From: Patrick F. <pa...@pu...> - 2002-11-01 14:01:54
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On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Craig I. Hagan wrote: > > Talk is cheap. > > > > I've not seen a _single_ bug-report with a fix that attributed the > > existing LKCD patches. I might be more impressed if I had. > > > > The basic issue is that we don't put patches in in the hope that they will > > prove themselves later. Your argument is fundamentally flawed. > > comment from userspace: > > I'm going to have to side with Linus here despite my desire to see LKCD > merged. I'll have to disagree with what you're saying, because: > However, we need to show him the money. This means: > > * making sure that the patches are kept up to date They are being kept up to date, and aparently have been for some time. > * keep the LKCD patches in the list/community spotlight in a positive > manner ("please test this!", or "please use this when > looking for help debugging a system problem"). Perhaps > a 2.5.x-lkcd bk tree or something like that. Umm, and the difference between maintaining a set of patches per kernel version and something using bitkeeper (or heaven forbid, CVS)? Even Linus didn't starting using source code management until somewhat recently. > * make documentation/HOWTO's available for folks so that > they'll know how to generate a crashdump > and run a some utilities against it to generate > a synopsis which can be submitted for debugging Have you seen http://lkcd.sf.net ? They have that there. I've successfully walked through their well-written tutorials and produced crashdumps from machines that have failed. > * most important: squash a whole lot of bugs with > said dumps! Perhaps people are but they're not posting the bugs to the list... > If it becomes apparent through empirical data that crash dumps are a useful > tool, I'm sure that Linus will become far more amenable. Until then, lets let > him handle all of his other work which needs to get done. The data is there, perhaps not for Linux, but for other Unixes - including ones like the BSDs. Crashdumps are an invaluable resource for finding bugs that involve things like hardware that doesn't conform exactly to specs, or deadlocks, or... Pat -- Purdue Universtiy ITAP/RCS Information Technology at Purdue Research Computing and Storage http://www-rcd.cc.purdue.edu http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2040637020924.gif |