Re: [GIT PULL] x86/mm changes for v4.14: PCID support, 5-level paging support, Secure Memory Encryption support

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Thu Sep 07 2017 - 04:07:21 EST



* Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 5, 2017 at 2:40 PM, Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Hm, just as background, there are no regression reports I'm aware of
> > against any of these trees, plus most of the dangerous commits have
> > been in linux-next for at least two weeks - the majority of them even
> > longer. The last 2-4 commits of x86/mm are fresher.
>
> Side note: I do not believe a lot of people actually run linux-next on
> laptops, so suspend/resume likely doesn't get a lot of testing in
> next.
>
> I think most people who run linux-next tend to be automation things on farms.

Yeah, so 10af6235e0d3 was in linux-next for over a month, yet no-one reported the
bug.

> Don't get me wrong - I love linux-next and your tip testing, but I
> think linux-next is best for finding build errors etc big integration
> issues, with some very rudimentary actual boot checking.
>
> Maybe I'm wrong.

I don't think you are wrong - most boot tests don't involve laptops. linux-next is
mostly server oriented - and servers are often more debuggable than laptops. (Have
actual serial ports or physical network connections with serial emulation, etc.)

I tried to maintain a laptop testbox in -tip testing with netconsole for a time -
but it was quite a bit of pain so I eventually dropped it. (Not that the simple
boot + kernel build test that -tip does would have uncovered this particular bug.)

Maybe a tester or two saw the 'dead on resume' bug and didn't bother reporting it,
because it's a very difficult category of bug to debug short of a full bisection?

Thanks,

Ingo