[sclug] Recovering gracefully from lost interrupt

[Simon Huggins]

On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 12:17:41PM +0100, lug at assursys.co.uk wrote:
> On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Simon Huggins wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 12:54:59AM +0100, Will Dickson wrote:
> > > Perhaps, although IIRC is was just 2.4.20; I can't remember whether it
> > > was Debian's precompiled one or a customised one. (In the latter case,
> > > I am familiar with the kernel compile process; I've been compiling
> > > customised kernels successfully for several years prior to this
> > > incident.)
> > Distribution kernels are rarely the same as a particular vanilla version
> > from kernel.org though.
> Most distributions (Debian, Red Hat at least) include a significant number
> of patches that fix stability and reliability issues with the vanilla Linus
> (Marcelo) kernel.

Absolutely this is my point.  There could be any number of patches
floating around in the Suse or Debian ones which cause the problem to
appear or disappear.

> As these patches are picked by people more closely involved in the
> kernel development process (and thus, probably more knowledgable) than
> myself,

More closely than Linus or Marcelo? :)

> I generally use distribution kernels on production machines.  I'll
> only use custom kernels on non-mission critical machines, and even
> then, I'll go to some lengths to include the same set of patches -
> checking for obsolence if a patch clashes, and back/forward-porting if
> necessary.

I agree that commercial distributions often do lots of testing and
include fixes for bugs in vanilla kernels.  They do however normally get
folded in upstream too eventually.

-- 
----------(  "Have you seen a man who's lost his luggage?"   )----------
----------(                   -- Suitcase                    )----------
Simon ----(                                                  )---- Nomis
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