Slackware 13.1 Released :: An Unfortunate Choice of Kernel
As per the release announcement Slackware 13.1 has been released. Unfortunately I have to report I am less than happy with the 2.6.33.4 kernel with which it comes. I have come across too many bugs over too short a period of time to be able to trust this kernel with production servers; and this is a huge shame. Usually the only OS I’m truly happy to trust for my production servers is Slackware. It has always been simple, stable and secure. Unfortunately stable is just not the right word for 13.1. It feels rushed. It’s just not quite ready. If anything it feels like 13.1 is a running snapshot of -current rather than an end result. Pat has been tracking KDE SC and other software pretty closely putting the latest releases into -current as soon as possible and the current selection doesn’t feel like a well-tested stable collection, but just an arbitrary snapshot in time.
To be fair, most of the software in 13.1 is working pretty well without fault. Certainly I’m not aware of any specific complaints with the latest KDE SC, but the kernel is another matter. The 2.6.33.4 kernel has some major problems. There’s a bug between the versions of LVM and DRBD that causes massive data corruption. There’s a bug in LVM startup scanning that stops some LVM devices from being properly configured. There’s new ACPI bugs. All of these being major problems for production systems.
In practice this means that all my production stuff is halted at Slackware 13.0 which is pretty rock-solid. I really truly hope that Pat is planning to run a 13.2 in a few months and more than that I hope he doesn’t bow to any pressure to release anything prematurely. To give an indication of what I mean, it took just two weeks for Slackware 13.1 beta1 to go through rc1 and rc2 all the way to full release and in the melee it appears Pat forgot to update the README files in usb-and-pxe-installers.
Also, to clarify my concerns about the kernel, there are a number of features in 2.6.33 that people have been asking for but it is brand-spanking new and will only be supported for 6 months or so. Pat missed a golden opportunity to release 13.1 with the 2.6.32 kernel which is very stable and well tested and will be supported for between 2 and 3 years because it has been designated for long term support.
Could the people who really wanted a 2.6.33 kernel not have upgraded to it on their own without taking the whole stable Slackware release with them?
I can only hope for my own sake that 2.6.34 (or at least 35 or 36) proves itself rock solid so that I will be able to upgrade the servers that matter but still have a kernel I can trust.
Hi
excuse my ignorance: what issues would arise if I were to revert the Slackware64 13.1 kernel from 2.6.33.4 to 2.6.32.14 ? I have done something similar on Slackware 13 and it seemed to go fine but I’m not knowledgeable enough to know for sure.
@Gerard Lally
I am running one slackware 13.1 box at home on 2.6.32. It runs very fine
Although I have another box at home, that used to run slackware 13.0 and kernel 2.6.32 until yesterday. Now it runs slack 13.1 and kernel 2.6.33.5 (all kernels are custom-built by me). The newer kernel performs much better on that box. I am even going to patch BFS in for better interactivity, when I have time.
Regards, slava_dp @ freenode ##slackware
?
I can’t see anything about that fixed even in 2.6.33.5 changelog: it would be fine if you please point us to some text/reports about this stuff…
@Ponce
There isn’t a lot of data gathered together in one place. The DRBD/LVM bug is currently with the DRBD devs, the ACPI bugs have been brought up in IRC discussion, I THINK someone has submitted the LVM issue as a bug (there’s someone specifically being affected by it that was looking into it).
I appreciate that it would be awesome if I could go around finding and cataloguing all of these issues and making sure they’re all being dealt with in the current kernel, but I just don’t have the time. I only just found the time to write the article in the first place while waiting for the missus to get ready
At work I am so snowed under it’s a wonder I managed to recover from the corruption in the first place.
I’ve been using Slackware for the last 5 years, and love the distro. But there is one thing bothering me since Slackware moved to the 2.6 kernel, why is it always using these bleeding-edge kernels as the default? Why not choose the most stable 2.6 kernel as the default and the newest ones as an option. For several versions of slack, the 2.4 kernel was the default and then 2.6 was in extra/testing. In my opinion Slackware should have used 2.6.16 as the default until 2.6.27 became the “stable” 2.6 kernel and should now be using 2.6.27 as the default kernel.
@hrottius
I’m not sure I’d go that far.. but I definitely agree with the sentiment that a proven stable kernel is required rather than bleeding-edge.