Roman Kennke <rkennke@xxxxxxxxxx> 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@xxxxxxxxxx> >> 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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >> 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 -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
