Bug#360561: [cl-debian] Bug#360561: cmucl: CMUCL does not run under kernel version 2.6.16

[Peter Van Eynde]

Alle Wednesday 26 July 2006 16:41, Don Geddis ha scritto:
> I understand the conflict, that it appears the kernel guys did make an
> unintentional error.  Nevertheless, I find the phrase "non-standard kernel"
> to be suspect.  If a user tries to install the default linux-2.6 kernel in
> Debian ("testing"), this is the "standard" kernel that they get.

I was unclear. I meant 'unmodified kernel from kernel.org with default 
options'. We had a similar problem a few years back when redhat decided to go 
for a 2/2 G split in memory. The cmucl maintainers ignored bugreports about 
this and redhat reversed the patch in the end.

> This bug doesn't appear to bother most applications.  Moreover, the kernel
> guys (while admitting an error) seem to claim that this kind of change is
> permitted by their API contract.

Could you point me to that contract so I can check other assumptions made. As 
someone who got bitten numerous times by glibc's changing semantics I would 
appreciate such a document and to my knowledge it does not exist.

> Finally, Carl Shapiro suggests that CMUCL's current memory layout is an odd
> accident, and he has a simple patch to reorder the memory (on all 
platforms?)
> which happens to solve this problem and also make CMUCL compatible with
> Debian kernel 2.6.16.

I can see what the solution would be but there are technical and cultural 
problems with it, basicly the debian package would be 'different' from a 
normal cmucl and this is often enough reason to distrust bug reports from 
debian users.

> > I'm open to suggestions on what I should 'require'. ;-)
> 
> Well, hopefull this is only a short-term issue.  I don't really know the
> Debian package syntax, but can't you can something like "requires
> linux-image-2.4, or linux-image-2.6 with version <= 2.6.15"?

This would only require a specific version of the kernel to be installed, 
there is no general way to say 'this package only runs with kernels < 2.6.15 
and > 2.7.17-5 (I hope).

Groetjes, Peter

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