Oldest supported Linux kernel version?

[Anand]

I'm looking at using a feature that was introduced in 2.6.22. Hopefully that's old enough to be allowed in Chrome without needing a fallback. But what's the oldest kernel version that we support?

[Mike Frysinger]

considering glibc itself requires >=2.6.32, i would say anything older than that isn't worth our time at the very least

-mike

On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 2:05 AM, Anand <ami...@chromium.org> wrote:

I'm looking at using a feature that was introduced in 2.6.22. Hopefully that's old enough to be allowed in Chrome without needing a fallback. But what's the oldest kernel version that we support?

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[Dirk Pranke]

For desktop linux, the oldest versions we officially support are still Ubuntu Precise and Debian 7, both of which are (I believe) 3.2+. 

I believe we still support JellyBean (4.1) on Android, which (I think) is 3.0.31+. 

I don't know what version of the kernel is used on ChromeOS, but I'd be pretty surprised if it wasn't substantially newer than either of those.

So, you're probably quite safe.

Those more knowledgeable than me should feel free to reply with more accurate version info.

-- Dirk

[Mike Frysinger]

CrOS's min is 3.8 currently.  we do not care about anything older :).  depending on the feature/need, we are also not against backporting from newer kernels, although we will push back depending on the size of the patches.

i'm not sure this info is listed anywhere, and i'm not sure putting it in a doc in the wiki would be that discoverable/useful.  if you look at the ToT source checkout, it's somewhat easy to see what kernels are available.  you can also divine the answer from reading this file:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/overlays/chromiumos-overlay/+/master/virtual/linux-sources/linux-sources-1.ebuild

-mike

[Matthew Dempsky]

To add to what has already been said, Chromium's Linux sandbox also requires kernel 3.0+.  Kernels before 3.0 have a PID namespace bug, which we explicitly CHECK for when launching the zygote.  See crbug.com/357670.