On Mon, 2010-09-06 at 23:05 -0400, Chuck Ebbert wrote: > On Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:23:01 -0500 > John Morris <jmorris@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > In my case I reported #573135 back in March and stopped taking kernel > > updates. In another month or so I'll boot a live USB stick of F14 and > > see if the bug was fixed and just didn't get closed. Then it is either > > suck it up and run without security fixes or jump distros. > > > > And in the meantime these patches went into the F12 kernel via > 2.6.32-stable, but you weren't even checking the updates: Sorry everyone, time to vent. Bah. This is why I just blocked kernel updates in the first place. Tried updating.... now things are worse due to a bad combination of Fedora policy multiplied by my own stupidity. I KNEW you were supposed to make darned sure you were running your favorite kernel before letting yum loose. (Don't ask, long story) That was mistake number one. Number two came when I looked to the backup server and found to my horror I fumbled that too, / and /home safely backed up but no /boot! Double crap! So now I lost the only kernel package where everything worked. And of course Fedora doesn't have it anymore. You can pick the original package or the current update. Triple crap! If anyone has a pointer to kernel-2.6.31.12-174.222.x86_64.rpm I'd really appreciate it! Google, rpmfind, etc. all come up blank as did manually poking around on the Fedora mirrors. Ya would think there could be ONE site where someone could find old packages. Figuring out exactly where an unnoticed regression appeared would be a lot easier with a complete archive of updates. Ban direct access by yum using the user-agent string to prevent people from abusing it if needed. Seriously, if there really isn't any complete archive of Fedora updates I'd be willing to host it. Assuming the wizards who wear red headgear even have a complete dataset. With the current kernel package the ACPI error is gone but it still doesn't survive a suspend/resume so apparently there is more than one regression involved. The only kernel package I can still find that sorta suspends breaks Network-Manager so that after resume a manual kick of it is usually required. At least I think that is what is happening, it might have been an update to NM a couple days before because I think I remember having to kickstart NM once before I tried the kernel update. Now for the ranting part. Not so much about the above bug, it is after all a fairly exotic one involving power management. But about the rising misfeature problem in general. And of course Network-Manager isn't optional anymore. Oh no, you can't just revert to the original networking subsystem that actually worked, years ago, better for everything except WiFi. Onwards into the glorious future! And no Citizen, totally replacing the networking subsystem was easier than adding WPA/WPA2 support to the old one. Never question the developers! Yes it has been several years now and NM still doesn't do bridging (well if at all) multiple static IPs per interface or PPPoA but we know what is best for you. So you obviously didn't need those features. What? Virtualization really needs bridging you say? Fie on you! Some days lately I actually consider just saying screw it, boot the Win7 partition and try the Cygwin path to UNIX happiness. That multiplatform OpenSource migration path goes both ways... Folks say OO.o, FF, Putty and The Gimp are pretty stable on Windows lately.. which is more than I can say for FF on Fedora. Is there a replacement for XMMS? The last Windows I used for more than a hundred hours was Win95 so really don't know what it is like now. Want to follow the GNU Testament but the Linux desktop has been becoming less stable over the last few years and everyone says Win7 is actually getting fairly reliable at long last. But I have booted it a couple of times on this Thinkpad... enough to know the multi-monitor support in Win7 is as dodgy as Fedora's and that unlike Fedora I can't fix the breakage with a bash script bound to a hotkey. When Windows breaks you are just outta luck. No bugzilla.microsoft.com. Is this why so much malevolent glowing fruit at conferences? Is it a warning sign when so many open source devels stop eating the dog food? And to make this more than just a Fedora vs Windows rant.... spent this afternoon helping a coworker try Ubuntu only to discover the automounter has apparently been broke for months; the discussion on the bug has, after months, come really close to a solution but no actual update has issued yet. Really? The automounter known to be 100% broken for MONTHS? Not broken in certain corner cases, not broken for some users, 100% broken for 100% of users. Or check this one. Debian's dial up networking support is currently busted. Ok, not a lot of people still use it (Except for the 299 Windows using library patrons who dialed into our Portmasters in August.) and I might just be going senile but last month I tried a fresh Debian[1] + a genuine US Robotics V.Everything external and got nowhere. Dial, carrier and then fail to negotiate a PPP link. Logs didn't say anything useful on either side. That was the first time I failed to get a dialup link to work since Yggdrasil Linux and Trumpet Winsock on WfW3.11.[2] Finally had to give up that day and move on, but hope to get back to it; turn on debugging and figure it out so I can at least file a proper bug report. Perhaps someone will care. Folks, we have a problem. If there isn't a "come to Jesus" moment real soon the Linux/GNU/X desktop is about to collapse under this breakneck development pace. For the first decade almost every release was a major improvement regardless of which distribution. Now it is mostly sideways motion with change for change's sake, pointless rewrites instead of repairing, breakage and misfeatures almost as common as actual improvements. BREAKING CORE SUBSYSTEMS FOR MONTHS/YEARS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. Rawhide, yes. Alphas only by accident. Never in a shipping system. NetworkManager and PulseAudio might be the poster children for multi-year breakage but the mindset is fast becoming mainstream. It is really hard to get work done if at any point in time at least one major subsystem (and lately more than one) is unreliable to the point of being unusable by mortals. A minor security issue that could in theory allow an exploit, if the right corner case can be abused, will cause a full stop and a rush to fix it. Every serious distribution keeps a security team ready to spring into action on a moments's notice. PulseAudio left countless real users lacking the skills to deal with it with no working audio for years and nobody in a position of authority saw a problem important enough to even postpone the work to bind PA so deeply into the system that turning it off was no longer an option. Am I the only one who has ever wondered if there just might be a problem in setting priorities? [1] Why Debian? Because Fedora decided a 1% speed bump was worth ditching support for the Via EPIA series. Or someone just got tired of explaining for the Nth time that a .386.rpm compiled with the right switches was just as good as those .[56]86.rpm packages distro Y's fanboys were always holding up as an example of superiority. [2] And yes you can get the heck off my lawn now.
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
-- test mailing list test@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/test
