[asterisk-dev] Proposal for DAHDI-trunk: deprecate old kernels

[Oron Peled]

On Thursday, 29 בDecember 2011 20:08:21 Jason Parker wrote:
> On 12/29/2011 11:42 AM, Oron Peled wrote:
> >    * After DAHDI-2.8:
> >      Drop support for 2.6.18 kernels.
> 
> I was with you right up until this point.  If support for 2.6.18 is released
> before the enterprise distros maintenance period ends (RHEL5, March 2014),
> then we are doing a serious disservice to these users.

1. You are right (and I knew RHEL/Centos-5 would be the thorniest
   issue), but let's try some prediction (although it's hard
   to make predictions... especially about the future ;-)

   * DAHDI-2.6 is out RSN.

   * I was talking about two releases ahead (2.7, 2.8) when would
     it be? Let's say they would take a year from now (we can
     be optimistic) [Jan-2013]

   * So let's re-evaluate RHEL-5 at that time.
     (how many such boxes would need *new* installtion from trunk
     not a maintenance release from DAHDI-2.8 stable branches)

   * "Worst" case, by that time we'll decide to wait until
     March-2014 as you suggested -- I'll be totally OK with this.

   * So it looks that 2.6.18 kernels can be deprecated sometime
     around 2013, 2014.

2. However, the policy you imply has bigger, long term, implication:
   * First, RHEL life-cycle has separate periods, the March-2014
     date means until end of "Production 3 Phase". From:

       https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/

       "...No new functionality, new hardware support or updated
        installation images..."

     So we talk about extending DAHDI *trunk* support beyond
     the time the OS vendor itself supports new hardware install.

   * The more accute problem is that it implies maintaining
     DHADI trunk for two RHEL releases (e.g: 5 + 6)

     It is easy to see that this is not sustainable:
     - E.g: RHEL-4 + RHEL-5 (Feb-2005 until Mar-2014)
       spans 10 years
     - In this time the upstream kernel matured from 2.6.0
       into 3.x.... Hmmm...

So while I think the current decisions are not very difficult
we are heading to some harder decisions later.

-- 
Oron Peled                                 Voice: +972-4-8228492
oron at actcom.co.il                  http://users.actcom.co.il/~oron
Microsoft gives you windows, linux gives you the whole house.
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