Re: [PATCH 4.4 00/65] 4.4.173-stable review

[Guenter Roeck]

On 2/5/19 6:42 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 04, 2019 at 02:48:17PM -0800, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 04, 2019 at 11:35:53AM +0100, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > This is the start of the stable review cycle for the 4.4.173 release.
> > > There are 65 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 Wed Feb  6 10:35:30 UTC 2019.
> > > Anything received after that time might be too late.
> >
> > Build results:
> > 	total: 171 pass: 171 fail: 0
> > Qemu test results:
> > 	total: 291 pass: 291 fail: 0 (*)
> >
> > Guenter
> >
> > ---
> > (*) I had to revert to gcc 5.3.0 for sh4 boot tests.
> >      With gcc 8.2.0, most tests stall early in boot.
> >      I didn't try to track down the root cause.
>
> Is this a new issue?  I don't see any sh-specific patches in this
> series.

I had switched to gcc 8.2.0 last October since images built with gcc 5.3.0
had stopped working in -next at the time (coincidentally with the same
symptoms). Ever since then, I had on-and-off problems where one or two
of the test boots would fail. Usually a re-run would be successful.
I originally blamed qemu and switched between versions, but that didn't help.
This is the first release and branch where 8-10 of the 14 boot tests failed
persistently when building the image with gcc 8.2.0. I finally had the idea
to look at the compiler and, yes, switching back to an older version helped.

I have no idea if gcc or qemu or the code itself is to blame. I am not
sure if anyone would be interested enough to fix the underlying problem.
I just wanted to mention it in case someone does care. If so,
I'll be happy to help tracking it down further.

Thanks,
Guenter