[Nix-dev] end-of-life kernels

[Lluís Batlle i Rossell]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 02:26:00PM +0100, Mathijs Kwik wrote:
> 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.

As for glibc, the glibc has to be told the minimum kernel version to build for.
It will use not all syscalls available in the headers, but only those which
match the 'configure' argument requirement.

But I imagine Eelco wants glibc to be built for 3.5 kernels or above.

In trunk we have glibc using an absurdly low kernel, and I think it ends up not
having 'fstatat' making proper direct syscalls or something like that.

Regards,
Lluís.

> > 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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