[arch-general] Getting freeze on early start with linux 4.9-1 kernel.

[Mauro Santos]

On 26-12-2016 02:54, Eli Schwartz via arch-general wrote:
> On 12/24/2016 10:33 AM, Mauro Santos via arch-general wrote:
>> What other distros do is recommend a 1GB /boot or changing the
>> configuration to reduce the number of older kernels installed[1]. People
>> have complained about small libraries needing to be installed as being
>> wasteful, at a grand total 100MiB+ for each kernel that would start a
>> nice flamewar.
> 
> Well, we already expect people to take care of orphans themselves, and
> nobody is suggesting old kernels *must* be kept around forever.
> 
>>>> There is also the matter of automagic bootloader configuration change to
>>>> support that, not to mention people that use efistub to boot their
>>>> system, how do you propose to handle that?
> 
> The blatantly obvious way would be with a dummy kernel package
> containing a symlink to the vmlinuz/initramfs of the latest versioned
> package. Old bootloader configurations don't care about how many new and
> irrelevant files aren't being looked at.
> 
> If you want new bootloader entries to be automatically added in grub.cfg
> then simply use a pacman hook to re-run grub-mkconfig -- I am sure
> something similar can be easily done for syslinux/EFI.
> You can also edit the boot cmdline from grub itself...
> 

Automagic updates? No thank you. Stay away from my configuration files
and efi variables.

>>> If you have installed archlinux, it's reasonable to expect that one knows
>>> how to configure this.
>>
>> It is you who said "I wish arch would (like other distros) keep 2 or
>> three old kernel versions around" not me. Other distributions
>> automagically take care of updating the bootloader configuration, as
>> much would be expected of arch.
>> Some people already have trouble managing to update one kernel properly,
>> imagine the chaos it would be with more than one if manual steps were
>> involved, not to mention old kernels have _known_ security issues and
>> having old stuff around is not the Arch way.
> 
> What problems are people having with updating one kernel? Please
> elaborate on your vagueness.
> 

Forgetting to reboot, which you address below and I have to agree that
as things are now they are not optimal. Forgetting to mount /boot and
all the "fun" stuff that every once in a while pops up in the forum.

> As for known security issues and keeping old stuff around, I could care
> less about offering all kernels in the repos -- I just don't want my old
> kernel to be uninstalled until I say so.
> 
> See http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/16702 for more details, but the basic
> gist is that versioned kernel installs are a *good* thing, as opposed to
> being forced to reboot every time your --sysupgrade includes the kernel
> (which is what *I* would call not-very-Arch-way), and it is intended
> that we will eventually get versioned kernels, and the fact that we
> don't have that today is simply because it is low-priority and tpowa
> hasn't gotten around to it yet.
> 
> (I am not entirely sure what the holdup is, though.)
> 


-- 
Mauro Santos