LWN: Comments on "Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released"

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

jengelh — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:30:01 +0000

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).

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

pr1268 — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:30:58 +0000

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

iabervon — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:55:11 +0000

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.

kernel.org kernels on Debian

dmarti — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:12:01 +0000

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

gregkh — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:16:28 +0000

>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.

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

tbm — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:39:15 +0000

2.6.25 is in Debian unstable already.

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

interalia — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:14:29 +0000

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

patrick_g — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:11:19 +0000

>>> 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

gregkh — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:49:29 +0000

> 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 :(

upgrade kernels? continued support.

undefined — Sun, 11 May 2008 09:23:59 +0000

why upgrade from 2.6.24.x to 2.6.25.3? same reason you would upgrade from 2.6.25.2 to
2.6.25.3. same reason enterprises pay for Linux. continued support.

unless someone is backporting security fixes to your current kernel revision, you should
consider doing it yourself or upgrading to 2.6.25.3. or maybe you've done a risk analysis and
determined that an upgrade to a more recent kernel (2.6.24.x -> 2.6.25.3) is "riskier" (higher
probability of disruption/failure) than a security breach with your current version.

i want to personally thank Oliver Pinter for his continued maintenance of 2.6.22 [1]. the
stable version of linux-vserver is currently stuck at 2.6.22 (due to accommodating the new
container code in later kernels), so i'm forced to stick with 2.6.22 for right now, but
Oliver's "op" patchset has made that a supported possibility.

i only stumbled on his patchset because after the stable team dropped support for 2.6.22, i
searched for Willy Tarreau's patchset because he said he was going to rebase against it [2],
and in desperation i Googled for "2.6.22.20" [3], though i had heard nothing about it while
regularly reading lwn and kerneltrap (but it now appears that i haven't been paying enough
attention to the "Kernel Trees" section of the weekly edition). i've been compiling his
releases since 2.6.22.21-op1, but honestly i haven't ran one yet because there hasn't been a
pressing enough need, and now that it includes security fixes, i'm waiting for a good time for
"planned downtime" to reboot into the latest.

so consider upgrading to 2.6.25.3 unless a great individual like Oliver Pinter is supporting
2.6.24 (or whatever your version) with backported fixes (security or otherwise).

[1] http://repo.or.cz/w/linux-2.6.22.y-op-patches.git
[2] http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kernel/2007/11/6/...
[3] http://www.google.com/search?q=2.6.22.20

Stable kernel 2.6.25.3 released

pr1268 — Sun, 11 May 2008 03:41:28 +0000

... anyone running 2.6.24 should also move up to 2.6.25 at this time if possible.

What, exactly, is the motivation for moving up? I've heard mixed feelings about the reliability of 2.6.25[.x]. Thanks!