Important kernel update should not break stuff

[Nikola Pajkovsky]

Roman Kennke <rkennke at redhat.com> writes:

> Am Mittwoch, den 13.06.2012, 13:05 +0100 schrieb Johannes Lips:
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 1:00 PM, Roman Kennke <rkennke at redhat.com>
>> wrote:
>>         > Today something happened, that happens over and over again
>>         with Fedora,
>>         > and it makes me angry. I am running Fedora 17, and so far it
>>         worked well
>>         > with the initial kernel 3.3.x (except that it would panic on
>>         shutdown...
>>         > but that was not important to me, but still embarassing).
>>         Today I was
>>         > notified of an important security update in the kernel.
>>         Curiously, it
>>         > would update from 3.3 to 3.4 (a major version upgrade, which
>>         should not
>>         > happen in such a core package anyway, IMO). Reboot into the
>>         new kernel,
>>         > everything comes up --- until I want to actually want to
>>         read email,
>>         > surf web, or anything that requires my network. I am on an
>>         Intel Wifi
>>         > card, iwlwifi module. I *can* connect to the network, but
>>         everything is
>>         > suuuuuuper  slow or times-out every now and then. Completely
>>         unusable.
>>         > Reboot into the older kernel, things work well again. Now I
>>         am left with
>>         > the choice of running a new kernel w/o network or an
>>         unsecure kernel.
>>         > Thank you very much!
>>         >
>>         > This sort of thing I would expect in rawhide/development
>>         builds, but not
>>         > in a supposed-to-be stable release. I can understand the
>>         underlying idea
>>         > of being on the bleeding edge, but I don't want to actually
>>         be bleeding.
>>         > At least the base system components should not undergo major
>>         version
>>         > updates. Security fixes should be backported to the software
>>         version
>>         > that is in the stable release (1 year release cycle
>>         shouldn't be too
>>         > demanding for this), and only security fixes and absolutely
>>         important
>>         > fixes should go into stable releases. (Not to mention that
>>         some fixes
>>         > that I *would* consider important enough to go into stable
>>         never end up
>>         > there.) If major version updates are really really
>>         necessary, they
>>         > should undergo serious testing. I cannot believe that I am
>>         the only one
>>         > on an Intel Wifi chip. The way it is now, Fedora feels like
>>         a constantly
>>         > rolling development version that is almost unusable (because
>>         any update,
>>         > even security, has a fairly high risk of breaking things)
>>         for day-to-day
>>         > work.
>>         >
>>         > Bugzilla report:
>>         > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=831571
>>         
>>         
>>         Since I just received an email in private pointing out that
>>         emails like
>>         mine above might be discouraging and not helpful... let me
>>         apologize for
>>         this. My intention is not to bash other people's best efforts,
>>         but
>>         instead try to help out (otherwise I would not bother to
>>         diligently file
>>         bugreports and mention my concerns on this list). I am willing
>>         to help
>>         track down and fix the problem. However, I see a more general
>>         problem
>>         and maybe we can turn this into a discussion how to address
>>         (or answer)
>>         it.
>>         
>>         - Why do we allow new major versions of core components into a
>>         stable
>>         release? What sort of testing is performed before a major
>>         kernel update
>>         hits Fedora stable?
>>         - What is the policy with regards to risky changes (like
>>         unnecessary
>>         feature updates, ABI changes, etc) in stable?
>>         - How can problems like the one I described above be avoided?
>>         Is there
>>         anything I and others can help with?
>>         
>>         Roman
>>         
>>         
>>         --
>>         devel mailing list
>>         devel at lists.fedoraproject.org
>>         https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
>> I think the reason for shipping the latest upstream kernel is based on
>> the fact that backporting would be too much work.
>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/KernelRebases
>> Gives a good overview and probably prevents us from repeating
>> arguments in the discussion.
>
> Ok, fair enough. The question remains, how can we avoid such bad things
> to happen in the future? Should I regularily try out kernel builds on
> their way to stable, and object to their stable-release when I find a
> problem? And how would I do that? (I.e. how can I find out when a new
> kernel is about to go to stable, and when to test it, etc) And what
> about the other base components of the system? (Although, to be fair,
> the kernel seems to be the most problematic one..)

imo, kernel maintainers should have released 3.3.8 or 3.4.1, not 3.4.0
for f17

-- 
Nikola