Re: [PATCH 6.12 000/385] 6.12.75-rc1 review

[Greg KH]

On Mon, Mar 02, 2026 at 09:10:11AM -0500, Greg KH wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 02, 2026 at 08:52:19AM -0500, Sasha Levin wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 01, 2026 at 10:05:02PM -0800, Barry K. Nathan wrote:
> > > On 2/28/26 10:00, Sasha Levin wrote:
> > > > This is the start of the stable review cycle for the 6.12.75 release.
> > > > There are 385 patches in this series, all will be posted as a response
> > > > to this one.  If anyone has any issues with these being applied, please
> > > > let me know.
> > > > 
> > > > Responses should be made by Mon Mar  2 05:59:55 PM UTC 2026.
> > > > Anything received after that time might be too late.
> > > > 
> > > > The whole patch series can be found in one patch at:
> > > >         https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable-rc.git/patch/?id=linux-6.12.y&id2=v6.12.74
> > > > or in the git tree and branch at:
> > > >         git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable-rc.git linux-6.12.y
> > > > and the diffstat can be found below.
> > > > 
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Sasha
> > > 
> > > I just now noticed a sizable discrepancy between what's in the
> > > stable-queue and what's in -rc1, for 5.10.y through 6.12.y. (6.18.y
> > > and 6.19.y appear unaffected.)
> > > 
> > > To make sure this is an apples-to-apples comparison, I'll compare with
> > > the stable-queue as of commit 2370009958172f632d48973387e7b6ae116086b1
> > > ("Drop a broken ACPI patch"); I'd expect the queue as of that commit to
> > > match the -rc1 patches, if I'm not mistaken.
> > > 
> > > 
> > >                      # of patches in         # of patches in
> > >                      stable mailing list     stable-queue git
> > >                      thread                  @ 237000995817
> > > 
> > > 5.10.252-rc1          147                     334
> > > 5.15.202-rc1          164                     411
> > > 6.1.165-rc1           232                     533
> > > 6.6.128-rc1           283                     683
> > > 6.12.75-rc1           385                     953
> > > 6.18.16-rc1           752                     751
> > > 6.19.6-rc1            844                     843
> > > 
> > > The off-by-one difference for 6.18.y/6.19.y is expected, since
> > > (unlike the stable-queue itself) the -rc1 patch and the mailing
> > > list thread include a Makefile patch to update the version number.
> > > 
> > > For the other kernels, though, it looks to me like something
> > > went wrong somewhere. Of course I could be mistaken, but that's
> > > how it appears to me.
> > > 
> > > In any case, I figured I should bring this to your attention.
> > 
> > Barry, this is a great catch. Thank you!
> > 
> > The root cause turned out to be a bug in git-quiltimport. One of the
> > patches queued has the literal text "\0" in its subject line:
> > 
> >   selftests: tc_actions: don't dump 2MB of \0 to stdout
> > 
> > git-quiltimport constructs commit messages using echo(1):
> > 
> >   commit=$( { echo "$SUBJECT"; echo; cat "$tmp_msg"; } | git commit-tree $tree -p $commit)
> > 
> > The problem is that echo interprets backslash escape sequences, so
> > "\0" gets expanded into an actual NUL byte (0x00). git commit-tree
> > then rejects the commit with:
> > 
> >   error: a NUL byte in commit log message not allowed.
> > 
> > This caused git-quiltimport to bail out mid-way through building
> > several trees during -rc construction. The trees that had this patch
> > queued (5.10 through 6.12) only got a partial set of patches into
> > the -rc branch, while 6.18 and 6.19 were unaffected because they
> > hadn't hit the problematic patch yet.
> > 
> > 6.18 and 6.19 were also previously released by Greg, who uses actual
> > quilt rather than git-quiltimport, so he wouldn't have run into this.
> 
> But I use git-quiltimport when creating the releases, so did I somehow
> not apply things properly when that happens, skipping patches in the
> releaase?

As we talked about this on irc, turns out it's a bash vs. dash issue.
Bash works fine, dash does not, hence the problem only showing up for
one of us.

Glad that's figured out :)

greg k-h