Return-path: Received: from mail-qa0-f53.google.com ([209.85.216.53]:63351 "EHLO mail-qa0-f53.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751023Ab2DPVye (ORCPT ); Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:54:34 -0400 Message-ID: <4F8C9502.2040103@gmail.com> (sfid-20120416_235438_638483_814D350F) Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:54:10 -0700 From: Don deJuan MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Felipe Contreras CC: Greg KH , Stefan Richter , "ath9k-devel@lists.ath9k.org" , linux-wireless Mailing List , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, stable@vger.kernel.org, "John W. Linville" , akpm@linux-foundation.org, torvalds@linux-foundation.org, alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk Subject: Re: [ath9k-devel] [ 00/78] 3.3.2-stable review References: <20120413105746.10ffb120@stein> <20120413190819.9469.qmail@stuge.se> <20120416162710.GA24100@kroah.com> <20120416205856.GA22298@kroah.com> <20120416212718.GA22824@kroah.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On 04/16/2012 02:50 PM, Felipe Contreras wrote: > On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 12:27 AM, Greg KH wrote: >> On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 12:18:13AM +0300, Felipe Contreras wrote: >>> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 11:58 PM, Greg KH wrote: >>>> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 11:11:05PM +0300, Felipe Contreras wrote: >>>>> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 7:27 PM, Greg KH wrote: >>>>>> Just one minor correction in this looney email thread: >>>>>> >>>>>> On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 01:53:22AM +0300, Felipe Contreras wrote: >>>>>>> v3.3.x on the other hand are *not* stable. They contain patches >>>>>>> backported from v3.4, but nobody guarantees they will work. There was >>>>>>> no v3.3.1-rc1, so the first time the patches compromising v3.3.1 were >>>>>>> generally tested together is in v3.3.1, at which point if somebody >>>>>>> finds issues, it's too late; bad patches are *not* going to be removed >>>>>>> in v3.3.2. >>>>>> >>>>>> Of course there was a 3.3.1-rc1, see the linux-kernel archives for the >>>>>> announcemen and the individual patches. kernel.org has the large patch >>>>>> itself if you like that format instead. >>>>> >>>>> I don't see it here: >>>>> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git;a=tags >>>>> >>>>> If you really want people to try it, why not tag it? >>>> >>>> That would be because I don't keep it in that tree. It is in a quilt >>>> tree you can find in the stable-queue.git repo, and I have never tagged >>>> -rc1 releases there. No one has ever asked for it before, so in the >>>> past 6 years of stable releases, I guess no one ever needed it. >>>> >>>> ketchup and tarballs seem to work well for others, perhaps you can use >>>> that as well (hint, ketchup on top of the linux-stable tree works just >>>> fine for testing this.) >>> >>> Perhaps the current process will be continue to be OK, but I do >>> believe a tagged v3.3.1-rc1 would have catched the ath9k issue. >> >> How exactly would that have helped here? > > More people would have given it a try. Not that many people read the > mailing list, and the ones that do certainly might want to avoid > applying a big series of patches; even if their mail client makes it > easy (mine (Gmail) doesn't). A tag, and an announcement to give a try > would make it *much* easier. > >> You point out: >> >>> I used to compile my own kernels and use your stable tree, but this a >>> new laptop and I was using Arch Linux which automatically updated to >>> v3.3.1, and with no network I had no way to revert to v3.2.x. >>> Fortunately I had the kernel sources available, but I wonder how many >>> people were completely stuck. >> >> Arch wouldn't have included a -rc in their kernel (unless they are >> crazy), so this would not have helped your situation at all. > > There's *a lot* of people that got affected by the 3.3.1 release; we > don't need to break a lot of boxes to figure out there's an issue, > only a few would suffice, even one. > >>> If some other 3.x.1 release get broken this way, I would seriously >>> consider tagging v3.x.1-rc1 as well. It works for Linus' tree. >> >> "this way" was for a very tiny subset of hardware, so odds are, if this >> happens again, it wouldn't be caught this way either. That subset just >> happened to show up in your machine, but, for example, not in the wide >> range of hardware I test with here, nor the machines that others test >> with. > > It was certainly not just me. I have seen a lot of people mentioning > "their wifi is broken", a lot of them using Arch Linux, > coincidentally. Because it was only "tested" through the mailing list on Arch-general. Like I stated your issue was related to you and not understanding Arch AND how that kernel was tested before being pushed to the repo's > > These issues would most likely not be caught before v3.x.1, and which > point it's too late, they cannot be reverted to v3.x.2 just like that; > they have to wait for upstream. Hopefully and probably everything > would go smooth like this time, but maybe not, we'll have to wait and > see. With more people using Arch Linux and thus the latest "stable" > release, I'd say we might see an increase in these kinds of issues. > > Cheers. > Learn the distro you are using better.