kernel: 2.6.21

Zero responses from developers

> 
> Samsung R20 - ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)	
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9339
> Kernel: 2.6.24
> (boot is very long
> ..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
> then the boot stop at :
> ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)
> (during 3 minutes, and boot continue)

No response from developers

> system_64.h: switch_to inline asm should be more robbust wrt optimizations
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9302
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1

Not really a bug.

> with CONFIG_NO_HZ and/or CONFIG_HPET_TIMER set kernel 2.6.23 doesn't
> boot (ARM, Timer)
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9229
> Kernel: 2.6.23

No response from developers

> NETWORKING===========================================================
> 
> RTNLGRP_ND_USEROPT does not report ifindex (IPv6)
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9349
> Kernel: 2.6.24+

No response from developers

> a kernel error happend in the func: __skb_dequeue when using in
> pfifo_fast_dequeue
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9342
> Kernel: 2.6.11.1 - reporter asked to try recent kernel

No response from developers

> e100 does not work after boot
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9336
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1

No response from developers

> 2.6.23.1-smp kernel panic (network-related)
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9318
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> Infiniband panic

No response from developers

> sundance -> 4port D-Link System Inc DFE-580TX -> Log errors
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9311
> Kernel: 2.6.22.9

No response from developers

> via-rhine driver stalls with: PHY status 786d, resetting...
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9300
> Kernel: 2.6.23+

No response from developers

> 
> Weird network problems with 2.6.23-rc2
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9080
> http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/11/40 - description

No response from developers

> rt2500pci: low TCP throughput (wireless)
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9273
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1
> This is a regression

No response from developers

> Unable to build wifi network between zd1201 and b43
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9237
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1

No response from developers

> Crash after module unload in b43 (wireless)
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9233
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1

No response from developers

> (net typhoon) "no descs for cmd, had (needed) 0 (1) cmd, 31 (7) resp"
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9225
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1

No response from developers

> 
> IDE/SATA=========================================================
> 
> pata_pdc202xx_old excessive ATA bus errors
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9337
> 2.6.24-rc2

No response from developers

> Drive seagate ST380011AS needs to be blacklisted
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9309
> Kernel: 2.6.22.X

Jeff and Tehun did some stuff.

> DVD-RAM umount and disk free bug
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9265
> Kernel: 2.6.15  (asked to try current kernel)

No response from developers

> FILE SYSTEMS=======================================================
> 
> ext4: delalloc space accounting problem drops data
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9329
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1

No response from developers

> POSIX Access Control Lists cause bogus file system check errors
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9241
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1

Andreas did some work, seemed to lose interest.

> MEMORY MANAGEMENT================================================
> 
> My system hangs when it has no more free memory to allocate via malloc()
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9316
> Kernel: 2.6.23
> User program, "My system hangs when it has no more free memory to
> allocate via malloc()"

Rafael poked Thomas a week ago, to no effect. Thomas has been travelling.

> BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address
> 26121228/kswapd0[231] exited with preempt_count 1
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9305
> EIP is at free_block+0x6d/0xe4
> Kernel: 2.6.22.6

No response from developers

> POWER MANAGEMENT==================================================
> 
> IBM X41 looses time after Suspend2Disk
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9314
> Kernel: 2.6.23

Rafael poked Thomas a week ago, to no effect.  Thomas has been travelling.

> Suspend to RAM resume hangs on a tickless (NO_HZ) kernel
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9275
> Kernel: 2.6.23
> This is HP notebook nc6320 T2400 945GM

No response from developers

> 
> VIDEO DRIVERS========================================================
> 
> No text consoles with FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_DETECT_PRIMARY
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9310
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1
> This is a regression

No response from developers

> 
> PARALLEL PORT========================================================
> 
> LPC IT8705 POST port making noise on parallel port
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9306
> Kernel: 2.6.16+
> 

No response from developers

> I/O STORAGE===========================================================
> 
> kernel bug from pktcdvd
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9294
> Kernel: 2.6.23

I think we might have fixed this.

> After pci-e video card was installed, pci add-on usb card & firewire card fail
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9223
> Kernel: 2.6.20 (testing of latest kernel requested)

No response from developers

> SCSI==================================================================
> 
> qla2xxx: driver initialization does not complete when booting with
> Port connected
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9267
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1

No response from developers

> SOUND ALSA============================================================
> 
> Unable to load snd-hda-intel module: Unknown symbol in module, or
> unknown parameter
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9242
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1

Takashi has responded

> usbaudio microphone: regular sound distortion on several Logitech Webcams
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9230
> Kernel: 2.6.22.9

Clemens responded

> HID====================================================================
> 
> Kernel NULL pointer dereference at :usbhid:hiddev_ioctl+0x2f/0xabc
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9216
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> Looks like this is a regression

No response from developers


So I count around seven reports which people are doing something with and
twenty seven which have been just ignored.

Three of these reports have been identified as regressions.  All three
of those remain unresponded to.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Jens Axboe]

On Tue, Nov 13 2007, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > I/O STORAGE===========================================================
> > 
> > kernel bug from pktcdvd
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9294
> > Kernel: 2.6.23
> 
> I think we might have fixed this.

It's fixed and merged, I just forgot to close the bugzilla. Did so now.

-- 
Jens Axboe

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[David Miller]

From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:15:53 -0800

> > NETWORKING===========================================================
> > 
> > RTNLGRP_ND_USEROPT does not report ifindex (IPv6)
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9349
> > Kernel: 2.6.24+
> 
> No response from developers

That's funny, then how come there was a proper patch fix posted
and it's now in my tree ready to go to Linus?

I think you like just saying "No response from developers" over and
over again to make some of point about how developers are ignoring
lots of bugs.  That's fine, but at least be accurate about it :-)

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Jarek Poplawski]

On 13-11-2007 12:15, Andrew Morton wrote:
...
> Zero responses from developers
...
> No response from developers
...
> Andreas did some work, seemed to lose interest.
...
> Rafael poked Thomas a week ago, to no effect. Thomas has been travelling.

Looks like very reproducible!

Maybe you should add this to ...bugzilla?

Regards,
Jarek P.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Andrew Morton]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:39:46 -0800 (PST) David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:

> From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
> Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:15:53 -0800
> 
> > > NETWORKING===========================================================
> > > 
> > > RTNLGRP_ND_USEROPT does not report ifindex (IPv6)
> > > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9349
> > > Kernel: 2.6.24+
> > 
> > No response from developers
> 
> That's funny, then how come there was a proper patch fix posted
> and it's now in my tree ready to go to Linus?
> 
> I think you like just saying "No response from developers" over and
> over again to make some of point about how developers are ignoring
> lots of bugs.  That's fine, but at least be accurate about it :-)

Do you believe that our response to bug reports is adequate?

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[David Miller]

From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:49:16 -0800

> Do you believe that our response to bug reports is adequate?

Do you feel that making us feel and look like shit helps?

I guess I'm just masterbating here all night long with the 46
bug fixes I've reviewed fully and queued up into my tree.  Along
with all the 10 or so -stable submissions I did tonight as well.

When someone like me is bug fixing full time, I take massive offense
to the impression you're trying to give especially when it's directed
at the networking.

So turn it down a notch Andrew.

I bet if you did things like list explicitly by name every single
person who adds a bug fix (however trivial) to an -mm release instead
of a new feature, you'll better achieve your goal than what you're
doing here.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Andrew Morton]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:58:24 -0800 (PST) David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:

> From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
> Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:49:16 -0800
> 
> > Do you believe that our response to bug reports is adequate?
> 
> Do you feel that making us feel and look like shit helps?
> 

That doesn't answer my question.

See, first we need to work out whether we have a problem.  If we do this,
then we can then have a think about what to do about it.

I tried to convince the 2006 KS attendees that we have a problem and I
resoundingly failed.  People seemed to think that we're doing OK.

But it appears that data such as this contradicts that belief.


This is not a minor matter.  If the kernel _is_ slowly deteriorating then
this won't become readily apparent until it has been happening for a number
of years.  By that stage there will be so much work to do to get us back to
an acceptable level that it will take a huge effort.  And it will take a
long time after that for the kerel to get its reputation back.

So it is important that we catch deterioration *early* if it is happening.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[David Miller]

From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 04:12:59 -0800

> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:58:24 -0800 (PST) David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:
> 
> > From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
> > Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:49:16 -0800
> > 
> > > Do you believe that our response to bug reports is adequate?
> > 
> > Do you feel that making us feel and look like shit helps?
> 
> That doesn't answer my question.
> 
> See, first we need to work out whether we have a problem.  If we do this,
> then we can then have a think about what to do about it.
> 
> I tried to convince the 2006 KS attendees that we have a problem and I
> resoundingly failed.  People seemed to think that we're doing OK.
> 
> But it appears that data such as this contradicts that belief.
> 
> This is not a minor matter.  If the kernel _is_ slowly deteriorating then
> this won't become readily apparent until it has been happening for a number
> of years.  By that stage there will be so much work to do to get us back to
> an acceptable level that it will take a huge effort.  And it will take a
> long time after that for the kerel to get its reputation back.
> 
> So it is important that we catch deterioration *early* if it is happening.

You tell me what I should spend my time working on, and I promise to
do it OK? :-)

For example, if I have a choice between a TCP crash just about anyone
can hit and some obscure issue only reported with some device nearly
nobody has, which one should I analyze and work on?

That's the problem.  All of us prioritize and it means the chaff
collects at the bottom.  You cannot fix that except by getting more
bug fixers so that the chaff pile has a chance to get smaller.

Luckily if the report being ignored isn't chaff, it will show up again
(and again and again) and this triggers a reprioritization because not
only is the bug no longer chaff, it also now got a lot of information
tagged to it so it's a double worthwhile investment to work on the
problem.

I think a lot of bugs that "aren't getting looked at" are simply
sitting in some early stage of this process.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Ingo Molnar]

* Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> > > Do you believe that our response to bug reports is adequate?
> > 
> > Do you feel that making us feel and look like shit helps?
> 
> That doesn't answer my question.
> 
> See, first we need to work out whether we have a problem.  If we do 
> this, then we can then have a think about what to do about it.
> 
> I tried to convince the 2006 KS attendees that we have a problem and I 
> resoundingly failed.  People seemed to think that we're doing OK.
> 
> But it appears that data such as this contradicts that belief.
> 
> This is not a minor matter.  If the kernel _is_ slowly deteriorating 
> then this won't become readily apparent until it has been happening 
> for a number of years.  By that stage there will be so much work to do 
> to get us back to an acceptable level that it will take a huge effort.  
> And it will take a long time after that for the kerel to get its 
> reputation back.
> 
> So it is important that we catch deterioration *early* if it is 
> happening.

yes, yes, yes, and i agree with you that there is a problem. I tried to 
make this point at the 2007 KS: not only is degradation in quality not 
apparent for years, slow degradation in quality can give kernel 
developers the exact _opposite_ perception! (Fewer testers means fewer 
bugreports and that results in apparent "improved" quality and fewer 
reported regressions - while exactly the opposite is happening and 
testers are leaving us without giving us any indication that this is 
happening. We just dont notice.)

I'm not moaning about bugs that slip through - those are unavoidable 
facts of a high flux codebase. I'm moaning about reoccuring, avoidable 
bugs, i'm moaning about hostility towards testers, i'm moaning about 
hostility towards automated testing, i'm moaning about unnecessary hoops 
a willing (but unskilled) tester has to go through to help us out.

I tried to make the point that the only good approach is to remove our 
current subjective bias from quality metrics and to at least realize 
what a cavalier attitude we still have to QA. The moment we are able to 
_measure_ how bad we are, kernel developers will adopt in a second and 
will improve those metrics. Lets use more debug tools, both static and 
dynamic ones. Lets measure tester base and we need to measure _lost_ 
early adopters and the reasons why they are lost. Regression metrics are 
a very important first step too and i'm very happy about the increasing 
effort that is being spent on this.

This is all QA-101 that _cannot be argued against on a rational basis_, 
it's just that these sorts of things have been largely ignored for 
years, in favor of the all-too-easy "open source means many eyeballs and 
that is our QA" answer, which is a _good_ answer but by far not the most 
intelligent answer! Today "many eyeballs" is simply not good enough and 
nature (and other OS projects) will route us around if we dont change.

We kernel developers have been spoiled by years of abundance in testing 
resources. We squander tons of resources in this area, and we could be 
so much more economic about this without hindering our development model 
in any way. We could be so much better about QA and everyone would 
benefit without having to compromize on the incoming flux of changes - 
it's so much easier to write new features for a high quality kernel.

My current guesstimation is that we are utilizing our current testing 
resources at around 10% efficiency. (i.e. if we did an 'ideal' job we 
could fix 10 times as many bugs with the same size of tester effort!) It 
used to be around 5%. (and i mainly attribute the increase from 5% to 
10% to Andrew and the many other people who do kernel QA - kudos!) 10% 
is still awful and we very much suck.

Paradoxically, the "end product" is still considerably good quality in 
absolute terms because other pieces of our infrastructure are so good 
and powerful, but QA is still a 'weak link' of our path to the user that 
reduces the quality of the end result. We could _really_ be so much 
better without any compromises that hurt.

(and this is in no way directed at the networking folks - it holds for 
all of us. I have one main complaint about networking: the separate 
netdev list is a bad idea - networking regressions should be discussed 
and fixed on lkml, like most other subsystems are. Any artificial split 
of the lk discussion space is bad.)

	Ingo

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:42:32 -0800 "Natalie Protasevich" <protasnb@gmail.com> wrote:
..
>> with CONFIG_NO_HZ and/or CONFIG_HPET_TIMER set kernel 2.6.23 doesn't
>> boot (ARM, Timer)
>> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9229
>> Kernel: 2.6.23
> 
> No response from developers
..

Note:  that same bug exists/existed on i386 back when NO_HZ was
introduced (2.6.21?).  I still see it from time to time on my Quad core
system (very rare), but not any more on my Duo notebook where it used
to happen about 1 in n boots (n < 10).

AFAICT no fix was ever released for it.



>> Suspend to RAM resume hangs on a tickless (NO_HZ) kernel
>> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9275
>> Kernel: 2.6.23
>> This is HP notebook nc6320 T2400 945GM
> No response from developers
..

I *still* get very slow resume-from-RAM quite often here
(new in 2.6.22 kernel, wasn't there in early 2.6.23-rc*).
Something eventually times out after a minute or so
and it comes back.  Cannot make it happen reliably,
unless I'm in a hurry to get something done.  :)
I suspect USB here, probably the same loopy bug that
we added a "loop limit failsafe" for back in 2.6.21(?).

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Ingo Molnar wrote:
..
> This is all QA-101 that _cannot be argued against on a rational basis_, 
> it's just that these sorts of things have been largely ignored for 
> years, in favor of the all-too-easy "open source means many eyeballs and 
> that is our QA" answer, which is a _good_ answer but by far not the most 
> intelligent answer! Today "many eyeballs" is simply not good enough and 
> nature (and other OS projects) will route us around if we dont change.
..

QA-101 and "many eyeballs" are not at all in opposition.
The latter is how we find out about bugs on uncommon hardware,
and the former is what we need to track them and overall quality.

A HUGE problem I have with current "efforts", is that once someone
reports a bug, the onus seems to be 99% on the *reporter* to find
the exact line of code or commit.  Ghad what a repressive method.

And if the "developer" who broke the damn thing, or who at least
"claims" to be supporting that code, cannot "reproduce" the bug,
they drop it completely.

Contrast that flawed approach with how Linus does things..
he thinks through the symptoms, matches them to the code,
and figures out what the few possibilities might be,
and feeds back some trial balloon patches for the bug reporter to try.

MUCH better. 

Linus also asks for a git bisect, but doesn't insist upon the reporter
learning an entire new (poorly documented) toolset just to to report a bug.

Blah!

And remember, *I'm* an old-time Linux kernel developer.. just think about
the people reporting bugs who haven't been around here since 1992..

-ml

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Mark Lord wrote:
> Andrew Morton wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:42:32 -0800 "Natalie Protasevich" 
>> <protasnb@gmail.com> wrote:
> ..
..
>>> Suspend to RAM resume hangs on a tickless (NO_HZ) kernel
>>> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9275
>>> Kernel: 2.6.23
>>> This is HP notebook nc6320 T2400 945GM
>> No response from developers
> ..
> 
> I *still* get very slow resume-from-RAM quite often here
> (new in 2.6.22 kernel, wasn't there in early 2.6.23-rc*).
..

Typo.  That should have said:

> (new in 2.6.23 kernel, wasn't there in early 2.6.23-rc*).

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz]

On Nov 13, 2007 12:15 PM, Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:42:32 -0800 "Natalie Protasevich" <protasnb@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > This is the listing of the open bugs that are relatively new, around
> > 2.6.22 and up. They are vaguely classified by specific area.
> > (not a full list, there are more :)

[...]

> > IDE/SATA=========================================================

[...]

> > DVD-RAM umount and disk free bug
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9265
> > Kernel: 2.6.15  (asked to try current kernel)
>
> No response from developers

Bug was filled under IO/Storage-Other so is it assigned to
<other_other@kernel-bugs.osdl.org>.

Could be a FS problem as well but it is the best to wait for
confirmation with 2.6.23 before proceeding further...

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Giacomo A. Catenazzi]

Mark Lord wrote:
> Ingo Molnar wrote:
> ..
>> This is all QA-101 that _cannot be argued against on a rational 
>> basis_, it's just that these sorts of things have been largely ignored 
>> for years, in favor of the all-too-easy "open source means many 
>> eyeballs and that is our QA" answer, which is a _good_ answer but by 
>> far not the most intelligent answer! Today "many eyeballs" is simply 
>> not good enough and nature (and other OS projects) will route us 
>> around if we dont change.
> ..
> 
> QA-101 and "many eyeballs" are not at all in opposition.
> The latter is how we find out about bugs on uncommon hardware,
> and the former is what we need to track them and overall quality.
> 
> A HUGE problem I have with current "efforts", is that once someone
> reports a bug, the onus seems to be 99% on the *reporter* to find
> the exact line of code or commit.  Ghad what a repressive method.


As a long time kernel tester, I see some problem with the
newer "new development model". In the short merge windows,
after to much time, there are to many patches.
So there are problem to bisect bugs, and to have attention
of developers. My impression is that in a week there are
many more messages in lkml and to much bugs to be
handled in these few days.

I've two proposal:

- better patch quality. I would like that every commit
would compile. So an automatic commit test and public
blames could increase the quality of first commits.
[bisecting with non compilable point it is not a trivial
task]

- a slow down the patch inclusion on the merge windows
(aka: not to much big changes in the first days).
As tester I prefer that some big changes would be
included in a "secondary window" (pre o rc release),
in an other period as the big patch rush.

ciao
	cate

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[James Bottomley]

On Tue, 2007-11-13 at 03:15 -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> >
> SCSI==================================================================
> > 
> > qla2xxx: driver initialization does not complete when booting with
> > Port connected
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9267
> > Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> 
> No response from developers

Urm, well, if no-one ever tells the SCSI list it's unrealistic to expect
anyone to be working on it.  As far as I can tell, email was sent to
Andrew Vasquez only on 31 October. However, the fault looks to be
generic, so he probably just dropped it.

This seems to be the significant line from the trace:

Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:   ISP2422: PCI-X Mode 1 (133 MHz) @
0000:01:03.0
hdma-, host#=1, fw=4.00.27 [IP] 
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:01:03.1[B] -> GSI 29
(level, low) -> IRQ 22
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: qla2xxx 0000:01:03.1: Found an ISP2422, irq 22,
iobase 0xf8cf4000
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: qla2xxx 0000:01:03.1: Configuring PCI space...
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: qla2xxx 0000:01:03.1: Configure NVRAM
parameters...
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: qla2xxx 0000:01:03.1: Verifying loaded RISC
code...
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: qla2xxx 0000:01:03.1: Allocated (64 KB) for
EFT...
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: qla2xxx 0000:01:03.1: Allocated (1413 KB) for
firmware dump...
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: scsi2 : qla2xxx
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: qla2xxx 0000:01:03.1: 
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  QLogic Fibre Channel HBA Driver: 8.01.07-k7
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:   QLogic QLA2462 - PCI-X 2.0 to 4Gb FC, Dual
Channel
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:   ISP2422: PCI-X Mode 1 (133 MHz) @ 0000:01:03.1
hdma-, host#=2, fw=4.00.27 [IP] 
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: qla2xxx 0000:01:03.0: LIP reset occured (f8f7).
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: qla2xxx 0000:01:03.0: LIP occured (f8f7).
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: qla2xxx 0000:01:03.0: LOOP UP detected (4 Gbps).
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: ohci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: auto-stop root hub
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: ohci_hcd 0000:03:00.1: auto-stop root hub
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access     transtec
PV610F16R1C      348B PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: kobject_add failed for 1:0:0:0 with -EEXIST,
don't try to register things with the same name in the same directory.
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c022c841>] kobject_shadow_add+0x111/0x190
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c0286814>] device_add+0xc4/0x570
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c02c90ce>] scsi_adjust_queue_depth+0x9e/0xf0
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c02249b2>] __blk_queue_init_tags+0x32/0x70
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c02d302f>] scsi_sysfs_add_sdev+0x4f/0x230
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<f8d93421>] qla2xxx_slave_configure+0x71/0x100
[qla2xxx]
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c02d0ecf>] scsi_probe_and_add_lun+0xa5f/0xb40
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c02d1559>] __scsi_scan_target+0xd9/0x6c0
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c03a5be1>] schedule+0x2e1/0x950
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c02d21f9>] scsi_scan_target+0xa9/0xe0
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c02d5640>] fc_scsi_scan_rport+0x0/0x80
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c02d56a9>] fc_scsi_scan_rport+0x69/0x80
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c012b032>] run_workqueue+0x72/0x100
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c012e8d0>] prepare_to_wait+0x20/0x70
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c012b8c0>] worker_thread+0x0/0x100
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c012b964>] worker_thread+0xa4/0x100
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c012e720>] autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x50
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c012b8c0>] worker_thread+0x0/0x100
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c012e462>] kthread+0x42/0x70
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c012e420>] kthread+0x0/0x70
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  [<c0103573>] kernel_thread_helper+0x7/0x14
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel:  =======================
Oct  7 23:35:07 t-host kernel: error 1

It looks like some type of sysfs/kobject race in SCSI ... and I think we
might have seen it before, just not able to reproduce it reliably.

My bet would be that the LIP which acts like a reset and occurs in the
middle of the scan and so the initialising object is killed on the first
scan but not yet dead and then can't be re-added on the second scan.

Hannes has patches to help with this, but they're rather complex, and
not really 2.6.24 material.  I could see if there's a simpler fix.

James

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Alan Cox]

> > pata_pdc202xx_old excessive ATA bus errors
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9337
> > 2.6.24-rc2
> 
> No response from developers

Untrue. We've been discussing it on list in the past and its now on
bugzilla. Not obvious from outside I realise. That one I'm afraid is
probably a longer term item.

> > DVD-RAM umount and disk free bug
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9265
> > Kernel: 2.6.15  (asked to try current kernel)
> 
> No response from developers

Not actually sure who is looking after this now ?

> > LPC IT8705 POST port making noise on parallel port
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9306
> > Kernel: 2.6.16+
> > 
> 
> No response from developers

Not sure who really owns parallel. Have grabbed and will sort
out.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Benoit Boissinot]

On Nov 13, 2007 3:08 PM, Mark Lord <liml@rtr.ca> wrote:
>
> Ingo Molnar wrote:
> ..
> > This is all QA-101 that _cannot be argued against on a rational basis_,
> > it's just that these sorts of things have been largely ignored for
> > years, in favor of the all-too-easy "open source means many eyeballs and
> > that is our QA" answer, which is a _good_ answer but by far not the most
> > intelligent answer! Today "many eyeballs" is simply not good enough and
> > nature (and other OS projects) will route us around if we dont change.
> ..
>
> QA-101 and "many eyeballs" are not at all in opposition.
> The latter is how we find out about bugs on uncommon hardware,
> and the former is what we need to track them and overall quality.
>
> A HUGE problem I have with current "efforts", is that once someone
> reports a bug, the onus seems to be 99% on the *reporter* to find
> the exact line of code or commit.  Ghad what a repressive method.
>

Btw, I used to test every -mm kernel. But since I've switched distros
(gentoo->ubuntu)
and I have less time, I feel it's harder to test -rc or -mm kernels (I
know this isn't a lkml problem
but more a distro problem, but I would love having an ubuntu blessed
repo with current dev kernel
for the latest stable ubuntu release).

For debugging, maybe it's time someone does an amazon ec2+s3 service
to automate the bisecting
and create .deb/.rpm from git, I don't know how much it would cost though.

regards,

Benoit

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Ray Lee]

On Nov 13, 2007 7:24 AM, Giacomo A. Catenazzi <cate@cateee.net> wrote:
> As a long time kernel tester, I see some problem with the
> newer "new development model". In the short merge windows,
> after to much time, there are to many patches.

I think the root issue there is that it's hard to get all testers to
run a bisect, but easy to ask them to test snapshots. Right now the
snapshots are generated nightly, but I think it would make more sense
if they were generated every N patches, for some value of N...

Of course, for that to really work, we have to ensure that the result
is always compilable, which has been getting better, but not perfect.

Ray

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Mark Lord wrote:

> Andrew Morton wrote:
> > On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:42:32 -0800 "Natalie Protasevich"
> > <protasnb@gmail.com> wrote:
> ..
> > > with CONFIG_NO_HZ and/or CONFIG_HPET_TIMER set kernel 2.6.23 doesn't
> > > boot (ARM, Timer)
> > > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9229
> > > Kernel: 2.6.23
> > 
> > No response from developers
> ..

The bug report is bogus. ARM has no CONFIG_HPET_TIMER. 
 
> Note:  that same bug exists/existed on i386 back when NO_HZ was
> introduced (2.6.21?).  I still see it from time to time on my Quad core
> system (very rare), but not any more on my Duo notebook where it used
> to happen about 1 in n boots (n < 10).
> 
> AFAICT no fix was ever released for it.

Hmm, at which point does the boot stop ? 

> > > Suspend to RAM resume hangs on a tickless (NO_HZ) kernel
> > > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9275
> > > Kernel: 2.6.23
> > > This is HP notebook nc6320 T2400 945GM
> > No response from developers
> ..
> 
> I *still* get very slow resume-from-RAM quite often here
> (new in 2.6.22 kernel, wasn't there in early 2.6.23-rc*).

Hmm. Which one 22 or 23 ?

> Something eventually times out after a minute or so
> and it comes back.  Cannot make it happen reliably,
> unless I'm in a hurry to get something done.  :)
> I suspect USB here, probably the same loopy bug that
> we added a "loop limit failsafe" for back in 2.6.21(?).

Do you have a pointer to that please ?

Thanks,

	tglx

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Mark Lord wrote:

> Mark Lord wrote:
> > Andrew Morton wrote:
> > > On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:42:32 -0800 "Natalie Protasevich"
> > > <protasnb@gmail.com> wrote:
> > ..
> ..
> > > > Suspend to RAM resume hangs on a tickless (NO_HZ) kernel
> > > > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9275
> > > > Kernel: 2.6.23
> > > > This is HP notebook nc6320 T2400 945GM
> > > No response from developers
> > ..
> > 
> > I *still* get very slow resume-from-RAM quite often here
> > (new in 2.6.22 kernel, wasn't there in early 2.6.23-rc*).
> ..
> 
> Typo.  That should have said:
> 
> > (new in 2.6.23 kernel, wasn't there in early 2.6.23-rc*).

Just asked that :) Is there a chance to bisect that ?

Thanks,

	tglx

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Randy Dunlap]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:33:21 -0600 James Bottomley wrote:

> On Tue, 2007-11-13 at 03:15 -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > >
> > SCSI==================================================================
> > > 
> > > qla2xxx: driver initialization does not complete when booting with
> > > Port connected
> > > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9267
> > > Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> > 
> > No response from developers
> 
> Urm, well, if no-one ever tells the SCSI list it's unrealistic to expect
> anyone to be working on it.  As far as I can tell, email was sent to
> Andrew Vasquez only on 31 October. However, the fault looks to be
> generic, so he probably just dropped it.

It seems that new SCSI bugs need to be sent to linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org.

Martin, can you arrange that to happen automatically instead of
Andrew having to do it manually?

---
~Randy

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Ingo Molnar]

* Mark Lord <liml@rtr.ca> wrote:

> Ingo Molnar wrote:
> ..
>> This is all QA-101 that _cannot be argued against on a rational basis_, 
>> it's just that these sorts of things have been largely ignored for years, 
>> in favor of the all-too-easy "open source means many eyeballs and that is 
>> our QA" answer, which is a _good_ answer but by far not the most 
>> intelligent answer! Today "many eyeballs" is simply not good enough and 
>> nature (and other OS projects) will route us around if we dont change.
> ..
>
> QA-101 and "many eyeballs" are not at all in opposition.

yes, absolutely so - that's why i used the "good" qualifier. "Good is 
not good enough" calls for additional efforts to make it more efficient, 
not for the abolition of the many eyeballs concept (which would be 
absurd). So what i wanted to say is that _sole_ reliance on the large 
numbers of eyeballs is a fundamental mistake. It's even sometimes used 
as an excuse to merge questionable stuff. "we'll find any bugs, many 
eyeballs will make bugs shallow". In reality the many eyeballs are not 
infinite, nor should they be taken for granted if they are used for 
bogus things. We have to make sure the eyeballs stay 'many', and we also 
have to make sure they are not wasted. It's a physical resource that 
must be intelligently handled. Its positive effects can be easily wasted 
and we do that today.

for example git-bisect was godsent. I remember that years ago bisection 
of a bug was a very laborous task so that it was only used as a final, 
last-ditch approach for really nasty bugs. Today we can autonomouly 
bisect build bugs via a simple shell command around "git-bisect run", 
without any human interaction! This freed up testing resources 
enormously and made bisection one of the _first_ things that are tried 
when bugs are met. We just need more of this (distros should offer 
pre-built kernel rpm 'farms' for every important commit point and 
automated tools for users to easily specify breakage points, without 
them having to install those kernels individually) , and everyone should 
be aware of the fact that we still suck (we merge too much crap and 
still dont have good enough tools to de-crappify what we merge) and that 
we are losing testers.

	Ingo

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Ingo Molnar]

* Benoit Boissinot <bboissin@gmail.com> wrote:

> For debugging, maybe it's time someone does an amazon ec2+s3 service 
> to automate the bisecting and create .deb/.rpm from git, I don't know 
> how much it would cost though.

a few months ago i estimated the costs of this and it's just a few 
terabytes so within arm's reach. As long as the .deb/.rpm's are built by 
tracking -git in a rolling fashion CPU time should not be a big issue. 
The only limit is download bandwidth - but even that problem might be 
solvable via a huge git repository of ready-to-boot .o's that are linked 
together on the tester's machine.

	Ingo

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Randy Dunlap]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:40:29 +0100 Ingo Molnar wrote:

> 
> * Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> 
> > > > Do you believe that our response to bug reports is adequate?
> > > 
> > > Do you feel that making us feel and look like shit helps?
> > 
> > That doesn't answer my question.
> > 
> > See, first we need to work out whether we have a problem.  If we do 
> > this, then we can then have a think about what to do about it.
> > 
> > I tried to convince the 2006 KS attendees that we have a problem and I 
> > resoundingly failed.  People seemed to think that we're doing OK.

We were a minority.

> > But it appears that data such as this contradicts that belief.
> > 
> > This is not a minor matter.  If the kernel _is_ slowly deteriorating 
> > then this won't become readily apparent until it has been happening 
> > for a number of years.  By that stage there will be so much work to do 
> > to get us back to an acceptable level that it will take a huge effort.  
> > And it will take a long time after that for the kerel to get its 
> > reputation back.
> > 
> > So it is important that we catch deterioration *early* if it is 
> > happening.
> 

[agree with most of Ingo's moaning]

> (and this is in no way directed at the networking folks - it holds for 
> all of us. I have one main complaint about networking: the separate 
> netdev list is a bad idea - networking regressions should be discussed 
> and fixed on lkml, like most other subsystems are. Any artificial split 
> of the lk discussion space is bad.)

but here I disagree.  LKML is already too busy and noisy.
Major subsystems need their own discussion areas.

---
~Randy

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 07:57:54AM -0800, Ray Lee wrote:
> On Nov 13, 2007 7:24 AM, Giacomo A. Catenazzi <cate@cateee.net> wrote:
> > As a long time kernel tester, I see some problem with the
> > newer "new development model". In the short merge windows,
> > after to much time, there are to many patches.
> 
> I think the root issue there is that it's hard to get all testers to
> run a bisect, but easy to ask them to test snapshots. Right now the
> snapshots are generated nightly, but I think it would make more sense
> if they were generated every N patches, for some value of N...
>...

I don't see a point in doing that - that would be a more manual 
bisecting, and the result would not be one guilty commit.

Testers are not expected to be able to hack a kernel, but it's 
reasonable to expect testers to be able to build their own kernels
(and your proposal wouldn't change that).

The small instruction below is enough for everyone who is able to 
build his own kernel to do a git bisect.

> Ray

cu
Adrian


<--  snip  -->


# install git

# clone Linus' tree:
git clone \ 
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git

# start bisecting:
cd linux-2.6
git bisect start
git bisect bad v2.6.21
git bisect good v2.6.20
cp /path/to/.config .

# start a round
make oldconfig
make
# install kernel, check whether it's good or bad, then:
git bisect [bad|good]
# start next round


After at about 10-15 reboots you'll have found the guilty commit
("...  is first bad commit").


More information on git bisecting:
  man git-bisect

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Theodore Tso]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 04:52:32PM +0100, Benoit Boissinot wrote:
> Btw, I used to test every -mm kernel. But since I've switched distros
> (gentoo->ubuntu)
> and I have less time, I feel it's harder to test -rc or -mm kernels (I
> know this isn't a lkml problem
> but more a distro problem, but I would love having an ubuntu blessed
> repo with current dev kernel
> for the latest stable ubuntu release).

There are two parts to this.  One is a Ubuntu development kernel which
we can give to large numbers of people to expand our testing pool.
But if we don't do a better job of responding to bug reports that
would be generated by expanded testing this won't necessarily help us.

The other an automated set of standard pre-built bisection points so
that testers can more easily localize a bug down to a few hundred
commits without needing to learn how to use "git bisect" (think Ubuntu
users).

So for the first, I've actually been playing with some plans to put
together an unofficial kernel that basically "what Ted is using on his
laptop".  It generally has emergency bug fixes that haven't made it
into mainline, plus some other trees where I've been more aggressive
since I want to latest in wireless and powersaving technology, etc.
It has the property that "if it breaks, you get to keep both pieces
--- and I've helpfully included the git ID in the package name so you
can do the bisection yourself".  If you want to try it, the first such
kernel is here:

       http://www.kernel.org/~tytso/tbek

I wasn't planning on talking about it until it was more fully baked,
but if people want something vaguely stable based on 2.6.24-rc2, this
might be interesting.

As for the second, I was just talking to Arjan over pizza and beer
last night, and we reached the same conclusion as Ingo, which is this
really isn't that hard.  It wouldn't be that hard to set up
infrastructure to do this, and it's just a matter of getting the disk
space and the network bandwidth togehter in the right place, plus a
relatively small amount of prgramming at least for the simplest
iteration of the idea.  (As is quite common when doing designs over
beer, we talked about some more gradious web-based schemes to do
custom built kernels that was tied to the kernel bugzilla, but first
things first. :-)

						- Ted

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Alan Cox]

> The other an automated set of standard pre-built bisection points so
> that testers can more easily localize a bug down to a few hundred
> commits without needing to learn how to use "git bisect" (think Ubuntu
> users).

Before that you want a flowchart or instruction list of boot options to
try. A lot of errors can be localised simply by asking the reported to
boot with things like "iommu=off", "pci=routeirq", "apci=off" etc

That takes a lot less time to run through and can be very informative.

Alan

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Larry Finger]

Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 04:52:32PM +0100, Benoit Boissinot wrote:
>> Btw, I used to test every -mm kernel. But since I've switched distros
>> (gentoo->ubuntu)
>> and I have less time, I feel it's harder to test -rc or -mm kernels (I
>> know this isn't a lkml problem
>> but more a distro problem, but I would love having an ubuntu blessed
>> repo with current dev kernel
>> for the latest stable ubuntu release).
> 
> There are two parts to this.  One is a Ubuntu development kernel which
> we can give to large numbers of people to expand our testing pool.
> But if we don't do a better job of responding to bug reports that
> would be generated by expanded testing this won't necessarily help us.

I'm very encouraged to read of your expanded testing efforts. As a bcm43xx developer, Ubuntu has
been our problem distro, mostly because your standard kernels have debugging turned off for bcm43xx.
When a Ubuntu user reports a problem and we ask for the relevant output from dmesg, they have no
information. I ask two things of all distros: (1) Turn on debugging - we don't spam the logs that
badly, and (2) forward any bugs found by your testing to the maintainer, and/or the bcm43xx mailing
list.

Thanks,

Larry

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Mark Lord wrote:
..
>> I *still* get very slow resume-from-RAM quite often here
>> (new in 2.6.23 kernel, wasn't there in early 2.6.23-rc*).
..
>> Something eventually times out after a minute or so
>> and it comes back.  Cannot make it happen reliably,
>> unless I'm in a hurry to get something done.  :)
>> I suspect USB here, probably the same loopy bug that
>> we added a "loop limit failsafe" for back in 2.6.21(?).
> 
> Do you have a pointer to that please ?
..

The "limit" added in the code below,
which was for messages of this form:

    hub 1-1:1.0: hub_port_status failed (err = -71)
    last message repeated 347 times

drivers/usb/hub.c:  
> static void hub_tt_kevent (struct work_struct *work)
> {
>         struct usb_hub          *hub =
>                 container_of(work, struct usb_hub, tt.kevent);
>         unsigned long           flags;
>         int                     limit = 100;
> 
>         spin_lock_irqsave (&hub->tt.lock, flags);
>         while (--limit && !list_empty (&hub->tt.clear_list)) {
>             ...

I'm not yet sure what's happening on resume now,
but there's this huge long pause with a dark screen
and then suddenly the USB subsystem comes to life
(my mouse lights up) and the system finally resumes.

More when I know more.  But it doesn't happen every time,
or even most times, so git-bisect is not possible either.

This one actually requires a developer/maintainer to put
in some effort and think about things.  Currently, that's me.

-ml

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Jan Kara]

> > FILE SYSTEMS=======================================================
> > 
> > ext4: delalloc space accounting problem drops data
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9329
> > Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1
> No response from developers
  Actually, there has been a response (Eric asked in mailing list and
created a bug and got answer to the mailing list):
http://marc.info/?l=linux-ext4&m=119454449014728&w=2

> > POSIX Access Control Lists cause bogus file system check errors
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9241
> > Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> 
> Andreas did some work, seemed to lose interest.
  As I read the bug it seems that the cause was a filesystem with errors
(which were in ACL's and thus kernel didn't boot only with ACL's
enabled) and fsck fixed the problem... I would close this one as
invalid (OK, I know the filesystem had to be corrupted somehow but
unless this is at least occasionally reproducible, there's low chance of
finding the bug).

								Honza

-- 
Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
SuSE CR Labs

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Ingo Molnar wrote:
>
> for example git-bisect was godsent. I remember that years ago bisection 
> of a bug was a very laborous task so that it was only used as a final, 
> last-ditch approach for really nasty bugs. Today we can autonomouly 
> bisect build bugs via a simple shell command around "git-bisect run", 
> without any human interaction! This freed up testing resources 
..

It's only a godsend for the few people who happen to be kernel developers
and who happen to already use git.

It's a 540MByte download over a slow link for everyone else.

-ml

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Romano Giannetti]

I jump in this discussion hoping to have some more insight on git and to
report my experience as a tester. I consider myself as half-literate in
this (I am here since 1991, more or less, and I am able to compile a
kernel and even hand-apply a patch, although I am in no way a kernel
programmer). 

On Tue, 2007-11-13 at 18:01 +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:

> The small instruction below is enough for everyone who is able to 
> build his own kernel to do a git bisect.

> # start bisecting:
> cd linux-2.6
> git bisect start
> git bisect bad v2.6.21
> git bisect good v2.6.20
> cp /path/to/.config .
> 

This was what I did in my (in the end almost successful) bisecting when
trying to find the mmc problem (see the thread named "2.6.24-rc1 eat my
SD card"). This is true in theory, but it has some problem. The "this
commit does not compile is the easiest and in man git-bisect it's
explained how to solve it. The changes in .config options, added or
removed, are another problem when jumping back and forth from version (I
was bitten by the gadzillions new options added to hda-intel alsa
driver, but well, that is solvable with a bit of attention).

The main problem I had, and that stopped me to arrive to a definite is
this situation:

j version-bad
i
h
g unrelated (but similar) bug corrected
f
e
d unrelated (but similar) bug introduced
c
b
a version-good 

(d was the series to change drivers to use sg helpers, and g was a "fix
fallout from sg helpers" patch). Now I have a series of kernels (d, e,
f) that did not work at all and so I cannot mark them good or bad. With
the number of patches added in the free-for-all week, this is a very
probable scenario. There is a way out from this using bisect?

Romano 

PS as a suggestion, I think that added a "Reported-by", or "Tested-by",
or "Debugged-by" attribution in the repository, as happened to be in the
MMC case, is a nice an d welcomed reward for the effort.    

-- 
Sorry for the disclaimer --- ¡I cannot stop it!



--
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Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Mark Lord wrote:
> 
>> > Andrew Morton wrote:
>>> > > On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:42:32 -0800 "Natalie Protasevich"
>>> > > <protasnb@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > ..
>>>> > > > with CONFIG_NO_HZ and/or CONFIG_HPET_TIMER set kernel 2.6.23 doesn't
>>>> > > > boot (ARM, Timer)
>>>> > > > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9229
>>>> > > > Kernel: 2.6.23
>>> > > 
>>> > > No response from developers
>> > ..
> 
> The bug report is bogus. ARM has no CONFIG_HPET_TIMER. 
>  
>> > Note:  that same bug exists/existed on i386 back when NO_HZ was
>> > introduced (2.6.21?).  I still see it from time to time on my Quad core
>> > system (very rare), but not any more on my Duo notebook where it used
>> > to happen about 1 in n boots (n < 10).
>> > 
>> > AFAICT no fix was ever released for it.
> 
> Hmm, at which point does the boot stop ? 
..

Just as it prints out these messages, sometimes one of them,
sometimes both (or all four on the quad core):

kernel: switched to high resolution mode on cpu 1
kernel: switched to high resolution mode on cpu 0 

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:13:56PM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 04:52:32PM +0100, Benoit Boissinot wrote:
> > Btw, I used to test every -mm kernel. But since I've switched distros
> > (gentoo->ubuntu)
> > and I have less time, I feel it's harder to test -rc or -mm kernels (I
> > know this isn't a lkml problem
> > but more a distro problem, but I would love having an ubuntu blessed
> > repo with current dev kernel
> > for the latest stable ubuntu release).
> 
> There are two parts to this.  One is a Ubuntu development kernel which
> we can give to large numbers of people to expand our testing pool.
> But if we don't do a better job of responding to bug reports that
> would be generated by expanded testing this won't necessarily help us.
>...

The main problem aren't missing testers [1] - we already have relatively 
experienced people testing kernels and/or reporting bugs, and we slowly 
scare them away due to the many bug reports without any reaction.

The main problem is finding experienced developers who spend time on 
looking into bug reports.

Getting many relatively unexperienced users (who need more guidance for 
debugging issues) as additional testers is therefore IMHO not 
necessarily a good idea.

> 						- Ted

cu
Adrian

[1] and e.g. when Greg says he has a few hundred people who want to
    write drivers it would most likely be possible to find a few
    dozen additional -rc testers among them

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 03:15:53AM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:42:32 -0800 "Natalie Protasevich" <protasnb@gmail.com> wrote:
> > PLATFORM===============================================================
> > 
> > xipImage is built so that uBoot cant run it (ARM)
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9356
> > Kernel: 2.6.21
> 
> Zero responses from developers

For christ sake Andrew.  Some of us are not employed to do kernel work
24h x 365days a year.  You might be, I'm not.

First thing, it's not a regression.  Second thing, it's *not* a bug.

uboot requires kernel images to be specially wrapped up in their crappy
formats before uboot will recognise it.  This means that if someone wants
to boot a binary image with uboot, they need to either:

1. work out the correct 'mkimage' command and run that program after
   the kernel build has completed.

2. sort out adding a new target to the kernel makefiles to run this
   uboot specific 'mkimage' command automatically.

And Alexandre (the original feature-missing reporter) has linked to a
message where a patch was proposed to do (2).  So obviously it's no
longer a problem for the reporter.

> > with CONFIG_NO_HZ and/or CONFIG_HPET_TIMER set kernel 2.6.23 doesn't
> > boot (ARM, Timer)
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9229
> > Kernel: 2.6.23
> 
> No response from developers

Bug was assigned to reporter, so I ignored it on the grounds that the
reporter was resolving it.  Plus, until recently I didn't have any
workable PXA systems to test stuff on.

In the end, a similar issue has been resolved anyway after a lot of
discussion on the ARM lists about how PXA should handle one-shot mode
with clockevents. It took absolutely ages to get agreement on what was
a simple patch.

commit 91bc51d8a10b00d8233dd5b6f07d7eb40828b87d
Author: Russell King <rmk@dyn-67.arm.linux.org.uk>
Date:   Thu Nov 8 23:35:46 2007 +0000

    [ARM] pxa: fix one-shot timer mode

    One-shot timer mode on PXA has various bugs which prevent kernels
    build with NO_HZ enabled booting.  They end up spinning on a
    permanently asserted timer interrupt because we don't properly
    clear it down - clearing the OIER bit does not stop the pending
    interrupt status.  Fix this in the set_mode handler as well.

    Moreover, the code which sets the next expiry point may race with
    the hardware, and we might not set the match register sufficiently
    in the future.  If we encounter that situation, return -ETIME so
    the generic time code retries.

    Acked-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
    Acked-by: Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>
    Signed-off-by: Russell King <rmk+kernel@arm.linux.org.uk>

Ergo, the bug can be closed provided the reporter re-tests a recent git
snapshot.  Sorry, no idea how the above commit relates to Linus' releases
and/or git snapshots.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 05:07:21PM +0100, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Mark Lord wrote:
> 
> > Andrew Morton wrote:
> > > On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:42:32 -0800 "Natalie Protasevich"
> > > <protasnb@gmail.com> wrote:
> > ..
> > > > with CONFIG_NO_HZ and/or CONFIG_HPET_TIMER set kernel 2.6.23 doesn't
> > > > boot (ARM, Timer)
> > > > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9229
> > > > Kernel: 2.6.23
> > > 
> > > No response from developers
> > ..
> 
> The bug report is bogus. ARM has no CONFIG_HPET_TIMER. 

Plus we've just merged a fix for NO_HZ on PXA platforms due to an utterly
broken one-shot implementation.  So chances are this problem is now fixed.

However, I object strongly to Andrew's responses to these bugs.  He's
completely out of line.

Given the wide range of ARM platforms today, it is utterly idiotic to
expect a single person to be able to provide responses for all ARM bugs.
I for one wish I'd never *VOLUNTEERED* to be a part of the kernel
bugzilla, and really *WISH* I could pull out of that function.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:50:08PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> Ingo Molnar wrote:
>>
>> for example git-bisect was godsent. I remember that years ago bisection of 
>> a bug was a very laborous task so that it was only used as a final, 
>> last-ditch approach for really nasty bugs. Today we can autonomouly bisect 
>> build bugs via a simple shell command around "git-bisect run", without any 
>> human interaction! This freed up testing resources 
> ..
>
> It's only a godsend for the few people who happen to be kernel developers

It's also godsend for users who want a regression they observe fixed.

If you can tell which patch broke it you often turned a very hard to 
debug problem into a relatively easy fixable problem.

As an example, [1] was an issue a normal user could discover, and 
bisecting made the difference between "nearly undebuggable" and
"easily fixable by revertng a commit".

> and who happen to already use git.

As already said in thread, the required instructions for bisecting are 
relatively short and simple (assuming the user can build his own 
kernels).

> It's a 540MByte download over a slow link for everyone else.

Not everyone has a slow connection.

For me, the speed of cloning a tree from git.kernel.org is completely 
cpu bound and limited by the speed of the 1.8 Ghz Athlon in my 
computer...

But if there is a real life problem like people with extremely slow and 
expensive internet connections not being able to bisect bugs these 
problems should be named and fixed (e.g. by sending CDs).

> -ml

cu
Adrian

[1] http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/11/12/154

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Tue, 2007-11-13 at 12:50 -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> Ingo Molnar wrote:
> >
> > for example git-bisect was godsent. I remember that years ago bisection 
> > of a bug was a very laborous task so that it was only used as a final, 
> > last-ditch approach for really nasty bugs. Today we can autonomouly 
> > bisect build bugs via a simple shell command around "git-bisect run", 
> > without any human interaction! This freed up testing resources 
> ...
> 
> It's only a godsend for the few people who happen to be kernel developers
> and who happen to already use git.
> 
> It's a 540MByte download over a slow link for everyone else.

Oh, common. Leeching CDs is so yesterday. These days some distributions
don't even offer CDs anymore in favour of DVDs.

I'd be amazed if a lot of the testers would still be on slownet, its
impossible to keep up with the latest distros without broadband.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:50:08PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
>> Ingo Molnar wrote:
>>> for example git-bisect was godsent. I remember that years ago bisection of 
>>> a bug was a very laborous task so that it was only used as a final, 
>>> last-ditch approach for really nasty bugs. Today we can autonomouly bisect 
>>> build bugs via a simple shell command around "git-bisect run", without any 
>>> human interaction! This freed up testing resources 
>> ..
>>
>> It's only a godsend for the few people who happen to be kernel developers
> 
> It's also godsend for users who want a regression they observe fixed.
> 
> If you can tell which patch broke it you often turned a very hard to 
> debug problem into a relatively easy fixable problem.
..

Oh yes, definitely.  When that use happens to be a kernel dev + git user,
it saves the *fool who broke it* a hell of a lot of time, because they can
slough it off onto the poor bloke who notices it.

Mind you, no arguing that this is effective when that poor bloke
has a day free to download the git-tree and build/reboot a dozen times.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Alan Cox]

> Given the wide range of ARM platforms today, it is utterly idiotic to
> expect a single person to be able to provide responses for all ARM bugs.
> I for one wish I'd never *VOLUNTEERED* to be a part of the kernel
> bugzilla, and really *WISH* I could pull out of that function.

You can. Perhaps that bugzilla needs to point to some kind of
arm-maintainers@vger.kernel.org list for the various ARM platform
maintainers ?

Alan

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 01:18:43PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> Adrian Bunk wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:50:08PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
>>> Ingo Molnar wrote:
>>>> for example git-bisect was godsent. I remember that years ago bisection 
>>>> of a bug was a very laborous task so that it was only used as a final, 
>>>> last-ditch approach for really nasty bugs. Today we can autonomouly 
>>>> bisect build bugs via a simple shell command around "git-bisect run", 
>>>> without any human interaction! This freed up testing resources 
>>> ..
>>>
>>> It's only a godsend for the few people who happen to be kernel developers
>>
>> It's also godsend for users who want a regression they observe fixed.
>>
>> If you can tell which patch broke it you often turned a very hard to debug 
>> problem into a relatively easy fixable problem.
> ..
>
> Oh yes, definitely.  When that use happens to be a kernel dev + git user,
> it saves the *fool who broke it* a hell of a lot of time, because they can
> slough it off onto the poor bloke who notices it.

"fool who broke it" are hard works. Bugs are part of software 
development, so you'd have to name everyone who develops software
a fool.

But the main point is that often you don't know who broke it until you 
know which commit broke it.

> Mind you, no arguing that this is effective when that poor bloke
> has a day free to download the git-tree and build/reboot a dozen times.

I did bisecting myself, and I know that it costs time and work.

But the first point is the above one that it makes otherwise nearly 
undebuggable problems debuggable and fixable.

Another point is that it shifts the work from the few experienced 
developers to the many users. Users (and voluntary testers) we have
many, but developer time for debugging bug reports is a quite scarce 
resource.

And why "poor bloke"? Bisecting takes time, but that's not different 
from e.g. writing code or cleaning up code or going through bug reports.

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Matthew Wilcox]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:50:08PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> It's a 540MByte download over a slow link for everyone else.

Where do you get this number from?
$ du -sh .git/objects/pack/
249M    .git/objects/pack/
$ du -sh .git/objects/
253M    .git/objects/

ie about half what you claim.

-- 
Intel are signing my paycheques ... these opinions are still mine
"Bill, look, we understand that you're interested in selling us this
operating system, but compare it to ours.  We can't possibly take such
a retrograde step."

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:50:08PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
>> It's a 540MByte download over a slow link for everyone else.
> 
> Where do you get this number from?
> $ du -sh .git/objects/pack/
> 249M    .git/objects/pack/
> $ du -sh .git/objects/
> 253M    .git/objects/
> 
> ie about half what you claim.
..

No, it's from earlier in this very thread:

Adrian Bunk wrote:
> The small instruction below is enough for everyone who is able to 
> build his own kernel to do a git bisect.
..
> <--  snip  -->
> 
> 
> # install git
> 
> # clone Linus' tree:
> git clone \ 
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git
..

mkdir t
cd t
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git
(wait half an hour)
/usr/bin/du -s linux-2.6
522732  linux-2.6

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Adrian Bunk wrote:
...
> I did bisecting myself, and I know that it costs time and work.
> 
> But the first point is the above one that it makes otherwise nearly 
> undebuggable problems debuggable and fixable.
..

Definitely useful, no question.

But the problem is now that kernel devs are addicted to it,
many won't even consider resolving a problem any other way.

That's not "maintaining" (or supporting) one's code.

And when a "maintainer" is too busy to find/fix their own bugs,
that could be a sign that they've bitten off too big of a chunk
of the kernel, and it's time for them to distribute code maintainership.

Cheers

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Matthew Wilcox]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 01:43:53PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> >ie about half what you claim.
> ..
> 
> No, it's from earlier in this very thread:
> 
> Adrian Bunk wrote:
> >git clone \ 
> >git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git
> ..
> 
> mkdir t
> cd t
> git clone 
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git
> (wait half an hour)
> /usr/bin/du -s linux-2.6
> 522732  linux-2.6

You're assuming that everything in linux-2.6 was downloaded; that's
not true.  Everything in linux-2.6/.git was downloaded; but then you do a
checkout which happens to approximately double the size of the linux-2.6
directory.  If you do git-clone -n, you'll get a closer estimate to the
size of the download.

I suppose git-clone should grow a -v option that it could pass to rsync
to let us find out how many bytes are actually transferred, but i'm
happy to go with 250MB as a close estimate to the amount of data to xfer.

When you compare it to the 60MB tarballs that are published, it's really
not that bad.

-- 
Intel are signing my paycheques ... these opinions are still mine
"Bill, look, we understand that you're interested in selling us this
operating system, but compare it to ours.  We can't possibly take such
a retrograde step."

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 01:43:53PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
>
>> mkdir t
>> cd t
>> git clone 
>> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git
>> (wait half an hour)
>> /usr/bin/du -s linux-2.6
>> 522732  linux-2.6
> 
> You're assuming that everything in linux-2.6 was downloaded; that's
> not true.  Everything in linux-2.6/.git was downloaded; but then you do a
> checkout which happens to approximately double the size of the linux-2.6
> directory. 
..

Ah, I wondered why it took only half an hour to download.

..
> When you compare it to the 60MB tarballs that are published, it's really
> not that bad.
..

The tarballs I download are only 45MB.

Cheers

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Theodore Tso]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 11:33:44AM -0600, Larry Finger wrote:
> I'm very encouraged to read of your expanded testing efforts. As a
> bcm43xx developer, Ubuntu has been our problem distro, mostly
> because your standard kernels have debugging turned off for bcm43xx.
> When a Ubuntu user reports a problem and we ask for the relevant
> output from dmesg, they have no information. I ask two things of all
> distros: (1) Turn on debugging - we don't spam the logs that badly,
> and (2) forward any bugs found by your testing to the maintainer,
> and/or the bcm43xx mailing list.

Heh. I hadn't enabled CONFIG_BCM43XX_DEBUG myself, but I just changed
it for my next kernel build.  This is a slightly different issue,
which is that sometimes _DEBUG options shouldn't be turned on by
default (because they really trash performance and bloat log size),
and sometimes they are painless to turn on and don't cost much.

If that is the case, I'd suggest removing the option and just making
it compiled in by default with a run-time option to enable it.

   	       	  	       	 	  - Ted


   	      

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Gabriel C]

Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:13:56PM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 04:52:32PM +0100, Benoit Boissinot wrote:
>>> Btw, I used to test every -mm kernel. But since I've switched distros
>>> (gentoo->ubuntu)
>>> and I have less time, I feel it's harder to test -rc or -mm kernels (I
>>> know this isn't a lkml problem
>>> but more a distro problem, but I would love having an ubuntu blessed
>>> repo with current dev kernel
>>> for the latest stable ubuntu release).
>> There are two parts to this.  One is a Ubuntu development kernel which
>> we can give to large numbers of people to expand our testing pool.
>> But if we don't do a better job of responding to bug reports that
>> would be generated by expanded testing this won't necessarily help us.
>> ...
> 
> The main problem is finding experienced developers who spend time on 
> looking into bug reports.

There are already. IMO the problem is the development model.

There are tons new features in each new kernel release and 'tons new bugs'
which are not fixed during the release cycle nor in the .XX stable kernels.

Maybe after XX kernel releases there should be one just with bug-fixes _without_ any
new features , eg: cleaning bugs from bugzilla , know regressions , cleaning up code , 
removing broken drivers and the like.


> cu
> Adrian

Gabriel 

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Andrew Morton]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 04:32:07 -0800 (PST) David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:

> From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
> Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 04:12:59 -0800
> 
> > On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:58:24 -0800 (PST) David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
> > > Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:49:16 -0800
> > > 
> > > > Do you believe that our response to bug reports is adequate?
> > > 
> > > Do you feel that making us feel and look like shit helps?
> > 
> > That doesn't answer my question.
> > 
> > See, first we need to work out whether we have a problem.  If we do this,
> > then we can then have a think about what to do about it.
> > 
> > I tried to convince the 2006 KS attendees that we have a problem and I
> > resoundingly failed.  People seemed to think that we're doing OK.
> > 
> > But it appears that data such as this contradicts that belief.
> > 
> > This is not a minor matter.  If the kernel _is_ slowly deteriorating then
> > this won't become readily apparent until it has been happening for a number
> > of years.  By that stage there will be so much work to do to get us back to
> > an acceptable level that it will take a huge effort.  And it will take a
> > long time after that for the kerel to get its reputation back.
> > 
> > So it is important that we catch deterioration *early* if it is happening.
> 
> You tell me what I should spend my time working on, and I promise to
> do it OK? :-)

My suggestion: regressions.

If we're really active in chasing down the regressions then I think we can
be confident that the kernel isn't deteriorating.  Probably it will be
improving as we also fix some always-been-there bugs.

I think that we're fairly good about working the regressions in
Adrian/Michal/Rafael's lists but once Linus releases 2.6.x we tend to let
the unsolved ones slide, and we don't pay as much attention to the
regressions which 2.6.x testers report.

> For example, if I have a choice between a TCP crash just about anyone
> can hit and some obscure issue only reported with some device nearly
> nobody has, which one should I analyze and work on?
> 
> That's the problem.  All of us prioritize and it means the chaff
> collects at the bottom.  You cannot fix that except by getting more
> bug fixers so that the chaff pile has a chance to get smaller.
> 
> Luckily if the report being ignored isn't chaff, it will show up again
> (and again and again) and this triggers a reprioritization because not
> only is the bug no longer chaff, it also now got a lot of information
> tagged to it so it's a double worthwhile investment to work on the
> problem.
> 
> I think a lot of bugs that "aren't getting looked at" are simply
> sitting in some early stage of this process.

Yes, that's a useful technique.  If multiple people are being hurt a lot by
a bug then that's a more important one to fix than the single-person
minor-irritant bug.

otoh that doesn't work very well with driver/platform bugs.  Often these
are regressions which only a single person can reproduce within the time
window which we have in which we can fix it.  If we don't fix it in that
window it'll go out to distros and presumably some more people will hit it.

So I don't see much alternative here to the traditional
work-with-the-originator way of resolving it.

git bisection should really help us with these regressions but it doesn't
appear that people are using as much as one would like.  I'm hoping that
the very good http://www.kernel.org/doc/local/git-quick.html will help us
out here.  Thanks to the mystery person who prepared that.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 01:47:10PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> Adrian Bunk wrote:
> ...
>> I did bisecting myself, and I know that it costs time and work.
>>
>> But the first point is the above one that it makes otherwise nearly 
>> undebuggable problems debuggable and fixable.
> ..
>
> Definitely useful, no question.
>
> But the problem is now that kernel devs are addicted to it,
> many won't even consider resolving a problem any other way.
>
> That's not "maintaining" (or supporting) one's code.

What you replaced with two dots contained the answer to this:

Another point is that it shifts the work from the few experienced 
developers to the many users. Users (and voluntary testers) we have
many, but developer time for debugging bug reports is a quite scarce 
resource.

> And when a "maintainer" is too busy to find/fix their own bugs,
> that could be a sign that they've bitten off too big of a chunk
> of the kernel, and it's time for them to distribute code maintainership.

The problem is: Maintainers don't grow on trees.

You need people who are both technically capable and willing to spend 
time on the non-sexy task of debugging problems.

Where do you plan to find them?

If you don't believe me, please find a maintainer for the currently 
unmaintained parallel port support.

Or if you want a harder task, find a maintainer for the floppy driver...

> Cheers

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 01:47:10PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
>> Adrian Bunk wrote:
>> ...
>>> I did bisecting myself, and I know that it costs time and work.
>>>
>>> But the first point is the above one that it makes otherwise nearly 
>>> undebuggable problems debuggable and fixable.
>> ..
>>
>> Definitely useful, no question.
>>
>> But the problem is now that kernel devs are addicted to it,
>> many won't even consider resolving a problem any other way.
>>
>> That's not "maintaining" (or supporting) one's code.
> 
> What you replaced with two dots contained the answer to this:
> 
> Another point is that it shifts the work from the few experienced 
> developers to the many users. Users (and voluntary testers) we have
> many, but developer time for debugging bug reports is a quite scarce 
> resource.
> 
>> And when a "maintainer" is too busy to find/fix their own bugs,
>> that could be a sign that they've bitten off too big of a chunk
>> of the kernel, and it's time for them to distribute code maintainership.
> 
> The problem is: Maintainers don't grow on trees.
> 
> You need people who are both technically capable and willing to spend 
> time on the non-sexy task of debugging problems.
> 
> Where do you plan to find them?
> 
> If you don't believe me, please find a maintainer for the currently 
> unmaintained parallel port support.
> 
> Or if you want a harder task, find a maintainer for the floppy driver...
..

Again, the problem is:

> But the problem is now that kernel devs are addicted to it,
> many won't even consider resolving a problem any other way.

And that's simply not good enough.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 01:47:10PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
>> Adrian Bunk wrote:
..
> Another point is that it shifts the work from the few experienced 
> developers to the many users. Users (and voluntary testers) we have
> many, but developer time for debugging bug reports is a quite scarce 
> resource.
> 
>> And when a "maintainer" is too busy to find/fix their own bugs,
>> that could be a sign that they've bitten off too big of a chunk
>> of the kernel, and it's time for them to distribute code maintainership.
> 
> The problem is: Maintainers don't grow on trees.
..

Hey, if somebody has time to break things, then they damn well ought
to be able to make time to fix them again.  And the best developers
here on LKML do just that (fix what they break).

You broke it, you fix it.  A simple rule.

Translation for the particularly daft:

If you've been making significant updates to a driver/subsystem,
and people are reporting that it is now broken for them,
then it's your job to make it right.  The reporters can help,
and many may even git-bisect or send patches.  

But you cannot *expect* or *insist* upon them doing your job.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 02:12:57PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> Adrian Bunk wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 01:47:10PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
>>> Adrian Bunk wrote:
>>> ...
>>>> I did bisecting myself, and I know that it costs time and work.
>>>>
>>>> But the first point is the above one that it makes otherwise nearly 
>>>> undebuggable problems debuggable and fixable.
>>> ..
>>>
>>> Definitely useful, no question.
>>>
>>> But the problem is now that kernel devs are addicted to it,
>>> many won't even consider resolving a problem any other way.
>>>
>>> That's not "maintaining" (or supporting) one's code.
>>
>> What you replaced with two dots contained the answer to this:
>>
>> Another point is that it shifts the work from the few experienced 
>> developers to the many users. Users (and voluntary testers) we have
>> many, but developer time for debugging bug reports is a quite scarce 
>> resource.
>>
>>> And when a "maintainer" is too busy to find/fix their own bugs,
>>> that could be a sign that they've bitten off too big of a chunk
>>> of the kernel, and it's time for them to distribute code maintainership.
>>
>> The problem is: Maintainers don't grow on trees.
>>
>> You need people who are both technically capable and willing to spend time 
>> on the non-sexy task of debugging problems.
>>
>> Where do you plan to find them?
>>
>> If you don't believe me, please find a maintainer for the currently 
>> unmaintained parallel port support.
>>
>> Or if you want a harder task, find a maintainer for the floppy driver...
> ..
>
> Again, the problem is:
>
>> But the problem is now that kernel devs are addicted to it,
>> many won't even consider resolving a problem any other way.
>
> And that's simply not good enough.

There is this silly limit that noone can work more than 168 hours per 
week on the Linux kernel, and some kernel developers seem to take the 
liberty of spending even less time on kernel development...

Considering our problems to cope with the amount of incoming bug 
reports, everything that would require a kernel developer to spend more 
time for getting a bug fixed would be a horrible mistake.

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 04:32:07AM -0800, David Miller wrote:
> Luckily if the report being ignored isn't chaff, it will show up again
> (and again and again) and this triggers a reprioritization because not
> only is the bug no longer chaff, it also now got a lot of information
> tagged to it so it's a double worthwhile investment to work on the
> problem.

Strongly agree.

This is exactly what happened to that ARM NO_HZ bug report.  The report
in bugzilla was rather lacking (and wrong) in ways that have already
been described.  HPET on ARM? 8)

Then on the morning of 6th November, someone reported on the mailing list
that "pxa270 doesn't work with oneshot timer" and that was the trigger to
getting the bug resolved - because it was a narrowly defined bug report.

Since it was a narrowly defined bug report, it became very easy to
investigate and resolve.  About half an hour of time for an initial
patch.


There's another issue I want to raise concerning bugzilla.  We have the
classic case of "not enough people reading bugzilla bugs" - which is one
of the biggest problems with bugzilla.  Virtually no one in the ARM
community looks for ARM bugs in bugzilla.

Let's not forget that it would be a waste of time for people to manually
check bugzilla for ARM bugs.  There's soo few people reporting ARM bugs
into bugzilla that a weekly manual check by every maintainer would just
return the same old boring results for months and months at a time.

It would be far more productive if the ARM category was deleted from
bugzilla and the few people who use bugzilla reported their bugs on the
mailing list.  We've a couple of thousand people on the ARM kernel
mailing list at the moment - that's 3 orders of magnitude more of eyes
than look at bugzilla.

(I'm not saying that if the ARM NO_HZ bug as reported in bugzilla had
been reported on the correct mailing list would've been solved earlier;
I doubt there'd be much difference.  However, the probability of a
question being asked of the reporter would've been much higher, and
_that_ might have led to an earlier resolution.)

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 09:08:32AM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> Ingo Molnar wrote:
> ..
> > This is all QA-101 that _cannot be argued against on a rational basis_, 
> > it's just that these sorts of things have been largely ignored for 
> > years, in favor of the all-too-easy "open source means many eyeballs and 
> > that is our QA" answer, which is a _good_ answer but by far not the most 
> > intelligent answer! Today "many eyeballs" is simply not good enough and 
> > nature (and other OS projects) will route us around if we dont change.
> ..
> 
> QA-101 and "many eyeballs" are not at all in opposition.
> The latter is how we find out about bugs on uncommon hardware,
> and the former is what we need to track them and overall quality.
> 
> A HUGE problem I have with current "efforts", is that once someone
> reports a bug, the onus seems to be 99% on the *reporter* to find
> the exact line of code or commit.  Ghad what a repressive method.

99% on the reporter?  Is that why I always try to understand the
reporters problem (*provided* it's in an area I know about) and come
up with a patch to test a theory or fix the issue?

I'm _less_ inclined to provide such a "service" for lazy maintainers
who've moved off into new and wonderfully exciting technologies, to
churn out more patches for me to merge (and eventually provide a free
to them bug fixing service for.)

That's "less" inclined, not "won't".

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 08:30:35PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> There is this silly limit that noone can work more than 168 hours per 
> week on the Linux kernel, and some kernel developers seem to take the 
> liberty of spending even less time on kernel development...

That limit of 168 hours applies all around the world to everyone.
Moreover, not all kernel developers are employed to hack on the
kernel for 168 hours a week.

For me, personally, that figure is in reality about 24 hours a
week.  Yes, just 24.  The rest of the time (like *now*) is time I'm
volunteering because I happen to be reading my email...

... and happen to be wasting replying to discussions like this rather
than reading that message which has just arrived on the ARM kernel
mailing list from someone having problems using copy_from_user()
with a kernel pointer.

So, please, stop this idea that somehow kernel developers can
somehow spend infinite amounts of time solving lots and lots of
bugs.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 02:26:05PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> Adrian Bunk wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 01:47:10PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
>>> Adrian Bunk wrote:
> ..
>> Another point is that it shifts the work from the few experienced 
>> developers to the many users. Users (and voluntary testers) we have
>> many, but developer time for debugging bug reports is a quite scarce 
>> resource.
>>
>>> And when a "maintainer" is too busy to find/fix their own bugs,
>>> that could be a sign that they've bitten off too big of a chunk
>>> of the kernel, and it's time for them to distribute code maintainership.
>>
>> The problem is: Maintainers don't grow on trees.
> ..
>
> Hey, if somebody has time to break things, then they damn well ought
> to be able to make time to fix them again.  And the best developers
> here on LKML do just that (fix what they break).
>
> You broke it, you fix it.  A simple rule.
>
> Translation for the particularly daft:
>
> If you've been making significant updates to a driver/subsystem,
> and people are reporting that it is now broken for them,

What are "significant updates"?

Sometimes one person makes one small patch and this patch contains
a typo.

> then it's your job to make it right.

We have some open drivers/ata/ regressions.

I see some person named "Mark Lord" being responsible for 4 commits.

What pubishment do you plan for him if 2.6.24 ships with any libata 
regressions?

Let George W. Bush wrongly accuse him of possessing weapons of 
mass destructions and invade Canada?

> The reporters can help,
> and many may even git-bisect or send patches.  
> But you cannot *expect* or *insist* upon them doing your job.

Bullshit.

Bug fixing is not about finding someone to blame, it's about getting the 
bug fixed.

The bug reporter is the person who can reproduce the problem, and if 
it's a regression then bisecting is the natural way of getting nearer 
at getting it fixed.

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 07:46:49PM +0000, Russell King wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 08:30:35PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > There is this silly limit that noone can work more than 168 hours per 
> > week on the Linux kernel, and some kernel developers seem to take the 
> > liberty of spending even less time on kernel development...
> 
> That limit of 168 hours applies all around the world to everyone.
> Moreover, not all kernel developers are employed to hack on the
> kernel for 168 hours a week.
> 
> For me, personally, that figure is in reality about 24 hours a
> week.  Yes, just 24.  The rest of the time (like *now*) is time I'm
> volunteering because I happen to be reading my email...
> 
> ... and happen to be wasting replying to discussions like this rather
> than reading that message which has just arrived on the ARM kernel
> mailing list from someone having problems using copy_from_user()
> with a kernel pointer.
> 
> So, please, stop this idea that somehow kernel developers can
> somehow spend infinite amounts of time solving lots and lots of
> bugs.

Sorry, that happens when using irony in a non-native language...

What I wanted to express:
Noone has unlimited time for kernel development.

> Russell King

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Larry Finger]

Theodore Tso wrote:
> 
> Heh. I hadn't enabled CONFIG_BCM43XX_DEBUG myself, but I just changed
> it for my next kernel build.  This is a slightly different issue,
> which is that sometimes _DEBUG options shouldn't be turned on by
> default (because they really trash performance and bloat log size),
> and sometimes they are painless to turn on and don't cost much.
> 
> If that is the case, I'd suggest removing the option and just making
> it compiled in by default with a run-time option to enable it.

I am taking your suggestion and will produce the necessary patches for ssb, b43 and b43legacy. As
bcm43xx is likely to be removed from 2.6.25, which is the earliest such a non-bug fix patch would be
accepted, I hope that your future distribution and testing kernels will include the debug option.

Thanks,

Larry

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 07:32:19PM +0000, Russell King wrote:
>...
> There's another issue I want to raise concerning bugzilla.  We have the
> classic case of "not enough people reading bugzilla bugs" - which is one
> of the biggest problems with bugzilla.  Virtually no one in the ARM
> community looks for ARM bugs in bugzilla.
> 
> Let's not forget that it would be a waste of time for people to manually
> check bugzilla for ARM bugs.  There's soo few people reporting ARM bugs
> into bugzilla that a weekly manual check by every maintainer would just
> return the same old boring results for months and months at a time.
>...

What about having all ARM bugs in Bugzilla by default assigned to 
linux-arm-kernel@lists.arm.linux.org.uk? [1]

> Russell King

cu
Adrian

[1] Either directly or through a pseudo address, but that's just a
    technical detail.

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 02:26:05PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
..
>> If you've been making significant updates to a driver/subsystem,
>> and people are reporting that it is now broken for them,
> 
> What are "significant updates"?
> 
> Sometimes one person makes one small patch and this patch contains
> a typo.
..

Then that person should double check their changes against
the problems reported, and re-convince themselves that the
breakage wasn't from those.  Simple. 

>> then it's your job to make it right.
> 
> We have some open drivers/ata/ regressions.
..

Yup, but they're more specific than just that entire subsystem,
and the maintainers are actively pursuing the problems.
Exactly what should be happening.

> I see some person named "Mark Lord" being responsible for 4 commits.
> 
> What pubishment do you plan for him if 2.6.24 ships with any libata 
> regressions?
..

If the code I'm touching breaks, then I'll fix it ASAP,
exactly what the users of that code might expect.

>> The reporters can help,
>> and many may even git-bisect or send patches.  
>> But you cannot *expect* or *insist* upon them doing your job.
> 
> Bullshit.
> 
> Bug fixing is not about finding someone to blame, it's about getting the 
> bug fixed.
..

It's not about blame, it's about paying attention to breakages in code that a
person claims to be supporting, and then doing their best to resolve the issues.

Again, if one has the time to actively write/modify code such that something breaks,
then that person should also make time to fix the breakages.

> The bug reporter is the person who can reproduce the problem, and if 
> it's a regression then bisecting is the natural way of getting nearer 
> at getting it fixed.
..
For the third time, no disagreement here.  git-bsect can help in many cases,
but not in all cases.  And it requires a great time commitment from somebody
who's system used to work and now doesn't work.  The person who broke it has
a fair bit of responsibility there, too.

cheers

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Russell King wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 09:08:32AM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
>> Ingo Molnar wrote:
>> ..
>>> This is all QA-101 that _cannot be argued against on a rational basis_, 
>>> it's just that these sorts of things have been largely ignored for 
>>> years, in favor of the all-too-easy "open source means many eyeballs and 
>>> that is our QA" answer, which is a _good_ answer but by far not the most 
>>> intelligent answer! Today "many eyeballs" is simply not good enough and 
>>> nature (and other OS projects) will route us around if we dont change.
>> ..
>>
>> QA-101 and "many eyeballs" are not at all in opposition.
>> The latter is how we find out about bugs on uncommon hardware,
>> and the former is what we need to track them and overall quality.
>>
>> A HUGE problem I have with current "efforts", is that once someone
>> reports a bug, the onus seems to be 99% on the *reporter* to find
>> the exact line of code or commit.  Ghad what a repressive method.
> 
> 99% on the reporter?  Is that why I always try to understand the
> reporters problem (*provided* it's in an area I know about) and come
> up with a patch to test a theory or fix the issue?
..

Same here.

I just find it weird that something can be known broken for several -rc*
kernels before I happen to install it, discover it's broken on my own machine,
and then I track it down, fix it, and submit the patch, generally all within a
couple of hours.  Where the heck was the dude(ess) that broke it ??  AWOL.

And when I receive hostility from the "maintainers" of said code for fixing
their bugs, well.. that really motivates me to continue reporting new ones..

> I'm _less_ inclined to provide such a "service" for lazy maintainers
> who've moved off into new and wonderfully exciting technologies, to
> churn out more patches for me to merge (and eventually provide a free
> to them bug fixing service for.)
> 
> That's "less" inclined, not "won't".
> 

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Andrew Morton]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:32:19 +0000 Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:

> There's another issue I want to raise concerning bugzilla.  We have the
> classic case of "not enough people reading bugzilla bugs" - which is one
> of the biggest problems with bugzilla.  Virtually no one in the ARM
> community looks for ARM bugs in bugzilla.

Nor should they.

> Let's not forget that it would be a waste of time for people to manually
> check bugzilla for ARM bugs.  There's soo few people reporting ARM bugs
> into bugzilla that a weekly manual check by every maintainer would just
> return the same old boring results for months and months at a time.

I screen all bugzilla reports.  100% of them.

- I'll try to establish whether it is a regression

- I'll solicit any extra information which I believe the reveloper will need

- I'll ensure that an appropriate developer has seen the report

And yes, the number of arm-specific reports in there is very small.

> It would be far more productive if the ARM category was deleted from
> bugzilla and the few people who use bugzilla reported their bugs on the
> mailing list.  We've a couple of thousand people on the ARM kernel
> mailing list at the moment - that's 3 orders of magnitude more of eyes
> than look at bugzilla.

Is that linux-arm-kernel@lists.arm.linux.org.uk?

If so, MANITAINERS claims that it is subscribers-only.  That would cause
some bug reporters to give up and go away.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Alan Cox]

> Bug fixing is not about finding someone to blame, it's about getting the 
> bug fixed.

Partly - its also about understanding why the bug occurred and making it
not happen again.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 03:13:46PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> Adrian Bunk wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 02:26:05PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> ..
>>> If you've been making significant updates to a driver/subsystem,
>>> and people are reporting that it is now broken for them,
>>
>> What are "significant updates"?
>>
>> Sometimes one person makes one small patch and this patch contains
>> a typo.
> ..
>
> Then that person should double check their changes against
> the problems reported, and re-convince themselves that the
> breakage wasn't from those.  Simple. 

Simple?

Everything you have in mind with "should double check their changes" is 
simply not realistic with dozens of known unfixed regressions within 
more than half a million changed or new lines of code written by more 
than 800 people - all numbers only counted since 2.6.23.

>...
>>> The reporters can help,
>>> and many may even git-bisect or send patches.  But you cannot *expect* or 
>>> *insist* upon them doing your job.
>>
>> Bullshit.
>>
>> Bug fixing is not about finding someone to blame, it's about getting the 
>> bug fixed.
> ..
>
> It's not about blame, it's about paying attention to breakages in code that a
> person claims to be supporting, and then doing their best to resolve the issues.

Maintainers are just humans with limited time. 

You were the one who suggested to "distribute code maintainership", 
so you should explain how to find the additional maintainers.

> Again, if one has the time to actively write/modify code such that something breaks,
> then that person should also make time to fix the breakages.

code writer != subsystem maintainer

And git-bisect is the tool that tells you who broke it.

>> The bug reporter is the person who can reproduce the problem, and if it's 
>> a regression then bisecting is the natural way of getting nearer at 
>> getting it fixed.
> ..
> For the third time, no disagreement here.  git-bsect can help in many cases,
> but not in all cases.  And it requires a great time commitment from somebody
> who's system used to work and now doesn't work.  The person who broke it has
> a fair bit of responsibility there, too.

git-bisect can help only for regressions, and it can help for most 
regressions.

And you shouldn't try to make a problem out of something that isn't a 
problem:

Bug submitters are either volunteers who test -rc or even -git or -mm 
kernels for finding bugs or people who want a problem they experience 
fixed.

In both cases the submitters are usually willing to invest some time for 
helping to get the bug fixed.

> cheers

cu
Adrian

--

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Jörn Engel]

On Tue, 13 November 2007 15:18:07 -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> 
> I just find it weird that something can be known broken for several -rc*
> kernels before I happen to install it, discover it's broken on my own 
> machine,
> and then I track it down, fix it, and submit the patch, generally all 
> within a
> couple of hours.  Where the heck was the dude(ess) that broke it ??  AWOL.
> 
> And when I receive hostility from the "maintainers" of said code for fixing
> their bugs, well.. that really motivates me to continue reporting new ones..

Given a decent bug report, I agree that having the bug not looked at is
shameful.  But what can a developer do if a bug report effectively reads
"there is some bug somewhere in recent kernels"?  How can I know that in
this particular case it is my bug that I introduced?  It could just as
easily be 50 other people and none of them are eager to debug it unless
they suspect it to be their bug.

This is a common problem and fairly unrelated to linux in general or the
kernel in particular.  Who is going to be the sucker that figures out
which developer the bug belongs to?  And I have yet to find a project,
commercial or opensource, where volunteers flock to become such a
sucker.

One option is to push this role to the bug reporter.  Another is to
strong-arm some developers into this role, by whatever means.  A third
would be for $LARGE_COMPANY to hire some people.  If you have a better
idea or would volunteer your time, I'd be grateful.  Simply blaming one
side, whether bug reporter or a random developer, for not being the
sucker doesn't help anyone.

Jörn

-- 
Joern's library part 2:
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/tirix/embarrassing-memo.html

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Andrew Morton]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:33:58 +0100 Jörn Engel <joern@logfs.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 13 November 2007 15:18:07 -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> > 
> > I just find it weird that something can be known broken for several -rc*
> > kernels before I happen to install it, discover it's broken on my own 
> > machine,
> > and then I track it down, fix it, and submit the patch, generally all 
> > within a
> > couple of hours.  Where the heck was the dude(ess) that broke it ??  AWOL.
> > 
> > And when I receive hostility from the "maintainers" of said code for fixing
> > their bugs, well.. that really motivates me to continue reporting new ones..
> 
> Given a decent bug report, I agree that having the bug not looked at is
> shameful.  But what can a developer do if a bug report effectively reads
> "there is some bug somewhere in recent kernels"?  How can I know that in
> this particular case it is my bug that I introduced?  It could just as
> easily be 50 other people and none of them are eager to debug it unless
> they suspect it to be their bug.

It's relatively common that a regression in subsystem A will manifest as a
failure in subsystem B, and the report initially lands on the desk of the
subsystem B developers.

But that's OK.  The subsystem B people are the ones with the expertise to
be able to work out where the bug resides and to help the subsystem A
people understand what went wrong.

Alas, sometimes the B people will just roll eyes and do nothing because
they know the problem wasn't in their code.  Sometimes.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Frans Pop]

Romano Giannetti wrote:
> This was what I did in my (in the end almost successful) bisecting when
> trying to find the mmc problem (see the thread named "2.6.24-rc1 eat my
> SD card"). This is true in theory, but it has some problem. The "this
> commit does not compile is the easiest and in man git-bisect it's
> explained how to solve it. The changes in .config options, added or
> removed, are another problem when jumping back and forth from version.
> 
> The main problem I had, and that stopped me to arrive to a definite is
> this situation:
[...] 
> (d was the series to change drivers to use sg helpers, and g was a "fix
> fallout from sg helpers" patch). Now I have a series of kernels (d, e,
> f) that did not work at all and so I cannot mark them good or bad. With
> the number of patches added in the free-for-all week, this is a very
> probable scenario. There is a way out from this using bisect?

I think there are three strategies you can use in this case:
- create a kernel config that is as simple as possible, but still supports
  your hardware and reproduces your problem; a simpler config will often
  avoid compilation issues in parts of the kernel that you're not using
  anyway and has the benefit of speeding up the compiles too

- if you know/suspect in what part of the tree the bug is, first limit the
  bisection to that; you will have to verify that you did indeed find the
  correct (broken) change by doing a compile for the "last good commit + 1"

- if you find a broken commit, use 'git-reset --hard' to try to jump past
  the bad set of commits, but of course that does not help in the case:
    g version-bad
    f unrelated bug corrected
    e
    d the broken commit that caused your problem
    c
    b unrelated bug that breaks compilation or system introduced
    a version-good
  in that case the best you can reasonably be expected to do is report that
  you narrowed it down to "between a and g" and leave the rest to the
  developers

Cheers,
FJP

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Rafael J. Wysocki]

On Tuesday, 13 of November 2007, Mark Lord wrote:
> Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 01:43:53PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> >
> >> mkdir t
> >> cd t
> >> git clone 
> >> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git
> >> (wait half an hour)
> >> /usr/bin/du -s linux-2.6
> >> 522732  linux-2.6
> > 
> > You're assuming that everything in linux-2.6 was downloaded; that's
> > not true.  Everything in linux-2.6/.git was downloaded; but then you do a
> > checkout which happens to approximately double the size of the linux-2.6
> > directory. 
> ..
> 
> Ah, I wondered why it took only half an hour to download.
> 
> ..
> > When you compare it to the 60MB tarballs that are published, it's really
> > not that bad.
> ..
> 
> The tarballs I download are only 45MB.

You clone the git repo once.  Afterwards, you only update it and that usually
doesn't take that much time and a little effort.

Greetings,
Rafael

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:52:22PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:32:19 +0000 Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> > There's another issue I want to raise concerning bugzilla.  We have the
> > classic case of "not enough people reading bugzilla bugs" - which is one
> > of the biggest problems with bugzilla.  Virtually no one in the ARM
> > community looks for ARM bugs in bugzilla.
> 
> Nor should they.

So what you're saying is...

> > Let's not forget that it would be a waste of time for people to manually
> > check bugzilla for ARM bugs.  There's soo few people reporting ARM bugs
> > into bugzilla that a weekly manual check by every maintainer would just
> > return the same old boring results for months and months at a time.
> 
> I screen all bugzilla reports.  100% of them.
> 
> - I'll try to establish whether it is a regression
> 
> - I'll solicit any extra information which I believe the reveloper will need
> 
> - I'll ensure that an appropriate developer has seen the report
> 
> And yes, the number of arm-specific reports in there is very small.

that just because you do this everyone in a select clique, who you include
me in, should be doing this as well.

No.  Thank.  You.

> > It would be far more productive if the ARM category was deleted from
> > bugzilla and the few people who use bugzilla reported their bugs on the
> > mailing list.  We've a couple of thousand people on the ARM kernel
> > mailing list at the moment - that's 3 orders of magnitude more of eyes
> > than look at bugzilla.
> 
> Is that linux-arm-kernel@lists.arm.linux.org.uk?

Yes.

> If so, MANITAINERS claims that it is subscribers-only.  That would cause
> some bug reporters to give up and go away.

Find some other mailing list; I'm not hosting *nor* am I willing to run a
non-subscribers only mailing list.  Period.  Not negotiable, so don't even
try to change my mind.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Jörn Engel]

On Tue, 13 November 2007 13:56:58 -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> 
> It's relatively common that a regression in subsystem A will manifest as a
> failure in subsystem B, and the report initially lands on the desk of the
> subsystem B developers.
> 
> But that's OK.  The subsystem B people are the ones with the expertise to
> be able to work out where the bug resides and to help the subsystem A
> people understand what went wrong.
> 
> Alas, sometimes the B people will just roll eyes and do nothing because
> they know the problem wasn't in their code.  Sometimes.

And sometimes the A people will ignore the B people after the root cause
has been worked out.  Do you have a good idea how to shame A into
action?  Should I put you on Cc:?  Right now I'm in the eye-rolling
phase.

Jörn

-- 
The cost of changing business rules is much more expensive for software
than for a secretaty.
-- unknown

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Jörn Engel wrote:
> On Tue, 13 November 2007 15:18:07 -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
>> I just find it weird that something can be known broken for several -rc*
>> kernels before I happen to install it, discover it's broken on my own machine,
>> and then I track it down, fix it, and submit the patch, generally all within a
>> couple of hours.  Where the heck was the dude(ess) that broke it ??  AWOL.
>>
>> And when I receive hostility from the "maintainers" of said code for fixing
>> their bugs, well.. that really motivates me to continue reporting new ones..
> 
> Given a decent bug report, I agree that having the bug not looked at is
> shameful.  But what can a developer do if a bug report effectively reads
> "there is some bug somewhere in recent kernels"?  How can I know that in
> this particular case it is my bug that I introduced?  It could just as
> easily be 50 other people and none of them are eager to debug it unless
> they suspect it to be their bug.
..

Most of the regressions we have are easily identifiable and not of the type
where there could "50 other people" touching the relevant code.  As a developer
(and former subsystem maintainer) I look hard at my own code when there's a
bug reported that could have come from recent updates there.  Usually there are
not that many updates to consider, and tracking it down is just a matter of
being willing to do so.

Of late, I've given up on other developers fixing the stuff they break on my
own machines, and I generally just dive into totally unfamiliar code, and find
and fix it myself.  Quite quickly, usually.  And the bugs are often very apparent
just from looking at the source code diffs (patches) from recent history in
the code that's not working.  This is not rocket science, and it doesn't require
a log2 download/rebuild/reboot process.

But yes, there are more difficult ones, like when my machine crashed yesterday
with some form of corruption showing up during JBD filesystem I/O.  That's one
where the problem isn't going to be obvious to anyone, and I don't actually
expect anyone to go looking for it right away.  If more such events happen,
then it will get more attention.

But things like broken drivers, in almost every case those are trivial
to track down and fix, even for people not familar with that specific code.

> This is a common problem and fairly unrelated to linux in general or the
> kernel in particular.  Who is going to be the sucker that figures out
> which developer the bug belongs to?  And I have yet to find a project,
> commercial or opensource, where volunteers flock to become such a
> sucker.
> 
> One option is to push this role to the bug reporter.  Another is to
> strong-arm some developers into this role, by whatever means.  A third
> would be for $LARGE_COMPANY to hire some people.  If you have a better
> idea or would volunteer your time, I'd be grateful.  Simply blaming one
> side, whether bug reporter or a random developer, for not being the
> sucker doesn't help anyone.
..

Nobody's blaming anyone here.  I'm just asking that developers here do more
like our Top Penguin does, and actually look at problems and try to understand
them and suggest fixes to try.  And not rely solely on the git-bisect crutch.
It's a good crutch, provided the reporter is a kernel developer, or has a lot
of time on their hands.  But we debugged Linux here for a long time without it.

And I already volunteer my time here, thanks, BIG TIME, since 1992 or so.

Cheers

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Andrew Morton]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:18:01 +0000 Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:52:22PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:32:19 +0000 Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> > > There's another issue I want to raise concerning bugzilla.  We have the
> > > classic case of "not enough people reading bugzilla bugs" - which is one
> > > of the biggest problems with bugzilla.  Virtually no one in the ARM
> > > community looks for ARM bugs in bugzilla.
> > 
> > Nor should they.
> 
> So what you're saying is...
> 
> > > Let's not forget that it would be a waste of time for people to manually
> > > check bugzilla for ARM bugs.  There's soo few people reporting ARM bugs
> > > into bugzilla that a weekly manual check by every maintainer would just
> > > return the same old boring results for months and months at a time.
> > 
> > I screen all bugzilla reports.  100% of them.
> > 
> > - I'll try to establish whether it is a regression
> > 
> > - I'll solicit any extra information which I believe the reveloper will need
> > 
> > - I'll ensure that an appropriate developer has seen the report
> > 
> > And yes, the number of arm-specific reports in there is very small.
> 
> that just because you do this everyone in a select clique, who you include
> me in, should be doing this as well.
> 
> No.  Thank.  You.

No, I don't mean that at all and this was very plainly obviously from my very
clearly written email.  Let me try again.

No, no subsystem developer needs to monitor new bugzilla reports.  This is
because *I do it for them*.  I will actively make them aware of new reports
which I believe are legitimate and which contain sufficient information for
them to be able to take further action.

> > > It would be far more productive if the ARM category was deleted from
> > > bugzilla and the few people who use bugzilla reported their bugs on the
> > > mailing list.  We've a couple of thousand people on the ARM kernel
> > > mailing list at the moment - that's 3 orders of magnitude more of eyes
> > > than look at bugzilla.
> > 
> > Is that linux-arm-kernel@lists.arm.linux.org.uk?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > If so, MANITAINERS claims that it is subscribers-only.  That would cause
> > some bug reporters to give up and go away.
> 
> Find some other mailing list; I'm not hosting *nor* am I willing to run a
> non-subscribers only mailing list.  Period.  Not negotiable, so don't even
> try to change my mind.

Making a list subscribers-only will cause some bug reports to be lost.

Tradeoffs are involved, against which decisions must be made.  You have
made yours.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 06:25:16PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > Given the wide range of ARM platforms today, it is utterly idiotic to
> > expect a single person to be able to provide responses for all ARM bugs.
> > I for one wish I'd never *VOLUNTEERED* to be a part of the kernel
> > bugzilla, and really *WISH* I could pull out of that function.
> 
> You can. Perhaps that bugzilla needs to point to some kind of
> arm-maintainers@vger.kernel.org list for the various ARM platform
> maintainers ?

That might work - though it would be hard to get all the platform
maintainers to be signed up to yet another mailing list, I'm sure
sufficient would do.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Andrew Morton]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:24:14 +0100 Jörn Engel <joern@logfs.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 13 November 2007 13:56:58 -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > 
> > It's relatively common that a regression in subsystem A will manifest as a
> > failure in subsystem B, and the report initially lands on the desk of the
> > subsystem B developers.
> > 
> > But that's OK.  The subsystem B people are the ones with the expertise to
> > be able to work out where the bug resides and to help the subsystem A
> > people understand what went wrong.
> > 
> > Alas, sometimes the B people will just roll eyes and do nothing because
> > they know the problem wasn't in their code.  Sometimes.
> 
> And sometimes the A people will ignore the B people after the root cause
> has been worked out.  Do you have a good idea how to shame A into
> action?  Should I put you on Cc:?  Right now I'm in the eye-rolling
> phase.
> 

Well, that's the problem, isn't it?

The best I can come up with is to suggest that all the info be captured in
a bugzilla report so that at least it doesn't get forgotten about.

I suppose that other options are

a) try to fix it yourself.  I'll take the patch and as long as we make a
   big enough mess of it, someone who knows what they're doing might fix it
   for real.

b) If it was a regression, identify the offending commit and we'll just
   revert it.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Mark Lord wrote:

> Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Mark Lord wrote:
> > 
> > > > Andrew Morton wrote:
> > > > > > On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:42:32 -0800 "Natalie Protasevich"
> > > > > > <protasnb@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > ..
> > > > > > > > with CONFIG_NO_HZ and/or CONFIG_HPET_TIMER set kernel 2.6.23
> > > > > doesn't
> > > > > > > > boot (ARM, Timer)
> > > > > > > > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9229
> > > > > > > > Kernel: 2.6.23
> > > > > > > > No response from developers
> > > > ..
> > 
> > The bug report is bogus. ARM has no CONFIG_HPET_TIMER.  
> > > > Note:  that same bug exists/existed on i386 back when NO_HZ was
> > > > introduced (2.6.21?).  I still see it from time to time on my Quad core
> > > > system (very rare), but not any more on my Duo notebook where it used
> > > > to happen about 1 in n boots (n < 10).
> > > > > AFAICT no fix was ever released for it.
> > 
> > Hmm, at which point does the boot stop ? 
> ..
> 
> Just as it prints out these messages, sometimes one of them,
> sometimes both (or all four on the quad core):
> 
> kernel: switched to high resolution mode on cpu 1
> kernel: switched to high resolution mode on cpu 0 

It's completely dead afterwards ?

     tglx

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 02:32:01PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:18:01 +0000 Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:52:22PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > > On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:32:19 +0000 Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> > > > There's another issue I want to raise concerning bugzilla.  We have the
> > > > classic case of "not enough people reading bugzilla bugs" - which is one
> > > > of the biggest problems with bugzilla.  Virtually no one in the ARM
> > > > community looks for ARM bugs in bugzilla.
> > > 
> > > Nor should they.
> > 
> > So what you're saying is...
> > 
> > > > Let's not forget that it would be a waste of time for people to manually
> > > > check bugzilla for ARM bugs.  There's soo few people reporting ARM bugs
> > > > into bugzilla that a weekly manual check by every maintainer would just
> > > > return the same old boring results for months and months at a time.
> > > 
> > > I screen all bugzilla reports.  100% of them.
> > > 
> > > - I'll try to establish whether it is a regression
> > > 
> > > - I'll solicit any extra information which I believe the reveloper will need
> > > 
> > > - I'll ensure that an appropriate developer has seen the report
> > > 
> > > And yes, the number of arm-specific reports in there is very small.
> > 
> > that just because you do this everyone in a select clique, who you include
> > me in, should be doing this as well.
> > 
> > No.  Thank.  You.
> 
> No, I don't mean that at all and this was very plainly obviously from my very
> clearly written email.  Let me try again.

If you screen all bugzilla reports then you'll know that bug #9356 arrived
at about 1400 GMT yesterday.  It's hardly surprising then that your utterly
crappy responses to Natalie's message (which, incidentally, wasn't copied
to me) sent within 24 hours of that report cause *great* annoyance.

> No, no subsystem developer needs to monitor new bugzilla reports.  This is
> because *I do it for them*.  I will actively make them aware of new reports
> which I believe are legitimate and which contain sufficient information for
> them to be able to take further action.

On the whole you do an excellent job with feeding the bug reports to
people, and while I recognise that you're only human, things do
occasionally go wrong.  For instance, sending clearly marked Samsung
S3C bugs to me rather than Ben Dooks (who's in MAINTAINERS for those
platforms.)

> > > > It would be far more productive if the ARM category was deleted from
> > > > bugzilla and the few people who use bugzilla reported their bugs on the
> > > > mailing list.  We've a couple of thousand people on the ARM kernel
> > > > mailing list at the moment - that's 3 orders of magnitude more of eyes
> > > > than look at bugzilla.
> > > 
> > > Is that linux-arm-kernel@lists.arm.linux.org.uk?
> > 
> > Yes.
> > 
> > > If so, MANITAINERS claims that it is subscribers-only.  That would cause
> > > some bug reporters to give up and go away.
> > 
> > Find some other mailing list; I'm not hosting *nor* am I willing to run a
> > non-subscribers only mailing list.  Period.  Not negotiable, so don't even
> > try to change my mind.
> 
> Making a list subscribers-only will cause some bug reports to be lost.
> 
> Tradeoffs are involved, against which decisions must be made.  You have
> made yours.

So how are they lost when they're held in a moderation queue and are
either accepted, a useful response given to the original poster, or
are forwarded to someone who can deal with the issue.

I don't think "subscribers only" describes my lists - we don't devnull
stuff just because the poster is not a subscriber.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Andrew Morton]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:09:37 +0000 Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 02:32:01PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:18:01 +0000 Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> > > On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:52:22PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:32:19 +0000 Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> > No, I don't mean that at all and this was very plainly obviously from my very
> > clearly written email.  Let me try again.
> 
> If you screen all bugzilla reports then you'll know that bug #9356 arrived
> at about 1400 GMT yesterday.  It's hardly surprising then that your utterly
> crappy responses to Natalie's message (which, incidentally, wasn't copied
> to me) sent within 24 hours of that report cause *great* annoyance.
> 
> > No, no subsystem developer needs to monitor new bugzilla reports.  This is
> > because *I do it for them*.  I will actively make them aware of new reports
> > which I believe are legitimate and which contain sufficient information for
> > them to be able to take further action.
> 
> On the whole you do an excellent job with feeding the bug reports to
> people, and while I recognise that you're only human, things do
> occasionally go wrong.  For instance, sending clearly marked Samsung
> S3C bugs to me rather than Ben Dooks (who's in MAINTAINERS for those
> platforms.)


Well whatever, sorry.  But this is in the noise floor.  Point is: many bug
reports aren't being attended to.


> > > > > It would be far more productive if the ARM category was deleted from
> > > > > bugzilla and the few people who use bugzilla reported their bugs on the
> > > > > mailing list.  We've a couple of thousand people on the ARM kernel
> > > > > mailing list at the moment - that's 3 orders of magnitude more of eyes
> > > > > than look at bugzilla.
> > > > 
> > > > Is that linux-arm-kernel@lists.arm.linux.org.uk?
> > > 
> > > Yes.
> > > 
> > > > If so, MANITAINERS claims that it is subscribers-only.  That would cause
> > > > some bug reporters to give up and go away.
> > > 
> > > Find some other mailing list; I'm not hosting *nor* am I willing to run a
> > > non-subscribers only mailing list.  Period.  Not negotiable, so don't even
> > > try to change my mind.
> > 
> > Making a list subscribers-only will cause some bug reports to be lost.
> > 
> > Tradeoffs are involved, against which decisions must be made.  You have
> > made yours.
> 
> So how are they lost when they're held in a moderation queue and are
> either accepted, a useful response given to the original poster, or
> are forwarded to someone who can deal with the issue.
> 
> I don't think "subscribers only" describes my lists - we don't devnull
> stuff just because the poster is not a subscriber.

Oh, OK, as long as there really is a human paying attention to those things
then that's fine.  When one is on the sending end of these things one never
knows how long it will take, not whether it will even happen.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 09:13:19PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 07:32:19PM +0000, Russell King wrote:
> >...
> > There's another issue I want to raise concerning bugzilla.  We have the
> > classic case of "not enough people reading bugzilla bugs" - which is one
> > of the biggest problems with bugzilla.  Virtually no one in the ARM
> > community looks for ARM bugs in bugzilla.
> > 
> > Let's not forget that it would be a waste of time for people to manually
> > check bugzilla for ARM bugs.  There's soo few people reporting ARM bugs
> > into bugzilla that a weekly manual check by every maintainer would just
> > return the same old boring results for months and months at a time.
> >...
> 
> What about having all ARM bugs in Bugzilla by default assigned to 
> linux-arm-kernel@lists.arm.linux.org.uk? [1]

That would also work, probably much better than setting up yet another
list.

My experience of trying to get mbligh to do this when I stopped looking
after PCMCIA stuff was *extremely* painful.  Wonder if it's become any
easier of late?

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Mark Lord]

Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Mark Lord wrote:
> 
>> Thomas Gleixner wrote:
>>> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Mark Lord wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Andrew Morton wrote:
>>>>>>> On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:42:32 -0800 "Natalie Protasevich"
>>>>>>> <protasnb@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> ..
>>>>>>>>> with CONFIG_NO_HZ and/or CONFIG_HPET_TIMER set kernel 2.6.23
>>>>>> doesn't
>>>>>>>>> boot (ARM, Timer)
>>>>>>>>> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9229
>>>>>>>>> Kernel: 2.6.23
>>>>>>>>> No response from developers
>>>>> ..
>>> The bug report is bogus. ARM has no CONFIG_HPET_TIMER.  
>>>>> Note:  that same bug exists/existed on i386 back when NO_HZ was
>>>>> introduced (2.6.21?).  I still see it from time to time on my Quad core
>>>>> system (very rare), but not any more on my Duo notebook where it used
>>>>> to happen about 1 in n boots (n < 10).
>>>>>> AFAICT no fix was ever released for it.
>>> Hmm, at which point does the boot stop ? 
>> ..
>>
>> Just as it prints out these messages, sometimes one of them,
>> sometimes both (or all four on the quad core):
>>
>> kernel: switched to high resolution mode on cpu 1
>> kernel: switched to high resolution mode on cpu 0 
> 
> It's completely dead afterwards ?

Yeah.  No magic sysrq key or anything.
There's gotta be a race somewhere that's causing it,
but it's not obvious where to look for it.

My regular 2-core notebook no longer suffers from it,
and subtle .config changes used to make it come and go
back when it first appeared.

The quad-core has only done it twice on me thus far.

Tracking this one down looks tricky.  It might require some early lockup
detection code to be tailor made or something.

Cheers

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Andrew Morton]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:29:54 +0000 Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 09:13:19PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 07:32:19PM +0000, Russell King wrote:
> > >...
> > > There's another issue I want to raise concerning bugzilla.  We have the
> > > classic case of "not enough people reading bugzilla bugs" - which is one
> > > of the biggest problems with bugzilla.  Virtually no one in the ARM
> > > community looks for ARM bugs in bugzilla.
> > > 
> > > Let's not forget that it would be a waste of time for people to manually
> > > check bugzilla for ARM bugs.  There's soo few people reporting ARM bugs
> > > into bugzilla that a weekly manual check by every maintainer would just
> > > return the same old boring results for months and months at a time.
> > >...
> > 
> > What about having all ARM bugs in Bugzilla by default assigned to 
> > linux-arm-kernel@lists.arm.linux.org.uk? [1]
> 
> That would also work, probably much better than setting up yet another
> list.

cpufreq (at least) does it this way.  I don't know how well it is turning
out in practice.

It's useful if the initial report makes it clear (ie; to me) that the report
has already gone to a mailing list so I don't go and forward a duplicate.

But there are so few arm reports in bugzilla that this is all rather moot.

> My experience of trying to get mbligh to do this when I stopped looking
> after PCMCIA stuff was *extremely* painful.  Wonder if it's become any
> easier of late?

He's a bad, bad man ;)

But he's been turning these things around pretty rapidly lately.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 03:18:07PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> Russell King wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 09:08:32AM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> >> Ingo Molnar wrote:
> >> ..
> >>> This is all QA-101 that _cannot be argued against on a rational basis_, 
> >>> it's just that these sorts of things have been largely ignored for 
> >>> years, in favor of the all-too-easy "open source means many eyeballs and 
> >>> that is our QA" answer, which is a _good_ answer but by far not the most 
> >>> intelligent answer! Today "many eyeballs" is simply not good enough and 
> >>> nature (and other OS projects) will route us around if we dont change.
> >> ..
> >>
> >> QA-101 and "many eyeballs" are not at all in opposition.
> >> The latter is how we find out about bugs on uncommon hardware,
> >> and the former is what we need to track them and overall quality.
> >>
> >> A HUGE problem I have with current "efforts", is that once someone
> >> reports a bug, the onus seems to be 99% on the *reporter* to find
> >> the exact line of code or commit.  Ghad what a repressive method.
> > 
> > 99% on the reporter?  Is that why I always try to understand the
> > reporters problem (*provided* it's in an area I know about) and come
> > up with a patch to test a theory or fix the issue?
> ..
> 
> Same here.
> 
> I just find it weird that something can be known broken for several -rc*
> kernels before I happen to install it, discover it's broken on my own machine,
> and then I track it down, fix it, and submit the patch, generally all within a
> couple of hours.  Where the heck was the dude(ess) that broke it ??  AWOL.

Same thing can be said for compile breakages as well.  Looking at the
latest kautobuild output:

ARM ep93xx defconfig has been broken since 2.6.23-git1 due to:

drivers/net/arm/ep93xx_eth.c:420: error: implicit declaration of function '__netif_rx_schedule_prep'

caused by: [NET]: Make NAPI polling independent of struct net_device objects.

ARM netx defconfig has been broken since 2.6.23-git1 due to:

drivers/net/netx-eth.c: In function 'netx_eth_hard_start_xmit':
drivers/net/netx-eth.c:131: error: 'dev' undeclared (first use in this function)
drivers/net/netx-eth.c:131: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
drivers/net/netx-eth.c:131: error: for each function it appears in.)
drivers/net/netx-eth.c: In function 'netx_eth_receive':
drivers/net/netx-eth.c:158: error: 'dev' undeclared (first use in this function)

caused by: [NET] drivers/net: statistics cleanup #1 -- save memory and shrink code

Haven't got a report for either of those, but Kautobuild lets people
know if folk can be bothered to subscribe to its mailing list and/or
look at the site occasionally.

I suspect the maintainers of the above drivers aren't aware that their
drivers are broken.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Denys Vlasenko]

On Tuesday 13 November 2007 07:08, Mark Lord wrote:
> Ingo Molnar wrote:
> ..
>
> > This is all QA-101 that _cannot be argued against on a rational basis_,
> > it's just that these sorts of things have been largely ignored for
> > years, in favor of the all-too-easy "open source means many eyeballs and
> > that is our QA" answer, which is a _good_ answer but by far not the most
> > intelligent answer! Today "many eyeballs" is simply not good enough and
> > nature (and other OS projects) will route us around if we dont change.
>
> ..
>
> QA-101 and "many eyeballs" are not at all in opposition.
> The latter is how we find out about bugs on uncommon hardware,
> and the former is what we need to track them and overall quality.
>
> A HUGE problem I have with current "efforts", is that once someone
> reports a bug, the onus seems to be 99% on the *reporter* to find
> the exact line of code or commit.  Ghad what a repressive method.

This is the only method that scales.

Developer has only 24 hours in each day, and sometimes he needs to eat,
sleep, and maybe even pay attention to e.g. his kids.

But bug reporters are much more numerous and they have more
hours in one day combined.

BUT - it means that developers should try to increase user base,
not scare users away.

> And if the "developer" who broke the damn thing, or who at least
> "claims" to be supporting that code, cannot "reproduce" the bug,
> they drop it completely.

Developer should let reporter know that reporter needs to help
a bit here. Sometimes a bit of hand holding is needed, but it
pays off because you breed more qualified testers/bug reporters.

> Contrast that flawed approach with how Linus does things..
> he thinks through the symptoms, matches them to the code,
> and figures out what the few possibilities might be,
> and feeds back some trial balloon patches for the bug reporter to try.
>
> MUCH better.
>
> And remember, *I'm* an old-time Linux kernel developer.. just think about
> the people reporting bugs who haven't been around here since 1992..

Yes. Developers should not grow more and more unhelpful
and arrogant towards their users just because inexperienced
users send incomplete/poorly written bug reports.
They need to provide help, not humiliate/ignore.

I think we agree here.
--
vda

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Denys Vlasenko]

On Tuesday 13 November 2007 10:56, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:13:56PM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 04:52:32PM +0100, Benoit Boissinot wrote:
> > > Btw, I used to test every -mm kernel. But since I've switched distros
> > > (gentoo->ubuntu)
> > > and I have less time, I feel it's harder to test -rc or -mm kernels (I
> > > know this isn't a lkml problem
> > > but more a distro problem, but I would love having an ubuntu blessed
> > > repo with current dev kernel
> > > for the latest stable ubuntu release).
> >
> > There are two parts to this.  One is a Ubuntu development kernel which
> > we can give to large numbers of people to expand our testing pool.
> > But if we don't do a better job of responding to bug reports that
> > would be generated by expanded testing this won't necessarily help us.
> >...
>
> The main problem aren't missing testers [1] - we already have relatively
> experienced people testing kernels and/or reporting bugs, and we slowly
> scare them away due to the many bug reports without any reaction.
>
> The main problem is finding experienced developers who spend time on
> looking into bug reports.
>
> Getting many relatively unexperienced users (who need more guidance for
> debugging issues) as additional testers is therefore IMHO not
> necessarily a good idea.

And where experienced developrs are coming from?
They are not born with Linux kernel skills.
They grow up from within user base.

Bigger user base -> more developers (eventually)
--
vda

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Denys Vlasenko]

On Tuesday 13 November 2007 11:57, Gabriel C wrote:
> > The main problem is finding experienced developers who spend time on
> > looking into bug reports.
>
> There are already. IMO the problem is the development model.
>
> There are tons new features in each new kernel release and 'tons new bugs'
> which are not fixed during the release cycle nor in the .XX stable kernels.
>
> Maybe after XX kernel releases there should be one just with bug-fixes
> _without_ any new features , eg: cleaning bugs from bugzilla , know
> regressions , cleaning up code , removing broken drivers and the like.

Won't work. You cannot force people to work on things they don't
find interesting, long-term.
--
vda

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Chuck Ebbert]

On 11/13/2007 04:12 PM, Alan Cox wrote:
>> Bug fixing is not about finding someone to blame, it's about getting the 
>> bug fixed.
> 
> Partly - its also about understanding why the bug occurred and making it
> not happen again.

Very few people think about that part.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[David Miller]

From: Mark Lord <liml@rtr.ca>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:18:43 -0500

> Mind you, no arguing that this is effective when that poor bloke has
> a day free to download the git-tree and build/reboot a dozen times.

Like the internet, this time spent is beneficial because it's
pushing the work out to the end nodes.  In fact git bisect is
an awesome example of the end node principle in action for
software development and QA.

For the end-user wanting their bug fixed and the developer it's a win
win situation because the reporter is actually able to do something
proactive which will help get the bug they want fixed faster.

So I don't agree with framing this person as a "poor bloke".  Our
testers are more empowered than ever to lead the process towards a
fix.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:52:17 -0500
Chuck Ebbert <cebbert@redhat.com> wrote:

> On 11/13/2007 04:12 PM, Alan Cox wrote:
> >> Bug fixing is not about finding someone to blame, it's about getting the 
> >> bug fixed.
> > 
> > Partly - its also about understanding why the bug occurred and making it
> > not happen again.
> 
> Very few people think about that part.

Why does the kernel have very few useful tests?
 Lack of interest? resources? expertise?
Ideally each new feature would just be a small add on to an existing test.

Unlike developing new features which seems to grow well with more developers.
Bug fixing also seems to be a scarcity process. There often seems to be
a very few people that understand the problem well enough or have the necessary
hardware to reproduce and fix the problem.

Recent changes like tickless and scheduler rework were well thought out and caused
very little impact to 90% of the users. The problem is the 10% who do have problems.
Worse, the developers often only hear about the a small sample of those.

-- 
Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[David Miller]

From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:32:01 -0800

> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:18:01 +0000 Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> 
> > Find some other mailing list; I'm not hosting *nor* am I willing to run a
> > non-subscribers only mailing list.  Period.  Not negotiable, so don't even
> > try to change my mind.
> 
> Making a list subscribers-only will cause some bug reports to be lost.
> 
> Tradeoffs are involved, against which decisions must be made.  You have
> made yours.

Russell doesn't have to worry any more, he doesn't have to
host it, and he doesn't have to be willing to run a
non-subscribers-only mailing list.

Because I am.

I've created linux-arm@vger.kernel.org

Enjoy.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[David Miller]

From: Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:40:33 +0000

> ARM ep93xx defconfig has been broken since 2.6.23-git1 due to:
> 
> drivers/net/arm/ep93xx_eth.c:420: error: implicit declaration of function '__netif_rx_schedule_prep'
> 
> caused by: [NET]: Make NAPI polling independent of struct net_device objects.
> 
> ARM netx defconfig has been broken since 2.6.23-git1 due to:
> 
> drivers/net/netx-eth.c: In function 'netx_eth_hard_start_xmit':
> drivers/net/netx-eth.c:131: error: 'dev' undeclared (first use in this function)
> drivers/net/netx-eth.c:131: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
> drivers/net/netx-eth.c:131: error: for each function it appears in.)
> drivers/net/netx-eth.c: In function 'netx_eth_receive':
> drivers/net/netx-eth.c:158: error: 'dev' undeclared (first use in this function)
> 
> caused by: [NET] drivers/net: statistics cleanup #1 -- save memory and shrink code
> 

I'll fix these up, thanks for the report.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Andrew Morton]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:11:36 -0800 Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:52:17 -0500
> Chuck Ebbert <cebbert@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > On 11/13/2007 04:12 PM, Alan Cox wrote:
> > >> Bug fixing is not about finding someone to blame, it's about getting the 
> > >> bug fixed.
> > > 
> > > Partly - its also about understanding why the bug occurred and making it
> > > not happen again.
> > 
> > Very few people think about that part.
> 
> Why does the kernel have very few useful tests?

Tests would of course be nice, but they aren't very useful(!)

Looking at this list which Natalie has generated I see around thirty which
are dependent on the right hardware and ten which are not.  This ratio is
typical, I think.  In fact I'd say that more than 75% of reported bugs are
dependent on hardware.

So the best test of all for the kernel is "run it on a different machine". 
This is why we are sooooo dependent upon our volunteer testers/reporters to
be able to do kernel development.

>  Lack of interest? resources? expertise?
> Ideally each new feature would just be a small add on to an existing test.

Sure.  For system-call-visible features it would be good to do that.

But this tends not to be where bugs get exposed.  Because the original
developer can 100% exercise such code.  That isn't the case with
driver/arch/platform changes.

> Unlike developing new features which seems to grow well with more developers.
> Bug fixing also seems to be a scarcity process. There often seems to be
> a very few people that understand the problem well enough or have the necessary
> hardware to reproduce and fix the problem.

We're 100% dead if "having the hardware" is a prerequisite to fixing a bug.
The terminal state there is that the kernel runs on about 200 machines
worldwide.  We have to work with reporters via email to fix these sorts of
things.  As we of course do.

> Recent changes like tickless and scheduler rework were well thought out and caused
> very little impact to 90% of the users. The problem is the 10% who do have problems.
> Worse, the developers often only hear about the a small sample of those.

Yes.  An unknown number of people just shrug and go back to an old kernel.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Andrew Morton]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:55:51 -0800 (PST) David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:

> I've created linux-arm@vger.kernel.org

Let me just say - I'm astonished at how little spam gets though the vger
lists.  Considering how many times those email addresses must have been
added to spam databases.

It must be a lot of work, and whoever is doing it does it well.

I don't even know.  Is it Matti?  You?

<contemplates linux-kernel@lists.sourceforge.net.  Shudders.>

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Tobin Davis]

Is there any chance this can be distributed individually to the
respecive lists (i.e. ACPI issues go to their mailing list, ALSA to
their mailing list, etc).

I just spent the last 35 minutes reading 80 emails, mostly flame
throwing, that had absolutely NOTHING to do with the bugs I work on
(Alsa, snd-hda-intel to be specific).  Besides, a lot of the language is
very unprofessional, and some of us have to read these at work.

Thanks,

Tobin Davis
Part-time Alsa developer 



On Mon, 2007-11-12 at 22:42 -0800, Natalie Protasevich wrote:

> This is the listing of the open bugs that are relatively new, around
> 2.6.22 and up. They are vaguely classified by specific area.
> (not a full list, there are more :)
> 
> The good part is that reporters of the bugs below are still around and
> haven't dissipated, or disposed of their hardware, so it is a good
> time to get the bugs.
> Those bugzillas that have been started as regressions on Rafael's list
> are not mentioned here so far, since they are being tracked as new
> regressions already.
> 
> It would be appreciated if the corresponding maintenance team could take a
> look, close off any which are fixed and see if they can fix any which aren't.
> 
> NOTE: when replying to this email, please add the bug number to the Subject in
> the form [Bug 1234] so that bugzilla will capture the discussion.
> Thanks.
> 
> ACPI====================================================================
> 
> System does not load without acpi=off ide=nodma noapic
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9358
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> 
> ACPI Error attaching device data
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9354
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc2
> 
> /proc/acpi/battery displays Incorrect voltages
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9341
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> 
> PATA scan: ACPI Exception AE_AML_PACKAGE_LIMIT... is beyond end of object
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9320
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc2
> (Tejun: calling _GTF without calling _STM first.  _GTM doesn't have any
> prerequisite (it can't).  Can someone familiar with ACPI tell me why the method
> is failing?  At any rate, libata should work fine regardless of ACPI failures.
> Maybe it's time to start blacklist to skip ATA-ACPI for some boards to avoid
> those annoying messages during boot)
> 
> ACPI Battery Info in /sys but not /proc/acpi
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9183
> Kernel: 2.6.23-rc8-mm2
> 
> When using ACPI on a Compaq Presario V6221EU the laptop goes into
> deadlock after a random amount of time
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9118
> Kernel: 2.6.23-rc6
> 
> ACPI video driver should validate brightness level before setting it via _BCM
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9277
> Kernel: 2.6.23
> 
> VIDEO/DVB
> 
> dvb driver reboot system
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9357
> Kernel: 2.6.21.5
> 
> 
> PLATFORM===============================================================
> 
> xipImage is built so that uBoot cant run it (ARM)
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9356
> Kernel: 2.6.21
> 
> Samsung R20 - ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)	
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9339
> Kernel: 2.6.24
> (boot is very long
> ..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
> then the boot stop at :
> ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)
> (during 3 minutes, and boot continue)
> 
> system_64.h: switch_to inline asm should be more robbust wrt optimizations
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9302
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1
> 
> with CONFIG_NO_HZ and/or CONFIG_HPET_TIMER set kernel 2.6.23 doesn't
> boot (ARM, Timer)
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9229
> Kernel: 2.6.23
> 
> NETWORKING===========================================================
> 
> RTNLGRP_ND_USEROPT does not report ifindex (IPv6)
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9349
> Kernel: 2.6.24+
> 
> a kernel error happend in the func: __skb_dequeue when using in
> pfifo_fast_dequeue
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9342
> Kernel: 2.6.11.1 - reporter asked to try recent kernel
> 
> e100 does not work after boot
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9336
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> 
> 2.6.23.1-smp kernel panic (network-related)
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9318
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> Infiniband panic
> 
> sundance -> 4port D-Link System Inc DFE-580TX -> Log errors
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9311
> Kernel: 2.6.22.9
> 
> via-rhine driver stalls with: PHY status 786d, resetting...
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9300
> Kernel: 2.6.23+
> 
> 
> Weird network problems with 2.6.23-rc2
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9080
> http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/11/40 - description
> 
> rt2500pci: low TCP throughput (wireless)
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9273
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1
> This is a regression
> 
> Unable to build wifi network between zd1201 and b43
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9237
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1
> 
> Crash after module unload in b43 (wireless)
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9233
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1
> 
> (net typhoon) "no descs for cmd, had (needed) 0 (1) cmd, 31 (7) resp"
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9225
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> 
> 
> IDE/SATA=========================================================
> 
> pata_pdc202xx_old excessive ATA bus errors
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9337
> 2.6.24-rc2
> 
> Drive seagate ST380011AS needs to be blacklisted
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9309
> Kernel: 2.6.22.X
> 
> DVD-RAM umount and disk free bug
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9265
> Kernel: 2.6.15  (asked to try current kernel)
> 
> FILE SYSTEMS=======================================================
> 
> ext4: delalloc space accounting problem drops data
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9329
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1
> 
> POSIX Access Control Lists cause bogus file system check errors
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9241
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> 
> MEMORY MANAGEMENT================================================
> 
> My system hangs when it has no more free memory to allocate via malloc()
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9316
> Kernel: 2.6.23
> User program, "My system hangs when it has no more free memory to
> allocate via malloc()"
> 
> BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address
> 26121228/kswapd0[231] exited with preempt_count 1
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9305
> EIP is at free_block+0x6d/0xe4
> Kernel: 2.6.22.6
> 
> POWER MANAGEMENT==================================================
> 
> IBM X41 looses time after Suspend2Disk
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9314
> Kernel: 2.6.23
> 
> Suspend to RAM resume hangs on a tickless (NO_HZ) kernel
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9275
> Kernel: 2.6.23
> This is HP notebook nc6320 T2400 945GM
> 
> 
> VIDEO DRIVERS========================================================
> 
> No text consoles with FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_DETECT_PRIMARY
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9310
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1
> This is a regression
> 
> 
> PARALLEL PORT========================================================
> 
> LPC IT8705 POST port making noise on parallel port
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9306
> Kernel: 2.6.16+
> 
> 
> I/O STORAGE===========================================================
> 
> kernel bug from pktcdvd
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9294
> Kernel: 2.6.23
> 
> After pci-e video card was installed, pci add-on usb card & firewire card fail
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9223
> Kernel: 2.6.20 (testing of latest kernel requested)
> 
> SCSI==================================================================
> 
> qla2xxx: driver initialization does not complete when booting with
> Port connected
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9267
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> 
> SOUND ALSA============================================================
> 
> Unable to load snd-hda-intel module: Unknown symbol in module, or
> unknown parameter
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9242
> Kernel: 2.6.24-rc1
> 
> usbaudio microphone: regular sound distortion on several Logitech Webcams
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9230
> Kernel: 2.6.22.9
> 
> HID====================================================================
> 
> Kernel NULL pointer dereference at :usbhid:hiddev_ioctl+0x2f/0xabc
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9216
> Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> Looks like this is a regression
> _______________________________________________
> Alsa-devel mailing list
> Alsa-devel@alsa-project.org
> http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[David Miller]

From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:27:00 -0800

> Let me just say - I'm astonished at how little spam gets though the vger
> lists.  Considering how many times those email addresses must have been
> added to spam databases.
> 
> It must be a lot of work, and whoever is doing it does it well.
> 
> I don't even know.  Is it Matti?  You?

Matti gets all the credit for setting up the bayesian et al.
filters we have and training it as needed.

> <contemplates linux-kernel@lists.sourceforge.net.  Shudders.>

Yes, sourceforge is a complete joke.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Sam Ravnborg]

> 
> > If so, MANITAINERS claims that it is subscribers-only.  That would cause
> > some bug reporters to give up and go away.
> 
> Find some other mailing list; I'm not hosting *nor* am I willing to run a
> non-subscribers only mailing list.  Period.  Not negotiable, so don't even
> try to change my mind.

The postmasters at vger is pretty good at running mailing lists.
For linux-kbuild my effort so far has been to request it.
Thats not a big deal.

So if they accept it you could have linux-arm@vger.kernel.org for zero
overhead for you.

	Sam

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Sam Ravnborg]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 06:56:06AM +0100, Sam Ravnborg wrote:
> > 
> > > If so, MANITAINERS claims that it is subscribers-only.  That would cause
> > > some bug reporters to give up and go away.
> > 
> > Find some other mailing list; I'm not hosting *nor* am I willing to run a
> > non-subscribers only mailing list.  Period.  Not negotiable, so don't even
> > try to change my mind.
> 
> The postmasters at vger is pretty good at running mailing lists.
> For linux-kbuild my effort so far has been to request it.
> Thats not a big deal.
> 
> So if they accept it you could have linux-arm@vger.kernel.org for zero
> overhead for you.

And in a later mail I saw davem already created it.

	Sam

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[David Miller]

From: Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 06:56:06 +0100

> > 
> > > If so, MANITAINERS claims that it is subscribers-only.  That would cause
> > > some bug reporters to give up and go away.
> > 
> > Find some other mailing list; I'm not hosting *nor* am I willing to run a
> > non-subscribers only mailing list.  Period.  Not negotiable, so don't even
> > try to change my mind.
> 
> The postmasters at vger is pretty good at running mailing lists.
> For linux-kbuild my effort so far has been to request it.
> Thats not a big deal.
> 
> So if they accept it you could have linux-arm@vger.kernel.org for zero
> overhead for you.

I already did, get a little deeper in your mailbox before
replying :-)

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 05:39:45PM -0700, Denys Vlasenko wrote:
> On Tuesday 13 November 2007 10:56, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:13:56PM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> > > On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 04:52:32PM +0100, Benoit Boissinot wrote:
> > > > Btw, I used to test every -mm kernel. But since I've switched distros
> > > > (gentoo->ubuntu)
> > > > and I have less time, I feel it's harder to test -rc or -mm kernels (I
> > > > know this isn't a lkml problem
> > > > but more a distro problem, but I would love having an ubuntu blessed
> > > > repo with current dev kernel
> > > > for the latest stable ubuntu release).
> > >
> > > There are two parts to this.  One is a Ubuntu development kernel which
> > > we can give to large numbers of people to expand our testing pool.
> > > But if we don't do a better job of responding to bug reports that
> > > would be generated by expanded testing this won't necessarily help us.
> > >...
> >
> > The main problem aren't missing testers [1] - we already have relatively
> > experienced people testing kernels and/or reporting bugs, and we slowly
> > scare them away due to the many bug reports without any reaction.
> >
> > The main problem is finding experienced developers who spend time on
> > looking into bug reports.
> >
> > Getting many relatively unexperienced users (who need more guidance for
> > debugging issues) as additional testers is therefore IMHO not
> > necessarily a good idea.
> 
> And where experienced developrs are coming from?
> They are not born with Linux kernel skills.
> They grow up from within user base.
> 
> Bigger user base -> more developers (eventually)

You missed the following in my email:
"we slowly scare them away due to the many bug reports without any 
 reaction."

The problem is that bug reports take time. If you go away from easy 
things like compile errors then even things like describing what does
no longer work, ideally producing a scenario where you can reproduce it 
and verifying whether it was present in previous kernels can easily take 
many hours that are spent before the initial bug report.

If the bug report then gets ignored we discourage the person who sent 
the bug report to do any work related to the kernel again.

> vda

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Denys Vlasenko]

On Wednesday 14 November 2007 00:27, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> You missed the following in my email:
> "we slowly scare them away due to the many bug reports without any
>  reaction."
>
> The problem is that bug reports take time. If you go away from easy
> things like compile errors then even things like describing what does
> no longer work, ideally producing a scenario where you can reproduce it
> and verifying whether it was present in previous kernels can easily take
> many hours that are spent before the initial bug report.
>
> If the bug report then gets ignored we discourage the person who sent
> the bug report to do any work related to the kernel again.

Cannot agree more. I am in a similar position right now.
My patch to aic7xxx driver was ubmitted four times
with not much reaction from scsi guys.

Finally they replied and asked to rediff it against their
git tree. I did that and sent patches back. No reply since then.

And mind you, the patch is not trying to do anything
complex, it mostly moves code around, removes 'inline',
adds 'const'. What should I think about it?
--
vda

Moderated list (Was: Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs)

[Takashi Iwai]

At Wed, 14 Nov 2007 04:01:31 -0800 (PST),
David Miller wrote:
> 
> From: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
> Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 03:56:57 -0800 (PST)
> 
> > The fact that it farts at me every time I post to this thread.
> 
> See?  I got another one and I have received at least 10 of the
> following over the past 2 days.
> 
> That's rediculious.
> 
> And because a human adds the whitelist this is always going to
> happen to someone when they start posting to the alsa list for
> the first time.

... if you give too many recipients in your post.  That is often
really annoying thing to me, together with keeping the unrelated
subject line ;)

I personally don't care whether it's a moderated or open list.
We chose it simply due to too bad S/N ratio at that time.  So, if the
current list annoys your or many others and the list management on
vger is so good, it'd be basically a good move, of course.  I'll
appreciate it.

The only confusion would be the change of ML address, but we can do it
slowly, too.


Takashi

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 06:27:00PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:55:51 -0800 (PST) David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:
> 
> > I've created linux-arm@vger.kernel.org
> 
> Let me just say - I'm astonished at how little spam gets though the vger
> lists.  Considering how many times those email addresses must have been
> added to spam databases.
> 
> It must be a lot of work, and whoever is doing it does it well.
> 
> I don't even know.  Is it Matti?  You?
> 
> <contemplates linux-kernel@lists.sourceforge.net.  Shudders.>

Martin's changed the owner for ARM bugs last night to the mailing list
so the whole issue is now redundant.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: Moderated list (Was: Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs)

[Takashi Iwai]

At Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:21:30 +0100,
Rene Herman wrote:
> 
> On 14-11-07 09:25, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> 
> > At Wed, 14 Nov 2007 04:01:31 -0800 (PST),
> > David Miller wrote:
> >> From: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
> >> Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 03:56:57 -0800 (PST)
> >>
> >>> The fact that it farts at me every time I post to this thread.
> >> See?  I got another one and I have received at least 10 of the
> >> following over the past 2 days.
> >>
> >> That's rediculious.
> >>
> >> And because a human adds the whitelist this is always going to
> >> happen to someone when they start posting to the alsa list for
> >> the first time.
> > 
> > ... if you give too many recipients in your post.  That is often
> > really annoying thing to me, together with keeping the unrelated
> > subject line ;)
> > 
> > I personally don't care whether it's a moderated or open list.
> > We chose it simply due to too bad S/N ratio at that time.  So, if the
> > current list annoys your or many others and the list management on
> > vger is so good, it'd be basically a good move, of course.  I'll
> > appreciate it.
> > 
> > The only confusion would be the change of ML address, but we can do it
> > slowly, too.
> 
> I'd love the lists at vger. Amazing spam-filtering. I'd like to request the 
> name alsa-devel@vger.kernel.org (and alsa-user@vger.kernel.org if at all 
> possible so we can open that one up as well) though.

I think alsa-user can stay as is.  It's no place for dragging many
other addresses like alsa-devel.

BTW, I also prefer keeping the name alsa-devel@.  It's been so.

> There wouldn't need to be a forced ML address change if Jaroslov would then 
> just rewrite alsa-{devel,user}@alsa-project.org to vger.kernel.org same as 
> he did for alsa-devel and does for alsa-user to @lists.sf.net.

If it works, then I'm for it, too.


thanks,

Takashi

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 05:55:51PM -0800, David Miller wrote:
> From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
> Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:32:01 -0800
> 
> > On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:18:01 +0000 Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> > 
> > > Find some other mailing list; I'm not hosting *nor* am I willing to run a
> > > non-subscribers only mailing list.  Period.  Not negotiable, so don't even
> > > try to change my mind.
> > 
> > Making a list subscribers-only will cause some bug reports to be lost.
> > 
> > Tradeoffs are involved, against which decisions must be made.  You have
> > made yours.
> 
> Russell doesn't have to worry any more, he doesn't have to
> host it, and he doesn't have to be willing to run a
> non-subscribers-only mailing list.
> 
> Because I am.
> 
> I've created linux-arm@vger.kernel.org

By doing so you've just said (implicitly) that you can not tolerate
someone having a different opinion from your own.

While I accept *your* right to run *your* lists how you please, you
are unable to accept *my* right to run *my* lists how I see fit.

Time will tell which lists will survive.  Whatever, I suspect that by
doing what you've just done, you're going to create more confusion and
problems. Instead of having one focused place for discussions and bug
reports, they're going to be spread more thinly, meaning less people
looking at such things, meaning more bugs get ignored.  Thus making
the issue worse.

So, when are you creating a replacement alsa-devel mailing list on
vger?  That's also subscribers-only.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[David Miller]

From: Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 09:55:07 +0000

> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 05:55:51PM -0800, David Miller wrote:
> > I've created linux-arm@vger.kernel.org
> 
> By doing so you've just said (implicitly) that you can not tolerate
> someone having a different opinion from your own.

I created a mailing list on a machine where I provide such services.

People can choose to use or not use the new list, it is their choice.

> While I accept *your* right to run *your* lists how you please, you
> are unable to accept *my* right to run *my* lists how I see fit.

I didn't tell you to take your list down or to run it in some other
way.  I didn't tell you to unsubscribe everyone and move them over
to the new list either.

I've provided an alternative, and people can pick and choose how they
see fit.  I'm letting natural selection run it's course.  Are you
able to cope with the fact that people might not want to use your
list any longer?  Perhaps that is what bugs you so much about my
giving people a alternative choice.

> So, when are you creating a replacement alsa-devel mailing list on
> vger?  That's also subscribers-only.

The operative term is "alternative" rather than "replacement".
Perhaps this misunderstanding is what you're so upset about.

And yes, that alsa list bugs the crap out of me too.  I'm more than
happy to provide an alternative for that one as well.

In fact, *poof*, there it is, linux-alsa@vger.kernel.org is there and
available for anyone who wants to use it.

Have a nice day Russell.

Re: [alsa-devel] [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Rene Herman]

On 14-11-07 11:07, David Miller wrote:

Added Jaroslav and Takashi to the already extensive CC....

> From: Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk>

>> So, when are you creating a replacement alsa-devel mailing list on
>> vger?  That's also subscribers-only.
> 
> The operative term is "alternative" rather than "replacement".
> Perhaps this misunderstanding is what you're so upset about.
> 
> And yes, that alsa list bugs the crap out of me too.  I'm more than
> happy to provide an alternative for that one as well.

alsa-devel@alsa-project.org is not subscriber-only. Same as that arm list, 
it's _moderated_ for non-subscribers and given that I and other moderators 
have been doing our best to moderate quickly (I tend to stay logged in to 
the moderation interface all day for example) what specifically bugged the 
crap out of you? It's not something a poster needs to concern himself with.

Also for alsa-devel the moderators tend to add any valid non-subcribers to 
a whitelist after landing in the queue the first time meaning even a delay 
is just a one-time thing normally. So what's the trouble? Basically, noone 
need even notice...

> In fact, *poof*, there it is, linux-alsa@vger.kernel.org is there and
> available for anyone who wants to use it.

Not that I think that moving alsa-devel over to vger wouldn't be a good idea 
mind you; when the list moved from sourceforge, asking you to host it was my 
preferred option. I do somewhat suspect that Jaroslav would like to keep the 
alsa-devel@ name (and I'd like to ask you to then also host alsa-user@) and 
would then rewrite mail to those lists @alsa-project.org to vger.

But what is the problem you speak of with the alsa-devel list? While I would 
not mind loosing it, moderation hasn't been overly laborious and I'm not 
aware of any serious problems.

Rene.

Re: [alsa-devel] [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[David Miller]

From: Rene Herman <rene.herman@keyaccess.nl>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 12:46:24 +0100

> alsa-devel@alsa-project.org is not subscriber-only. Same as that arm list, 
> it's _moderated_ for non-subscribers and given that I and other moderators 
> have been doing our best to moderate quickly (I tend to stay logged in to 
> the moderation interface all day for example) what specifically bugged the 
> crap out of you? It's not something a poster needs to concern himself with.

The fact that it farts at me every time I post to this thread.  That's
rude and annoying.

> Also for alsa-devel the moderators tend to add any valid non-subcribers to 
> a whitelist after landing in the queue the first time meaning even a delay 
> is just a one-time thing normally. So what's the trouble? Basically, noone 
> need even notice...

That sucks for new people taking part in the conversation.

There is no reason for moderation at all, it isn't necessary
for spam prevention and it does nothing but annoy new posters
and make work for the moderator.

Re: [alsa-devel] [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[David Miller]

From: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 03:56:57 -0800 (PST)

> The fact that it farts at me every time I post to this thread.

See?  I got another one and I have received at least 10 of the
following over the past 2 days.

That's rediculious.

And because a human adds the whitelist this is always going to
happen to someone when they start posting to the alsa list for
the first time.

/me gets ready for the 11th copy in response to this one...

--------------------
Subject: Your message to Alsa-devel awaits moderator approval
From: alsa-devel-bounces@alsa-project.org
To: davem@davemloft.net
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 12:57:06 +0100
Sender: alsa-devel-bounces@alsa-project.org

Your mail to 'Alsa-devel' with the subject

    Re: [alsa-devel] [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval.

The reason it is being held:

    Too many recipients to the message

Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive
notification of the moderator's decision.  If you would like to cancel
this posting, please visit the following URL:

    http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/confirm/alsa-devel/12dd3bd077bbf9cd142f214beae6d22ae43b53aa

Re: [alsa-devel] [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Rene Herman]

On 14-11-07 12:56, David Miller wrote:

> From: Rene Herman <rene.herman@keyaccess.nl>
> Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 12:46:24 +0100
> 
>> alsa-devel@alsa-project.org is not subscriber-only. Same as that arm list, 
>> it's _moderated_ for non-subscribers and given that I and other moderators 
>> have been doing our best to moderate quickly (I tend to stay logged in to 
>> the moderation interface all day for example) what specifically bugged the 
>> crap out of you? It's not something a poster needs to concern himself with.
> 
> The fact that it farts at me every time I post to this thread.  That's
> rude and annoying.

It certainly is. I only experienced that now due to the "too many recipients 
to message" moderation notice that I got from my own message.

Jaroslav -- please disable that junk or if possible, make it a "at most once 
per address per month" thing or somesuch. This is complete crap.

>> Also for alsa-devel the moderators tend to add any valid non-subcribers to 
>> a whitelist after landing in the queue the first time meaning even a delay 
>> is just a one-time thing normally. So what's the trouble? Basically, noone 
>> need even notice...
> 
> That sucks for new people taking part in the conversation.
> 
> There is no reason for moderation at all, it isn't necessary
> for spam prevention and it does nothing but annoy new posters
> and make work for the moderator.

Yes there is. It's necessary for lists that do not have the human and other 
resouces behind it that vger does. alsa-devel was drowning in spam and dying 
as a result back when it was at sourceforge. Upon moving, my preference was 
to ask the lists to be hosted at vger but given that (it seems) Jaroslav 
wanted to keep them locally, moderation was very necessary. I moderate out 
quite a bit of spam every day.

vger is doing an amazing job at spam filtering -- if it's an option to move 
to vger, than sure, no need. But otherwise, the "no need" needs a list admin 
with enough bandwidth and skill.

As to the "new people": it's not optimal, but (upto this thread I'll admit 
-- I woke up to a huge number of posts in the queue) it's not been a _real_ 
problem. alsa-devel is not high-volume enough for it to be.

Rene.

Re: [alsa-devel] [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Rene Herman]

On 14-11-07 13:01, David Miller wrote:

> From: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
> Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 03:56:57 -0800 (PST)
> 
>> The fact that it farts at me every time I post to this thread.
> 
> See?  I got another one and I have received at least 10 of the
> following over the past 2 days.

Nah, in this case you are not even getting them to not being a non-subcriber 
but due to too many CCs. I got one as well. That just needs to be disabled, 
does not have anything to do with non-subscribers (and you're in the white 
list) but is just a retarted bit of list configuration...

(no, I can't personally change it, needs Jaroslav Kysela)

Rene.

Re: Moderated list (Was: Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs)

[Rene Herman]

On 14-11-07 09:25, Takashi Iwai wrote:

> At Wed, 14 Nov 2007 04:01:31 -0800 (PST),
> David Miller wrote:
>> From: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
>> Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 03:56:57 -0800 (PST)
>>
>>> The fact that it farts at me every time I post to this thread.
>> See?  I got another one and I have received at least 10 of the
>> following over the past 2 days.
>>
>> That's rediculious.
>>
>> And because a human adds the whitelist this is always going to
>> happen to someone when they start posting to the alsa list for
>> the first time.
> 
> ... if you give too many recipients in your post.  That is often
> really annoying thing to me, together with keeping the unrelated
> subject line ;)
> 
> I personally don't care whether it's a moderated or open list.
> We chose it simply due to too bad S/N ratio at that time.  So, if the
> current list annoys your or many others and the list management on
> vger is so good, it'd be basically a good move, of course.  I'll
> appreciate it.
> 
> The only confusion would be the change of ML address, but we can do it
> slowly, too.

I'd love the lists at vger. Amazing spam-filtering. I'd like to request the 
name alsa-devel@vger.kernel.org (and alsa-user@vger.kernel.org if at all 
possible so we can open that one up as well) though.

There wouldn't need to be a forced ML address change if Jaroslov would then 
just rewrite alsa-{devel,user}@alsa-project.org to vger.kernel.org same as 
he did for alsa-devel and does for alsa-user to @lists.sf.net.

Rene.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Jiri Kosina]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Andrew Morton wrote:

> > HID====================================================================
> > 
> > Kernel NULL pointer dereference at :usbhid:hiddev_ioctl+0x2f/0xabc
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9216
> > Kernel: 2.6.23.1
> > Looks like this is a regression
> No response from developers

Hi,

it is assigned to 'other_modules@kernel-bugs.osdl.org', so I didn't 
notice, it's as simple as that.

-- 
Jiri Kosina

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> > Suspend to RAM resume hangs on a tickless (NO_HZ) kernel
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9275
> > Kernel: 2.6.23
> > This is HP notebook nc6320 T2400 945GM
> 
> No response from developers

Maybe I'm optimistic, but I expected Ingo/Thomas to look after nohz
problems. nohz=off highres=off fixes more than one suspend problem...

...stuff I've seen with NOHZ even without suspend (cursor blinking
irregulary) make me think that nohz perhaps should not be used in
production just yet...

							Pavel
-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Matthew Wilcox]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 12:46:20AM -0700, Denys Vlasenko wrote:
> Finally they replied and asked to rediff it against their
> git tree. I did that and sent patches back. No reply since then.
> 
> And mind you, the patch is not trying to do anything
> complex, it mostly moves code around, removes 'inline',
> adds 'const'. What should I think about it?

I'm waiting for an ACK/NAK from Hannes, the maintainer.  What should I
do?

-- 
Intel are signing my paycheques ... these opinions are still mine
"Bill, look, we understand that you're interested in selling us this
operating system, but compare it to ours.  We can't possibly take such
a retrograde step."

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Hannes Reinecke]

Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 12:46:20AM -0700, Denys Vlasenko wrote:
>> Finally they replied and asked to rediff it against their
>> git tree. I did that and sent patches back. No reply since then.
>>
>> And mind you, the patch is not trying to do anything
>> complex, it mostly moves code around, removes 'inline',
>> adds 'const'. What should I think about it?
> 
> I'm waiting for an ACK/NAK from Hannes, the maintainer.  What should I
> do?
> 
I haven't actually been able to test it here (too busy, sorry). If someone
else confirms it does it's job then

Acked-by: Hannes Reinecke <hare@suse.de>

Cheers,

Hannes
-- 
Dr. Hannes Reinecke		      zSeries & Storage
hare@suse.de			      +49 911 74053 688
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg
GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg)

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Ingo Molnar]

* Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> wrote:

> > (and this is in no way directed at the networking folks - it holds 
> > for all of us. I have one main complaint about networking: the 
> > separate netdev list is a bad idea - networking regressions should 
> > be discussed and fixed on lkml, like most other subsystems are. Any 
> > artificial split of the lk discussion space is bad.)
> 
> but here I disagree.  LKML is already too busy and noisy. Major 
> subsystems need their own discussion areas.

That's a stupid argument. We lose much more by forced isolation of 
discussion than what we win by having less traffic! It's _MUCH_ easier 
to narrow down information (by filter by threads, by topics, by people, 
etc.) than it is to gobble information together from various fractured 
sources. We learned it _again and again_ that isolation of kernel 
discussions causes bad things.

In fact this thread is the very example: David points out that on netdev 
some of those bugs were already discussed and resolved. Had it been all 
on lkml we'd all be aware of it.

this is a single kernel project that is released together as one 
codebase, so a central place of discussion is obvious and common-sense.

so please stop this "too busy and too noisy" nonsense already. It was 
nonsense 10 years ago and it's nonsense today. In 10 years the kernel 
grew from a 1 million lines codebase to an 8 million lines codebase, so 
what? Deal with it and be intelligent about filtering your information 
influx instead of imposing a hard pre-filtering criteria that restricts 
intelligent processing of information.

	Ingo

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Fabio Comolli]

FWIW, I see the same problem with another HP notebook, DV4378EA with
radeon X700 video card. It does not happen frequently but I can say
that since I disabled the tickless feature I can't reproduce the
problem anymore.

On Nov 14, 2007 2:24 PM, Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> > > Suspend to RAM resume hangs on a tickless (NO_HZ) kernel
> > > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9275
> > > Kernel: 2.6.23
> > > This is HP notebook nc6320 T2400 945GM
> >
> > No response from developers
>
> Maybe I'm optimistic, but I expected Ingo/Thomas to look after nohz
> problems. nohz=off highres=off fixes more than one suspend problem...
>
> ...stuff I've seen with NOHZ even without suspend (cursor blinking
> irregulary) make me think that nohz perhaps should not be used in
> production just yet...
>
>                                                         Pavel
> --
> (english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
> (cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Ingo Molnar]

* Mark Lord <liml@rtr.ca> wrote:

>> You're assuming that everything in linux-2.6 was downloaded; that's 
>> not true.  Everything in linux-2.6/.git was downloaded; but then you 
>> do a checkout which happens to approximately double the size of the 
>> linux-2.6 directory.
> ..
>
> Ah, I wondered why it took only half an hour to download.

and you can get even lower than the 260MB by downloading a shallow clone 
of v2.6.23 and then populating the git tree from tht point on. (see the 
--depth parameter of git-clone) [because most of the time you want to 
bisect back to the last stable release, not back to 2 years of git 
history.]

	Ingo

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Larry Finger]

Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Mark Lord <liml@rtr.ca> wrote:
> 
>>> You're assuming that everything in linux-2.6 was downloaded; that's 
>>> not true.  Everything in linux-2.6/.git was downloaded; but then you 
>>> do a checkout which happens to approximately double the size of the 
>>> linux-2.6 directory.
>> ..
>>
>> Ah, I wondered why it took only half an hour to download.
> 
> and you can get even lower than the 260MB by downloading a shallow clone 
> of v2.6.23 and then populating the git tree from tht point on. (see the 
> --depth parameter of git-clone) [because most of the time you want to 
> bisect back to the last stable release, not back to 2 years of git 
> history.]

When creating additional git trees (Linville's wireless-2.6 tree, for example) for driver
development, you can save a lot of download bandwidth by using the --reference parameter of git-clone.

Larry

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Randy Dunlap]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:08:47 +0100 Ingo Molnar wrote:

> 
> * Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> wrote:
> 
> > > (and this is in no way directed at the networking folks - it holds 
> > > for all of us. I have one main complaint about networking: the 
> > > separate netdev list is a bad idea - networking regressions should 
> > > be discussed and fixed on lkml, like most other subsystems are. Any 
> > > artificial split of the lk discussion space is bad.)
> > 
> > but here I disagree.  LKML is already too busy and noisy. Major 
> > subsystems need their own discussion areas.
> 
> That's a stupid argument. We lose much more by forced isolation of 
> discussion than what we win by having less traffic! It's _MUCH_ easier 
> to narrow down information (by filter by threads, by topics, by people, 
> etc.) than it is to gobble information together from various fractured 
> sources. We learned it _again and again_ that isolation of kernel 
> discussions causes bad things.
> 
> In fact this thread is the very example: David points out that on netdev 
> some of those bugs were already discussed and resolved. Had it been all 
> on lkml we'd all be aware of it.

or had <someone> been on netdev.

> this is a single kernel project that is released together as one 
> codebase, so a central place of discussion is obvious and common-sense.

Central doesn't have to mean one-and-only-one-list-for-everything.

> so please stop this "too busy and too noisy" nonsense already. It was 
> nonsense 10 years ago and it's nonsense today. In 10 years the kernel 
> grew from a 1 million lines codebase to an 8 million lines codebase, so 
> what? Deal with it and be intelligent about filtering your information 
> influx instead of imposing a hard pre-filtering criteria that restricts 
> intelligent processing of information.

So you have a preferred method of handling email.  Please don't
force it on the rest of us.

I'll plan to use lkml-list-only when you have convinced DaveM to drop
all of the other mailing lists at vger.kernel.org.  Yeah, sure.

---
~Randy

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[J. Bruce Fields]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 09:38:20AM -0800, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:08:47 +0100 Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > so please stop this "too busy and too noisy" nonsense already. It was 
> > nonsense 10 years ago and it's nonsense today. In 10 years the kernel 
> > grew from a 1 million lines codebase to an 8 million lines codebase, so 
> > what? Deal with it and be intelligent about filtering your information 
> > influx instead of imposing a hard pre-filtering criteria that restricts 
> > intelligent processing of information.
> 
> So you have a preferred method of handling email.  Please don't
> force it on the rest of us.

I'd be curious for any pointers on tools, actually.  I "read" (ok, skim)
lkml but still overlook relevant bug reports occasionally.
(Fortunately, between Trond and Andrew and others forwarding things it's
not actually a problem, but I'm still curious).

--b.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Kok, Auke]

Denys Vlasenko wrote:
> On Wednesday 14 November 2007 00:27, Adrian Bunk wrote:
>> You missed the following in my email:
>> "we slowly scare them away due to the many bug reports without any
>>  reaction."
>>
>> The problem is that bug reports take time. If you go away from easy
>> things like compile errors then even things like describing what does
>> no longer work, ideally producing a scenario where you can reproduce it
>> and verifying whether it was present in previous kernels can easily take
>> many hours that are spent before the initial bug report.
>>
>> If the bug report then gets ignored we discourage the person who sent
>> the bug report to do any work related to the kernel again.
> 
> Cannot agree more. I am in a similar position right now.
> My patch to aic7xxx driver was ubmitted four times
> with not much reaction from scsi guys.
> 
> Finally they replied and asked to rediff it against their
> git tree. I did that and sent patches back. No reply since then.
> 
> And mind you, the patch is not trying to do anything
> complex, it mostly moves code around, removes 'inline',
> adds 'const'. What should I think about it?

this has nothing to do with the bugs on bugzilla.

you're trying to send a janitor patch. It should be logical that the response to
that is not heated or receiving a joyous reception :)

If you have a problem getting your cleanup patch to the driver maintainer, send it
to the subsystem maintainer instead, or even the janitors, or even Adrian Bunk who
will gladly push it to everyone. Or, even to Andrew Morton who will carry it in
-mm for a while and then harrasses the subsystem maintainer to merge it for you!

Cheers,

Auke

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 02:07:06AM -0800, David Miller wrote:
> From: Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk>
> Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 09:55:07 +0000
> 
> > On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 05:55:51PM -0800, David Miller wrote:
> > > I've created linux-arm@vger.kernel.org
> > 
> > By doing so you've just said (implicitly) that you can not tolerate
> > someone having a different opinion from your own.
> 
> I created a mailing list on a machine where I provide such services.
> 
> People can choose to use or not use the new list, it is their choice.
> 
> > While I accept *your* right to run *your* lists how you please, you
> > are unable to accept *my* right to run *my* lists how I see fit.
> 
> I didn't tell you to take your list down or to run it in some other
> way.  I didn't tell you to unsubscribe everyone and move them over
> to the new list either.

I didn't say that you were.

> I've provided an alternative, and people can pick and choose how they
> see fit.  I'm letting natural selection run it's course.  Are you
> able to cope with the fact that people might not want to use your
> list any longer?  Perhaps that is what bugs you so much about my
> giving people a alternative choice.

Absolutely, and if you'd have read my message you'd have seen that
I'd said effectively the same thing that you're saying here.

Having been flamed for not reading emails properly by AKPM shall
I flame you for not reading my emails properly?  Oh no, it's merely
human to occasionally have such misunderstandings.  Unless you're
rmk.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Russell King]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 01:24:48PM +0000, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> > > Suspend to RAM resume hangs on a tickless (NO_HZ) kernel
> > > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9275
> > > Kernel: 2.6.23
> > > This is HP notebook nc6320 T2400 945GM
> > 
> > No response from developers
> 
> Maybe I'm optimistic, but I expected Ingo/Thomas to look after nohz
> problems. nohz=off highres=off fixes more than one suspend problem...
> 
> ...stuff I've seen with NOHZ even without suspend (cursor blinking
> irregulary) make me think that nohz perhaps should not be used in
> production just yet...

It appears that bug 9229 has been solved, and the reporter of that
bug now says that:

  If I unset NO_TZ suspend/resume works.
  If I set it suspend/resume doesn't works.

So I think this guy is now suffering from bug #9275

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[David Miller]

From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:08:47 +0100

> In fact this thread is the very example: David points out that on netdev 
> some of those bugs were already discussed and resolved. Had it been all 
> on lkml we'd all be aware of it.

That's a rediculious argument.

One other reason these bugs are resolved, is that the networking
developers only need to subscribe to netdev and not have to listen to
all the noise on lkml.

People who want to manage bugs know what list to look on and
contact about problems.

Dumping even more crap on lkml is not the answer.

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[James Bottomley]

On Wed, 2007-11-14 at 11:56 -0800, David Miller wrote:
> From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
> Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:08:47 +0100
> 
> > In fact this thread is the very example: David points out that on netdev 
> > some of those bugs were already discussed and resolved. Had it been all 
> > on lkml we'd all be aware of it.
> 
> That's a rediculious argument.
> 
> One other reason these bugs are resolved, is that the networking
> developers only need to subscribe to netdev and not have to listen to
> all the noise on lkml.
> 
> People who want to manage bugs know what list to look on and
> contact about problems.
> 
> Dumping even more crap on lkml is not the answer.

I agree totally with David, and this goes for SCSI too.  If it's not
reported on linux-scsi, there's a significant chance of us missing the
bug report.  The fact that some people notice bugs go past on LKML and
forward them to linux-scsi is a happy accident and not necessarily
something to rely on.

LKML has 10-20x the traffic of linux-scsi and a much smaller signal to
noise ratio.  Having a specialist list where all the experts in the
field hangs out actually enhances our ability to fix bugs.

James
 

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Ingo Molnar]

* Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:08:47 +0100 Ingo Molnar wrote:
> 
> > 
> > * Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > > (and this is in no way directed at the networking folks - it holds 
> > > > for all of us. I have one main complaint about networking: the 
> > > > separate netdev list is a bad idea - networking regressions should 
> > > > be discussed and fixed on lkml, like most other subsystems are. Any 
> > > > artificial split of the lk discussion space is bad.)
> > > 
> > > but here I disagree.  LKML is already too busy and noisy. Major 
> > > subsystems need their own discussion areas.
> > 
> > That's a stupid argument. We lose much more by forced isolation of 
> > discussion than what we win by having less traffic! It's _MUCH_ 
                                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > easier to narrow down information (by filter by threads, by topics, 
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > by people, etc.) than it is to gobble information together from 
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > various fractured sources. We learned it _again and again_ that 
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > isolation of kernel discussions causes bad things.
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > 
> > In fact this thread is the very example: David points out that on 
> > netdev some of those bugs were already discussed and resolved. Had 
> > it been all on lkml we'd all be aware of it.
> 
> or had <someone> been on netdev.

countered by the underlined sentences above, just in case you missed it.

	Ingo

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Randy Dunlap]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:16:39 +0100 Ingo Molnar wrote:


> countered by the underlined sentences above, just in case you missed it.

I didn't miss your claim.


---
~Randy

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Ingo Molnar]

* Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> wrote:

> > so please stop this "too busy and too noisy" nonsense already. It 
> > was nonsense 10 years ago and it's nonsense today. In 10 years the 
> > kernel grew from a 1 million lines codebase to an 8 million lines 
> > codebase, so what? Deal with it and be intelligent about filtering 
> > your information influx instead of imposing a hard pre-filtering 
> > criteria that restricts intelligent processing of information.
> 
> So you have a preferred method of handling email.  Please don't force 
> it on the rest of us.

actually, posting to lkml is the preferred method of handling 
development for like 70% of all Linux kernel activities. It is _YOU_ who 
is the sore thumb sticking out, it is you who is forcing people to Cc: 
around various stupid fractured lists for no good reason. You dont have 
to read all of lkml, just like you dont read all of netdev either.

once someone decides to work on Linux, information should be 
fundamentally opt-out, not opt-in. And there should be a central place 
for people to go to. The "Subject:" line is enough of a filter key - in 
fact it's _far superior_ to the forced separation of topics that you 
advocate! Fact is, many regressions happen because they were posted to 
the wrong list and got ignored or under-handled. I claim that we'd have 
a much higher quality kernel if we had a single central mailing list 
instead of these elitist fractured lists. Every kernel topic would have 
global visibility, and it would be trivially easy to get the interest of 
other people, across subsystems.

damn, THINK ABOUT IT instead of just ignorantly dismissing my points 
without even answering them... Often when someone writes to the wrong 
list and he is told "wrong list", he'd have to repost to the "right 
list". Lots of extra bounces for the tester for _NO GOOD REASON_. All 
just because a few developers are too lazy to filter the lkml subjects 
for their main topic of interest.

I claim that we have far larger lack of testing resources than we have a 
lack of development resources. So we might as well set up our mailing 
lists to favor information sharing, instead of imposing this insane 
separation of lists that some subsystems still insist on. We can 
evidently throttle development activities by forcing _every subsystem_ 
to lkml and exposing them to the harsh combined realities of all the 
crap that we are are writing. Life might look nice and easy on an 
isolated list, and it's sure convenient not being exposed to ... users. 

THAT is our main problem, not your bogus "lkml has too much traffic" 
argument.

	Ingo

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Ingo Molnar]

* Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:16:39 +0100 Ingo Molnar wrote:
> 
> > countered by the underlined sentences above, just in case you missed 
> > it.
> 
> I didn't miss your claim.

ok, then you conceded it by not replying to it? good ;-)

	Ingo

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Ingo Molnar]

* David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:

> From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
> Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:08:47 +0100
> 
> > In fact this thread is the very example: David points out that on netdev 
> > some of those bugs were already discussed and resolved. Had it been all 
> > on lkml we'd all be aware of it.
> 
> That's a rediculious argument.
> 
> One other reason these bugs are resolved, is that the networking 
> developers only need to subscribe to netdev and not have to listen to 
> all the noise on lkml.

what noise? If someone really wants networking discussions only, use 
this procmail rule:

  :0 HBc
          * .*net: *
          sched-patches

to separate it into an extra folder and use "net: " as an agreed upon 
Subject line if you really want to narrow things down. (But there would 
still be all the other mail just in case the developer has to look at 
the wider picture. There would be no "I'm only subscribed to netdev" 
excuse. )

but there should still be one central repository for all kernel 
discussions - just like there is one central repository for all kernel 
code.

> People who want to manage bugs know what list to look on and contact 
> about problems.

i think that's the problem. Developers (and here i dont mean you) who
want to do "development only", without being exposed to the global state
of the kernel and without being exposed to bugs. I think that's the
basic mindset difference. That is one of the factor that is causing
assymetric allocation of developers and the increasing detachment from
reality.

> Dumping even more crap on lkml is not the answer.

that "crap" that i'd like to see dumped upon lkml would be netdev 
traffic mainly - most of the other kernel development lists (and i'm 
subscribed to many of them) are low-traffic. netdev is the main reason 
why we cannot do a "one common discussion forum" approach.

	Ingo

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Ingo Molnar]

* James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 2007-11-14 at 11:56 -0800, David Miller wrote:
> > From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
> > Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:08:47 +0100
> > 
> > > In fact this thread is the very example: David points out that on netdev 
> > > some of those bugs were already discussed and resolved. Had it been all 
> > > on lkml we'd all be aware of it.
> > 
> > That's a rediculious argument.
> > 
> > One other reason these bugs are resolved, is that the networking 
> > developers only need to subscribe to netdev and not have to listen 
> > to all the noise on lkml.
> > 
> > People who want to manage bugs know what list to look on and contact 
> > about problems.
> > 
> > Dumping even more crap on lkml is not the answer.
> 
> I agree totally with David, and this goes for SCSI too.  If it's not 
> reported on linux-scsi, there's a significant chance of us missing the 
> bug report.  The fact that some people notice bugs go past on LKML and 
> forward them to linux-scsi is a happy accident and not necessarily 
> something to rely on.
> 
> LKML has 10-20x the traffic of linux-scsi and a much smaller signal to 
> noise ratio.  Having a specialist list where all the experts in the 
> field hangs out actually enhances our ability to fix bugs.

you are actually proving my point. People have to scan lkml for SCSI 
regressions _anyway_, because otherwise _you_ would miss them. In the 
case a user is fortunate enough to realize that a regression is SCSI 
related, and he is lucky enough to pre-select the SCSI mailing list in 
the first go, he might get a fix from you. That already reduces the 
number of useful bugreports by about an order of magnitude.

	Ingo

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[david]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007, Ingo Molnar wrote:

>> Dumping even more crap on lkml is not the answer.
>
> that "crap" that i'd like to see dumped upon lkml would be netdev
> traffic mainly - most of the other kernel development lists (and i'm
> subscribed to many of them) are low-traffic. netdev is the main reason
> why we cannot do a "one common discussion forum" approach.

hmm, how much work would it be to tweak the mail software on vger to have 
a linux-all@vger.kernel.org that got a copy of any linux-* list hosted by 
vger.

this would solve half the problem (people on linux-kernel not seeing 
discussions on the other lists)

David Lang

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Randy Dunlap]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:37:37 +0100 Ingo Molnar wrote:

> ok, then you conceded it by not replying to it? good ;-)

No, I don't intend to carry on this discussion,
but I appreciate the smiley.

---
~Randy

Re: Moderated list

[David Miller]

From: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:47:39 +0100

> I think alsa-user can stay as is.  It's no place for dragging many
> other addresses like alsa-devel.
> 
> BTW, I also prefer keeping the name alsa-devel@.  It's been so.

That's fine with me, I've changed it alsa-devel@vger.kernel.org

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[Daniel Barkalow]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Theodore Tso wrote:

> There are two parts to this.  One is a Ubuntu development kernel which
> we can give to large numbers of people to expand our testing pool.
> But if we don't do a better job of responding to bug reports that
> would be generated by expanded testing this won't necessarily help us.
> 
> The other an automated set of standard pre-built bisection points so
> that testers can more easily localize a bug down to a few hundred
> commits without needing to learn how to use "git bisect" (think Ubuntu
> users).

I don't see any reason that we couldn't have a tool accessible to Ubuntu 
users that does a real "git bisect". Git is really good at being scripted 
by fancy GUIs. It should be easy enough to have a drop down with all of 
the Ubuntu kernel package releases, where the user selects what works and 
what doesn't. Then the tool clones a git repository with flags to only get 
relevant parts, and then leads a bisect run, where it's also 
configuring, building, and installing the kernels (as a different grub 
entry), and providing instructions in general. Fundamentally, "git bisect" 
is a really low-interaction process: you tell it a couple of commits, and 
then it does stuff, and then you tell it "I tested, and it worked" or "I 
tested, and it had the problem" or "Something else went wrong", and it 
asks you something new. Other than that, it just takes time (and a build 
system hook, which this tool would handle for the kernel). Eventually, it 
tells you what to report, and you do so.

	-Daniel
*This .sig left intentionally blank*

Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs

[J. Bruce Fields]

On Thu, Nov 15, 2007 at 01:50:43PM +1100, Neil Brown wrote:
> Virtual Folders.
> 
> I use VM mode in EMACS, but I believe some other mail readers have the
> same functionality.
> I have a virtual folder called "nfs" which shows me all mail in my
> inbox which has the string 'nfs' or 'lockd' in a To, Cc, or Subject
> field.  When I visit that folder, I see all mail about nfs, whether it
> was sent to me personally, or to a relevant list, or to lkml.

Hm (googling around for "mutt" and "virtual folders"): looks like I can
get most of the way there in mutt with some macros based on its "limit"
command:

	http://www.tummy.com/journals/entries/jafo_20060303_044440

Thanks.--b.

size of git repository (was Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs)

[Pavel Machek]

On Tue 2007-11-13 12:50:08, Mark Lord wrote:
> Ingo Molnar wrote:
> >
> >for example git-bisect was godsent. I remember that 
> >years ago bisection of a bug was a very laborous task 
> >so that it was only used as a final, last-ditch 
> >approach for really nasty bugs. Today we can 
> >autonomouly bisect build bugs via a simple shell 
> >command around "git-bisect run", without any human 
> >interaction! This freed up testing resources 
> ..
> 
> It's only a godsend for the few people who happen to be 
> kernel developers
> and who happen to already use git.
> 
> It's a 540MByte download over a slow link for everyone 
> else.

Hmmm, clean-cg is 7.7G on my machine, and yes I tried
git-prune-packed. What am I doing wrong?
						Pavel
-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html

Re: size of git repository (was Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs)

[Rene Herman]

On 18-11-07 13:44, Pavel Machek wrote:

> On Tue 2007-11-13 12:50:08, Mark Lord wrote:

>> It's a 540MByte download over a slow link for everyone 
>> else.
> 
> Hmmm, clean-cg is 7.7G on my machine, and yes I tried
> git-prune-packed. What am I doing wrong?

clean-cg? But failure to run "git repack -a -d" every once in a while?

Rene.

Re: size of git repository (was Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs)

[James Bottomley]

On Sun, 2007-11-18 at 13:58 +0100, Rene Herman wrote:
> On 18-11-07 13:44, Pavel Machek wrote:
> 
> > On Tue 2007-11-13 12:50:08, Mark Lord wrote:
> 
> >> It's a 540MByte download over a slow link for everyone 
> >> else.
> > 
> > Hmmm, clean-cg is 7.7G on my machine, and yes I tried
> > git-prune-packed. What am I doing wrong?
> 
> clean-cg? But failure to run "git repack -a -d" every once in a while?

Actually, the best command is 

git gc

which does a repack (into a single pack file rather than an incremenal),
and then removes all the objects now in the pack.  If, like me, you work
on temporary branches which you keep rebasing, you can add a --prune to
gc which will erase all unreferenced objects as it packs (use this one
with care.  I usually never use it but run a git prune -n just to see
what would be removed, and then run git prune separately if it looks
OK).

James

Re: size of git repository (was Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs)

[Ingo Molnar]

* Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz> wrote:

> On Tue 2007-11-13 12:50:08, Mark Lord wrote:
> > Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > >
> > >for example git-bisect was godsent. I remember that 
> > >years ago bisection of a bug was a very laborous task 
> > >so that it was only used as a final, last-ditch 
> > >approach for really nasty bugs. Today we can 
> > >autonomouly bisect build bugs via a simple shell 
> > >command around "git-bisect run", without any human 
> > >interaction! This freed up testing resources 
> > ..
> > 
> > It's only a godsend for the few people who happen to be 
> > kernel developers
> > and who happen to already use git.
> > 
> > It's a 540MByte download over a slow link for everyone 
> > else.
> 
> Hmmm, clean-cg is 7.7G on my machine, and yes I tried 
> git-prune-packed. What am I doing wrong?

"git-repack -a -d" gives me ~220 MB:

  $ du -s .git
  222064  .git

anyone who can download a 43 MB tar.bz2 tarball for a kernel release 
should be able to afford a _one time_ download size of 250 MB (the size 
of the current kernel.org git repository). If not, burning a CD or DVD 
and carrying it home ought to do the trick. Git is very 
bandwidth-efficient after that point - lots of people behind narrow 
pipes are using it - it's just the initial clone that takes time. And 
given all the history and metadata that the git repository carries (full 
changelogs, annotations, etc.) it's a no-brainer that kernel developers 
should be using it.

(and you can shrink the 250 MB further down by using shallow clones, 
etc.)

yes, some people complained when distros stopped doing floppy installs. 
Some people complained when distros stopped doing CD installs. Yes, i've 
myself done a 250+ MB download over a 56 kbit modem in the past, and 
while it indeed took overnight to finish, it's very much doable. It's 
not really qualitatively different from the 1.5 hours a kernel tar.bz2 
took to download.

	Ingo

Re: size of git repository (was Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs)

[Rene Herman]

On 18-11-07 15:35, James Bottomley wrote:

>> clean-cg? But failure to run "git repack -a -d" every once in a while?
> 
> Actually, the best command is
> 
> git gc
> 
> which does a repack (into a single pack file rather than an incremenal), 
> and then removes all the objects now in the pack.  If, like me, you work 
> on temporary branches which you keep rebasing, you can add a --prune to 
> gc which will erase all unreferenced objects as it packs (use this one 
> with care.  I usually never use it but run a git prune -n just to see 
> what would be removed, and then run git prune separately if it looks OK).

Thanks for the comment. That managed to indeed shave a few extra bytes off 
my already "repack -a -d" packed repo still.

Rene.

Re: size of git repository (was Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs)

[Willy Tarreau]

On Sun, Nov 18, 2007 at 03:56:11PM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> 
> * Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue 2007-11-13 12:50:08, Mark Lord wrote:
> > > Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > > >
> > > >for example git-bisect was godsent. I remember that 
> > > >years ago bisection of a bug was a very laborous task 
> > > >so that it was only used as a final, last-ditch 
> > > >approach for really nasty bugs. Today we can 
> > > >autonomouly bisect build bugs via a simple shell 
> > > >command around "git-bisect run", without any human 
> > > >interaction! This freed up testing resources 
> > > ..
> > > 
> > > It's only a godsend for the few people who happen to be 
> > > kernel developers
> > > and who happen to already use git.
> > > 
> > > It's a 540MByte download over a slow link for everyone 
> > > else.
> > 
> > Hmmm, clean-cg is 7.7G on my machine, and yes I tried 
> > git-prune-packed. What am I doing wrong?
> 
> "git-repack -a -d" gives me ~220 MB:
> 
>   $ du -s .git
>   222064  .git
> 
> anyone who can download a 43 MB tar.bz2 tarball for a kernel release 
> should be able to afford a _one time_ download size of 250 MB (the size 
> of the current kernel.org git repository). If not, burning a CD or DVD 
> and carrying it home ought to do the trick. Git is very 
> bandwidth-efficient after that point - lots of people behind narrow 
> pipes are using it - it's just the initial clone that takes time. And 
> given all the history and metadata that the git repository carries (full 
> changelogs, annotations, etc.) it's a no-brainer that kernel developers 
> should be using it.
> 
> (and you can shrink the 250 MB further down by using shallow clones, 
> etc.)
> 
> yes, some people complained when distros stopped doing floppy installs. 
> Some people complained when distros stopped doing CD installs. Yes, i've 
> myself done a 250+ MB download over a 56 kbit modem in the past, and 
> while it indeed took overnight to finish, it's very much doable. It's 
> not really qualitatively different from the 1.5 hours a kernel tar.bz2 
> took to download.

Probably that once in a while, we should set up a complete tree in a
tar.bz2 format on kernel.org. It would help a lot of people behind small
pipes. I have been encountering problems with git-clone when the link is
unstable. After the smallest error, it erases everything and you have to
retry from start, which is quite frustrating and expensive.

At least, downloading a tar.bz2 with FTP would be easier and a lot more
reliable. Also, people could download it from their workplace and bring
it home.

Willy