[OpenAFS-devel] Re: How old of Linux do you use with OpenAFS?

[D'Amato, Tony]

>
> Hi all,
>
> OpenAFS has generally tried to provide a software that is compatible=20
> with a wide range of new and historical operating systems; it is only=20
> recently (March 2015) that we removed support for Linux 2.4.
>
> The current linux support is all bundled in as "Linux 2.6", since=20
> there has not been a major version boundary with drastic changes since=20
> then, rather, a continual evolution with some changes affecting us in=20
> most releases.  Major versions 3 and 4 were added just because "the=20
> numbers were getting too big", but are still a normal evolution of the=20
> code with ancestry from 2.6.
>
> Because there are not major version conditionals in place (and because=20
> many distributions backport some patches for their kernels but not=20
> others), we instead rely on feature tests at configure time.  Over=20
> time, we accumulate a lot of these tests and the corresponding code=20
> conditionals, which makes the code harder to read and maintain.
>
> I would like to get a sense for what versions of Linux are in use with=20
> OpenAFS today, to give some guidance as to whether it may be=20
> appropriate to increase the minimum supported version of Linux from 2.6.0=
.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ben

Sorry about before. Thunderbird & Office365 are fun...
=20
We're mostly running RHEL6 with the Red Hat 2.6.32 kernel, a shrinking hand=
ful of RHEL5 boxes with
the 2.6.18 kernel, and an even smaller number of RHEL7 machines running 3.1=
0.0. We're also planning
on replacing our Solaris 10 OpenAFS database servers with RHEL6 machines wi=
thin the year.

Since support for RHEL6 doesn't end until 2020, we'll still like to see Lin=
ux 2.6 support continue in
OpenAFS 1.6 at least until then.

--
Tony D'Amato, RHCSA/RHCE
Senior UNIX Systems Administrator
Server Support Group, Information Technology Services
Old Dominion University