Hi, I was trying to recompile a module and needed the kernel source.. but it wasn''t to be found in the debian archives at all - it''s like it had vanished off the face of the planet. The old 2.6.18 code is there but as that doesn''t support newer motherboards it''s no use to me. I can find no official statement but this single line from the kernel maintainer (at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=418783) "2.6.20 is dropped from the archive and no xen support exists in newer kernels." That''s it. No mention of support being ''delayed'' or anyting, just no support. That reads to me as if xen is dead on debian.. without kernel support it''s pretty useless. Any ideas why they took this decision? There''s nothing on the debian development archives that I can see. It''s left me hosed - I can''t build a device driver without headers and they deleted all the xen related 2.6.20 kernel packages without warning, so I''m left with a kernel I can''t build drivers for without going outside the package management system and handcrafting my own (something I used to do but it''s too frought with error.. haven''t done it for a long while now). Tony _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
It may be of some assistance that 2.6.20-1-xen-xxx packages are in the backports repository, including header packages and source. I am quite curious about the maintainer message you found... Tom On Thu, 7 Jun 2007, Tony Hoyle wrote:> Hi, > > I was trying to recompile a module and needed the kernel source.. but it > wasn''t to be found in the debian archives at all - it''s like it had vanished > off the face of the planet. The old 2.6.18 code is there but as that doesn''t > support newer motherboards it''s no use to me. I can > find no official statement but this single line from the kernel maintainer > (at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=418783) > > "2.6.20 is dropped from the archive and no xen support exists in newer > kernels." That''s it. No mention of support being ''delayed'' or anyting, just > no support. > > That reads to me as if xen is dead on debian.. without kernel support it''s > pretty useless. Any ideas why they took this decision? There''s nothing on > the debian development archives that I can see. > > It''s left me hosed - I can''t build a device driver without headers and they > deleted all the xen related 2.6.20 kernel packages without warning, so I''m > left with a kernel I can''t build drivers for without going outside the > package management system and handcrafting my own (something I used to do but > it''s too frought with error.. haven''t done it for a long while now). > > Tony > > _______________________________________________ > Xen-users mailing list > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com > http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users >_______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Tom Allen wrote:> It may be of some assistance that 2.6.20-1-xen-xxx packages are in the > backports repository, including header packages and source. I am quite > curious about the maintainer message you found...Ahh never thought of backports - I usually pull in stuff from testing as needed. I''ll add that so I can at least get this module built. Tony _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Thu, Jun 07, 2007 at 07:35:38PM +0100, Tony Hoyle wrote:> vanished off the face of the planet. The old 2.6.18 code is there but > as that doesn''t support newer motherboards it''s no use to me. I can > find no official statement but this single line from the kernel > maintainer (at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=418783) > > "2.6.20 is dropped from the archive and no xen support exists in newer > kernels." That''s it. No mention of support being ''delayed'' or anyting, > just no support.My guess (and it''s purely a guess) is that nobody''s stepped up to port the Xen patches to kernels newer than 2.6.20, and hence "no xen support exists in newer kernels". Debian is taking a fairly hard-line approach to kernel versions these days -- no more having hundreds of different kernel versions and build options in the stable release (at one point, an entire CD''s worth of various kernel packages were in the release). Now, you get one kernel source that covers all architectures and options, and the various different kernels get built out of that. If your pet out-of-lkml-tree patch doesn''t apply to the new kernel source, and nobody''s willing to put the resources into making it work again, then out it goes. It''s a pest, but the other options were just untenable, from a stable release maintenance point of view. In addition to backports, you can also find any old package you like on snapshot.debian.net.> That reads to me as if xen is dead on debian.. without kernel support > it''s pretty useless. Any ideas why they took this decision? There''s > nothing on the debian development archives that I can see.Package maintainers take decisions as they see fit. No need for project-wide consensus (thank $DEITY, or nothing would *ever* get done). You can easily have a say in what gets done, though -- jump in there and do things. If you''re feeling motivated, port the Xen patches to 2.6.21. I''m quite confident that the kernel maintainers would be happy to re-add the patch -- it''s just that they''re not willing to spend some massive amount of time doing the work themselves (presumably none of them use Xen). I believe I saw something recently about Fedora forward-porting some Xen kernel patches... it was either to 2.6.20 or 2.6.21. If they''re working on 2.6.21, you could use their work as a starting point.> It''s left me hosed - I can''t build a device driver without headers and > they deleted all the xen related 2.6.20 kernel packages without warning,Just out of interest, how should you have been warned about this change, to guarantee that you would know about it in enough time to take whatever action you deemed appropriate? As an aside, this discussion would much more productively be had on pkg-xen-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org, or perhaps debian-kernel@lists.debian.org, rather than here. You''re far more likely to get the kernel maintainers'' and/or Xen package maintainers'' input that way. - Matt _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users