[arch-dev-public] Minimal kernel version

[Dan McGee]

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Tom Gundersen <teg at jklm.no> wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> As far as I understand the minimal kernel version we support is
> 2.6.27. This is at least due to glibc and udev.
>
> I thought it would be worth noting that as of its next release udev
> will require kernel version 2.6.32:
> <http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/hotplug/udev.git;a=commit;h=67a77c8bf299f6264f001677becd056316ebce2f>.
>
> Maybe this could be an opportunity to raise the requirement across the
> board, and also to make a news item about this?

Not to be the thorn in the side of progress, but we can't keep
changing this every six months on a whim unless we truly don't care
about some semblance of stability and uptime. We last changed this
less than 5 months ago[1], and before that, 21 months ago[2]. I think
there needs to be an extremely valid reason someone can't have a
machine with uptime approaching a year in duration. I'm sure there are
people running pre-2.6.32 kernels out there even though we don't
currently package one- it was only released in December 2009, so 18
months ago.

So obviously if you update udev on your system, you should be expected
to run a kernel that satisfies the requirement, but I don't think we
should force people to jump from the 2.6.27 level we established only
5 months ago just yet if at all possible.

-Dan

[1] http://www.archlinux.org/news/minimum-required-kernel-version-increased-1/
[2] http://www.archlinux.org/news/udev-minimum-kernel-version/