2008/7/5 Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora(a)leemhuis.info>:
Hi all
John (CCed), I really appreciate your work in the wireless area and would
like to use the opportunity to say "thanks for all you work", as support for
WLAN hardware in the Linux kernel improved a lot in the upstream kernel and
Fedora thx to your (and other linux wireless developers) work over the last
two years.
But we now for at least the second time in the past few weeks had/have
a more-than-minor wireless breakage in a Fedora kernel for a released distro
(bug #453390 now;
http://lwn.net/Articles/286558/ is discussing the one some
weeks ago; I think there was one more breakage not that long ago, but I
can't remember). I and many users (see for example #453390) got hit by those
problems. That's why I was wondering: what are we at Fedora doing to prevent
similar problems in the future?
Three things spring to my mind and I just propose then here for discussion;
maybe something good comes out of it in the end:
- a karama of "+3" in bodhi seems not enough for a auto-move from testing to
stable (or even worse: straight to stable if enough people tested the kernel
and gave their +1 after the update got filed in bodhi but *before* it
actually hit fedora-testing) if there are no other pressing issues (like
security fixes). The kernel is a to complex beast; more then 3 people should
be needed to give a +1. And a bit of time needs to pass to give enough
people the opportunity to install, test and report problems with new
kernels. For the latest kernel it seems to me that "to less time" really was
the problem, otherwise the problem from #453390 would have been noticed
earlier
- should we separate security updates and other kernel fixes in a better
way to make sure those "other fixes" get proper testing before they get
send out to the users?
- John, having all those pending and not-yet-upstream-merged improvements
for wireless hardware in the Fedora kernel was something good in the past
when WLAN support in the kernel was quite bad/incomplete. But the main and
most important bits for proper wireless hardware support seem to be in the
upstream kernel now; sure, there will always be improvements in the queue,
but that's the same in most other linux subsystems with drivers as well. So
I'm wondering: isn't it time now to finally stop shipping all those
wireless-next bits (currently quite some big patches; see:
-rw-rw-r-- 1 thl thl 2484 14. Mär 17:06
linux-2.6-ms-wireless-receiver.patch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 thl thl 39874 4. Jul 22:21 linux-2.6-wireless-fixups.patch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 thl thl 2656652 4. Jul 22:21 linux-2.6-wireless-pending.patch
-rw-rw-r-- 1 thl thl 4165718 4. Jul 22:21 linux-2.6-wireless.patch
) in released Fedora Version (e.g. 8 and 9 currently) when we start shipping
2.6.26?
Wireless breakage occurs almost exclusively on desktop machines. If a
newer kernel breaks, roll back to the old one. I have experienced zero
wireless breakage since Fedora 9 was released (this on three separate
chipsets) and am happy for development to take place (in this one
particular area) ahead of kernel as it is still an area that lags
behind a Windows desktop environment.
Besides, I'm willing to bet removing the above patches will break even
more stuff than the occasional wireless tree pull-age.
Regards
--
Christopher Brown
http://www.chruz.com