From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756110AbYBQE1r (ORCPT ); Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:27:47 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753434AbYBQE1l (ORCPT ); Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:27:41 -0500 Received: from turing-police.cc.vt.edu ([128.173.14.107]:35146 "EHLO turing-police.cc.vt.edu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750896AbYBQE1k (ORCPT ); Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:27:40 -0500 X-Mailer: exmh version 2.7.2 01/07/2005 with nmh-1.2 To: Willy Tarreau Cc: Bill Davidsen , Adrian Bunk , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Driver removals In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:39:08 +0100." <20080216073907.GT8953@1wt.eu> From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu References: <20080214082547.GJ12383@cs181133002.pp.htv.fi> <47B5E2FD.9060908@tmr.com> <20080215222830.GA9962@cs181133002.pp.htv.fi> <47B6377D.4050502@tmr.com> <26601.1203126747@turing-police.cc.vt.edu> <20080216073907.GT8953@1wt.eu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="==_Exmh_1203222445_2997P"; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:27:25 -0500 Message-ID: <26786.1203222445@turing-police.cc.vt.edu> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org --==_Exmh_1203222445_2997P Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:39:08 +0100, Willy Tarreau said: > I don't understand why kernel developers always think that users spend > their whole time testing their new stuff. That is mostly true for a lot > of desktop users, but definitely not for servers. On a server, you may > *ignore* that a new driver exists for years. The basic make oldconfig > does the stuff right. Been there, done that. We got a number of boxes that sit there for ages between reboots and even longer between upgrades. Deploying Solaris 10 was like a 2-year process for some of our boxes (when the boxes are running the Oracle databases that house the enterprise business systems, and your organizational budget is pushing the $1B/year mark, everybody gets *really* cautious to avoid a CLM while upgrading... ;) And we may actually manage to finally kill off our last AIX 4.3.3 box this quarter (4.3.3 was released all the way back in Sep 1999, and EOL'ed back in 2004 - don't ask. :) Of course, the difference is that we *expect* that there's a good chance that if we try to subject that sort of box to 3 year's worth of updates, there's a good chance we'll discover that some driver has been EOL'ed or otherwise problematic on now-ancient hardware... (And yes, there's a *lot* of risk-management going on centered around "What if we have to patch Server23 for a critical kernel security issue?". Of course, if it was actually *feasible* to blindly upgrade-and-reboot twice a month, the job could be done by a much less expensive patch monkey, so it's good job security ;) --==_Exmh_1203222445_2997P Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Exmh version 2.5 07/13/2001 iD8DBQFHt7etcC3lWbTT17ARApCXAJ90tDCbdf3jMTFk5il0vCHn50Sd9gCgnact jwilPgbeG/XS6qt+OZ7n6yI= =N6fW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --==_Exmh_1203222445_2997P--