On 5/8/23 17:04, NeilBrown wrote: > On Tue, 09 May 2023, Jes Sorensen wrote: >> On 4/10/23 17:54, NeilBrown wrote: >>> On Tue, 11 Apr 2023, Jes Sorensen wrote: >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> I bumped the minimum kernel version required for mdadm to 2.6.32. >>>> >>>> Should we drop support for anything prior to 3.10 at this point, since >>>> RHEL7 is 3.10 based and SLES12 seems to be 3.12 based. >>>> >>>> Thoughts? >>> >>> When you talk about changing the required kernel version, I would find >>> it helpful if you at least mention what actual kernel features you now >>> want to depend on - at least the more significant ones. >>> >>> Aside from features, I'd rather think about how old the kernel is. >>> 2.6.32 is over 13 years old. >>> 3.10 is very nearly 10 years old. >>> If there is something significant that landed in 3.10 that we want to >>> depend on, then requiring that seems perfectly reasonable. >>> >>> I think the oldest SLE kernel that you might care about would be 4.12 >>> (SLE12-SP5 - nearly 6 years old). Anyone using an older SLE release >>> values stability over new functionality and is not going to be trialling >>> a new mdadm. >> >> Hi Neil, >> >> I guess my mindset is more that I don't expect RHEL/SLES grade distros >> to fully upgrade mdadm, but I do see them backporting changes occasionally. >> >> I was mostly basing my question on what I see us testing for in the >> actual code. Dropping support for anything prior to SLES 12 (4.12) and >> RHEL 8 (kernel 4.18) seems fair. > > So where you say "dropping support" you don't actually mean removing any > code, but only that you will document somewhere that no effort will be > made support, or test against, earlier kernels. Is that correct? > Sounds reasonable to me. There may be a few removals, or at least checks for linux kernel being more recent than X. Otherwise yes, not planning on proactively ripping anything out. Cheers, Jes
