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Linus Torvalds: Backporting Is A Good Thing
darthcamaro writes "Looks like we don't need to speculate on what Linus' opinion is on backporting. Internetnews.com is running a story this morning that includes Linus' comments on the issue which was a /. topic yesterday.
When asked by e-mail to comment for internetnews.com, Torvalds wrote:
'I think it makes sense from a company standpoint to basically "cherry-pick" stuff from the development version that they feel is important to their customers. And in that sense I think the back-porting is actually a very good thing.'"
Then perhaps someone should back-port the fixes that remove the SCO code.
(ducks to avoid flying objects)
We tried, but seeing how Linus likes to keep a low profile and NEVER gives out his email address to anyone, we where unable to.
Perhaps one day people will be able to understand his thoughts and passions but, sadly, today isn't that day.
His skills are on the hello world level anyway
Actually no, his skills are much below the "hello world level". Pretty much right under the libc6 layer in fact.
You, on the other hand, seem like you couldn't even pass a urine test...
"The basic issue"
"I believe"
"root of the problem"
"at the end of the day"
At the beginning of one sentence, you used four of the most overused means of beginning a sentence that I know of - impressive!
Slashdot seems to agree with Perens...
I love it when all the Linux drones bitch and moan as they follow Torvalds down the primrose path. Now us Mac users, for instance, think diff...hold on...Steve's doing another keynote...be right back...
I bet you're not Catholic.
No data, no cry
BSD is still around? I remember using that on the VAX in college. I thought Bill Joy killed it or something. Oh well, I feel old.
You must be new here...
Something like this happened to me once. It was a comical chain of events, and admittedly the most embarrassing moment of my early career in things Unix-related.
I was charged with upgrading a kernel, remotely, over the weekend, at a customer site. I did so, and I even remembered to ask first if there was anything special I should consider before going through with the task. No, just use the old configuration file, upgrade and let her rip.
Ok, while I was kinda nervous about doing this, I felt balls-ey enough to do it anyways. I took the proper precautions. I reconfigured lilo to boot off the copied off old kernel by typing in "emergency" at the lilo prompt. Worse case scenario, I could call in, ask the local operator to walk over to the machine, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, type "emergency" at the promt, and all would be well. Remember the words "worst case scenario".
It happened. All went well during compilation, and I went ahead and hit "shutdown -r now" at the root prompt over my ssh connection. The connection was subsequently reset by peer. Ok, I expected that. I'll go grab a beer and wait for the ping to start responding again.
I waited, waited... um, okay it's still not responding over the internet. Okay, where's that number... um, where did I put that number?
You can see where this goes from here.
Two hours later, I had no way of reaching the operator. The number I had in hand disappeared somewhere, and I had no idea where it went. To this day, I have no idea where I put that little slip of paper. Did it get folded into the infinite nooks that existed in my old, torn up wallet? Did it go to the same place where half of a good number of pairs of socks have disappeared to over the years? Where, where, where, where, where?
Fortunately, all ended well. They had our number at least, and I apologized, gave them the emergency procedure, and everything was working again. Hooray for the forces of good!
To this day, my heart still skips a beat whenever I reboot a server remotely.
------
P.S. as it turned out I wasn't told that the kernel module for the network card being used wasn't officially supported by the official Linux kernel at the time, and that needed to be downloaded separately and recompiled along with the new kernel. It did boot successfully. It just did so without network support. D'oh!
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
God I hate your stupid sig
> When we ported to a new version of unix, we had scripts that would compile test programs for each of 100s of known features that differentiated these unii (plural of unix?). Results of the test programs would auto-create the config program
:) You just described GNU autoconf.
LOL man
What's wrong with it ?
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
You recompile your Windows NT kernel?
My favorite one was when he compared against "Linux 7.0"
I smile every time I see that.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Surely you jest!
Every time Linus farts, 1001 Linux fan-boys are there to analyze the substance of said statement...