Re: [gentoo-user] Upgrading from 5.14 to 6.0 version

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, Nov 11, 2022 at 1:25 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Is there some major change that causes copying .config file from 5.14 to
> 5.18 or higher to break?

So, I just upgraded to 5.15 recently and tend to stick to LTS kernels,
precisely to minimize this sort of thing.

My guess is that you missed something in make oldconfig, but obviously
without exact errors that could be completely wrong.

I can't speak to 6.0 specifically, but one thing that I've found is a
gotcha is when they consolidate config items under higher level ones.
So they'll take what used to be 50 questions, and turn it into 1
question with 50 questions underneath it.  The 1 question shows up as
a new config item, and if you don't appreciate what it does and answer
no to it, then you'll disable every item underneath it.

Basically, don't assume that any new question is a new feature, and if
you say no you'll still have all the pre-existing features.  It could
be a virtual question and answering no turns off a whole bunch of
things that you had previously said yes to.  You need to review
oldconfig questions pretty carefully.  You could try defaulting the
answers but even then the defaults aren't always reasonable.  They
don't just turn on things you don't need.  For example, by default
linux turns off CGROUP support, and almost everything uses that today.
That was just the first thing I checked, and I bet there are a million
other gotchas like that.

--
Rich