From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from wtarreau.pck.nerim.net ([62.212.114.60]:36047 "EHLO 1wt.eu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756615AbdKOEcH (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Nov 2017 23:32:07 -0500 Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 05:32:02 +0100 From: Willy Tarreau To: Sebastian Gottschall Cc: Harsh Shandilya , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, stable@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Linux 3.10.108 (EOL) Message-ID: <20171115043202.GA4315@1wt.eu> References: <20171104230639.GA25503@1wt.eu> <20171105074659.GA26639@1wt.eu> <29db159f-7cb3-1a4f-28a2-73830f8afc22@dd-wrt.com> <20171114221844.GA3929@1wt.eu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: stable-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 11:40:31PM +0100, Sebastian Gottschall wrote: > > And anyway the end of life has been indicated on kernel.org for 18 months > > and in every announce in 2017, so it cannot be a surprize anymore :-) At > > least nobody seemed to complain for all this time! > > itsn no surprise for sure, but that also means i have to stay on the old > kernel for these special devices and your argument about disable certain > parts which simply turned bigger over time is no option > > since it would remove features which existed before. its not that i enable > all features of the kernel. i use every kernel with the same options (some > are adjusted since they are renamed or moved) Then I have a few questions : - how did you choose this kernel ? Or did you choose the hardware based on the kernel size ? - what would have you done if 3.10 had not been LTS ? - have you at least tried other kernels before claiming they are much larger ? Following your principle, 3.2 should be smaller and 3.16 not much larger. The former offers you about 6 extra months of maintenance, the latter 3.5 years (https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html). > but even then the kernel is turning into a ram and space eating monster if i > look on devices with 16 mb ram and 4 mb flash. this is mainly for > maintaining older hardware with latest updates. So why didn't you ask if it was possible to pursue the maintenance a bit a long time ago ? LTS maintenance is a collective effort and is done based on usage. If enough people have good reasons for going further it can be enough a justification to push the deadline. Now it's too late. > the more recent hardware is getting better here > > you dont seem to know how it is to work on wireless routers :-) Yes I do, I've been distributing a full blown load balancer distro on a 10 MB image (running on 3.10 as well). But I also know that sometimes you make some nice space savings on new kernels (xz/zstd compression, ability to remove certain useless stuff in these environments such as FS ACLs or mandatory locks, etc). Sure, upgrading to a new kernel on existing hardware is always a challenge. But it's also an interesting one. Also just to give you an idea, I've just compared the size of these kernels configured with "make allnoconfig" (and I verified that all of them were compressed using gzip) : 3.10.108 : 875 kB 4.4.97 : 522 kB 4.9.61 : 561 kB 4.14 : 566 kB So the argument that migrating away from 3.10 is hard due to the size doesn't stand much here :-) Willy