[Nix-dev] end-of-life kernels

[Mathijs Kwik]

Marco Maggesi <maggesi at math.unifi.it> writes:

> For the record, I still use 2.6.35 which is the newest kernel
> supporting BLCR presently available in NixoOS (BLCR needs kernels <=
> 2.6.38).
> By the way, for what I can say, this makes NixOS the only distribution
> which currently supports easily BLCR (just add two lines in
> configuration.nix).
> Seems that the development of BLCR has been resumed recently, but it
> still difficult to predict when there will be a new version that
> supports 3.x.y kernels.

We will keep 2.6.35 for now and it will become the only 2.6.x version.
Mainly because our current default kernel-headers version is 2.6.35 as
well. So in the short term, you're fine.

After next stdenv-upgrades-merge however, it seems 3.5.x will be chosen for the
headers, which might cause problems for older kernels.
Also, I would like to stabilize on long-term-supported kernels, which
means 2.6.32 or 2.6.34 in the 2.6.x range.

To combat the headers-problem, we can add a headers-compat/headers-2.6
package and have the system use those if the chosen kernel is lower than
our default (3.4 or 3.6 probably). This will cause rebuilds for almost
every other package, and probably hydra will not produce binaries for
systems that want to stay on 2.6, so it will take some more
building-from-source, but at least it keeps the possibility
to run older kernels open. I think that's a good trade-off.


>
> M.
>
> 2012/11/19 Eelco Dolstra <eelco.dolstra at logicblox.com>:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 18/11/12 20:58, Mathijs Kwik wrote:
>>
>>> Indeed I didn't think about 2.6.35 being our current headers, so
>>> indeed we should keep 2.6.35 until stdenv-upgrades.
>>
>> FWIW, the stdenv branch already uses Linux 3.5.x for the kernel headers.
>>
>> --
>> Eelco Dolstra | LogicBlox, Inc. | http://nixos.org/~eelco/
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