Greg KH and Chris Wright continue to finalize how the -stable Linux kernel tree will work in an email Greg described as, "everything you ever wanted to know about Linux 2.6 -stable releases." Provided as patches against the last official 2.6.x release, the -stable branch uses 2.6.x.y numbering. The list of requirements for includable patches [story] has been further refined, while a proceedure for submitting patches, specifics for a review cycle, and mention of a review committee were added. New patches will generally be in review for 48 hours before the patch is added to the -stable tree. If any single member of the review committee votes against the patch, it will be dropped from the queue and not included in a stable release. Greg explains that the review comittee is made up of "a number of kernel developers who have volunteered for this task, and a few that haven't." Security patches are accepted directly from the kernel security team [story], bypassing the normal review cycle.

This announcement was quickly followed by the release of 2.6.11.2. Greg explained, "it contains one patch, which is already in the -bk tree, and came from the security team (hence the lack of the longer review cycle)." The changlog describes the event poll fix as, "return proper error on overflow condition".

From: Greg KH [email blocked]
To:  linux-kernel
Subject: [RFC] -stable, how it's going to work.
Date: 	Tue, 8 Mar 2005 23:28:33 -0800

So here's a first cut at how this 2.6 -stable release process is going
to work that Chris and I have come up with.  Does anyone have any
problems/issues/questions with this?

thanks,

greg k-h

-------------------

Everything you ever wanted to know about Linux 2.6 -stable releases.


Rules on what kind of patches are accepted, and what ones are not, into
the "-stable" tree:
 - It must be obviously correct and tested.
 - It can not bigger than 100 lines, with context.
 - It must fix only one thing.
 - It must fix a real bug that bothers people (not a, "This could be a
   problem..." type thing.)
 - It must fix a problem that causes a build error (but not for things
   marked CONFIG_BROKEN), an oops, a hang, data corruption, a real
   security issue, or some "oh, that's not good" issue.  In short,
   something critical.
 - No "theoretical race condition" issues, unless an explanation of how
   the race can be exploited.
 - It can not contain any "trivial" fixes in it (spelling changes,
   whitespace cleanups, etc.)
 - It must be accepted by the relevant subsystem maintainer.
 - It must follow Documentation/SubmittingPatches rules.

Procedure for submitting patches to the -stable tree:
 - Send the patch, after verifying that it follows the above rules, to
 [email blocked].
 - The sender will receive an ack when the patch has been accepted into
   the queue, or a nak if the patch is rejected.  This response might
   take a few days, according to the developer's schedules.
 - If accepted, the patch will be added to the -stable queue, for review
   by other developers.
 - Security patches should not be sent to this alias, but instead to the
   documented [email blocked].  
   
Review cycle:
 - When the -stable maintainers decide for a review cycle, the patches
   will be sent to the review committee, and the maintainer of the
   affected area of the patch (unless the submitter is the maintainer of
   the area) and CC: to the linux-kernel mailing list.
 - The review committee has 48 hours in which to ack or nak the patch.
 - If the patch is rejected by a member of the committee, or linux-kernel
   members object to the patch by bringing up issues that the maintainer
   and members did not realize, the patch will be dropped from the
   queue.
 - At the end of the review cycle, the acked patches will be added to
   the latest -stable release, and a new -stable release will happen.
 - Security patches will be accepted into the -stable tree directly from
   the security kernel team, and not go through the normal review cycle.
   Contact the kernel security team for more details on this procedure.

Review committe:
 - This will be made up of a number of kernel developers who have
   volunteered for this task, and a few that haven't.



From: Greg KH [email blocked]
Subject: Linux 2.6.11.2
Date: 	Wed, 9 Mar 2005 00:39:23 -0800

And to further test this whole -stable system, I've released 2.6.11.2.
It contains one patch, which is already in the -bk tree, and came from
the security team (hence the lack of the longer review cycle).

It's available now in the normal kernel.org places:
	kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/patch-2.6.11.2.gz
which is a patch against the 2.6.11.1 release.  If consensus arrives
that this patch should be against the 2.6.11 tree, it will be done that
way in the future.

A detailed changelog can be found at:
 	kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.11.2

A bitkeeper tree for the 2.6.11.y releases can be found at:
	bk://linux-release.bkbits.net/linux-2.6.11

The diffstat and short summary of the fixes are below.  

I'll also be replying to this message with a copy of the patch itself,
as it is small enough to do so.

thanks,
 
greg k-h

-------


 Makefile       |    2 +-
 fs/eventpoll.c |    3 ++-
 2 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)


Summary of changes from v2.6.11.1 to v2.6.11.2
============================================

Greg Kroah-Hartman:
  o Linux 2.6.11.2

Linus Torvalds:
  o epoll: return proper error on overflow condition



From: Greg KH [email blocked]
Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.11.2
Date: 	Wed, 9 Mar 2005 00:39:53 -0800


diff -Nru a/Makefile b/Makefile
--- a/Makefile	2005-03-09 00:13:29 -08:00
+++ b/Makefile	2005-03-09 00:13:29 -08:00
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 VERSION = 2
 PATCHLEVEL = 6
 SUBLEVEL = 11
-EXTRAVERSION = .1
+EXTRAVERSION = .2
 NAME=Woozy Numbat
 
 # *DOCUMENTATION*
diff -Nru a/fs/eventpoll.c b/fs/eventpoll.c
--- a/fs/eventpoll.c	2005-03-09 00:13:29 -08:00
+++ b/fs/eventpoll.c	2005-03-09 00:13:29 -08:00
@@ -619,6 +619,7 @@
 	return error;
 }
 
+#define MAX_EVENTS (INT_MAX / sizeof(struct epoll_event))
 
 /*
  * Implement the event wait interface for the eventpoll file. It is the kernel
@@ -635,7 +636,7 @@
 		     current, epfd, events, maxevents, timeout));
 
 	/* The maximum number of event must be greater than zero */
-	if (maxevents <= 0)
+	if (maxevents <= 0 || maxevents > MAX_EVENTS)
 		return -EINVAL;
 
 	/* Verify that the area passed by the user is writeable */

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