[arch-general] How often kernel26-lts updated?

[David Rosenstrauch]

On 03/25/2011 11:42 AM, Thomas S Hatch wrote:
> 2011/3/25 Cédric Girard<girard.cedric at gmail.com>
>
>> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 4:22 PM, David Rosenstrauch<darose at darose.net
>>> wrote:
>>
>>> Just wondering:  what's the general policy about how often (and why)
>>> kernel26-lts gets updated?  I know it's supposed to be a "long-term
>>> supported" kernel, making it more appropriate for servers and such.  But
>>> it seems like it gets updated almost as often as the main kernel26
>>> package.  Also, I saw today that it's currently flagged as out of date.
>>> What would be the criteria for it being out of date?  Is there some
>>> upstream release that the lts kernel follows along with?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> DR
>>>
>>
>> There are kernel releases marked upstream as "longterm"[1]. The 2.6.32
>> version currently being used in Arch as lts has been updated on the 24th of
>> March. (2.6.32.35).
>>
>> [1] http://kernel.org/
>>
>> --
>> Cédric Girard
>>
>
> So the idea is not that there is a kernel that doesn't get updated, the
> kernel MUST be updated to reflect security issues, the concept is that there
> is an older mostly feature frozen kernel available for server use.
> The reality is that, if you can't reboot your server on a regular basis then
> you have an architecture issue, which is why I use the latest kernel on my
> servers and reboot them a lot because using frozen state systems that can't
> reboot is a high security risk.

Thanks for the info Cedric and Thomas.

I can (and do) upgrade my kernel and reboot my server, though it would 
be nice to keep that to a minimum.

I guess I had been thinking that an older, LTS kernel would need to get 
upgraded less frequently, but perhaps this is not realistic.

Thanks,

DR