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

[Stephan Wiesand]

On May 11, 2016, at 18:42 , D'Amato, Tony wrote:

>=20
>>=20
>> Hi all,
>>=20
>> OpenAFS has generally tried to provide a software that is compatible =
with
>> a wide range of new and historical operating systems; it is only =
recently
>> (March 2015) that we removed support for Linux 2.4.
>>=20
>> The current linux support is all bundled in as "Linux 2.6", since =
there
>> has not been a major version boundary with drastic changes since =
then,
>> rather, a continual evolution with some changes affecting us in most
>> releases.  Major versions 3 and 4 were added just because "the =
numbers
>> were getting too big", but are still a normal evolution of the code =
with
>> ancestry from 2.6.
>>=20
>> Because there are not major version conditionals in place (and =
because
>> many distributions backport some patches for their kernels but not
>> others), we instead rely on feature tests at configure time.  Over =
time,
>> we accumulate a lot of these tests and the corresponding code
>> conditionals, which makes the code harder to read and maintain.
>>=20
>> I would like to get a sense for what versions of Linux are in use =
with
>> OpenAFS today, to give some guidance as to whether it may be =
appropriate
>> to increase the minimum supported version of Linux from 2.6.0.
>>=20
>> Thanks,
>>=20
>> Ben
>=20
> We're mostly running RHEL6 with the Red Hat 2.6.32 kernel, a shrinking=20=

> handful of RHEL5 boxes with the 2.6.18 kernel, and an even smaller=20
> number of RHEL7 machines running 3.10.0. We're also planning on=20
> replacing our Solaris 10 OpenAFS database servers with RHEL6 machines=20=

> within the year.
>=20
> Since support for RHEL6 doesn't end until 2020, we'll still like to =
see=20
> 2.6 support continue in OpenAFS 1.6 at least until then.


I think we're not even discussing the removal of support for Linux 2.4 =
from the 1.6.x stable release series, and this is rather about the =
upcoming 1.8 (which will not support 2.4 since the code doing that was =
removed on the master branch a while ago).

IMO, OpenAFS 1.6 should support EL6 (Linux 2.6) until either one reaches =
its end of life, and 1.8 should support EL7 (Linux 3.10) in the same =
fashion. If other "Enterprise"/"LTS"/"stable" distributions in wide use =
(SLE, Ubuntu LTS, debian stable, ...) set stricter boundary conditions, =
those should be honored. But all this is "ideally" and of course subject =
to availability resources.


--=20
Stephan Wiesand
DESY -DV-
Platanenenallee 6
15738 Zeuthen, Germany