[arch-general] Reboot - Versioned Kernel Installs

[Thomas Dziedzic]

On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 11:22 AM, Tavian Barnes
<tavianator at tavianator.com> wrote:
> On 6 June 2011 10:02, KESHAV P.R. <skodabenz at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>         Since the next kernel will be 3.0 , the kernel26 naming is
>> meaningless from the next kernel. I think this is also a good time to
>> consider implementing versioned kernel install. Agreed arch has a
>> policy of 1 package per software in the official repos. While this
>> attitude is acceptable for Xorg or windows managers or even some low
>> level utilities, problems with those can be corrected if the system
>> can boot to a shell atleast (init 1 or 3). But if the kernel fails to
>> boot and under the assumption that the user hdoes not have any rescue
>> system/distro handy he/she cannot boot into the system (atleast not at
>> that moment). Without a working kernel it is not possible to boot to a
>> shell to run any damn command.
>>        While this topic has already been discussed at [1] the
>> discussion was slow and has not lead to any fruitful result. This post
>> is mainly to reach out to a larger audience and decide on how to go
>> about since the upsteam version change provides the right time for
>> Arch to reconsider the same. Another discussion at [2] is about
>> removing the word kernel from the initramfs image. If in case
>> versioned kernel proposal is accepted then the initramfs also
>> (automatically) becomes versioned to match the kernel. Atleast Dave
>> Reisner (falconindy) took the first step by making the change in his
>> geninit program. I understand this might require changes in the way
>> mkinitcpio (or geninit if at all it becomes default) and the way
>> pacman handles different versions of same packages. Please join in.
>>
>> [1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/16702
>> [2] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/18719
>>
>> Regards.
>>
>> keshav
>>
>
> I have kernel26-lts installed as a backup kernel, and this is all
> that's really necessary for rolling back broken kernel updates.  I've
> been bitten by a BTRFS bug once and rolled back with -lts no problem.
> -1 from me on keeping multiple kernel versions installed; I really
> like that arch doesn't keep 6 old kernels around.
>
> While we're at it, +1 for calling the kernel package "linux" for version 3.0.
>
> --
> Tavian Barnes
>

Agreed with Tavian Barnes.
Also, don't call it "linux30" just call it "linux"