Intel em receive hang and possible pr #72970

[Robert Watson]

On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Joe Holden wrote:

>>> Does it seem that we are encountering that bug? Is that bug fixed in 
>>> 6.1-RELEASE, or is there an easy patch to 6.0-RELEASE (i.e. can we only 
>>> patch the em driver).
>> 
>> That fix is only just into the STABLE code, so no, not in 6.1-RELEASE. You 
>> could take the tip of STABLE, but if you have only a 6.0 based system I 
>> know you are going to run into some backward incompatabililties. As a 
>> matter of fact I dont believe the STABLE tip will even build on RELEASE 
>> (something that I take issue with).
>> 
>> Sounds like its at least possible this is your problem, worth setting up a 
>> system to test with I would say.
>
> IF you want latest -STABLE you use stable, if you want code AS-IS when it 
> was released, you use RELEASE

There's also another possibility these days -- we support errata fixes going 
into release branches, as we do with security fixes.  These changes must be 
low-impact (not affect API, ABI, etc), but are useful for critical stability 
fixes or to correct widely experienced problems.  If there is a small tweak 
which could make a big difference, and has been well QA'd, then that approach 
can be taken.  However, we're currently accepting errata fixes only for the 
most recent release, so expanding the scope to include older releases (i.e., 
6.0 in addition to 6.1) then that would require some discussion and careful 
thinking.  So far, we've been very conservative in accepting errata fixes on 
the basis that we want it to be a trickle, not a waterfall, for a great many 
good reasons :-).

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge