[gentoo-user] Using oldconfig and kernel revisions ( was : Cannot boot 2.6.21-gentoo-r4)

[Billy Wayne McCann <thebillywayne@gmail.com>]

Right after I sent my previous mail, it hit me that maybe a better topic
than just "OT" would be better.

Billy Wayne McCann wrote:
> Albert Hopkins wrote:
>> On Tue, 2007-07-17 at 15:19 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>>> On Tuesday 17 July 2007, Mick wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday 17 July 2007 13:20, Billy McCann wrote:
>>>>> Hi Mick.   From what I understand, using oldconfig for major
>>>>> version changes (.20 -> .21) is a bad idea.  Here's what I did.  It
>>>>> may be slow and stupid but it worked like a charm.
>>>> Sure, but I have been using oldconfig for previous major changes and
>>>> never had a problem like this before.
>>> Now you know why the kernel devs keep telling you not to do it, heh :-)
>>>
>> I don't know which kernel dev keeps saying that, but I'd recommend
>> he/she specify what is meant by "major version" since, historically:
>>
>> 2.6.22
>> ^ ^ ^
>> | | +--- Revision
>> | +----- Minor version
>> +------- Major version
>>
>> And therefore .20 -> .21 would not be considered a "major" version
>> change by most accounts.
>>
>> --
>> Albert W. Hopkins
> 
> Thanks for correcting my nomenclature, Albert.  I too was wanting to use
> oldconfig for upgrading my kernel from .20 to .21, but decided not to
> after reading the recommendation of the Gentoo Kernel Upgrade Guide, the
> relevant portion of which I have pasted below. Perhaps this applied only
> to the specific example used.
> 
> My purpose for pasting this into this discussion is three-fold: to show
> why I said what I did, to hopefully dispel the notion that I merely made
> this all up, and to discuss the relevance of the pasted text itself.
> 
> I apologize for being off-topic and hope that Mick finds himself a
> working kernel config soon.  :)
> 
> 
> Billy Wayne
> 
> =====================
> 
> (Note the the second and third sentences of the second paragraph.)
> 
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/kernel-upgrade.xml
> 
> 10. Advanced: Using your old kernel .config to configure a new one
> 
> It is sometimes possible to save time by re-using the configuration file
> from your old kernel when configuring the new one. Note that this is
> generally unsafe -- too many changes between every kernel release for
> this to be a reliable upgrade path.
> 
> The only situation where this is appropriate is when upgrading from one
> Gentoo kernel revision to another. For example, the changes made between
> gentoo-sources-2.6.9-r1 and gentoo-sources-2.6.9-r2 will be very small,
> so it is usually OK to use the following method. However, it is not
> appropriate to use it in the example used throughout this document:
> upgrading from 2.6.8 to 2.6.9. Too many changes between the official
> releases, and the method described below does not display enough context
> to the user, often resulting in the user running into problems because
> they disabled options that they really didn't want to.
> 
> 
-- 
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