linux-kernel - Re: Linux 3.10.108 (EOL)

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Date:   Wed, 15 Nov 2017 09:50:24 +0100
From:   Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To:     Sebastian Gottschall <s.gottschall@...wrt.com>
Cc:     Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>, Harsh Shandilya <msfjarvis@...il.com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, stable@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Linux 3.10.108 (EOL)

On Wed, Nov 15, 2017 at 09:09:34AM +0100, Sebastian Gottschall wrote:
> Am 15.11.2017 um 05:32 schrieb Willy Tarreau:
> > On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 11:40:31PM +0100, Sebastian Gottschall wrote:
> > > > And anyway the end of life has been indicated on kernel.org for 18 months
> > > > and in every announce in 2017, so it cannot be a surprize anymore :-) At
> > > > least nobody seemed to complain for all this time!
> > > itsn no surprise for sure, but that also means i have to stay on the old
> > > kernel for these special devices and your argument about disable certain
> > > parts which simply turned bigger over time is no option
> > > 
> > > since it would remove features which existed before. its not that i enable
> > > all features of the kernel. i use every kernel with the same options (some
> > > are adjusted since they are renamed or moved)
> > Then I have a few questions :
> >    - how did you choose this kernel ? Or did you choose the hardware based
> >      on the kernel size ?
> 
> i did not choose it. i port regular all kernels to the platforms i use
> including 4.4 and 4.9
> 
> but a few of these which are already ported to 4.4 and 4.9 will still run
> 3.10 for resource problems.
> 
> >    - what would have you done if 3.10 had not been LTS ?
> using another LTS at that point :-)
> >    - have you at least tried other kernels before claiming they are much
> >      larger ? Following your principle, 3.2 should be smaller and 3.16 not
> >      much larger. The former offers you about 6 extra months of maintenance,
> >      the latter 3.5 years (https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html).
> 
> i also used 3.2 before. sure
> 
> dont get me wrong i work with all kernels, also with latests. i do also not
> complain that 3.10 is now EOL
> 
> i just wanted to throw some stones on the bloated kernel problem which is
> increasing

People used to be working on that, but then it seemed like the "size"
got to a point that people were comfortable with it.  Are you sure that
just changing some build options would not make your image smaller?
Letting people know sometime in the past few years that the kernel was
getting "too big" for you would have been good to do :)

What exactly is the size limits you are hitting?  What is your .config?

thanks,

greg k-h