Andres Salomon announced a new kernel patchset focused on security and obvious bugfixes. He explained, "I'm announcing a new kernel tree; -as. The goal of this tree is to form a stable base for vendors/distributors to use for their kernels. In order to do this, I intend to include only security fixes and obvious bugfixes, from various sources. I do not intend to include driver updates, large subsystem fixes, cleanups, and so on. Basically, this is what I'd want 2.6.10.1 to contain."

Andres notes that the new patchset will be used by Debian, whose upcoming sarge release will have a 2.6.8 kernel patched with the -as patchset. He explains, "my plan is to include security fixes for a kernel or two behind what is the latest. Currently, I'm supporting (for Debian) 2.6.8 through 2.6.10. Of course, normally I wouldn't support 2.6.8 for this long, but since sarge will (hopefully?) be releasing someday, and this is the kernel chosen for it, I must continue support." He went on to note that for the older kernels he plans to primarily focus on security fixes, not small bugfixes.

From: Andres Salomon [email blocked]
To:  linux-kernel
Subject: 2.6.10-as1
Date: 	Thu, 13 Jan 2005 03:37:28 -0500

Hi,

I'm announcing a new kernel tree; -as.  The goal of this tree is to form
a stable base for vendors/distributors to use for their kernels.  In
order to do this, I intend to include only security fixes and obvious
bugfixes, from various sources.  I do not intend to include driver
updates, large subsystem fixes, cleanups, and so on.  Basically, this is
what I'd want 2.6.10.1 to contain.

This first release should have been done last week, but the various
security advisories kept me pretty busy.  It includes various iptables
and nfs fixes, the various security fixes announced over the past two
weeks (including the latest, CAN-2005-0001), and misc. others.  My hope
is that people find this useful, so less work is duplicated by
distribution packagers.  Debian kernels are basically a combination of
this tree, as well as debian-specific patches and more experimental
stuff.

The kernel patches can be grabbed from here:
http://www.acm.rpi.edu/~dilinger/patches/2.6.10/as1/

02e412361955fa80c0ea3a5a59a37c36  ChangeLog
0a75d0e8922491fb2540b3c6178dfd58  linux-2.6.10-as1.tar.gz
540effd229ea72dad4bd274bba40fb94  patch-2.6.10-as1.gz

patch-2.6.10-as1.gz is a patch against vanilla 2.6.10.
linux-2.6.10-as1.tar.gz are the patches, individually broken out.
Patches pulled from bitkeeper include their comment headers.

As mentioned, this should've been released last week; as such, it's
about a week behind bitkeeper.  I shall go through the remaining 600 or
so changesets within the next few days, and release -as2.
 

-- 
Andres Salomon [email blocked]



From: Frank Steiner [email blocked]
Subject: Re: 2.6.10-as1
Date: 	Thu, 13 Jan 2005 11:09:24 +0100

Andres Salomon wrote

> Hi,
> 
> I'm announcing a new kernel tree; -as.  The goal of this tree is to form
> a stable base for vendors/distributors to use for their kernels.  In
> order to do this, I intend to include only security fixes and obvious
> bugfixes, from various sources.  I do not intend to include driver
> updates, large subsystem fixes, cleanups, and so on.  Basically, this is
> what I'd want 2.6.10.1 to contain.

Very nice idea! Not only for distributors! Thanks for doing this!
Do you plan to maintain -as only for the latest release, i.e., will
2.6.10-as still be maintained with security fixes even when 2.6.11-as
comes up?

cu,
Frank

-- 
Dipl.-Inform. Frank Steiner   Web:  http://www.bio.ifi.lmu.de/~steiner/
Lehrstuhl f. Bioinformatik    Mail: http://www.bio.ifi.lmu.de/~steiner/m/
LMU, Amalienstr. 17           Phone: +49 89 2180-4049
80333 Muenchen, Germany       Fax:   +49 89 2180-99-4049
* Rekursion kann man erst verstehen, wenn man Rekursion verstanden hat. *



From: Andres Salomon [email blocked]
Subject: Re: 2.6.10-as1
Date: 	Thu, 13 Jan 2005 10:26:00 -0500

On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 11:09 +0100, Frank Steiner wrote:
> Andres Salomon wrote
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I'm announcing a new kernel tree; -as.  The goal of this tree is to form
> > a stable base for vendors/distributors to use for their kernels.  In
> > order to do this, I intend to include only security fixes and obvious
> > bugfixes, from various sources.  I do not intend to include driver
> > updates, large subsystem fixes, cleanups, and so on.  Basically, this is
> > what I'd want 2.6.10.1 to contain.
> 
> Very nice idea! Not only for distributors! Thanks for doing this!
> Do you plan to maintain -as only for the latest release, i.e., will
> 2.6.10-as still be maintained with security fixes even when 2.6.11-as
> comes up?
> 

My plan is to include security fixes for a kernel or two behind what is
the latest.  Currently, I'm supporting (for Debian) 2.6.8 through
2.6.10.  Of course, normally I wouldn't support 2.6.8 for this long, but
since sarge will (hopefully?) be releasing someday, and this is the
kernel chosen for it, I must continue support.

I do not plan to continue small bugfixes for older kernels too much
longer after a new kernel is released; however, if people were to feed
me patches for older kernels, I'd be more than happy to do releases.


-- 
Andres Salomon [email blocked]



From: Frank Steiner [email blocked]
Subject: Re: 2.6.10-as1
Date: 	Thu, 13 Jan 2005 17:18:08 +0100

Andres Salomon wrote

> My plan is to include security fixes for a kernel or two behind what is
> the latest.  Currently, I'm supporting (for Debian) 2.6.8 through

That would definitely help a lot. I always try to upgrade to a new major
release, but sometimes this is not easy. We have 60 hosts here and are,
for example, using Ati Radeons and nvidia Gforce cards. So when 2.6.10
came out, I couldn't just upgrade until patches came out that made
the fglrx and nv modules compile and work again.

So from time to time, there are reasons to stay with the former major
release for a while (and if it is only because one currently doesn't
have time for testing the new one) and I'm sure that I'm not the only
one with this problem. If at least one kernel behind the latest was
supplied with security fixes that would give people enough time to
test the new release without ruffle while still getting security
fixes for the former release.

> I do not plan to continue small bugfixes for older kernels too much
> longer after a new kernel is released; however, if people were to feed
> me patches for older kernels, I'd be more than happy to do releases.

I guess that for most people security fixes would already be enough,
or say, that's at least what you want in the first place...


I hope that many people make use of this tree and that is will be
included on the kernel.org page as official tree. It definitely is
a very useful tree!

cu,
Frank

-- 
Dipl.-Inform. Frank Steiner   Web:  http://www.bio.ifi.lmu.de/~steiner/
Lehrstuhl f. Bioinformatik    Mail: http://www.bio.ifi.lmu.de/~steiner/m/
LMU, Amalienstr. 17           Phone: +49 89 2180-4049
80333 Muenchen, Germany       Fax:   +49 89 2180-99-4049
* Rekursion kann man erst verstehen, wenn man Rekursion verstanden hat. *

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