question regarding the -stable patch queue ?

question regarding the -stable patch queue ?

[Abhijit Karmarkar]

hi,

i am trying to find if a particular upstream commit [1] will appear in
the next -stable release of 2.6.28 kernel.

i see this commit being marked as "-stable candidate". does that mean
it will automatically make it to the next stable release? or should i
submit a patch against the latest 2.6.28 stable series, to have this
patch queued up for next stable release (2.6.28.10). can someone
please advice?

what is the recommend way to do this search ("will upstream patch X be
included in the next stable release")? so i don't bug this list in
future with similar queries.

finally, talking of this particular commit, we have quite a few
machines with such BIOSes and it will be really nice to have this
included in the next stable (2.6.28.10) release. Without this patch,
machines panic in early boot.

thanks!
abhijit


[1] the commit i am specifically interested in is:
===
[upstream commit: 01522df346f846906eaf6ca57148641476209909]

x86, setup: mark %esi as clobbered in E820 BIOS call

Jordan Hargrave diagnosed a BIOS clobbering %esi in the E820 call.
That particular BIOS has been fixed, but there is a possibility that
this is responsible for other occasional reports of early boot
failure, and it does not hurt to add %esi to the clobbers.

-stable candidate patch.

Cc: Justin Forbes <jmforbes@linuxtx.org>
Signed-off-by: Michael K Johnson <johnsonm@rpath.com>
Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: stable@kernel.org
---

diff --git a/arch/x86/boot/memory.c b/arch/x86/boot/memory.c
index 8c3c25f..a99dbbe 100644
--- a/arch/x86/boot/memory.c
+++ b/arch/x86/boot/memory.c
@@ -27,13 +27,14 @@ static int detect_memory_e820(void)
 	do {
 		size = sizeof(struct e820entry);

-		/* Important: %edx is clobbered by some BIOSes,
-		   so it must be either used for the error output
+		/* Important: %edx and %esi are clobbered by some BIOSes,
+		   so they must be either used for the error output
 		   or explicitly marked clobbered. */
 		asm("int $0x15; setc %0"
 		    : "=d" (err), "+b" (next), "=a" (id), "+c" (size),
 		      "=m" (*desc)
-		    : "D" (desc), "d" (SMAP), "a" (0xe820));
+		    : "D" (desc), "d" (SMAP), "a" (0xe820)
+		    : "esi");

 		/* BIOSes which terminate the chain with CF = 1 as opposed
 		   to %ebx = 0 don't always report the SMAP signature on

Re: [stable] question regarding the -stable patch queue ?

[Greg KH]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 06:26:53PM -0700, Abhijit Karmarkar wrote:
> hi,
> 
> i am trying to find if a particular upstream commit [1] will appear in
> the next -stable release of 2.6.28 kernel.

Yes it will.

> i see this commit being marked as "-stable candidate". does that mean
> it will automatically make it to the next stable release?

Yes.

> or should i submit a patch against the latest 2.6.28 stable series, to
> have this patch queued up for next stable release (2.6.28.10). can
> someone please advice?

If you know that the commit that went into Linus's tree will not apply
to the 2.6.28-stable tree, please send an updated version to the
stable@kernel.org address.

> what is the recommend way to do this search ("will upstream patch X be
> included in the next stable release")? so i don't bug this list in
> future with similar queries.

Just ask stable@kernel.org about it.  We've been a bit behind on
flushing out the -stable queue (right now my todo-stable mbox contains
399 emails I need to wade through), due to vacations and conferences.
I'm slowly getting there, sorry for the delay.

thanks for your patience,

greg k-h

Re: [stable] question regarding the -stable patch queue ?

[Abhijit Karmarkar]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 8:27 PM, Greg KH <greg@kroah.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 06:26:53PM -0700, Abhijit Karmarkar wrote:
>> hi,
>>
>> i am trying to find if a particular upstream commit [1] will appear in
>> the next -stable release of 2.6.28 kernel.
>
> Yes it will.

nice.

>
>> i see this commit being marked as "-stable candidate". does that mean
>> it will automatically make it to the next stable release?
>
> Yes.
>

good to know that.

>> or should i submit a patch against the latest 2.6.28 stable series, to
>> have this patch queued up for next stable release (2.6.28.10). can
>> someone please advice?
>
> If you know that the commit that went into Linus's tree will not apply
> to the 2.6.28-stable tree, please send an updated version to the
> stable@kernel.org address.
>

this particular upstream commit
(01522df346f846906eaf6ca57148641476209909) applies cleanly to
2.6.28-stable and fixes the panic.

>> what is the recommend way to do this search ("will upstream patch X be
>> included in the next stable release")? so i don't bug this list in
>> future with similar queries.
>
> Just ask stable@kernel.org about it.  We've been a bit behind on
> flushing out the -stable queue (right now my todo-stable mbox contains
> 399 emails I need to wade through), due to vacations and conferences.
> I'm slowly getting there, sorry for the delay.
>

no worries. thanks for maintaining the -stable series :-) looking
forward to 28.10

thanks
abhijit


> thanks for your patience,
>
> greg k-h
>