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Bisecting a regression

This document describes how to use a git bisect to find the source code change that broke something -- for example when some functionality stopped working after upgrading from Linux 6.0 to 6.1.

The text focuses on the gist of the process. If you are new to bisecting the kernel, better follow How to verify bugs and bisect regressions instead: it depicts everything from start to finish while covering multiple aspects even kernel developers occasionally forget. This includes detecting situations early where a bisection would be a waste of time, as nobody would care about the result -- for example, because the problem happens after the kernel marked itself as ‘tainted’, occurs in an abandoned version, was already fixed, or is caused by a .config change you or your Linux distributor performed.

Finding the change causing a kernel issue using a bisection

Note: the following process assumes you prepared everything for a bisection. This includes having a Git clone with the appropriate sources, installing the software required to build and install kernels, as well as a .config file stored in a safe place (the following example assumes ‘~/prepared_kernel_.config’) to use as pristine base at each bisection step; ideally, you have also worked out a fully reliable and straight-forward way to reproduce the regression, too.

  • Preparation: start the bisection and tell Git about the points in the history you consider to be working and broken, which Git calls ‘good’ and ‘bad’:

    git bisect start
git bisect good v6.0
git bisect bad v6.1

    Instead of Git tags like ‘v6.0’ and ‘v6.1’ you can specify commit-ids, too.

  1. Copy your prepared .config into the build directory and adjust it to the needs of the codebase Git checked out for testing:

    cp ~/prepared_kernel_.config .config
make olddefconfig

  2. Now build, install, and boot a kernel. This might fail for unrelated reasons, for example, when a compile error happens at the current stage of the bisection a later change resolves. In such cases run git bisect skip and go back to step 1.

  3. Check if the functionality that regressed works in the kernel you just built.

    If it works, execute:

    git bisect good

    If it is broken, run:

    git bisect bad

    Note, getting this wrong just once will send the rest of the bisection totally off course. To prevent having to start anew later you thus want to ensure what you tell Git is correct; it is thus often wise to spend a few minutes more on testing in case your reproducer is unreliable.

    After issuing one of these two commands, Git will usually check out another bisection point and print something like ‘Bisecting: 675 revisions left to test after this (roughly 10 steps)’. In that case go back to step 1.

    If Git instead prints something like ‘cafecaca0c0dacafecaca0c0dacafecaca0c0da is the first bad commit’, then you have finished the bisection. In that case move to the next point below. Note, right after displaying that line Git will show some details about the culprit including its patch description; this can easily fill your terminal, so you might need to scroll up to see the message mentioning the culprit’s commit-id.

    In case you missed Git’s output, you can always run git bisect log to print the status: it will show how many steps remain or mention the result of the bisection.

  • Recommended complementary task: put the bisection log and the current .config file aside for the bug report; furthermore tell Git to reset the sources to the state before the bisection:

    git bisect log > ~/bisection-log
cp .config ~/bisection-config-culprit
git bisect reset

  • Recommended optional task: try reverting the culprit on top of the latest codebase and check if that fixes your bug; if that is the case, it validates the bisection and enables developers to resolve the regression through a revert.

    To try this, update your clone and check out latest mainline. Then tell Git to revert the change by specifying its commit-id:

    git revert --no-edit cafec0cacaca0

    Git might reject this, for example when the bisection landed on a merge commit. In that case, abandon the attempt. Do the same, if Git fails to revert the culprit on its own because later changes depend on it -- at least unless you bisected a stable or longterm kernel series, in which case you want to check out its latest codebase and try a revert there.

    If a revert succeeds, build and test another kernel to check if reverting resolved your regression.

With that the process is complete. Now report the regression as described by Reporting issues.

Bisecting linux-next

If you face a problem only happening in linux-next, bisect between the linux-next branches ‘stable’ and ‘master’. The following commands will start the process for a linux-next tree you added as a remote called ‘next’:

git bisect start
git bisect good next/stable
git bisect bad next/master

The ‘stable’ branch refers to the state of linux-mainline that the current linux-next release (found in the ‘master’ branch) is based on -- the former thus should be free of any problems that show up in -next, but not in Linus’ tree.

This will bisect across a wide range of changes, some of which you might have used in earlier linux-next releases without problems. Sadly there is no simple way to avoid checking them: bisecting from one linux-next release to a later one (say between ‘next-20241020’ and ‘next-20241021’) is impossible, as they share no common history.

Additional reading material