On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 10:50:27PM +0200, Claus Herwig wrote:
> Hello,
> as I've to compile a new kernel for one of my vserver boxes,
> it's time to come back to this much loved question:
looking at your post, I see at least three different questions,
but I'll try to answer all of them as good as I can :)
> Which (vanilla) kernel and which vserver patch version should
> I use for a production system?
this question is kind-of similar to the question: "which
debian release should I use for my production system?"
some will answer: "the stable branch of course!" others
will argue: "you have to go for experimental, unless you
want ancient apps and kernels"
it's quite similar with Linux-VServer here, you have the
choice between roughly three flavors:
- stable (well tested and kind of 'unbreakable' :)
- development (new/more features, not extensively tested)
- experimental (bleeding edge, only basic testing)
> I know this question isn't entirely new, but even after scanning
> through the last months of mailing list posts I'm missing a
> simple answer ;-)
probably because there is none (see above)
> The website states 2.6.22.19 + vs2.2.0.7, which is, well,
> ancient (1.5 years old i.E.)
this is the last stable version, which had extensive
code review and testing .. unfortunately the community
is not willing to sponsor a similar review and testing
for a more recent kernel (e.g. 2.6.27.x) so for the
forseeable future, it will stay the 'last stable' release
> A second look at the website says 2.6.30.1 + vs2.3.0.36.14,
> which is experimental, what (at least for me) means that I
> shouldn't use it on a production system.
there is 2.6.27.29-vs2.3.0.36.6 (on a maintained mainline
kernel, which can be considered development class), and
there is 2.6.29.6-vs2.3.0.36.14 (a more recent version,
still maintained) and finally 2.6.30.4-vs2.3.0.36.14-pre4
which is considered experimental (i.e. not feature complete
and not well tested)
> Then I read in some other post, that it is of course useable in
> production - which just leads to another question:
despite the classifications, all those kernels are somewhere
in production, and usually they work a lot better than the
kernels e.g. provided by debian ... but, there might be
unexpected issues and you definitely should keep them up to
date, to incroporate gradual improvements and fixes
> Why is it called experimental?
everything without a code review and extensive testing is
called "development" or "experimental", everything known to
be missing some features or functionality is labeled
"experimental" ... I don't think that those labels keep
folks from running it in production very similar to the
debian releases ...
HTC,
Herbert
> Thanks,
> Claus
>
>
> --
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> Claus Herwig * Barer Straße 70 * 80799 München
> +49 89 27826981 * Fax 27826982 * c.herwig@checon.de
Received on Tue Aug 11 12:46:18 2009