5.18 Merge window, part 2

Posted Apr 11, 2022 18:58 UTC (Mon) by johannbg (guest, #65743)
In reply to: 5.18 Merge window, part 2 by flussence
Parent article: 5.18 Merge window, part 2

Well I would think that if an deprecation period truly is necessary it should never be longer than a single upstream longterm maintenance kernel release cycle meanwhile stable could immediately drop it. It should be safe to assume that anyone that is stuck on anything in the kernel is running an enterprise distro with paid support and that paid support arguably should be dealing with issues just like this and if demands are for it continue support it downstream, if not what else are those enterprise distro's good for?

5.18 Merge window, part 2

Posted Apr 12, 2022 16:35 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (9 responses)

> meanwhile stable could immediately drop it.

What a brilliant idea. Now anyone updating to new stable kernels has to consider the possibility that their filesystems suddenly don't work any more and all their data is inaccessible! What could possibly go wrong?

(Seriously, you appear to be operating under the assumption that user data in old filesystems is utterly unimportant and can just be cavalierly deleted. The opposite is true: it's probably both crucial, very hard to move, and largely disregarded, so a long deprecation period with loud warnings is essential.)

5.18 Merge window, part 2

Posted Apr 12, 2022 19:14 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (8 responses)

No I'm operating under the assumption that no downstream users is still using Reiserfs which it's development ceased years ago and if they are they must be on an distribution which has a long term support ( either paid or free ) or are using long term supported kernel which gives them enough time to make the necessary preparement for this change thus are unaffected by this change and the kernel community can immediately drop it as opposed to the kernel community giving mixed signals by continuing to ship it just like they have been doing for years while it's development had ceased.

5.18 Merge window, part 2

Posted Apr 13, 2022 18:32 UTC (Wed) by dullfire (guest, #111432) [Link] (2 responses)

> which it's development ceased years ago

Yeah, nobody uses fat32 either.

5.18 Merge window, part 2

Posted Apr 18, 2022 21:53 UTC (Mon) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (1 responses)

Tangentially related to this whole thread: I recently discovered they've been removing NFSv2 support from the kernel and userspace.

Said discovery came as an unpleasant surprise whereby my NAS (running only NFSv4 for years) failed to reboot properly and broke half my network, because suddenly "--no-nfs-version 2" on rpc.nfsd had gone from working to being a fatal syntax error. Adding to the fun, it's still present and necessary on other tools...

5.18 Merge window, part 2

Posted Apr 19, 2022 13:20 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Ditto. libnfs 4 and 5 also broke, for reasons I don't entirely understand given that it was using NFSv3 all along. (It ends up dereferencing null pointers and crashing. I switched to ordinary server-side client mounts. The problem went away in 5.16.19, it seems.)

5.18 Merge window, part 2

Posted Apr 14, 2022 8:27 UTC (Thu) by dtardon (subscriber, #53317) [Link] (4 responses)

> No I'm operating under the assumption that no downstream users is still using Reiserfs which it's development ceased years ago

IOW, your assumption is based on the assumption that users have good knowledge of filesystems and would actively move away from old ones. I can assure you that far from the reality.

> and if they are they must be on an distribution which has a long term support ( either paid or free ) or are using long term supported kernel

And what is the basis of this assertion, if I may ask?

5.18 Merge window, part 2

Posted Apr 14, 2022 9:10 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (3 responses)

> I can assure you that far from the reality.

I'm ready to be assured so assure me.

> And what is the basis of this assertion, if I may ask?

The reality you yourself are claiming that I'm so affar from...

5.18 Merge window, part 2

Posted Apr 19, 2022 13:21 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

So... let me get this clear. Because *you* are not using reiserfs, or are using it only on LTS-supported kernels, therefore *everyone* must be? No other possibility exists?

5.18 Merge window, part 2

Posted Apr 19, 2022 18:51 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (1 responses)

I dont see how you reached that conclusion

5.18 Merge window, part 2

Posted Apr 20, 2022 20:47 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I'm assuming that your assumptions stated above are derived from your own experience. The alternative (that they're just guesses) is even worse...