# linux-headers-4.1 GONE

## dalu

I'm sorry but this diletancy is really annoying the crap out of me.

Who thought it was a smart idea to remove LONGTERM SUPPORT kernel headers?

1. Go to https://www.kernel.org/

2. What do you see? 

```

mainline:    4.5    2016-03-14    

stable:    4.4.5    2016-03-09

stable:    4.3.6 [EOL]    2016-02-19

longterm:    4.1.19    2016-03-04

longterm:    3.18.28    2016-03-04

longterm:    3.14.64    2016-03-09

longterm:    3.12.56    2016-03-08

longterm:    3.10.100    2016-03-09

longterm:    3.4.110    2015-10-22

longterm:    3.2.78    2016-02-27

longterm:    2.6.32.71 [EOL]    2016-03-12

```

3. What do you conclude?

Well I conclude that 4.1 is a LTS kernel

4. What do you see when ls -lah /usr/portage/sys-kernel/linux-headers/ ?

```

-rw-r--r--  1 root root 6.9K Mar 15 16:25 ChangeLog

-rw-r--r--  1 root root  67K Nov  9 05:11 ChangeLog-2015

-rw-r--r--  1 root root  487 Aug  9  2015 linux-headers-2.4.33.3.ebuild

-rw-r--r--  1 root root  500 Aug  9  2015 linux-headers-2.4.36.ebuild

-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1.5K Aug  9  2015 linux-headers-3.18.ebuild

-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1.5K Feb 29 19:54 linux-headers-4.3.ebuild

-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1.6K Jan 11 03:17 linux-headers-4.4.ebuild

-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1.6K Mar 15 03:52 linux-headers-4.5.ebuild

-rw-r--r--  1 root root 8.3K Mar 15 16:25 Manifest

-rw-r--r--  1 root root  344 Jan 25 00:06 metadata.xml

```

then WHY are you removing 4.1 headers?

Drunk?

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## charles17

Known as bug 577460.

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## Ant P.

Is there any specific reason why you need outdated kernel headers? Can you demonstrate a real-world problem with having newer or older ones?

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## Geneslaf

 *Ant P. wrote:*   

> Can you demonstrate a real-world problem with having newer or older ones?

 

The problem Kernel modules not loaded after upgrading from 3.4.95-gentoo was partly caused by having the kernel headers ahead of the kernel version. The kernel defined by the headers (3.13 at the time I think) had system call finit_module but 3.4.95 did not. A problem in the 3.4.96 kernel meant that non existant syscalls were not returning ENOSYS so libkmod used finit_module and no modules were loaded.

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## khayyam

Geneslaf, dalu, et al ...

to be fair, you're probably more likely to have an issue with 4.1.19 than some issue with mismatched linux-headers. So while this probably shouldn't happen I wouldn't place too much store in upstreams notion of "stable", or what they are prepared to label as such, and in that regard there is some need for gentoo to impose their own standard.

That said, I agree linux-headers should stay on track with *-sources (though as the example provided by Geneslaf shows you can't be sure a major version is enough to anchor), and so generally impose a mask like so:

```
=sys-kernel/linux-headers-4*

=sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-4*
```

Similarly, you could also anchor on a specific version of headers and allow some variation of *-sources, eg:

```
>sys-kernel/linux-headers-3.18

=sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-3.18*
```

Also, if something is removed from the tree there is always the option of grabing it from the attic.

best ... khay

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