I'm not sure if you in the kernel herd are intending to support 2.6.16 in addition to latest 2.6.x, but considering you've made new 2.6.16 ebuilds since it's normal lifecycle ended and it became maintained by Adrian Bunk instead, I'm assuming you do. While vanilla-sources-2.6.16 has been regularly updated, gentoo-sources-2.6.16 has bitrotted for six months now, while upstream has made several bugfixes and security patches addressing 14 different security issues (of varying, generally low, severity): CVE-2005-4352, CVE-2006-2935, CVE-2006-2936, CVE-2006-3741, CVE-2006-3745, CVE-2006-4093, CVE-2006-4145, CVE-2006-4538, CVE-2006-4572, CVE-2006-4623 CVE-2006-4997, CVE-2006-5174, CVE-2006-5619, and CVE-2006-5751 So basically I'm asking for a updated gentoo-sources-2.6.16 ebuild, or, if that's not gonna happen, a definite message that I have to choose between vanilla-sources-2.6.16 and gentoo-sources-2.6.x to get future bug fixes.
Considering that gentoo-sources-2.6.18-r6 is the latest stable version and 2.6.19 will be stabilized soon, I really don't see what kind of updated are you expecting for gentoo-sources-2.6.16.
Yes, 2.6.19.1 is the latest stable 2.6.x linux kernel, however, that is not the only stable branch upstream. During the last few weeks there has also been upstream stale releases from two additional branches: the 2.6.16 branch (latest release: 2.6.37 @ 2006-12-26; latest vanilla sources in portage: 2.6.16.36 @ 2006-12-17; latest gentoo-sources in portage: 2.6.16-r13, based on 2.6.16.24 @ 2006-06-15) as well as the 2.4 branch (latest release: 2.4.34 @ 2006-12-23; latest vanilla-sources in portage: 2.4.34 @ 2006-12-24; latest gentoo-sources in portage: 2.4.32-r7, based on 2.4.32 @ 2006-08-04) So, upstream currently maintain 3 stable branches: 2.6.x (currently 2.6.19), 2.6.16 and 2.4 The Gentoo kernel herd seems to maintain vanilla-sources for all three branches. However, regarding gentoo-sources the picture isn't as clear. The Gentoo kernel herd has obviously maintained all three branches previously, but both 2.4 and 2.6.16 seems to have been left to bitrot lately. What I want is some maintenance of the 2.6.16 branch of gentoo-sources, since upstream has made 12 stable releases addressing 14 security issues since last ebuild in portage. Or, if the kernel heard does not intend to ever maintain the 2.6.16 branch of gentoo-sources again, a clear message that that is their intention would be appreciated, so I know that I have to migrate to another branch (either vanilla-sources-2.6.16 or gentoo-sources-2.6.x).
gentoo-sources-2.6.16 is unsupported, as is gentoo-sources-2.6.17 and everything else below the latest stable version. We do not have the resources to maintain the extra 2.6.16 branch. Please note that we don't apply bugfixes to vanilla-sources, it is unsupported. I recommend you switch to gentoo-sources-2.6.18, or if you are feeling adventurous, help with the 2.6.19 testing. gentoo-sources-2.4 is maintained separately, but currently has no maintainer. We are looking for someone to step up, otherwise it will be removed from portage sometime soon.
closing
OK, then I at least know what is going on. Thanks for the reply.
(In reply to comment #3) > I recommend you switch to gentoo-sources-2.6.18, or if you are feeling > adventurous, help with the 2.6.19 testing. > If you suggest this, can you at least please push out a fix for the VM mmap writeback corruption, which 2.6.19 triggers? A backport to 2.6.19 is easy and works flawlessly on top of 2.6.19-gentoo-r2 for me at least (x86_64) Testing 2.6.19 without is, well, more than adventurous.
Will do soon. Please note that the bug you are referring to is trivially easy to reproduce on all kernels, well at least as far back as 2.6.5 as that is the range that has been tested. It shouldn't be viewed as a for or against 2.6.19 testing.
