Re: My thoughts on the "new development model"

Ed Tomlinson
2004-10-26T10:45:11Z

On Tuesday 26 October 2004 01:40, Chuck Ebbert wrote:
> Bill Davidsen wrote:
>
> > I don't see the need for a development kernel, and it is desirable to be
> > able to run kernel.org kernels.
>
> Problem is, kernel.org 'release' kernels are quite buggy. For example 2.6.9
> has a long list of bugs:
>
> - superio parports don't work
> - TCP networking using TSO gives memory allocation failures
> - s390 has a serious security bug (sacf)
> - ppp hangup is broken with some peers
> - exec leaks POSIX timer memory and loses signals
> - auditing can deadlock
> - O_DIRECT and mmap IO can't be used together
> - procfs shows the wrong parent PID in some cases
> - i8042 fails to initialize with some boards using legacy USB
> - kswapd still goes into a frenzy now and then
>
> Sure, the next release will (may?) fix these bugs, but it will definitely
> add a whole set of new ones.

To my mind this just points out the need for a bug fix branch. e.g. a
branch containing just bug/security fixes against the current stable
kernel. It might also be worth keeping the branch active for the n-1
stable kernel too.

Ed

PS. we could call this the Bug/Security or bs kernels.