Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Wed, 10 Dec 2003 07:12:13 +0100 | From | Willy Tarreau <> | Subject | Re: Device-mapper submission for 2.4 |
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On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 02:38:02PM +1100, Lincoln Dale wrote:
> i concur with this. > Marcello: try to migrate from a root-on-LVM1/2.4 to LVM2/2.6; it is very > painful. major/minor # changes, more stuff required in initrd, "dm" > doesn't appear in 2.6's /proc/partitions . . . > > it is a painful upgrade - probably partly due to lack of > tools/documentation on DMs part, but also equally because 2.4->2.6 is a bug > jump in a kernel and its exacerbated by LVM1->LVM2 changes...
And what next ? people will ask "marcelo, please include initramfs support, it will help us migrating", "marcelo, it's annoying to support both module-init-tools and modutils, please accept this patch to change all modules to 2.6 format", "marcelo, my usb memory stick is only supported in 2.6, please include it in 2.4 so that I can use it to backup my system in case 2.6 crashes", "marcelo, please include preempt, it's already in 2.6 and my desktop feels smoother with it"...
If 2.6 breaks some backwards compatibility, which kernel do you think should be changed ? Did anybody submit a patch to include netfilter support in 2.2 in case people would finally switch their firewall back to 2.2 when 2.4 was unstable ? no.
I agree it's important to be able to upgrade and downgrade with a maximum safety. But frankly, when you know that your data are so much important when migrating to the new stable kernel, don't you believe you will backup them first instead something weird happens ? Then they can be restored into a common format. That's what I did when I used reiserfs 3.5 on raid5 in 2.2 when I switched to 2.4. Converting everything to ext2 was safer than risking to rely on a not wide tested compatibility glue between the kernels.
It was the same for XFS imho. All XFS users once had the ability to patch and install it themselves, and should still have the ability to continue this way. OK this is annoying, and I too am happy that Marcelo makes it easier now for them. There also are good reasons in case of DM. But we should also consider that including any patch regularly breaks other patches and makes it worse for many other people to include external patches. So the question remains : what next ? 2.4 is definitely not what I consider a "stable kernel", it's rather the "most stable actively developped branch". Getting only bugfixes in it would be fairly simpler for all people using it in production.
Cheers, Willy
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