Re: [gentoo-user] Re: What's happened to gentoo-sources?

[Neil Bothwick]

On Fri, 2 Sep 2016 02:33:12 +0200, Kai Krakow wrote:

> Am Thu, 1 Sep 2016 22:56:31 +0100
> schrieb Neil Bothwick :
> 
> > > - so my next upgrade would "force" me into deciding going way down
> > > (probably a bad idea) or up into unknown territory (and this showed:
> > > can also be a problem). Or I can stay with 4.6 until depclean
> > > removed it for good (which will, by the way, remove the files
> > > from /usr/src).
> > 
> > Depclean won't remove it if you add it to world.  
> 
> Multi-slot packages ARE removed by depclean except the last stable
> version - which jumped backwards for me because I used an ~arch kernel
> that was removed from portage.

Not if you specify the version.

> Lesson learned: Keep your eyes open. Maybe I put the kernel slot
> into my world file, with the opposite downside this has. (note to
> myself)

That's exactly what I did before I started using sets.conf. There is no
downside because I don't want depclean to remove a kernel source package,
that's for me to decide on.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity;
 and I'm not sure about the the universe."
 (Albert Einstein)


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[gentoo-user] Re: What's happened to gentoo-sources?

[»Q«]

On Thu, 1 Sep 2016 22:56:31 +0100
Neil Bothwick  wrote:

> On Thu, 1 Sep 2016 22:08:19 +0200, Kai Krakow wrote:
 
> > Removal of a 4.6 series ebuild also means there would follow no
> > updates  
> 
> Are there any updates to the 4.6 series or was is 4.7 considered its
> successor by the kernels devs? If the former, I can understand your
> point. If the latter, there would be no updates so there is no point.

The latter.  The announcement of that is probably what prompted the
tree-cleaning.

[gentoo-user] Re: What's happened to gentoo-sources?

[Kai Krakow]

Am Thu, 1 Sep 2016 22:56:31 +0100
schrieb Neil Bothwick :

> > - so my next upgrade would "force" me into deciding going way down
> > (probably a bad idea) or up into unknown territory (and this showed:
> > can also be a problem). Or I can stay with 4.6 until depclean
> > removed it for good (which will, by the way, remove the files
> > from /usr/src).  
> 
> Depclean won't remove it if you add it to world.

Multi-slot packages ARE removed by depclean except the last stable
version - which jumped backwards for me because I used an ~arch kernel
that was removed from portage.

The following happened:

# emerge -DNua world

Reinstalled 4.4 for me. Problem here: I didn't exactly distinguish that
4.4.something is not 4.6.something in the result list. So I continued
with:

# emerge --depclean -a
# cd /usr/src/linux && make oldconfig && ... the usual stuff

Wow, that went fast. Then, I realized why: I just depcleaned my 4.6 and
4.4 compile objects were still there, I tried to reinstall 4.6,
it failed - of course: The package is no longer in portage.

I thought: Okay, there's probably a reason, let's get to 4.7.2 then -
what should possibly go wrong? It's not 4.7.0 and I still have 4.6
in /boot. Yeah, what should go wrong... I shouldn't have asked. TL;DR:
I restored from backup.

This must be coincidence. I wanted to go to stable kernel at next
opportunity. But forward in version, not backward. ;-)

But let's get back to the point:

Depclean does remove multi-slotted kernel sources. It does it with
every multislot package except there's an explicit slot dependency or
you explicitly mention the slot in the world file.

Since I cannot remember such a surprise-removal* happened anytime
before and put me in such a situation, this was completely new to me.
(10+ years of Gentoo usage)

Lesson learned: Keep your eyes open. Maybe I put the kernel slot
into my world file, with the opposite downside this has. (note to
myself)


*: This is subjective, I know.

-- 
Regards,
Kai

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: What's happened to gentoo-sources?

[Neil Bothwick]

On Thu, 1 Sep 2016 22:08:19 +0200, Kai Krakow wrote:

> > No one forced you to do anything. You 4.6 kernel was still in boot,
> > your 4.6 sources were still installed. The ebuild was only removed
> > fro the portage tree, nothing was uninstalled from your system unless
> > you did it. Even the ebuild was still on your computer
> > in /var/db/pkg.  
> 
> Of course nobody forced me. I just can't follow how the 4.7 ebuild
> kind-of replaced the 4.6 (and others) ebuild in face of this pretty
> mature oom-killer problem.
> 
> Removal of a 4.6 series ebuild also means there would follow no updates

Are there any updates to the 4.6 series or was is 4.7 considered its
successor by the kernels devs? If the former, I can understand your
point. If the latter, there would be no updates so there is no point.

> - so my next upgrade would "force" me into deciding going way down
> (probably a bad idea) or up into unknown territory (and this showed:
> can also be a problem). Or I can stay with 4.6 until depclean removed
> it for good (which will, by the way, remove the files from /usr/src).

Depclean won't remove it if you add it to world. Or you can add this
to /etc/portage/sets.conf to prevent depclean removing any kernels

[kernels]
class = portage.sets.dbapi.OwnerSet
world-candidate = False
files = /usr/src

Running old or out of date kernels is not an issue with Gentoo. I had a
machine running the same kernel for at least a year, long after it was
removed from the tree, because I had some hardware for which the driver
wouldn't compile with newer kernels.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

[unwieldy legal disclaimer would go here - feel free to type your own]


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: What's happened to gentoo-sources?

[Alan McKinnon]

On 01/09/2016 22:08, Kai Krakow wrote:

Am Tue, 30 Aug 2016 08:47:22 +0100
schrieb Neil Bothwick :


On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 08:34:55 +0200, Kai Krakow wrote:


Surprise surprise, 4.7 has this (still not fully fixed) oom-killer
bug. When I'm running virtual machines, it still kicks in. I wanted
to stay on 4.6.x until 4.8 is released, and only then switch to
4.7. Now I was forced early (I'm using btrfs), and was instantly
punished by doing so:


No one forced you to do anything. You 4.6 kernel was still in boot,
your 4.6 sources were still installed. The ebuild was only removed
fro the portage tree, nothing was uninstalled from your system unless
you did it. Even the ebuild was still on your computer in /var/db/pkg.


Of course nobody forced me. I just can't follow how the 4.7 ebuild
kind-of replaced the 4.6 (and others) ebuild in face of this pretty
mature oom-killer problem.

Removal of a 4.6 series ebuild also means there would follow no updates
- so my next upgrade would "force" me into deciding going way down
(probably a bad idea) or up into unknown territory (and this showed:
can also be a problem). Or I can stay with 4.6 until depclean removed
it for good (which will, by the way, remove the files from /usr/src).

I think masking had been a much more fair option, especially because
portage has means of displaying me the reasoning behind masking it.

In the end, I simply was really unprepared for this - and this is
usually not how Gentoo works and always worked for me. I'm used to
Gentoo doing better.

Even if the 4.6 series were keyworded - in case of kernel packages they
should not be removed without masking first. I think a lot of people
like to stay - at least temporary - close to kernel mainline because
they want to use the one or other feature.

And then my workflow is always like this: If an ebuild is removed, it's
time to also remove it from my installation and replace it with another
version or an alternative. I usually do this during the masking phase.



Was the ebuild removed from arch or ~arch?

If arch, then you have a point.
If ~arch, then you don't have a point. Gentoo has pretty much always 
expected you to deal with $WHATEVER_HAPPENS on ~arch. There has never 
been a guarantee (not even a loose one) that anything will ever stick 
around in ~arch.


Alan

[gentoo-user] Re: What's happened to gentoo-sources?

[Kai Krakow]

Am Sun, 21 Aug 2016 05:55:06 -0400
schrieb Rich Freeman :

> On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 5:12 AM, Peter Humphrey
>  wrote:
> >
> > After this morning's sync, both versions 4.4.6 and 4.6.4 of
> > gentoo-sources have disappeared. Is this just finger trouble in the
> > server chain? I get the same with UK and US sync servers.
> >  
> 
> No idea, but upstream is up to 4.4.19, and 4.6.7 (which is now EOL).
> So, those are pretty old versions.  I see 4.4.19 in the Gentoo repo,
> and 4.7.2 (which is probably where 4.6 users should be moving to).
 ^...
No, until the oom-killer bug has been completely resolved. Still
kicking in for me, killing my Chromium tabs while using VirtualBox. And
I'm having 16GB of RAM and the killer kicks in while the kernel still
reports 50% free.

-- 
Regards,
Kai

Replies to list-only preferred.

[gentoo-user] Re: What's happened to gentoo-sources?

[Kai Krakow]

Am Tue, 30 Aug 2016 08:47:22 +0100
schrieb Neil Bothwick :

> On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 08:34:55 +0200, Kai Krakow wrote:
> 
> > Surprise surprise, 4.7 has this (still not fully fixed) oom-killer
> > bug. When I'm running virtual machines, it still kicks in. I wanted
> > to stay on 4.6.x until 4.8 is released, and only then switch to
> > 4.7. Now I was forced early (I'm using btrfs), and was instantly
> > punished by doing so:  
> 
> No one forced you to do anything. You 4.6 kernel was still in boot,
> your 4.6 sources were still installed. The ebuild was only removed
> fro the portage tree, nothing was uninstalled from your system unless
> you did it. Even the ebuild was still on your computer in /var/db/pkg.

Of course nobody forced me. I just can't follow how the 4.7 ebuild
kind-of replaced the 4.6 (and others) ebuild in face of this pretty
mature oom-killer problem.

Removal of a 4.6 series ebuild also means there would follow no updates
- so my next upgrade would "force" me into deciding going way down
(probably a bad idea) or up into unknown territory (and this showed:
can also be a problem). Or I can stay with 4.6 until depclean removed
it for good (which will, by the way, remove the files from /usr/src).

I think masking had been a much more fair option, especially because
portage has means of displaying me the reasoning behind masking it.

In the end, I simply was really unprepared for this - and this is
usually not how Gentoo works and always worked for me. I'm used to
Gentoo doing better.

Even if the 4.6 series were keyworded - in case of kernel packages they
should not be removed without masking first. I think a lot of people
like to stay - at least temporary - close to kernel mainline because
they want to use the one or other feature.

And then my workflow is always like this: If an ebuild is removed, it's
time to also remove it from my installation and replace it with another
version or an alternative. I usually do this during the masking phase.

-- 
Regards,
Kai

Replies to list-only preferred.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: What's happened to gentoo-sources?

[Neil Bothwick]

On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 08:34:55 +0200, Kai Krakow wrote:

> Surprise surprise, 4.7 has this (still not fully fixed) oom-killer bug.
> When I'm running virtual machines, it still kicks in. I wanted to stay
> on 4.6.x until 4.8 is released, and only then switch to 4.7. Now I was
> forced early (I'm using btrfs), and was instantly punished by doing so:

No one forced you to do anything. You 4.6 kernel was still in boot, your
4.6 sources were still installed. The ebuild was only removed fro the
portage tree, nothing was uninstalled from your system unless you did it.
Even the ebuild was still on your computer in /var/db/pkg.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to
eat.


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[gentoo-user] Re: What's happened to gentoo-sources?

[Kai Krakow]

Am Sun, 21 Aug 2016 07:28:17 -0400
schrieb Rich Freeman :

> On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 6:20 AM, Peter Humphrey
>  wrote:
> > On Sunday 21 Aug 2016 05:55:06 Rich Freeman wrote:  
> >> On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 5:12 AM, Peter Humphrey
> >>   
> > wrote:  
>  [...]  
> >>
> >> No idea, but upstream is up to 4.4.19, and 4.6.7 (which is now
> >> EOL). So, those are pretty old versions.  I see 4.4.19 in the
> >> Gentoo repo, and 4.7.2 (which is probably where 4.6 users should
> >> be moving to).  
> >
> > Yes, this ~amd64 box is now at 4.7.2, but I have an amd64 and two
> > x86 systems and they both want to downgrade to 4.1.15-r1, which eix
> > shows as the latest stable version.
> >
> > I thought 4.4.6 and 4.6.4 were both pretty stable; was I wrong?
> >  
> 
> I'm sure they both work.  However, upstream has released numerous
> fixes since 4.4.6, and they will not be releasing security/bug/etc
> fixes for 4.6.x.
> 
> As long as there are no critical issues there is no issue with not
> being completely up-to-date with the kernel's stable releases, and I'm
> sure the Gentoo kernel team is tracking these sorts of issues.
> However, it isn't a surprise that they dropped 4.6.  If they
> downgraded 4.1 I suspect that was a mistake somewhere along the ways -
> I could see them upgrading it to something more recent.
> 
> And there is nothing wrong with having some internal QA on kernel
> releases.  4.1 had a nasty memory leak a release or two ago that was
> killing my system after only an hour or two uptime.  They took over a
> week to stabilize the fix as well (though a patch was out fairly
> quickly).  So, I'm not in nearly the rush to update kernels as I used
> to be (granted, unless you read all the lists it is easy to miss this
> sort of thing).

Surprise surprise, 4.7 has this (still not fully fixed) oom-killer bug.
When I'm running virtual machines, it still kicks in. I wanted to stay
on 4.6.x until 4.8 is released, and only then switch to 4.7. Now I was
forced early (I'm using btrfs), and was instantly punished by doing so:

The bfq patches I used were unstable (IO ops froze during boot, I was
forced to hard-reset the system) and as a consequence btrfs eventually
broke down a few hours later after the kernel booted without using bfq.

I had to restore from backup. Gentoo could have simply masked 4.6.x
with a masking message instead of removing it completely without
warning. I'm now using deadline instead of bfq, and I'm not using cfq
because it is everything else but running an interactive system
regarding IO: have some more than normal background IO and desktop
becomes unusable, audio and video apps starts skipping, games start
freezing up to a minute.

I'm now on 4.7.2 and I'm not happy due to the oom-killer mess. And
going back to 4.4 or even 4.1 is probably an unrealistic option when
using btrfs - at least I don't want to test it.

> I really wish the kernel had separate
> announce/discussion/patch lists.  It is really annoying that there is
> no way to get official notices up upstream updates without subscribing
> to lkml and such.  Is Linux the only FOSS project that has never heard
> of -announce lists?
> 
> I ended up bailing on gentoo-sources all the same.  Not that there was
> really anything wrong with it, but since I'm running btrfs and they've
> had a history of nasty regressions that tend to show up MONTHS later
> I've been a lot more picky about my kernel updates.  I'm currently
> tracking 4.1.  I might think about moving to 4.4 in a little while.  I
> tend to stay on the next-to-most-recent longterm not long after a new
> longterm is announced.  That tends to give them enough time to work
> out the bugs.  Plus, I spend a lot less time playing with
> configuration options this way (they don't change within a minor
> version).

This is why I wanted to stay major version behind currently stable -
I'm using btrfs, too. And history shows that especially 4.x.{0,1} may
introduce some nasty bugs if you are using edge technology like btrfs.

As I said, I'm not happy with this situation currently but I arranged
to live with it for the time being.

With btrfs gaining no must-have features lately, I'm considering to
stay with stable gentoo-sources when it switches to the unstable
version I'm currently using - which might be 4.7 or 4.8, I'm not sure.
I don't trust 4.7 currently, so I hope it will be 4.8.

-- 
Regards,
Kai

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