Slashdot Mirror

I wonder why the /. editors are telling us to "Just hit Kernel.org" when everyone SHOULD use the mirrors.

Wait a few hours for the changes to propogate, then find a local mirror at http://kernel.org/mirrors/. It helps everyone: Kernel.org still has bandwidth, and you get faster download speeds!

1. If you're willing to get a year-old machine, almost any distribution will support almost all the features on any Sony, IBM, or Dell. Specifically we have had good luck with all IBM ThinkPads, Dell Inspirons, and Sony Vaios.
2. The best machine for the ultimate power user is unquestionably the Dell Inspiron 8000. The 1600x1200 display works perfectly in X4. Many of our university astronomer customers opt for this system. For a powerful machine that you can port around daily, the IBM ThinkPad T20 series is expensive, but very nice. Its 1400x1050 display works perfectly in Linux. Both of these machines have an Intel eepro100 ethernet which works perfectly in Linux. They both have the Lucent winmodem which can also be made to work in Linux. They both have CDRWs which will burn CDs in Linux.
3. By far our most popular machines are the Sony Z505 and R505 machines which weigh 3.75 pounds and are still very fully featured. APM can be a problem with these systems, but X runs at 1024x768, the USB floppies work, the memory sticks work, and they also have the internal eepro ethernet. Their winmodem is worthless in Linux.
4. Of extreme popularity lately has been the Transmeta Crusoe chipped Sony PictureBook (C1VN/C1VP). It weighs just over two pounds and also runs Linux very well. The camera works. Due to its small size, it does not have internal ethernet, serial or parallel ports.

Kernel: linux-2.4.7 + 2.4.8-pre-3 + kerneli patch (kernel.org)
Sound: alsa-0.9.0beta5 (www.alsa-project.org)
PCMCIA: pcmcia-cs-3.1.27 (www.pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.org)

My personal machine upon which I have done all of my development work for the past year is the IBM T21. The person who does all of our web and Perl development uses the small C1VN. My wife, who has to carry her computer in a backpack all over downtown Atlanta, uses the Z505.

You will need the latest version of modutils.

You may need to do some mknod magic if you want to use some of the newer drivers/interfaces, or you could just switch over to devfs.

That's about all I can think of at the moment; I may well be forgetting something, but it's late. Also keep in mind that I shun RedHat, so I don't really have any distro-specific knowledge for you.

--

Honestly, I don't understand what all the fuss is about.

Unless you're the kind who likes to pay for water, just use one of the many other Linux distributions out there that don't have such odious licensing terms. It's not like there aren't any alternatives out there.

Or, better, you can use something with no restrictions at all on how you use it.

If Caldera wants to shoot themselves in the foot, who are we to stop them?

b&

Okay, ignoring the ad-hominem "blatantly false and jingoistic" . . .

Sorry about that, its just sometimes people seem to just be as guilty of spreading FUD as the so-called "evil" corporations that it gets exasperating.

I apologise for those comments.

Now . . . you're saying, if I understand, that the NSA's SE Linux is just hacking the Linux kernel to put in some stuff that's been talked about and even done in other OSes for years? And stuff that isn't even all that novel for Linux?

Yes and Yes. Actually what regular Linux is implementing (which is different from what the NSA is doing with SE Linux) is POSIX 1.e capabilities or "priviledges" which involves splitting up the permissions typically given to the root user (e.g. can connect to ports under 1024, can mount kernel modules, can change ownership of files, etc) into discrete entities that can be apportioned to other users and processes. This was something that the POSIX folks tried to agree on in the eighties (or is it seventies) but never came to an agreement on how best to implement it. Check out the Linux Capabilities FAQ for more information.

The NSA is working on "true capabilities" which is being able to grant and revoke extremely granular permissions to all objects/entities in the system. This concept is similar to java.policy files being maintained for every entity in the system. Making sure that policies can be tracked in such a manner that they are revokable is the most difficult part (e.g. if I lose permissions to connect on a certain port or write to a certain file, then every process or file that I've created should lose those permissions as well).

--

However, some mirror sites have already mirrored it, such as kernel.org.

ftp://ftp.du.se/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4 or
ftp://ftp2.se.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4

• Alan Cox's Patches - Nice!
• Real Time Scheduler - Aside from making Linux a RTOS, it improves app performance!
• GetRewted - Similar to the Openwall pacthes for 2.2.X - NonExec stack, improved filesystem security, stealth networking, Trusted Path Execution

You just haven't looked hard enough.... :-)

apt-get install picturebook longrun jogdiald
or download from
http://samba.org/picturebook/
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/cpu/crusoe/
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.brisset/vaio/

then you'll get, among other things,
setbrightness [0-254]
vaiobat (read battery status)
longrun -f [economy|performance] (set power saving mode; you can also change specific settings)
jogdiald (which I use to get page up/page down events from the jog dial in X)

(Hopefully bits of these will make it into the kernel before much longer.)

Same place as ever. goatse.cx^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hkernel.org

Well http://www.uk.kernel.org doesn't have 2.4.4 yet and I don't know whats going on at http://www.us.kernel.org!
--

Well http://www.uk.kernel.org doesn't have 2.4.4 yet and I don't know whats going on at http://www.us.kernel.org!
--

1. mirrors organized by country
2. UK
3. US

Slashdot should maintain topic pages for each category with links like this, yes?

1. mirrors organized by country
2. UK
3. US

Slashdot should maintain topic pages for each category with links like this, yes?

1. mirrors organized by country
2. UK
3. US

Slashdot should maintain topic pages for each category with links like this, yes?

1. mirrors organized by country
2. UK
3. US

Slashdot should maintain topic pages for each category with links like this, yes?

1. mirrors organized by country
2. UK
3. US

Slashdot should maintain topic pages for each category with links like this, yes?

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux- 2.4.4.tar.bz2 Or any mirror near you! Just goto: http://www.[countrycode].kernel.org/pub/linux/kern el/v2.4/linux-2.4.4.tar.bz2 For example, Albania is abbreviated "al" so you would go to: http://www.al.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/lin ux-2.4.4.tar.bz2

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux- 2.4.4.tar.bz2 Or any mirror near you! Just goto: http://www.[countrycode].kernel.org/pub/linux/kern el/v2.4/linux-2.4.4.tar.bz2 For example, Albania is abbreviated "al" so you would go to: http://www.al.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/lin ux-2.4.4.tar.bz2

How would you feel if something you'd spent 6-months of your life creating was being given away free?

See Linux. Ten years free, and still going strong.

-----
"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"

Oh one of noble but misguided intentions. Before dispensing of wisdom one must learn wisdom. After slaking thy thirst at the fount of freely available knowledge. Go forth and spread thy wisdom and your newly aquired conception of liberty throughout the mind of humanity.

has been decided its legal to reverse engineer software

DECSS is reverse engineering. It was ruled by a court to be illegal . Illegal to even link to.

Reverse engineering isn't quite as legal as it used to be and the situation will only get worse. Thanks, Congress!

So what is your suggestion? Should they ship a kernel in their distro with known bugs, when they instead could easily fix it by applying a patch?

If you want a pristine kernel, download one from kernel.org yourself or rebuild the kernel source rpm with whatever options you want. If you want a stable and well-tested kernel that works well with your distro and is built with the necessary options, use the kernel that comes with the distro. If you want to know what changes were made, just read the documentation for the kernel source rpm.

Don't confuse your distro with kernel.org; they fill different purposes. kernel.org has to distribute pristine kernels, but they can have serious bugs, that's not their problem. Your distro on the other hand does not have to ship pristine kernels, but they should not contain any serious bugs and it's their problem to make sure it doesn't.

To my knowledge each apache process can only serve one client

I think you're right (unless Apache uses nonblocking I/O), but is one process per client such a bad thing, especially when multiple Apache processes/threads can share resources and when some kernels' schedulers are extremely fast?

Any idea if this will be ported to WinApache?

In related news, kernel.org, the on-line headquarters of the Linux Kernel was defaced. The normal notes about progress of the Linux kernel were replaced with the cryptic message:

GOOD EVENING GENTLEMEN
ALL YOUR SLASHDOT ARE BELONG TO US

The identity of the hackers responsible is yet unkown.

I only discovered know this because there's been a bug in drivers/scsi/megaraid.c since 2.4.0. Based on a kernel dev message, I've made the one-character patch locally, and all is well. I've checked 2.4.1 and 2.4.2 hoping that the patch would get into the standard distro.

So today, even though there's no mention of megaraid.c in the changelog, I check a diff between my patched megaraid.c and the new one, and find that it might as well have been rewritten. Diffs galore, but there's no mention in the changelog.

Maybe the changes are mentioned, but because I don't know who does what, I can't recognize them. What exactly does "Jens Axboe: more loop cleanups and fixes" cover, for example?

I wonder how many other changes are in there that aren't mentioned in changelog?
--

Remember that if you allready have 2.4.0, 2.4.1, or 2.4.2 source, you don't need to download the full tarball, just the patches. Apply in order until your at the current version.

cd /usr/src
gzip -cd patchXX.gz | patch -p0
or
cd /usr/src
bzip2 -dc patchXX.bz2 | patch -p0


Oh, and access via http seems to be working better than ftp.

Thank you.

Thank you.

here's the Changelog, as requested...

I could make that list even longer with many more projects that Red Hat either funds, maintains, develops or contributes to, but I think I've already proven my point.

I could make that list even longer with many more projects that Red Hat either funds, maintains, develops or contributes to, but I think I've already proven my point.

I understand that 2600 is synonymous with hacking. However, I think they get undue attention, and in many cases, undue persecution.

I really don't care whether it is legal or illegal to link to or carry contraband binary files on your site. The point is that it is too late to stop decss. I have found copies of decss all over the place. Some sites have it kind of hidden in non-obviously named directories. For example, check out ftp.kernel.org/pub/software/web/html-util/decss

Where is Henry David Thoreau when you need him! The government that governs least, governs best

It's in patch-2.4.2-ac1

Alan Cox is doing that voodoo he do do: LWN report on 2.4.2ac1. Also, the ftp link.

More on 2.4.2 from the LWN is here.

if you look at the most recent changelog for 2.4.1 you'll see PPC patches among the changes.

I'd like to see some stats on current usage and bandwidth resources.

Everytime I read an article where the source story is slashdotted I think about the kinds of resources being used by slashdot itself.

Kernel.org has a nice bandwidth meter - how about seeing the throughput of this site.

[at least then we can see how close slashdot is to being slashdotted]

cheers - swgn

I think that most hackers who are saavy about the kernel know better than to download one from a mirror. Expecially after all the virus problems with RedHat, now is not the time to risk downloading a tainted version of the kernel [...]

That's a bad argument, kernel releases are PGP signed.

For once the mirrors seem to have had enough time to get the files. Kernel.org is already painfully slow, giving me a measly 20k/sec. If you're in Europe, try the Funet mirror. I got a decent 320k/sec from there, entire download took about a minute (and I'm not talking about the patch file).

The official release date on kernel.org was something like January 4th, actually. Also, besides the addition of being almost comepletely usb-compliant, there aren't that many features that would be noticeable to the desktop user, or would warrant a fresh newbie to compile it because it "BEATS THE CRAP OUT OF WINDOWS"

They note Torvalds lacks formal accountability for Linux...

What's more, industry titans... are pouring billions of dollars into developing Linux products and want to exert more influence on the direction of the kernel, based on customer feedback.

"VARs are reluctant because they don't see a clear channel. They don't see a Microsoft or strong corporate company saying, 'We're going to be here forever,'" he said.

Publicly, blue-chip vendors recognize Torvalds as the lead Linux developer, but note that they aren't beholden to his final nod to carry out their product plans, as they are with Microsoft's Bill Gates.

"I don't believe open source works well for commercial companies because they can't control schedules," said Michael Cusumano, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management who sits on the board of solution provider NetNumina Solutions. "Software companies try to have regular development cycles. That's how you build a rhythm for a company.?

"We need a full-time leader and a nonprofit organization that can be funded by IBM, Compaq, and Dell and the [Linux] distributors,"

I think that at this point, the big vendors are scared of forking the kernel because of the old Unix wars and the ammunition it would give to the MSFT FUD machine. They needn't be worried, though; I think most people (outside of industry) agree that an amicable fork would be in the best interest of many people. IBM could take some of that $1B they were planning to invest and pay someone to oversee development of their forked version. And since both projects would be GPL, they could learn and borrow from each other. If Linus should happen to make a bad design decision, for example, he may reconsider if it's shown that the other kernel, using the decision he rejected, performs better.

As other people have pointed out, Linux is a hobby for Linus. He just wants something that will run well for him; if people submit patches for something that he'll never use, he'll include it in "his" kernel if it's good code and doesn't adversely affect other systems.

sigh...

--

Interresting how Microsoft Service Packs are frowned upon, and yet Linux Kernel updates are hailed. The open source movement has both advantages and disadvantages when compared to closed source software. So bring on Linux vs Microsoft... No wait, it's down *grin*.

You don't seem to hear much about the other journalling filesystems, most notably JFS and ext3. I would really like to see an article comparing the different filesystems ... including a walkthrough of patching the kernel, making the filesystem, etc ... perhaps I'll do one up this weekend.

Stability...

Quoted from the slackware.com site:
"Slackware [is] .. designed with the twin goals of ease of use and stability as top priorities."

Bleeding edge isn't top priority .. stability is.

If you want XFree86-4.0.2 in Slackware ... install the .tgz yourself.

If you want the 2.4.x kernel ... compile/install it yourself.

If is very easy to figure out your nearest mirror:

Determine the two-letter country code for the nation you reside in. This will be the same as the top-level national domain, ca for Canada, uk for United Kingdom, ch for Switzerland and so on.

If you're using ftp, the server name starts with ftp. If you're using http (a web browser), then it starts with www.

Put the country code in the middle. Add .kernel.org at the end.

• Canada: http://www.ca.kernel.org
• United Kingdom: http://www.uk.kernel.org
• Japan:
  • and so on. If you have a web browser, it is more efficient to access the servers via HTTP, as you don't use a process that sits idle during the time you're not downloading something as is the case with FTP.

If is very easy to figure out your nearest mirror:

Determine the two-letter country code for the nation you reside in. This will be the same as the top-level national domain, ca for Canada, uk for United Kingdom, ch for Switzerland and so on.

If you're using ftp, the server name starts with ftp. If you're using http (a web browser), then it starts with www.

Put the country code in the middle. Add .kernel.org at the end.

• Canada: http://www.ca.kernel.org
• United Kingdom: http://www.uk.kernel.org
• Japan:
  • and so on. If you have a web browser, it is more efficient to access the servers via HTTP, as you don't use a process that sits idle during the time you're not downloading something as is the case with FTP.

If is very easy to figure out your nearest mirror:

Determine the two-letter country code for the nation you reside in. This will be the same as the top-level national domain, ca for Canada, uk for United Kingdom, ch for Switzerland and so on.

If you're using ftp, the server name starts with ftp. If you're using http (a web browser), then it starts with www.

Put the country code in the middle. Add .kernel.org at the end.

• Canada: http://www.ca.kernel.org
• United Kingdom: http://www.uk.kernel.org
• Japan:
  • and so on. If you have a web browser, it is more efficient to access the servers via HTTP, as you don't use a process that sits idle during the time you're not downloading something as is the case with FTP.

I just saw a very confused user posting to linux-kernel wondering where to send a report (he'd figured it out, but wasn't sure).

The correct, new address for bug report submissions is linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org

Same hostname, different domain.

If you're going to work with the new kernel, I highly recommand you browse the mailing list. But linux-kernel has one of the highest volumes of any internet mailing list so you probably don't want to actually subscribe (you don't have to subscribe to post, unlike many mailing lists).

Instead, read the list off an archive server. There are many of them. This search at Google will find you an archive

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

Things to note: The sites above are the companies sites. You'll probably have to click a few links to get throught. A direct link to the best site I've found (up-to-date, wicked fast) is here. As I said above, it's got a 250 Mbit/s pipe, so it will outlast kernel.org...

CAP THAT KARMA!
Moderators: -1, nested, oldest first!

As always... http://www.kernel.org/mirrors/