On Thu, 1 Sep 2016 22:08:19 +0200, Kai Krakow wrote:

> > No one forced you to do anything. You 4.6 kernel was still in boot,
> > your 4.6 sources were still installed. The ebuild was only removed
> > fro the portage tree, nothing was uninstalled from your system unless
> > you did it. Even the ebuild was still on your computer
> > in /var/db/pkg.  
> 
> Of course nobody forced me. I just can't follow how the 4.7 ebuild
> kind-of replaced the 4.6 (and others) ebuild in face of this pretty
> mature oom-killer problem.
> 
> Removal of a 4.6 series ebuild also means there would follow no updates

Are there any updates to the 4.6 series or was is 4.7 considered its
successor by the kernels devs? If the former, I can understand your
point. If the latter, there would be no updates so there is no point.

> - so my next upgrade would "force" me into deciding going way down
> (probably a bad idea) or up into unknown territory (and this showed:
> can also be a problem). Or I can stay with 4.6 until depclean removed
> it for good (which will, by the way, remove the files from /usr/src).

Depclean won't remove it if you add it to world. Or you can add this
to /etc/portage/sets.conf to prevent depclean removing any kernels

[kernels]
class = portage.sets.dbapi.OwnerSet
world-candidate = False
files = /usr/src

Running old or out of date kernels is not an issue with Gentoo. I had a
machine running the same kernel for at least a year, long after it was
removed from the tree, because I had some hardware for which the driver
wouldn't compile with newer kernels.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

[unwieldy legal disclaimer would go here - feel free to type your own]