Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

[Posted May 14, 2013 by corbet]

From:		Kamal Mostafa <kamal-AT-canonical.com>
To:		stable-AT-vger.kernel.org, kernel-team-AT-lists.ubuntu.com
Subject:		[ANNOUNCE] Linux 3.8.y.z extended stable support
Date:		Tue, 14 May 2013 09:18:59 -0700
Message-ID:		<1368548339.22392.115.camel@fourier>
Cc:		linux-kernel-AT-vger.kernel.org, gregkh-AT-linuxfoundation.org
Archive-link:		Article, Thread

Since Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring" uses the 3.8 kernel, the Ubuntu kernel team
will pick up stable maintenance where Greg KH left off[0] with 3.8.13
(thanks, Greg!)...


The Ubuntu kernel team is pleased to announce that we will be providing
extended stable support for the Linux 3.8 kernel until August 2014 as a
third party effort maintained on our infrastructure.

Our linux-3.8.y{-queue,-review} stable branches will fork from 3.8.13
and will be published here:

    git://kernel.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/linux.git

We will use the same stable request/review workflow and follow the
standard upstream stable kernel rules.  More details are available at
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable

We welcome any feedback and contribution to this effort.  We will be
posting the first review cycle patch set in a week or two.

 -Kamal Mostafa
  Ubuntu Kernel Team, Canonical Ltd.


[0] http://www.spinics.net/lists/stable/msg08735.html

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Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 14, 2013 20:06 UTC (Tue) by post-factum (subscriber, #53836) [Link]

Isn't that useless efforts spreading? What did they think about when chose 3.8?

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 14, 2013 20:54 UTC (Tue) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link]

See the first sentence of the announcement: "Since Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring" uses the 3.8 kernel..." - it's in their Long-Term Support release, so they're providing Long-Term Support for it...

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 14, 2013 21:02 UTC (Tue) by post-factum (subscriber, #53836) [Link]

13.04 is not LTS.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 14, 2013 21:04 UTC (Tue) by tcourbon (guest, #60669) [Link]

It's not a long tern supported release. Raring is a standard release and is supported for about a year. LTS are supported several years, 3 for desktop if my memory serves me well but it may have changed.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 14, 2013 23:20 UTC (Tue) by davidm (guest, #35) [Link]

Ubuntu LTS now gets 5 years support on both Desktop and Server.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 14, 2013 21:09 UTC (Tue) by smadu2 (guest, #54943) [Link]

What kernel version do you suggest ?
See the current long term kernel versions (https://www.kernel.org/) 13.04 released last month.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 14, 2013 21:13 UTC (Tue) by post-factum (subscriber, #53836) [Link]

3.9, of course. And there's no need to have LTS kernel in non-LTS distro release.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 15, 2013 0:34 UTC (Wed) by engla (subscriber, #47454) [Link]

It's not going to be an LTS kernel, that's not what it says. See the Ubuntu documentation.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 15, 2013 1:00 UTC (Wed) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link]

3.9 released far too late to be reasonable to QA for raring. As a user, I'm happy that they're not being stupidly aggressive with switching kernels right before release -- or worse, switching kernels post-release.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 15, 2013 8:11 UTC (Wed) by callegar (guest, #16148) [Link]

Following QA, they should have stayed with 3.7. Both 3.8 and 3.9 have regressions that are critical to roaming users. And I guess that ubuntu has a large quota of its users on laptops.

- In some configurations 3.8 causes systems where the ethernet cable is disconnected and then reconnected, or that sleep while connected, to loose the possibility to use the ethernet card (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1112652) - fixed in 3.8.x stable series and in 3.9 but not in the ubuntu kernel. This is preventing lots of people from upgrading to raring.

- In some configurations 3.8 and 3.9 cause a systematic kernel panic when one uses his/her mobile phone to connect a laptop to the internet via DUN (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1165433). Panic on disconnection. Notified upstream in March.

None of this issues affects 3.7.x

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 16, 2013 8:23 UTC (Thu) by tjaalton (subscriber, #54012) [Link]

if it's fixed in 3.8.x then the fix is already available in raring-proposed, since stable point-releases get merged and SRU'd

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted Sep 9, 2013 12:51 UTC (Mon) by plugwash (subscriber, #29694) [Link]

"3.9, of course."
Wouldn't really solve the problem, it might have bought them a couple of months of upstream security support but not much beyond that. Plus it wasn't actually released until four days after ubuntu raring so choosing it would have meant shipping a rc version of the kernel in the release.

"And there's no need to have LTS kernel in non-LTS distro release."
There is a need to have a kernel that is supported with security updates from when the descision on which kernel version to use is made until the distro release ends support.

For a regular (non-lts) ubuntu release under ubuntu's current support policy that time is of the order of 15 months (assuming they pick the kernel to use for a release halfway through the release's development cycle).

15 months is a lot longer than the support lifetime of a typical linux kernel so they either need to pick a long term supported version of the linux kernel (which would mean using a much older codebase) or do their own security updates work.

I admire the fact that they have chosen to keep their security work and distro packaging work seperate so that others can also benefit from it.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted Sep 9, 2013 12:52 UTC (Mon) by plugwash (subscriber, #29694) [Link]

My mistake it's of the order of 12 months. Still much longer than the lifetime of a typical stable kernel release.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 14, 2013 22:58 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

There really isn't much to see here. Ubuntu has a simple choice. They either rev the kernel as an SRU to their 13.04 release or they commit to supporting the existing kernel for the stated release lifetime for their non-lts 13.04 release. That's it, that's the options.

Making the choice they made here is the more conservative choice of the options available to them and is inline with their historic policy on trying really hard not to introduce large changes into the core system as part of the SRU process.

It's a noteworthy announcement for users of 13.04, but I'm really not sure there's much here worth discussion here.

-jef

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 15, 2013 4:46 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Exactly. The only noteworthy thing is it isn't an ubuntu-only effort, they are sharing with others and taking Greg KH's last release as a starting point.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 15, 2013 8:44 UTC (Wed) by nhippi (guest, #34640) [Link]

It is IIRC the first time canonical is taking a leadership in maintaining a kernel upstream, so it is noteworthy.

Now Canonical, how about assigning some engineers to work on Xorg/Mesa/DRM/graphics drivers instead of betting your luck that binary-only drivers will be "good enough" ?

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 15, 2013 10:50 UTC (Wed) by Otus (subscriber, #67685) [Link]

> It is IIRC the first time canonical is taking a leadership in maintaining a kernel upstream, so it is noteworthy.

According to the link in the email, they've been maintaining a 3.5 kernel since last November. According to their git they are currently at 3.5.7.12, which presumably means 12 stable releases after the last kernel.org stable release.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 15, 2013 5:27 UTC (Wed) by pjm (guest, #2080) [Link]

Furthermore, even if they go with 3.9, they'll still face the same choices in a couple of months' time when 3.9 can be expected to come to its end-of-life.

The only other reasonable-looking option they have when developing a distribution release would be to choose a kernel with longer upstream support. In the case of Ubuntu 13.04, the matching options were Linux 3.4 (projected EOL Oct 2014) and 3.2 (projected EOL 2016).

Why the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 15, 2013 13:20 UTC (Wed) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link]

About Raring and Jelly Bean re-spin I guess... Ubuntu Phone will need to run on an Android kernel to use 3D.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 14, 2013 21:01 UTC (Tue) by prometheanfire (subscriber, #65683) [Link]

Isn't redhat going with 3.9 (going by their bugs)?

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 15, 2013 7:19 UTC (Wed) by Felix.Braun (guest, #3032) [Link]

I hope that Ubuntu's releases will be listed on kernel.org. Although that does not seem likely as their git tree is hosted on Ubuntu infrastructure. I'll be using 3.8 for some time still as current OpenWRT is based on that kernel.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 16, 2013 8:05 UTC (Thu) by arekm (subscriber, #4846) [Link]

Unlikely. Ubuntu doesn't provide (downloadable) patches, tarballs , just theirs own git repo.

In theory you could fetch complete patche from their git repo directly but at least once they messed up and such patch did not apply cleanly to fresh "base" kernel.

Extended stable support for the 3.8 kernel

Posted May 16, 2013 11:10 UTC (Thu) by ssam (guest, #46587) [Link]

Makes sense. Ubuntu have always stuck with a single kernel for a whole release (fedora might be the only comparable distro to always switch to new kernels with in the release).

Hopefully these will be accepted as official 3.8.14 etc kernels. As far as I understand it does not have to be Greg KH who maintains the longterm kernels, 3.2.x is maintained by Ben Hutchings. Hopefull Canonical can do something that the kernel community will be happy with (or hopefully the kernel community will be appreciative of their work).