Re: [PATCH stable v4.15 1/3] media: staging: lirc_zilog: broken reference counting

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@s-opensource.com>]

Em Mon, 23 Apr 2018 10:04:20 +0100
Sean Young <sean@mess.org> escreveu:

> On Sun, Apr 22, 2018 at 11:47:51AM +0200, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 10:15:28AM +0100, Sean Young wrote:  
> > > On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 10:50:15AM +0200, Greg KH wrote:  
> > > > On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 09:43:45AM +0100, Sean Young wrote:  
> > > > > On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 09:52:28AM +0200, Greg KH wrote:  
> > > > > > What is the git commit id of this patch, and the other patches in this
> > > > > > series and the 4.14 patch series that you sent out?  
> > > > > 
> > > > > lirc_zilog was dropped in v4.16, so this can't be patched upstream.  
> > > > 
> > > > Ah you are right, should we just ditch them here as well as they
> > > > obviously do not work? :)
> > > >   
> > > > > > Please read:
> > > > > >     https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/stable-kernel-rules.html
> > > > > > for how to do this in a way that I can pick them up.  
> > > > > 
> > > > > These patches have been tested with different types of hardware. Is there
> > > > > anything else I can do to get these patches included?  
> > > > 
> > > > When submitting patches to stable, you need to be explicit as to why
> > > > they are needed, and if they are not upstream, why not.
> > > > 
> > > > In this case, for obviously broken code that is not used anymore (as
> > > > it is gone in 4.16), why don't we just take the patch that removed the
> > > > driver to the stable trees as well?  
> > > 
> > > Well in v4.16 the ir-kbd-i2c.c driver can do what the lirc_zilog does in
> > > v4.15 (and earlier), so it wasn't ditched as such. It's a case of replaced
> > > by mainline.
> > > 
> > > Since I was getting bug reports on it, there must be users of the lirc_zilog
> > > driver.
> > > 
> > > That being said, the old lirc_dev and lirc_zilog is pretty awful code.  
> > 
> > Ok, I've queued these up for 4.14.y now.  4.15 is end-of-life, so I
> > can't apply these patches there, sorry.  
> 
> Ok, thanks.
> 
> I wonder why Ubuntu picked 4.15 as the kernel for their upcoming 18.04 LTS
> release.

I've no idea. Maybe it might be due to spectre/meltdown? Anyway, they'll
need to maintain it for a long time. So, I won't be surprised if they
decide to take over LTS maintainership upstream. In the mean time, if the
bug is seriously enough, you may consider sending them fixup patches
directly, although I guess that they use a bugzilla instead for patches
to the distro, with makes harder/painful to send them fixups.

The Ubuntu FAQ (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/FAQ) points to an IRC
freenode channel (#ubuntu-kernel). Perhaps you could ping them there
and ask them about that.


Thanks,
Mauro