Greg KH and Chris Wright have been maintaining a -stable [1] 2.6.x.y patchset for the 2.6.x and 2.6.(x-1) kernels since March of 2005. Thus, with the current stable release being 2.6.22, they maintain -stable patches for 2.6.22 and 2.6.21. 2.4 stable kernel maintainer Willy Tarreau noted the currently high patch rate in each of the 2.6 -stable trees and decided to maintain -stable patches against the 2.6.20 tree until things calm down. Adrian Bunk also continues to maintain a -stable 2.6.16 branch of the Linux kernel. Willy explained about his new 2.6.20 -stable patches:

"I proposed Chris and Greg to continue issuing a few more 2.6.20 releases during the time needed for 2.6.21 and 2.6.22 to show a significant drop in their patch rates, which hopefully will be just a matter of a few releases.

"My goal is *not* to do all the hard work they do, but just to backport from their patches those which are meaningful for 2.6.20. For this reason, 2.6.20 releases will always be slightly late and should not contain patches not merged in more recent releases."

From:	Willy Tarreau [email blocked]
To: 	linux-kernel, [email blocked]
Subject: [2.6.20.16 review 00/28] 2.6.20.16 -stable review
Date:	Sat, 11 Aug 2007 20:47:52 +0200

I proposed Chris and Greg to continue issuing a few more 2.6.20 releases
during the time needed for 2.6.21 and 2.6.22 to show a significant drop
in their patch rates, which hopefully will be just a matter of a few
releases.

My goal is *not* to do all the hard work they do, but just to backport
from their patches those which are meaningful for 2.6.20. For this
reason, 2.6.20 releases will always be slightly late and should not
contain patches not merged in more recent releases.

My intent with this version is to catch up with 2.6.21.7. Other patches
are already pending for future releases, but one thing at a time. I'm
trying to follow the same review/release process, so 28 patches will
be posted for review in response to this message.

If some people think it's useless to repost individual patches that have
already been reviewed in more recent versions, I'm open to adapting the
process (eg: switch to one mail for -rc and one for release like Adrian
does with 2.6.16).

The rolled up patch can be found here :
   ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/stable-review/patch-2.6.20.16-rc1.gz

Responses should be made by August 13, 2007, 20:00:00 UTC. Anything
received after that time might be too late.

Thanks,
Willy

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