Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released [LWN.net]

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

Posted May 12, 2008 3:49 UTC (Mon) by gregkh (subscriber, #8)
In reply to: Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released by pr1268
Parent article: Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

> I've heard mixed feelings about the reliability of 2.6.25[.x].

And what are those feelings you have heard?  Do you have any bugs you have reported for this
kernel series?

Personally, I think it is one of the most used kernel versions in a very long time as both
Fedora and OpenSuSE have based their latest releases on it.  Don't you think that the hundreds
of thousands of users using those releases already would be a good enough reason to feel good?

And becides 2.6.24 isn't supported anymore by anyone that I know of, so if you feel that the
security problems posted are not relevant for you (which might be totally the case), feel free
to stay, but note that no developers are there to help you out if you have problems :(

(Log in to post comments)

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

Posted May 12, 2008 6:11 UTC (Mon) by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470) [Link]

>>> And becides 2.6.24 isn't supported anymore by anyone that I know of

2.6.24 is the kernel of the last Ubuntu version 8.04 (Long Term Support) and it will be supported three years (desktop version) or five years (server version).

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

Posted May 12, 2008 6:14 UTC (Mon) by interalia (subscriber, #26615) [Link]

I think 2.6.24 is the kernel in current Debian testing, so that version willll be in the next
release ("lenny") unless they move to 2.6.25 soon.

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

Posted May 12, 2008 8:39 UTC (Mon) by tbm (subscriber, #7049) [Link]

2.6.25 is in Debian unstable already.

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

Posted May 12, 2008 15:16 UTC (Mon) by gregkh (subscriber, #8) [Link]

>2.6.24 is the kernel of the last Ubuntu version 8.04 (Long Term Support)
> and it will be supported three years (desktop version) or five years
>(server version).

That's great if you are a Ubunutu customer, but that is not going to help you out if you are a
kernel.org 2.6.24 user as the Ubuntu developers do not contribute their fixes/changes
upstream, and their 2.6.24 kernel is very heavily modified from what the kernel.org version
looks like.

kernel.org kernels on Debian

Posted May 12, 2008 17:12 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

It's pretty easy to keep up to date with 2.6.x.y on Debian.

sudo apt-get install ketchup make-kpkg

Keep an unpacked copy of a recent version in your home directory, then:

cd linux-*
ketchup -r
make oldconfig
make-kpkg --rootcmd fakeroot clean
make-kpkg --rootcmd fakeroot kernel_image 
cd ..

and sudo dpkg -i to install the new kernel package.

Haven't tried this on Ubuntu.

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

Posted May 12, 2008 17:55 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

It's less than a month old, which makes me less confidant in it than I'd like. Gentoo, at
least, likes to leave a kernel marked as "testing" for 3 weeks to collect bug reports before
deciding what needs to be followed up on before marking it "stable". In general, this has more
to do with getting other packages updated for changes (e.g., /sys/block/* being symlinks) than
kernel bugs. Of course, these aren't something to complain to kernel developers about, but
neither can they be ignored when choosing a kernel version. For example, old versions of
x11-drm use flush_agp_mappings, which has been removed in 2.6.25, while newer versions of
x11-drm don't work for some people. So, if you happen to have particular hardware and
particular external module versions for it, you have to wait for stuff to happen that's
outside of the kernel process before you can switch to 2.6.25.

Regardless of the internal quality of a kernel release, there's the question of whether it
will trigger bugs in other packages. FWIW, Gentoo just released a 2.6.24-based kernel last
night, backporting at least one of the security fixes from 2.6.25.3.

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

Posted May 12, 2008 20:30 UTC (Mon) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

And what are those feelings you have heard? Do you have any bugs you have reported for this kernel series?

Here's someone else's comment about having read more than the usual number of bug reports for 2.6.25 on LKML. Also, According to the Kernel Newbies 2.6.25 Page, there seem to be lots of new additions and major revisions, to which I'm a little nervous about upgrading right at the moment without waiting a few weeks or so.

I still don't feel that my question was answered by anyone above. Regardless, I've downloaded 2.6.25.3, and I'll give it a try on my desktop system shortly (after compiling and installing it). If I have trouble with it, then I'll report issues to the LKML.

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

Posted May 12, 2008 21:30 UTC (Mon) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]

2.6.24 just felt uncomfortable with all those changes that gone into libataand as such, the
reports that come trickling in on lkml.
There were some 100 more patches (287) between 2.6.232.6.24 than 2.6.222.6.23 (138)
2.6.242.6.25 (189).