On Friday 10 June 2011 14:03:32 Yaro Kasear wrote:
On Friday, June 10, 2011 04:26:21 Robert Howard wrote:
Why not just copy the old kernel image, modules and initrd image somewhere by hand before you upgrade kernels. If we try to make this automated it isn't going to be kiss. I used to do this way back in the day by including the entire kernel version in the pkgver and giving the images longer names. It was possible to have concurrently installed kernels. Check out how some of the AUR kernels manage to be the same kernel version as the official without causing issues.
+1 on this. If you really need the old kernel, why not make sure you back up the old one and its image before upgrading instead of inconveniencing other users and the developers for a feature only a minority even wants?
Because it's painful to go through that every time a new kernel update comes along. Also, I think you're underestimating the interest in this. This list will typically contain the most advanced Arch users, who are confident rescuing their system from a bad kernel upgrade. I'm sure there are plenty of Arch users out there that aren't reading this list, but for whom this feature could save them a lot of time and effort. Just because most of *us* can probably fix this in our sleep, doesn't mean it's right for Arch users in general. Also, I wonder what happens if power is lost whilst pacman is installing a new kernel? I haven't tried this, but it wouldn't surprise me if the system ended up with a truncated kernel that wouldn't boot. That's a bug right there, although it's a pretty tiny corner case, granted :) Paul