The 2.3.x "Things To Fix" List

Johan Jonasson writes "Alan Cox has posted the first draft of the 2.3.x "Things to fix" list. Also known as "the stuff that has to be taken care of before 2.4 can come out". "

Comments

the list for the lazy

[griffjon]

(because we're lazy, the list is short, and because I want to eschew the 1stposters)

Multiwrite IDE breaks on a disk error
Poll on > 16000 file handles fails
Restore O_SYNC functionality
Merge the network fixes - there is a ton of backed up stuff to do asap
ISA DMA is no longer allocating correctly aligned data
vmalloc(GFP_DMA) is needed for DMA drivers
VM needs rebalancing
NFSD fixes for path walking to regenerate dentries
Fix eth= command line
Check O_APPEND atomicity bug fixing is complete
Protection on isize (sct)
Merge 2.2.13/14 changes
Get RAID 0.90 in
PAE36 failures
USB HID merge
Mikulas claims we need to fix the getblk/mark_buffer_uptodate thing gor
2.3.x as well
PIII/Athlon/MMX/etc acceleration merge from 2.2.x-ac
Merge arcnet update (DONE)
Fix SPX socket code
AHA152x isnt smp safe (FIXED)
NCR5380 isnt smp safe
isofs break on 4Gig disk (FIXED ?)
Finish 64bit vfs merges (stat64 etc) (DONE ??)
Make syncppp use new ppp code
Fbcon races
Fix all remaining PCI code to use new resources and enable_Device
Stackable fs ?? (Erez)
Get the Emu10K merged
Test PMC code on Athlon
Fix module remove race bug (-- not in open so why did I see crashes ??? --)
Per Process rtsigio
Maybe merge the ibcs emulation code
VFS?VM - mmap/write deadlock
initrd is bust
rw sempahores on page faults (mmap_sem)
kiobuf seperate lock functions/bounce/page_address fixes
per super block write_super needs an async flag
addres_space needs a VM pressure/flush callback
per file_op rw_kiovec
enhanced disk statistics
Fix routing by fwmark
put_user appears to be broken for i386 machines

Re:the list for the lazy

[Lotek]

Sure, like the standard "1st poster" even understands the word eschew. right now they are trying to figure out if you sneezed on them or something.

Re:the list for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Very nice. My Grats to you for succesfully foiling my fist prost. Are there any news on what the "enhanced disk statistics" entail? This sounds like it could be a nice new thing to look at and play with...

fist prost
The friendly first poster

Re:the list for the lazy

[BMIComp]

Ok, i think the initial post was good... but this Anon Coward seems like its too good to be true.. i mean, just that he seems to prove your point, but you can't prove its not you b/c he's anonymous.... not that it always would... But either way 'fist prost'... that doesn't seem like that would happen... i mean... yeah...

maybe i'm just ignorant and everyone else realizes this whole anon post?

Re:the list for the lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Hrrmm. I had a little trouble parsing that, but I'm a little bleary eyed from a rigorous work schedule...I suppose I could go and get a login, but then when I do make a first posting or offtopic comment that would waste two moderator points instead of 1 to put it down to where it belongs, which is contrary to my effort to make a simple, non-inflammatory first post, get it out of the way and not try to cause too many hard feelings in the process. I mean it's one thing to have a little fun trolling, but as someof the below comments indicate, there are far too many puerile attempts to disrupt the conversation already. Fist Prost just wants to get the #1 spot once in a while, and then maybe make a few on-topic postings as well.

Cheers
Fist Prost

Be sure to add NFS

[heroine]

How about fixing NFS on SMP too. That's been broken ever since 2.2.13. It seems like Alan was working on it in September and then he just lost interest in it.

Re:Be sure to add NFS

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't aware of any issues with NFS and SMP. What are they?

Re:Be sure to add NFS

[blakestah]

How about fixing NFS on SMP too. That's been broken ever since 2.2.13. It seems like Alan was working on it in September and then he just lost interest in it.

2.2.13 must be what - at least a month old ?

NFS on SMP is working JUST FINE on my SMP box, running 2.2.12 with the knfsd-1.4.7 patches. And it has been for about 2.5 months. Most of the knfsd patch functionality has been merged into the 2.2.14-pre tree, so 2.2.14 ought to be a fairly stable NFS branch, even for SMP users. At least for NFS version two, which is a fairly old standard.

If you are really interested, there is a separate mailing list for nfs users that has been posted to the kernel mailing list, and the user space utilities have been evolving from knfsd-1.4.7 to nfs-utils-0.15 or so. Linux nfs now has locking and everything. Still, you'd have to consider nfs on linux a real weakness compared to other Unices. NFS version 3 is still a pipe-dream for clients or servers, and version two is just now stabilizing in the 2.2 tree.

Re:Be sure to add NFS

[Anonymous Coward]

who gives a hoot? nfs has no place in the kernel anyway. tossing the nfs server into the kernel seems like a rather m$ approach...

Re:Be sure to add NFS

[tim pickering]

perhaps it is, but sun, HP, SGI, and i believe IBM put it in their unix kernels so to compete performance-wise, linux has to as well. the nice thing with linux is that you don't _have_ to. just compile a kernel without it and use the user-space nfs implementation, if you prefer.

however, once you see the performance diff, you'll likely want to stick with knfs. in my testing at home with a 10 MB network and at work at 100 MB i find that knfs is just about limited by wire/disk speed while user-nfs is several times slower. knfs is even faster than ftp by quite a bit, especially for reads. writes are generally 20-30% or so slower than reads due to using nfsv2.

tim

Bugs by Architecture?

[slpalmer]

It would be a great benefit (to me at least) to see this list of bugs by architecture. If I want to know what's going on with the Alpha Port I have to research almost every bug to find which ports it affects, before I can consider spending time trying to fix something.

sigh

[tweek]

It's times like these I wish I spoke more than php and perl =/.
Anyone got any good suggestions for getting started on linux programming or hell any good suggestions for starting? I actually thought about taking some courses at night.

Re:sigh

[rodentia]

I know the feeling. I found Wrox's (whose stuff I generally dislike) Beginning Linux Programming to be generally excellent. Read it with a good C reference handy and you will go far, grasshopper. There are several docs in the LDP dealing with kernel dev and device drivers, as well.

Re:sigh

[dsaxena]

If you are interested in kernel hacking, pickup "Writing Linux Device Drivers" published by O'Reilley, "Linux Kernel Internal" (forget who publishes it), and most importantly, use the source.

--
Deepak Saxena

Re:sigh

[G27 Radio]

Anyone got any good suggestions for getting started on linux programming or hell any good suggestions for starting? I actually thought about taking some courses at night.

It seems almost redundant (no KT intended) to mention O'Reilly books as an excellent resource...anyway, if you're looking for some insight into the Linux kernel, O'Reilly's Linux Device Drivers book is very educational. At least for me it was. I've never worked on the kernel or device drivers for it and probably never will, but I found the book to be very informative nevertheless. BTW, I also am a Perl/PHP geek...not very fluent in C.

numb

Re:sigh

[gwalla]

Why did this get market as a troll? Just because he gave his opinion (and then followed it with an exception, I might add)?

Wrox has some decent stuff out there. Frank Boumphrey's (sp?) book on stylesheets is excellent, for example. They ain't O'Reilly, but you could do a lot worse.

The only thing that sort of rubs me the wrong way about Wrox is their Windows bias. The vast majority of their books are about MS-proprietary technologies, and their web-development books concentrate on developing for MSIE almost exclusively.
---

Re:sigh

[Zurk]

or read online at http://khg.redhat.com

Re:sigh

[warpeightbot]

somebody moderate that post up, Linux Device Drivers was invaluable in walking me thru my first, for real, production device driver with no more knowledge than C and an idea of how memory mapping works.... the book kicks some serious booty.

Then again, so does that bucking bronco on the front... not to mention the operating system it's written about. It's pretty fscking cool when you can write your first driver on your everyday werk box, making liberal use of insmod and rmmod, and only really freak it out three or four times over the course of six weeks' work.

Good luck on the device driver....

(lucky bastard... wish I had time to hack some more of those...)

Re:sigh

[rob_from_ca]

Is this this a good place to start for decently experienced C programmers? I'm interested in OS programming, and examining and possibly contributing to linux seems like a good place to start. I've done quite a bit in C/C++, but I've never really worked on a large size project before, and I'm just not sure where to start digging in. Might this book help?

Re:sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're experienced in C, get the kernel source, with a good cross referencing editors (Emacs or vim, etc) and dig in. Its much less code than it looks like, since a lot is for drivers and other platforms. If you hit a .S file, just read the comments, and you should get the gist of it. (man, I have gas style asm).

If you're not real good at C and need a lot of hand holding, there are several books, various amounts out of date.

QA work for linux

[British]

This looks like an interesting opportunity for Quality Assurance work for Linux kernel stuff. Hmm, of course I wouldn't know where to start, what/how to test it, or even how to do a full-fledged system test. BUT, hey, it's a door waiting to be opened

Re:QA work for linux

[technos]

Start by trying all the features you can marked (FIXED) or (FIXED ?). They require the simplest effort but are the most useful to someone who may or may not have the hardware on hand. Make an ISO partition greater than 4Gb and use it. Attempt some of the stuff he says 'isn't SMP freindly' on a SMP. Take copious mental notes of the results, and a bug report (or an 'It Works!) sent his way would be nice.

Welcome to the Linux Quality Assurance Team!

Re:QA work for linux

[British]

That sounds like a good start, but my linux knowledge is next to nil.


Hmm, that just gave me an idea

1. Learn linux front to back

2. Start doing hobbyist QA work for linux software/distros

3. As soon as I get recognition, start company that does QA work for linux & its apps

4. Go IPO crazy!@#!@#



Yeah, easy money baby. heh.

Re:QA work for linux

[Christopher B. Brown]

This is not all that interesting work, in some ways, but certainly useful stuff.

The necessary methodology involves automating execution of QA tests. You don't want to have to run 'em all by hand...

Approach:

• For each test, X, cd /usr/src/qa/tests/X
• make clean; make test

  This compiles a C program that exercises some facility of the system.

  The program drops output into a local file in the directory, as well as to a central results DB in /usr/src/qa/results , where entries are keyed by test, by date, and by kernel version.

  The notable result is a Pass or Fail value.

• A script runs through all the directories, running each test.

  It would be good if a "success" result caused the test program to create the file success, so that one could run through, after a patch, and "merely" use make success to rerun failed tests.

• Every time you locate a bug, you create a test.
• Every time you find behaviour that ought to be, you create a test.

This is more-or-less how one does regression testing with things like compilers. Tests that run with the kernel would be equally valuable.

If you build a reasonably intelligent infrastructure, and are accepting of regression tests, you'll come to know more about how the kernel works than you ever wanted to know...

Re:QA work for linux

[Duranos]

It's these kinds of things that The Optical Valley Project hope to do for the community.

We'll be providing a mirror of that list on OVP sometime today (when one of the web monkeys finishes his recess), and hopefully, this could be the start of a worthy project to follow up on.

A previous poster mentioned that when he attempted to do any work on an Alpha port, he had to search high and low for each bug before starting. I think that would also help in this case, to specify for which platform each of the bug(s) affect.

Anyone interested in getting free hosting with OVP, and is willing to do work for the community, please contact us.

Thanks for your time.

Chris Simmons
The Optical Valley Project
http://www.opticalvalley.com

Re:QA work for linux

[Zurk]

it wont work cos :
[a] How do you test different SCSI drivers -- add 200 scsi cards to your system ?
[b] How do you test filesystem drivers ? create n filesystems ?
etc..etc..
regression testing is ok for standalone programs but since we have no generic emulator for all the hardware we cant do it on the kernel.

Re:QA work for linux

[hald]

It would be good if a "success" result caused the test program to create the file success, so that one could run through, after a patch, and "merely" use make success to rerun failed tests.

One problem with this, is any change could break something that previously worked. After patching I believe that all tests would need to be re-tested

Hal Duston

APM under SMP

[XenoWolf]

I was really hoping that some work on getting APM working under SMP would go in before 2.4.0, but alas, it seems not to have made the "to be added" list. I really miss the "power off on shutdown" option - that made my life a little easier before I got a UPS. Oh well, I guess I could wait a little longer, as it's not a necessary feature. Now if I could only get drivers for that dang blasted Efficient Networks Speedstream 3060 ADSL NIC. :) Stoopid BellSouth...

Re:APM under SMP

[Anonymous Coward]

What, is Bellsouth still discriminating against Linux? Or are you just using a NIC in your machine w/o Linux drivers?

Re:APM under SMP

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no option in 2.3 for power off on shutdown because you cannot turn that feature off. APM works fine in 2.3 and will in 2.4

Re:APM under SMP

[Anonymous Coward]

> I was really hoping that some work on getting APM working under SMP would go in before 2.4.0

APM is basically a broken standard as far as SMP is concerned-- the official specifications for APM break down on a SMP machine. Now, it may be possible to put in a hack workaround, but whether or not that will work depends upon your BIOS.

Heck, many BIOSes don't support APM in Linux on a uniprocessor machine; they expect to be called from DOS and crash when Linux asks them to power down.


Nevertheless, it's possible that a workaround may come at some point. Also, you may be able to do what you want with the ACPI driver in 2.4-- that should work okay with SMP.

Re:APM under SMP

[demon]

I actually made this work on the "old" (old? it's not even a year old!) dual PII-450 server at work. iirc, it's a matter of adding the 'apm=smp-power-off' option - use a line like:

append = "apm=smp-power-off"

in your lilo.conf to enable it.

How about HIGHPOINT 366?

[myconid]

The highpoint 366 udma/66 controller has a kernel patch and stuff available from highpoint-tech.com.. why not include thoes.. hehe :-)

Re:How about HIGHPOINT 366?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already in the current 2.3.x stuff, I'm using it right now w/ my abit bp6.
dual celery woohoo!

Re:How about HIGHPOINT 366?

[vherva]

Well, Highpoint 366 support is included in the Andre Hedrick's IDE-patch for 2.2.x (available at ftp.*.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/hedrick). I'm using it with my BP6, and it works well.

I'm not sure, but I suppose the IDE-patch is is already included in 2.3.x.

Re:How about HIGHPOINT 366?

[myconid]

Sweet! Time to download the 3.3.x

Two suggestions

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

If you are talking about just plain "Linux programming" (i.e. not the kernel) I suggest you do the following:

1) Buy "Beginning Linux Programming". The first edition was great, the second looks even better.

2) If you subscribe to Linux Journal, ask the editors to start a "Newbie Programmer" column. I recently sent them an offer to write such a column and having demand roll in would help a lot. 8^)
---

Some things I'd -like- to see in 2.3.x

[jd]

• The S/390 patches, from 2.2.x
• Reiserfs
• Ext3
• Procfs
• Softnet
• EITHER Posix ACL, OR Trustees
• Itanium support (I -know- it exists, somewhere)
• Transmeta support (C'mon, Linus, don't keep us in suspense! It's bad for the arteries. :)

Some things I'd -like- to see, for 2.5.x:

• Fixed QNS, NTFS and HPFS filing system support
• Better Configuration Documentation (missing from too many options)
• Any extensible network addressing protocol
• Better support for SMP
• Multi-protocol tunneling
• Better co-operation with the various microkernel efforts (eg: L4Linux)
• All kernel bugs fixed
• All buffer overflows removed
• Peace on Earth and Goodwill to Men

Re:Some things I'd -like- to see in 2.3.x

[Christopher B. Brown]

I have the suspicion that "official" S/390 support may be more than a little ways off. Possibly privileged information, so I'll leave it at that...

I agree that it would be nice to have the various new FSes; I don't think Reiserfs will be quite ready, and it looks likewise for ext3, more be the pity. As for Procfs, if it's not there already, I have a hard time believing it'll get there soon. And you forgot NFS3, no?

As for ACLs, I don't think the rest of the world is ready for them. They're practically useless without fairly sweeping changes to things like:

• LIBC
• GNU Fileutils
• RPM, dpkg
• Anything else that might need to be aware of them.

I somewhat favor a rather different ACL model based on TOPS-10 FILDAE; 'tis unclear that we've got a clear model of how to configure security with ACLs, and it doesn't make sense to push it into the kernel until there are some clear ideas on how to implement the user-space ACL management.

Re:Some things I'd -like- to see in 2.3.x

[maelstrom]

• Procfs

You meant DevFS right? From the brief discussions I've read on Linux Kernel, it doesn't seem too likely this will get in. Everytime it is brought up, it is usually shot right down with, "its not the right way (tm) to do it". EOD. (End Of Discussion)

Can someone enlighten me a little bit more on the issues. I'd sure like to get rid of all the crap hanging out in /dev on my system, and i'd rather not have to patch my kernel twice everytime I upgrade.

Re:Some things I'd -like- to see in 2.3.x

[jd]

Eeep! Sorry, not Procfs, Devfs. Erp! Has someone seen my brain?

Re:Some things I'd -like- to see in 2.3.x

[jd]

Yep, DevFS. Sorry!

The issues, as I understand them, can be summarised as:

• A need for a potentially very large number of devices, without using up all the inodes on the system, flooding the /dev directory any worse, or making a royal hash of device number allocation.
• Some method of supporting the 'orrible chaos that USB and Firewire could inflict on the current system.
• A belief (by some) that /dev is overcrowded and mostly filled with superfluous files.
• A question as to whether you need physical files which really only just point to virtual drivers anyway.
• A question as to what -would- be the Right Way (tm) to solve this Nightmare on /Dev Street.

Re:Some things I'd -like- to see in 2.3.x

[Cramer]

What's this about "have to patch my kernel twice"?

DevFS was doomed to failure from day one. How do you expect the kernel to know what devices will _ever_ be available? It certainly easy enough for loaded and/or active drivers, but what about modules? For a module to be automatically loaded, the device node will have to already exist. Maybe _I_ want weird names for my devices?

Re:Some things I'd -like- to see in 2.3.x

[Anonymous Coward]

>All buffer overflows removed
"We're UNIX programmers. We don't DO that sort of thing"

>Peace on Earth and Goodwill to Men

I want a Winnebago

Adaptec Raid Support

[seaportcasino]

Does anybody know if 2.3.x (2.4) will support the Adaptec Raid adapters, specifically the AAA-13x series? I really want a linux driver badly for this card. I got it before I even found out Linux existed. Adaptec's driver support really sucks, so don't imagine I'll ever be seeing them release the driver. Hell, they don't even have a win2000 driver for it. Thanks for you help in advance!

Re:Adaptec Raid Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Pester Adaptec to release specifications. Until they give the open source community enough information to write a driver, no one is going to bother trying to kludge one together on their own.

Especially considering the fact that the AAA cards are expensive and you can buy hardware RAID cards from other manufacturers that already DO work with Linux.

Suggested Reading

[Anonymous Coward]

This book isn't great, but it is quite good, and aproaches from a beginner lever, with only more of the basic assuumptions. I highly recommend it. Its called _Linux_Application_Development_ by Michael K. Johnson and Erik W. Troan, published by Addison Wesley, ISBN 0-201-30821-5, and I think I got it off of Fatbrain for around $38.

Re:TROLL

[chewbca]

she does???

;)

Cripes!

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

Hey, I want to eventually USE 2.4, let's don't go crazy....

Each of your 2.3 wishlist items would probably push 2.4 out an additional 1-2 months. That's No Good.
---

Re:TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

congratulations!

NFSV3 is possible.

[rogerbo]

Have you checked out SGI's patches for
NFSV3 against the 2.2.10 kernel?

Works fine for me as an NFS3 client.

oss.sgi.com/projects

Also included as part of SGI's modified version
of Redhat, sgilinux 1.1.

Re:NFSV3 is possible.

[blakestah]

Have you checked out SGI's patches for NFSV3 against the 2.2.10 kernel?

We use a LOT of nfs at work. I already have Trond's NFS V3 patches applied to my kernels, and they work OK, sort of. I can also run an NFS V3 server with the knfsd patches (or Neil Brown's new patches). But the linux nfs V3 server, while working with Digital and SGI NFS V3 clients, cannot be seen by linux nfs v3 clients, OR linux nfs v2 clients.

I feel safe in saying linux nfs v2 server and client are working well. V3 would sure help a lot, but I just don't see it happening in any sort of stable well-maintained way - yet. Of course, the speed differences are not great until you get to 100 BT lines anyway...

This has HUGE raminifications for the usability of linux as a file server in a distributed Unix environment. NFS servers from linux are behind virtually EVERY other flavor of Unix. I suspect they will come around. But nfs is not exactly improving fast.

It's the drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

The Efficient Networks card takes ATMF-25 straight to the NIC, then converts it internally to Ethernet & then passes things off to the rest of the system as usual.

There aren't any (that I know of) public *nix drivers for this card.

Which is a gigantic pain in the ass, since many low-cost DSL providers use this card rather than DSL routers. An Ameritech tech told me this was probably because the DSL provider knows that if they use a DSL router, you can hang a NAT box off the router and connect multiple machines (since DSL routers take ATMF-25 in one port, and spit Ethernet out the other port).

By using this NIC, they reduce the "unauthorized" use of their bandwidth. By not providing *nix drivers, they know that they've reduced that "risk" even further.

I hate this card -- the DSL providers in my area mostly use Alcatel hardware, and apparently Alcatel recommends using this card. As a result, I cannot get DSL+Linux at residential rates. I have to pay for "expanded service" -- meaning an additional $50 per month, with another $600 in Customer Premises Equipment.

Aaaaiiiieeee!

Re:It's the drivers

[IntlHarvester]

That sucks. But what's stopping people from doing NAT with Windows NT, if they have driver support for this card? (Besides the obvious slashdot commentary about WinNT.)

--

Re:It's the drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

I may be a fool here but what stops you from doing NAT with (ugh) NT on that box? Then you could stick your Linux box behind that. Thats what the Bell South kid told me to do, when I mentioned that was an advantage to cable. Still got cable, though.

Re:It's the drivers

[XenoWolf]

That's what I plan on doing... I do have some tech docs on the 3000 series, but I don't have the mojo for writing device drivers. NetBSD has some stuff, as does FreeBSD, but I much prefer a Linux box, as I already understand ipchains.

XenoWolf

Re:It's the drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to pester you, but is that the only card that BS.net uses/allows on their adsl service? I can't find any info on this stuff on their site.

This sucks pretty hard and I really can't believe this is still going on.

Re:It's the drivers

[JabberWokky]

>> The Efficient Networks card takes ATMF-25 straight to the NIC, then converts it internally to Ethernet & then passes things off to the rest of the system as usual. >> There aren't any (that I know of) public *nix drivers for this card.

Hold on a sec... I just got ADSL installed at one of our offices yesterday. BellSouth couldn't give me the Alcatel 1000 ADSL that I normally request (they've been out of them for awhile, but have ordered more). Since it's a three person office, I had them hook the ADSL to the receptionist's computer, and planned on using ISC (ICS?) in Win98 SE to share (BellSouth couldn't get Windows dial-up working after four or five hours... it took me two hours, not counting the four hours or so of trying to find the damn Product Key).

Now, I know it's a PPP Efficient Networks card, and in a directory on the computer, they left a directory that they said contained the Linux drivers. The directory exists, but I have't gone into it yet. The guy who did the install was a hardcore geek (after four hours of sitting watching Window 98 reboot, you chat about stuff), and even showed me some undocumented features of the Windows driver (when you have the PPP monitor up, hit "Alt-Shift-A" to bring up "Administrator Mode"). If anyone needs it, email me... but it should be up somewhere. (evan@onepaper.com)

And today, I finally got it all working by backing up and formatting, and reinstalling Windows 98. Turns out, the copy the office had, that they SWORE was SE, was a "first edition" Win98 disk. I have their network up, but no proxy (my fault for assuming they were right).

I never did anything to make ADSL work on my home Mandrake box... it booted up, and just saw the net. It took about half an hour to get IP Masquerade working for my home network, mostly because I took my time reading the HOWTO. When I tried Corel, the same thing - no configuration, just net.

And which is the harder system to setup and use? (30 minutes versus 10 hours and counting...)

--
Evan

Re:It's the drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

I, and several other people I know with Bellsouth ADSL have an external Alcatel modem, that plugs into a 3c590 in the computer. Works fine in Linux and OpenBSD. Fast too, I get about 1.5Mbit down all the time, primetime or no.

This is inside the Atlanta city limits, dunno about anywhere else...

Re:It's the drivers

[XenoWolf]

BS used to use Alcatel 1000 External ADSL interfaces, but switched to internal cards to "prevent networks behing the ADSL connection"

This is the only card that BS uses currently

XenoWolf

Hail Eris!

[farrellj]

All Hail Discordia!

Chaos Reigns...at least in Kernel Source Code!

ttyl
Farrell

how bout softmodems?

[jormurgandr]

I know it wouldnt be all that difficult to include generic softmodem support in the kernel, and that would REALLY make a lot of people happy (myself included). I wrote a mod for mine, but I'm not all that great at Kernel programming, and it has a habit of not working or crashing altogether. If it supported more devices (maybe better USB support as well), more people might consider linux over windows.
=======
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Re:It's gotta be depressing...

[1100011001]

Thanks for the input, Bill.

Hmm. List out of date?

[PhiRatE]

It seems a little out of date. The kernel I'm running on my latest test f/w disk is 2.3.35, and initrd is working fine on that. Admittedly they had a slight problem with earlier versions but its fixed as of days.

Show us the source

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

The whole point of Open Source is that YOU don't need to be all that great. Take what you've done and go to l-k with a request for testers, coders, etc. They'll find/fix your errors and viola! we have a softmodem driver.
---

Re:Show us the source

[jormurgandr]

I hate to sound like a newbie, but I havent been coding on linux all that long. what is 1-k?
=======
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Re:Show us the source

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

"l-k" is shorthand for "linux-kernel", meaning "the linux-kernel" mailing list.
---

Re:Show us the source

[CrosseyedPainless]

"l-k" == "linux-kernel mailing list"

Re:Show us the source

[jormurgandr]

At the daring risk of sounding even more moronic, where would I find this mailing list?
=======
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Re:Show us the source

[Bishop]

The fix list link was a direct copy of the email Alan Cox sent to the linux-kernel mailing list. At the bottom you will read:

- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

I trust you can figure out the rest.

Re:Show us the source

[Anonymous Coward]

You can read the list w/o subscribing at http://www.kernelnotes.org/lnxlists/linux-kernel/

3 more for a string quartet

[HenryFlower]

viola! we have a softmodem driver

Just add a 'cello, and 2 violins.

TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this a troll or just bad humor?

Journaling filesystem

[Poe]

It seems a shame that none of the journaling filesystems that are in the works are going to be ready in time for 2.4 (i.e. ext3, ReiserFS, or XFS) (unless I lost one of them somewhere in the alphabet soup)

There was some talk of these on Kernel Traffic, but apparently to no avail.

This is still one area that NT kinda shows linux up. (though there are plenty of bones to pick with NTFS, don't get me wrong) Not only that, but it's a neat, useful idea that adds much and takes nothing away. (I'm sure you'll be able to use ext2 'till the earth falls into the sun.)

Re:Journaling filesystem

[the eric conspiracy]

This is still one area that NT kinda shows linux up.

Not by much, and not for long. NTFS sucks as an example of a journaling file system. ext3, ReiserFS and XFS will soon give Linux users lots of choices and some pretty strong advantages over NTFS.

Re:Journaling filesystem

[Nothinman]

This is still one area that NT kinda shows linux up

I know NTFS is a journaling fs, but I thought one of the main advantages of journaling was so that in the event of a drive not getting unmounted properly the journal could be checked to see what is lost, etc and do what it needs to get it back up to where it left off without running fsck/chkdsk, but NT chkdsk runs over the whole drive as if there was no journaling, am I missing something?

--

Re:Journaling filesystem

[Anonymous Coward]

NTFS only journals some data, not the entire filesystem.

What is he talking about?

[Listerine]

Well thanks for the most uninformative news post I have ever seen. What on earth are you talking about? Version 2.3.x of what? I can't recognize a project by someone's name that I can't recognize. Grrr...

Re:What is he talking about?

[ChristTrekker]

The Linux kernel.

Re:What is he talking about?

[binarybits]

You obviously haven't been reading /. for very long. The unofficial motto of /. is "Linux news for Linux nerds, stuff that matters for Linux users." About every third story is tied in one way or another to Linux.

Re:What is he talking about?

[Listerine]

My mistake.

I have to treat slashdot more like the mail. If no country is mentioned on a stamp, it means UK. If no topic is mentioned on a post, it means Linux.

Re:What is he talking about?

[timster]

If you were paying attention you would notice that the topic on this article is "Linux" and if you use a graphical browser, is right next to a picture of Tux, the Linux penguin. I don't see how that's unclear.

Re:What is he talking about?

[Listerine]

No that is not clear. As you can see by clicking on the linux penguin (or alt message), a wide range of topics are posted with Tux as the icon.

v 2.3.xx of the Linux kernel

[Anonymous Coward]

Where have you been the last decade, Siberia?

He is of course talking about Version 2.3.x of the Linux kernel, which is the development series preceeding the 2.4.x series.

2.odd.x series are the development series
2.even.x series are the stable series

Re:v 2.3.xx of the Linux kernel

[Listerine]

No, not siberia. I come to slashdot for nerd news, not linux news. Believe it or not, I dont use linux. Articles without a topic are confusing even if they are talking about a product that I use often. Would you understand if a post claimed that Version 7 would be coming out next month? Version 7 of what? Who knows?

Linux Core Kernel Commentary

[Booker]

I haven't really looked at it, but saw it in a bookstore, and it seems interesting... annotated Linux kernel code (2.2.something...)

Take a look at it here...
----

Kernel 2.2.x is unstable on Alpha

[Anonymous Coward]

The scsi symbios and adaptec support for alpha is still unstable in 2.2.x kernel. Please, this needs to be fixed.

Re:Kernel 2.2.x is unstable on Alpha

[Dr. Sp0ng]

The scsi symbios and adaptec support for alpha is still unstable in 2.2.x kernel. Please, this needs to be fixed.

Errr... works fine for me, with an AlphaPC 164LX (EV5) and a Symbios SCSI adapter. Be more specific on your system, and maybe send it someplace where it's more likely to get noticed than a random AC post on Slashdot.

"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
-Linus Torvalds

AC has a dirty mouth...

[Ricardo Casals]

With language like that, I could never be a Linux kernel hacker. I mean, come on, where is your English there buddy?

Per poop_sein blabben

Re:It's gotta be depressing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, Windows 2000 is coming out already?
Well, I suppose sooner or later an infinite number of monkeys...

Windows 2000 is terribly late, over budget, still too demanding to run on
a lot of the hardware in corporate America, and there remain serious
compatability problems which mean MS will continue to produce consumer
Windows versions based on the rotting DOS core.

In 1998, NT5 faced an unprepared market, Bill hoped to make a killing,
but unfortunately he didn't have a product to put in the box. Two whole
years later NT5 has a new name, a reduced feature set and claims to be
"finished", but you still won't find it in any shops. Meanwhile the
competition have cleaned up.

Remember, if you choose W2K you have to live with that feature set for
the next three or four years, perhaps more. There's no reason to think
that the improvements from RH4.x to RH6.x can't be repeated in future
versions, which will leave W2K SP4 looking pretty sad next to a shiny
RH7.2 system, while Microsoft promises better things "Soon".

Wish list

[Anonymous Coward]

Top item on my wish list is that things like this should be in Jitterbug or GNATS". I would be nice if VA Linux Systems or Linux Care could provide and support bug tracking for offical OSS developers.

I also wish there had been more push for make Linux x86 a better database server platform. Limitations that get in the way are:

• 15 partition limit should be raised to a 31 partition limit
• Support in the offical kernel for accessing raw partitions such as rawfs or char partition devices
• Support in the offical x86 kernel for file over 2 gigs

Another item is the ability to have multiple default routes and routing to the default route based on source ip address. Multi-homing on multiple Internet feeds just isn't any fun when all your outbound traffic goes through the same pipe regardless of where the request comes from.

Anyways, I look forward to the 2.5 developments. The 2.3 kernel series has been fun. :)

Re:Wish list

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm, I do believe IP Route 2 does source routing (Actually I know it does, as I use it).

trolling for compliments

[rodentia]

Thanks, gwalla.

Boumphrey's book is the only other Wrox title I haven't returned disatisfied.

XML for Applications was one of the lightest 600 page tech book I've ever run afoul of. Its true you could do worse: SAMS.

Yes, you can use NT for the NAT

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the guy that wrote "It's the Drivers" above . . .

And yes, you can use an NT box. It's probably what I'll end up having to do. I'd rather not, since there are a couple other (*nix-specific) things that I'd like my NAT box to do, but I think I'll ultimately cave in.

It's not so bad, really, since I have the hardware available, but it's still a bummer. Of course, if I didn't have the spare machine, THEN I'd be pretty pissed . . .

heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Not too bad. :-) Inflammatory, but not overly so, and even topical. Nice one!

Procfs vs Devfs

[Christopher B. Brown]

Actually, I wasn't noting that; I made exactly the same mistake. Happily, that left us on the same page...

Devfs has been available as a patch to the kernel for a long time now; if it's not in yet, I'm not sure why it would be expected to go in now...

kernel source

[dwanner]

Has everyone out there actually read the source for the linux kernel? I walk with my hat in hand to anyone that can decipher it.

they are gods .

The Linux Kernel

If you want to sleep, its a great read.

Re:kernel source

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you not know C? its not that complex, if you don't let yourself get overwhelmed. Just get a good cross referencing editor and ignore the driver stuff for now. Oh yeah, and pay close attention to the scheduler code. It gets pretty wacky in there.

FYI: Suse now has ReiserFS for download

[harmonica]

In a press release made yesterday, Suse announces that ReiserFS 3.5.12 (that's not the latest version) can now be downloaded from their site at ftp://ftp.suse.com:/pub/suse/i386/update/6.3/reise rfs/. It's not a final version and you won't get support for it (if you have bought Suse 6.3).

See the Heise newsticker posting at http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/ps-04.01.00-00 0/ or Suse's announcement at http://www.suse.de/de/news/news/kurzmeldungen/reis erfs.html (both in German, Babelfish may help).

LVM, please!

[swordgeek]

We need a logical volume manager! Heinz Mauelshagen has written one (read about it here, and it appears to be stable. This has got to be part of the Linux core before using it in a large environment is reasonable. Those of us coming from other Unix backgrounds have been gritting our teeth at the lack of both a mature JFS AND an LVM.

Re:LVM, please!

[orcrist]

As of SuSE 6.3, LVM is part of the distribution. I just thought it was part of 2.2.13.

Chris

Some subsystems may be more challenging to test...

[Christopher B. Brown]

That's fair comment; it will be difficult to run all the tests in "the lab" if some of them are only for the Atari TT port, and the lab doesn't have an Atari TT.

That goes to suggest that the testing scheme needs to be highly distributed, so that it checks to see what hardware is there is on a particular box, and tests that hardware. And submits the results back to a central site that would collect the results of tests together.

Re:Show us the source (OT)

[Wah]

Did you see/hear the Crosseyed & Painless at NYE2000? or is your alias coincidence...

(searching for Linux usin' Phishies)

What I would really like..

[jallen02]

In the coming releases.. Instead of adding support for a whole lot of neat and new things. Perhaps making what we have better? Code audits fix ups. Just in my spare time of learning a little about the LInux Kernel ive seen a few little things here and there. It would be sort of nice to audit the code like the OpenBSD folks did. But that put the operating system a bit behind and made it not so much for the "bleeding edge" types which thrive on linux.

Re:What I would really like..

[Ross C. Brackett]

Well, I think that's kind of why people use Linux over OpenBSD. I mean, sure, OpenBSD is probably a bit more stable, more secure, etc, but it doesn't have AGP/USB/BizarroFS/System390 support as the tradeoff. That's kind of what makes Linux Linux. I'm afraid that once Linux gets to the point where things like getting an ultra-mellow kernel through code audits, etc. become a priority; another "more fun" alternative will emerge.

I suppose it all boils down to why you're using Linux in the first place. If it's the GPL that you like, HURD will probably be more up your alley. However, if it's not the GPL, or odd hardware support, or the bleeding edge mentality, or the fun factor that brings you to Linux, what's the point? :-)

Re:What I would really like..

[Anonymous Coward]

The millisecond OpenBSD has good x86 SMP, I'm ditching linux forever. If freebsd's SMP support improves, and it stops trying to be just like linux, only different, I might consider it.

Re:What I would really like..

[cnflctd]

This is all part of a cunning plan. The internet companies trade profits for growth, right? The kernel trades stability for market share. Linus figures that once the whole world is running his code, everybody will have an incentive to fix the bugs that bite 'em.

Linus is the master of lazy programmers.

excel

[Anonymous Coward]

what about support for MS excel 2000?

ive used linux and i think this is all it needs, so alan, if youre listening... i think itd be great if you can merge excel 2000 into the 2.3.x series. thanks hun!!!

-- converted windows user #138482

Re:excel

[Anonymous Coward]

yesplease put this into the cernel and put in ms word and ie5 adn frontpge to please alan thank you!!!!1!!!

32 bit UIDs patch!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally necessary if, like me, you're trying to build a network with 100K users ...

mylex works

[Anonymous Coward]

Get an AcceleRAID. It works

how to clean up dev

[Anonymous Coward]

sure like to get rid of all the crap hanging out in /dev on my system

rm -f /dev/*

Already there bub

[Anonymous Coward]

2.3.x (thus 2.4) allready have what you want:

• &gt2gb *FILES* on 32bit platforms (needs patched libc I think.)
• The ability to bypass the buffercache on raw devices.

For the first problem you have, get the devfs patch and bug Linus to include this.
Mods, please mod this up to stop the disinformation

CSS IOCTL Patches

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if the CSS IOCTL patches are going to be included in 2.3.x or 2.4.x? These are required for playing DVD's in Linux, and it's rather painful to have to patch every kernel I download. A side note, I've been running on a reiserfs system for a while now, and it has been solid so far, even through power-outs.

Re:MODERATE THIS UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

uhg, yet another "my berkeley shit's better than your finnish shit" post of little-to-no value. grow up please.

Yet, the "my linux is better than your Windows" pot shot posts get moderated up to funny for some reason. Hmm....

Exactally!!!!! I hate that.

Re:MODERATE THIS UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

> uhg, yet another "my berkeley shit's better than your finnish shit" post of little-to-no value. grow up please

Truth hurts eh?

Dump linux, and use FreeBSD kernel

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea!!!

"Slashdot for dummies"

[orcrist]

I come to slashdot for nerd news, not linux news.

Well, for one, it could be argued that if you go to a health-food store looking for 'food, not health food' you'll be sorely dissapointed. Slashdot is what it is...

For another, the articles are in categories; this one is in the category "Linux", denoted by the cute little penguin on graphical browsers, or the 'Linux' alt tag on text browsers. Given the context, a version number number alone doesn't leave much room for doubt.

Would you understand if a post claimed that Version 7 would be coming out next month? Version 7 of what? Who knows?

Well, if it were say, next to the Beos logo, I would assume it was version 7 of Beos. (just to choose an example at random, I don't know what version Beos is at). I guess if it were next to the Monty Python foot I might be confused...

Finally, you have a login. Take a look at your preferences and adjust accordingly.

Re:"Slashdot for dummies"

[Listerine]

No that is not clear. As you can see by clicking on the linux penguin (or alt message), a wide range of topics are posted with Tux as the icon. Feel free to notice that everything from Opera to new Window Managers get posted with Tux as the logo.

Re:"Slashdot for dummies"

[Anonymous Coward]

No that is not clear. As you can see by clicking on the linux penguin (or alt message), a wide range of topics are posted with Tux as the icon. Feel free to notice that everything from Opera to new Window Managers get posted with Tux as the logo.

Exactly "Opera for linux", New Linux Window Managers, etc...

Re:"Slashdot for dummies"

[orcrist]

As you can see by clicking on the linux penguin (or alt message), a wide range of topics are posted with Tux as the icon.

Okay, I'll play along...

Hmmmm...

0 Playboy And...Linux? by Hemos on Tuesday January 04, @09:43PM EST 24

1 Linux Kernel 2.2.14 by CmdrTaco on Tuesday January 04, @04:16PM EST 246

2 The 2.3.x "Things To Fix" List by CmdrTaco on Tuesday January 04, @02:43PM EST 128
-- The current article

3 The ROX Desktop by emmett on Monday January 03, @05:43PM EST 215
-- Okay this one is Linux/Unix

4 Interview: a New Linux Year with Jon 'maddog' Hall by Roblimo on Saturday January 01, @02:02PM EST 88

5 Universal Linux-based Internet Appliance by CmdrTaco on Saturday January 01, @09:32AM EST 52

6 Linux Last in Deja Network OS Poll by Roblimo on Saturday January 01, @07:10AM EST 156

7 Forrester Report: Linux Hysteria Will Fade In 2000 by Hemos on Thursday December 30, @03:29PM EST 241

8 The Linux Newbie Replies: WFM? by Hemos on Thursday December 30, @12:14PM EST 367

9 Yet Another Linux Driver Petition by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 30, @07:44AM EST 140

10 US Army Needs Linux Workstation Advice by Cliff on Tuesday December 28, @01:09PM EST 396

11 Second "Bonus" Interview: Jon "maddog" Hall by Roblimo on Monday December 27, @12:00PM EST 102
-- Linux, trust me!

12 Linus One of Fortune's "People to Watch in 2000" by Hemos on Monday December 27, @10:31AM EST 87
-- Linus is the creator of Linux

13 Crack.LinuxPPC.org Cracked by CmdrTaco on Monday December 27, @08:12AM EST 132

14 Linux Handwriting Recognition by CmdrTaco on Saturday December 25, @08:25AM EST 79

15 "What is Linux Missing?" by CmdrTaco on Friday December 24, @07:34AM EST 732

16 Opera Beta Released by Roblimo on Friday December 24, @06:35AM EST 255
-- This was Opera for Linux

17 UK Gov't Experts Say Linux is Secure, Windows Not by Roblimo on Thursday December 23, @10:14PM EST 277

18 The MassLinux Disappearance Explained by Hemos on Thursday December 23, @11:30AM EST 137

19 386 Based Linux Powered Telephone by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 22, @08:49PM EST 132

20 Realtime Linux Workshop in Vienna by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 22, @11:02AM EST 66

21 LWN Does Year in Review for Linux by Hemos on Tuesday December 21, @06:22PM EST 60

22 HP Still Porting Linux to 64 bit PA RISC by Hemos on Tuesday December 21, @08:45AM EST 54

23 Tivo Source Code Released by CmdrTaco on Tuesday December 21, @07:40AM EST 220
-- Tivo runs on Linux

24 Is SCSI Sub-Par Under Linux? by Cliff on Friday December 17, @06:37AM EST 263

25 Corel and Red Hat Rumors Continue by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 16, @11:20AM EST 180
-- Linux companies

26 Adobe Announces Initial Support for Linux by HeUnique on Thursday December 16, @05:15AM EST 256

27 Linus Announces Move into Pre-2.4 Stage by Hemos on Wednesday December 15, @12:38PM EST 209
-- See above re Linus/Linux

28 Matra to open source their CAD component library by sengan on Tuesday December 14, @08:40PM EST 139
-- Okay, open source

29 Wearable PCs Under Linux by CmdrTaco on Tuesday December 14, @12:16PM EST 133


So that's 27 pure Linux, and 2 borderline.
I'll agree there's a wide variety, but: unclear?

Chris

Re:"Slashdot for dummies"

[Listerine]

Are either you or the poster above you paying the slightest attention to what I'm talking about? I know that the Tux icon means stuff having to do with Linux... but a out of context version number does not mean anything next to Tux, because so many different LINUX topics are posted with Tux next to them!

Re:"Slashdot for dummies"

[orcrist]

Are either you or the poster above you paying the slightest attention to what I'm talking about?

Aaaarrrrgghhhhh. Are you stupid?!?!?!?!

Or are you not paying attention to what I said?

Let me give you an example:

"In a press release today, the White House said the President is not feeling well"

Now, quick; Is that the president of IBM? Zimbabwe? The Nose-Picker's Club of Estonia?

but a out of context version number

It's not out of context!!! It is implied. Shall I give you a translation table for reference?

A Version number sitting alone next to:

Linux Logo ---> Linux kernel
BeOS Logo ----> BeOS version
Apache Logo --> Apache version
etc.

What's so hard about that to understand?

Chris

Re:"Slashdot for dummies"

[Listerine]

Linux Logo ---> Linux kernel, Linux software, Linux GUIs, Linux lawsuits, Linux IPOs...

Re:"Slashdot for dummies"

[orcrist]

I give up

Re:"Slashdot for dummies"

[Listerine]

OH YEAH I WON.

Ok I apologize for that and this whole argument... Im just stubborn. I realized my mistake a little while ago but I was arguing from the reason why I made that mistake...

No hard feelings.

Have been in for ages

[axboe]

I can't even remember when I sent the DVD stuff to Linus - sometime prior to 2.3.15 (the oldest patch I have on my discs). So don't worry, 2.4 will support the CSS ioctls.

No, good thing.

[T-Ranger]

No, this is a good thing... We will be getting a significant change in the stable kernel tree quicker.

Yes, not having a tts[1] fs /now/ sucks, but waiting now+1mo*cool_feature_to_include for the next major release is a Bad Thing.

[1] (I wonder if he's a novell type?)

ACLs are cool..

[T-Ranger]

(I admit it, Im a Novell guy, and think NDS is the coolest thing since...(long pause) Um, the coolest thing ever.)

One thing that linux is good at is replacing the file and print sharing provided by a NT( However linux as a workgroup server currently cant compeat with Netware/NDS (and proably now with *gasp* win2k/ads). Novels marketing division is compleatly brain dead, but when ADS comes online, watch out.

Of course, why anyone would wory about filesystem privilages is beyond me, thats what ZENworks (application launching) and Groupwise (file sharing) is for :)

devfs is too big a change for some people

[DragonHawk]

I haven't heard much of a good argument against devfs.

devfs impacts every device driver in the kernel, true, but one assumes that if it is worthwhile, we can deal with that. Kernel-wide changes have been done before and will be again. And most of the changes have been done as patches by the devfs maintainer already. So that isn't the real issue.

devfs would add complexity to the kernel, but so does everything else that adds code. So that isn't the real reason.

You would lose persistance of the /dev/ directory structure, true, but a method to write out changes and read them back in at boot would be very simple to implement. You lose anything in the buffer-cache if you power-off without sync'ing, but nobody complains about that. So that isn't the issue.

In the end, it always comes down to "What we have now works fine, and we've done it this way forever, so why change?" The idea of replacing the /dev/ directory is too big a change to swallow for some people. Some of those people are kernel hackers with demigod or higher status, so the change isn't going in.

Too bad, really. I think devfs has a lot of merit to it.

Re:It's gotta be depressing...

[TummyX]

Remember, if you choose W2K you have to live with that feature set for
the next three or four years, perhaps more


How did you figure that one out?
Windows is a modular OS and NT is a modular kernel.

The feature set is already richer than Linux/Unix is many areas - anything that's missing - write it yourself.
Write kernel extensions, drivers, software. I don't really see how what you say is relevant.
You're like one of those people who go and compare Linux + every single piece of unix software created to Windows NT out of the box.
NT4 didn't have a telnet server - but you didn't have to wait to W2K to get one, write one yourself, port it from Unix using cygwin, or buy one. You complain when windows includes too many features - then you complain when windows lacks some features.

how about ....

[Anonymous Coward]

HOW ABOUT A HALF-DECENT filesystem (note HALF-decent not even decent) HOW ABOUT a HALF-DECENT memory management system ? Instead a SHITLOAD of half-assed drivers for half-assed HW no one will ever bother to use... Microsoft: Where do you want to go today? Linux : Where do you want to go tomorrow? FreeBSD : Are you guys coming or what?

Re:how about ....

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, from your sig its obvious that you're one of the non-techincal FreeBSD trolls. You can make some good arguements back and forth about different tradeoffs in the two VMs, but are you actually claiming that ffs (even with softupdates) is measurably better than ext2?

If so, I must say, my hat is off to you. You have taken delusional advocacy to levels I haven't seen since the amiga finally died off.

Re:how about ....

[Anonymous Coward]

That was not a sig actually you allmighty technical GOD. It was a quote i picked up from irc which i thought it was HILARIOUS.
And i am not particularly fond of freebsd either although i DO like freeBSD. I am a non-technical non-genius Mandrake user who has SUFFERED from ext2's HALF ASSED perfomance and HALF ASSED stability.
ANd if you claim that ext2 is a decent fs you obviously need to use it a litle bit in a production enviroment. Ext2 is by F-A-R the worst fs available ANYWHERE right now. Hell even FAT16 is better for god's sakes....
And i am speaking from what i SEE in my day in day out activities. Not from some half-assed theory you linux zealots give.
And since you didn't like my sig here's another quote
MS: GOOD marketing GOOD hype and no substance

Linux: BAD marketing GOOD hype half-assed substance

FreeBSD: NO hype NO marketing and substance.

Utter fantasy time...

[swordgeek]

Man pages. I want plain old, updated, current, man pages!

*sigh*

Oh well. Back to reality.

Re:Utter fantasy time...

[Anonymous Coward]

then get started. Or did you mean to say: "I want someone else to do all the work for me, so I can have plain, old, updated, current, man pages!"

How about moving the end-of-epoch ....

[taniwha]

how about 64-bit kernel time - so we can start implementing those future file systems with an end-of-time that's way way out there - I know we have untill 2038 .... but then 40 odd years ago in 1960 people were putting 2 digit dates in their cobol and look where it got us .....

Re:How about moving the end-of-epoch ....

[yerricde]

Or at least make time unsigned like it is on DJGPP. That would buy us an extra 70 years to get 64-bit machines.

Minor change --> Minor Test Run

[Christopher B. Brown]

I agree that you want, at some point, to rerun the whole suite.

But if all you did was to patch the kernel a bit to fix a particular problem, it may be desirable to just run the tests that you figure are related to that change.

Rerunning the full suite overnight or on some other reasonable periodic basis to find problems that may have been introduced would be an obvious thing to do.

The real point is that if the test suite grows to 15MB of source code, and runs for 25 hours, you don't run the whole thing every time you make a little change. You run the parts that could conceivably be relevant. And run the whole thang once in a while.

Or perhaps have a daemon that grabs the latest kernel every time one is released, and runs it through regression.

That's not a concern until there's so many tests that they'll run for many hours...

Re:Minor change --> Minor Test Run

[hald]

To a certain degree I agree with you, probably we could get away with only re-testing the subsystem that was changed. I like P. J. Plauger's comments about testing in Chapter 0 of The Standard C Library. He basically says that the test code and the code being tested end up testing each other, and frequently need to be changed in unison. The testing code is closely tied to the tested code, and usually as complex. Each piece debugs the other. He is talking about the C library, which is rather modular in places and rather interdependent in others, so I guess that same applies to the kernel.

Hal Duston

redundant?

[Trepidity]

moderators - how is this redundant when it's the first post?

Re:redundant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because its some loser's karma whoring. Click on the link, thats what its there for. One of the great things about the web is that you store info in one place and link to it elsewhere. This person evidently doesn't understand that.

This whole post is just a redundant copy of the link in the article.

Ugate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, so some of the Efficient cards do PPPoE, and others don't . . . and some have *nix drivers and others don't . . .

But -- has anyone here used the various Umax DSL router devices with Linux? The Umax tech support guys weren't very encouraging, but the Ugate series have some really nifty features -- like automating dynamic DNS stuff for you (anyone getting the appropriate Ugate device automatically gets a subdomain inside ugate.net -- cool).

Anyway, ideas?

Random Musings...

[seaportcasino]

Does linux have a MFC compatible interface? Does it support COM objects? When will I be able to port my 'hello world' over to linux? When is Microsoft's linux distro coming out? Will they throw in MS Office free like Corel does with Wordperfect? When will I finally be able to give them marketing scum their powerpoint presentations on linux? When will linux 2000 be out? When will Microsoft open-source windows? What is open source? Why is it no women ever log onto slashdot? What the hell is up with Natalie Portmen anyway? She's not that cute.

Gotta agree with the Beginning Linux Programming..

[Anonymous Coward]

It was actually required reading for a Linux programming course I took last summer at Southwest Texas State U. Good examples, great explanations, etc... It's actually a good book to read if you just want to know what is going on inside your box.

This message will self destruct in 3...2...

Hacking Crash course

[Rares Marian]

1. Read the manuals. The point being made lately about inadequacy is somewhat encouraging. I won't fault anyone for commenting on stuff that needs to be improved, but the fact is if you want to hack ( as in to build something) you have to take some responsibility for gathering information. 2. Forget about learning the whole source. Only a moron would do that. This relates to #1. The manuals were put together for two reasons, to avoid the monstrous stupidity of needing one hacker to accompany every user at all times and to avoid the monstrous stupidity of making people record unnecessary information. You want to be a hacker not a paranoid fascist effiency expert wannabe incapable of accomplishing anything to which you aspire, aka a wanker. 3. Learn how to read source. Applies to #2. This is even more important than fully learning a language. Know how to separate sections so that you can reconstruct them similarly rather than ridiculously attempting to regurgitate them from memory. It's more imprtant to know what a function looks like, what a comment looks like, and how to trace one result from one funtion to the use of that result in another function. 4. Applies to #3. Learn where to put infromation that you find. This is the 3rd most important part. Any project that looks like a black box is intimidating if you don't have an idea what you're trying to solve. For any project, state the obvious, lay it out on paper. Then begin to develop. 5. Applies to #4. (2nd Most important part). Learn to generalize. Remember software is virtual machinery. Virtual physics (somebody needs to write a book on that) is different from real physics. When you move a paperweight everything happens on its own, you don't have to tell the universe to move the image you see of the paperweight along with the paperweight itself. In a 3-D program you have to do that. One of the ways you become aware of this is by understanding the complete meaning of the idea that your screen is just a bunch of colored dots. A hacker gains a lot of freedom from knowing that. The complexity and collapses into simple models, the confusion disappears. An example is the crazy amount of redundancy virtual physics imposes on 3-D programs. Calculating visible areas from every cubic unit of space, takes a lot of time, to prevent that you have to waste a lot of space.. In real life light either reaches your eye or it doesn't. No big deal. 6. Applies to everything, so this is the most important tip. Nothing is simple; virtual physics prevents this. You have to identify extremes in the concept of your project where things either run slowly or take an enormous amount of space. An example is the cellular directory assistance place I work at: Sure type in the query values and presto you get your phone number. simple right? No. If your customer is looking for A & P super food stores, they might as well go out for coffee, cuz a lot of words begin with A + P. Lots of businesses like initials which makes it worse. Then there's things like the fact that Southern States have towns that have 3 or 4 different names plus you have customers that ask for the Police Department in Northern Virginia. Good luck. In CPU design you have CPU caches, It's a matter of balance because when you improve performance by increasing associativity, you screw perfomance because that automatically increases the miss rate. 7. As a result of #6 you need to learn balance. Speed vs space, Cache Hit Wait vs Miss Rate, Power and detail in your project versus deadline. So you can see it has nothing at all to do with code. It's about your organizational skills. The rest just writes itself.

Hacking Crash course PLAIN OLD TEXT, sorry

[Rares Marian]

1. Read the manuals. The point being made lately about inadequacy is somewhat encouraging. I won't fault anyone for commenting on stuff that needs to be improved, but the fact is if you want to hack ( as in to build something) you have to take some responsibility for gathering information.

2. Forget about learning the whole source. Only a moron would do that. This relates to #1. The manuals were put together for two reasons, to avoid the monstrous stupidity of needing one hacker to accompany every user at all times and to avoid the monstrous stupidity of making people record unnecessary information. You want to be a hacker not a paranoid fascist effiency expert wannabe incapable of accomplishing anything to which you aspire, aka a wanker.

3. Learn how to read source. Applies to #2. This is even more important than fully learning a language. Know how to separate sections so that you can reconstruct them similarly rather than ridiculously attempting to regurgitate them from memory. It's more imprtant to know what a function looks like, what a comment looks like, and how to trace one result from one funtion to the use of that result in another function.

4. Applies to #3. Learn where to put infromation that you find. This is the 3rd most important part. Any project that looks like a black box is intimidating if you don't have an idea what you're trying to solve. For any project, state the obvious, lay it out on paper. Then begin to develop.

5. Applies to #4. (2nd Most important part). Learn to generalize. Remember software is virtual machinery. Virtual physics (somebody needs to write a book on that) is different from real physics. When you move a paperweight everything happens on its own, you don't have to tell the universe to move the image you see of the paperweight along with the paperweight itself. In a 3-D program you have to do that. One of the ways you become aware of this is by understanding the complete meaning of the idea that your screen is just a bunch of colored dots. A hacker gains a lot of freedom from knowing that. The complexity and collapses into simple models, the confusion disappears. An example is the crazy amount of redundancy virtual physics imposes on 3-D programs. Calculating visible areas from every cubic unit of space, takes a lot of time, to prevent that you have to waste a lot of space.. In real life light either reaches your eye or it doesn't. No big deal.

6. Applies to everything, so this is the most important tip. Nothing is simple; virtual physics prevents this. You have to identify extremes in the concept of your project where things either run slowly or take an enormous amount of space. An example is the cellular directory assistance place I work at: Sure type in the query values and presto you get your phone number. simple right? No. If your customer is looking for A & P super food stores, they might as well go out for coffee, cuz a lot of words begin with A + P. Lots of businesses like initials which makes it worse. Then there's things like the fact that Southern States have towns that have 3 or 4 different names plus you have customers that ask for the Police Department in Northern Virginia. Good luck. In CPU design you have CPU caches, It's a matter of balance because when you improve performance by increasing associativity, you screw perfomance because that automatically increases the miss rate.

7. As a result of #6 you need to learn balance. Speed vs space, Cache Hit Wait vs Miss Rate, Power and detail in your project versus deadline.

So you can see it has nothing at all to do with code. It's about your organizational skills. The rest just writes itself.

Being steamrolled by a Microsoft Unix wannabe is

[Rares Marian]

futile and unlikely.

All of 2000 now refers to \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1. All of 2000 will name your hard drives according to what port and channel they're instralled on. Now why didn't we think of that? We did 30 years ago. Letter names will disappear soon. 2000 already has the mount syscall.

2000 Server comes with a (gasp) Mount point manager.

I'm sorry but I have no reason to switch back to Windows.

Is Linux missing some things? Sure. Are the betas of those portions kicking ass already? Most certainly.

Pffffffffffft

[Rares Marian]

Sorry bub but the only thing getting steamrolled is the public's ignorance about Microsoft's originality. Happy New Year.

Okay let's see here

[Rares Marian]

Windows is a modular OS and NT is a modular kernel.

Can you replace the shell? Can you replace the kernel? Does it run on 20+ Architectures? Would 911 run Windows (I do wonder why they run Linux, hmm..)?

The feature set is already richer than Linux/Unix is many areas - anything that's missing - write it yourself

Gee that's original.

Write kernel extensions, drivers, software. I don't really see how what you say is relevant.

Again, how is that better than Linux. Dude man show me a 2000 release that doen't need sound recorder or media player to play a sound file. Only the driver.

cat(concatenate, or just send) sound.au(raw audio) > (to, like DUH!) /dev/dsp (digital signal processor aka sound card)

(for the slow parenthese are not to be typed in.)

I can play a file from a damned one line script.

Second, Kernel extensions that need to be rewritten every few years compared to fully published stable APIs. Nope no thanks.

Sorry but no dice. It's still spit and glue from what I've seen, though it is kind of starting to look like Unix.

You're like one of those people who go and compare Linux + every single piece of unix software created to Windows NT out of the box.)

Nope. Wrong. I compare only the distributions I use to what comes on the Windows CD. I only need to do that. Though Linux still beats Windows in bare bones setup.

In a full install, I get full Internet readiness from using to developing, from small time applications to tools for setting up a major global organization in no time flat. Could Linux distros use some WYSIWYG editors on CD, maybe, but Windows so far doesn't offer me anything to match until I buy separate products. Windows gives me a click and drool universe and oh my god look at the pretty colors euphoria as the only reward. I'm not a kid anymore. It takes power and gunctionality to make me drool. I'm certainly not impressed.

I'm soory but you're the one who sounds sore.

Re:Okay let's see here

[TummyX]

Can you replace the shell?

Yes, ofcourse you can, you could since before Windows 3.0.
Ever seen litestep etc? Alternatives are extending the shell with COM objects/dlls etc (adding items to context menus of files, extending the task bar etc).


Can you replace the kernel?

What would be the point? If you buy windows with the intention of changing the kernel you shouldn't be buying windows.


Does it run on 20+ Architectures?

What's this got to do with my original objection?
NT's kernel design allows it to run on almost anything with very little source change, but most people didn't want to run it on 20+ archtectures.
Windows CE (based on NT) runs on a bit more cause of the wide variety of vendors.


Would 911 run Windows (I do wonder why they run Linux, hmm..)?

I believe lots of police and emergency response places run Windows (many i've seen actually run win31). Most businesses would say that run Linux now days - even if they just have a single box as an internet gateway or soemthing. It's fasionable.


Gee that's original.

Yes, but it was relevent, you can extend windows (something you implied to otherwise).


Again, how is that better than Linux. Dude man show me a 2000 release that doen't need sound recorder or media player to play a sound file. Only the driver.

I never said anything about being better than Linux, I was making an objection to the statement made about having to wait 4 years for "new features".
And I don't know what you mean by the second comment....no version of windows since 3.0 has needed sound recorder or media player to play a sound file, why don't you just use the winmm (winmm.dll) apis? Or, in windows 2000, the DirectSound apis.


cat(concatenate, or just send) sound.au(raw audio) > (to, like DUH!) /dev/dsp (digital signal processor aka sound card)

Yes that is nice how you can do it in the shell, but it's only a limitation that windows doesn't have a shell that's quite as advanced as unix's shells. Windows has an advanced GUI and API.
To play a simple sound, you can use the SndPlaySound API, to do more extensive transformations etc, you would probably want to use DirectSound. Win32 and NT's implementation especially has basically the equivalants of all of unix's /dev things, \Device\PhysicalMemory for /dev/kmem etc, but you generally can't access them from a CLI shell. Ofcourse, that doesn't stop anyone writing a CL processor to accept windows monikers.
What you point out here is window's lack of CLI support for it's advanced features, not anything lacking in the kernel.
Windows also has a nice model of "contexts", DeviceContexts etc, and normally when you want to directly access a sound card (without using DirectSound) you'd use EnumDevices etc and see what sounds cards are there, then pick the one you want.
Many windows devices are indeed mapped to names like "/dev/dsp". eg. "\Device\Display0" etc.


Second, Kernel extensions that need to be rewritten every few years compared to fully published stable APIs.

NT's DDK, SDK etc are fully published, and fully supported by microsoft (ever seen MSDN?). The windows driver model looks like it'll be around for a while yet, but I'm betting that it will indeed get phased out in about 5 years and new hardware comes along. Standard Application APIs stay the same for a long time though (Win32).



Nope. Wrong. I compare only the distributions I use to what comes on the Windows CD. I only need to do that. Though Linux still beats Windows in bare bones setup.

That's exactly what I mean, many distributions come with a lot of software. Microsoft generally has to support everything on their CDs, that's why they don't even include freeware windows applications like WinAMP on their CDs. It's unfair to compare a Linux distribution CD to an out of the box windows CD.
Imagine if MS wasn't allowed to distribute IE in windows, you'd be complaning about how crap windows is cause windows doesn't have a web browser - when in reality windows is the best browsing platform ATM.


Windows gives me a click and drool universe and oh my god look at the pretty colors euphoria as the only reward. I'm not a kid anymore. It takes power and gunctionality to make me drool. I'm certainly not impressed.

Power and functionality is exactly why I use NT.
I love extending the OS, and the RICH, nicely documented APIs I have available to me.
How good is Linux at (Remote Access) RAS, Componentization (COM+), Telephony (TAPI), Speech (SAPI), 3D (DirectX), DataAccess (ODBC), Accessibility (MSA), Transaction Servers (MTS), Message Queuing (MSMQ), IIS, ASP, ActiveX, PnP..etc
...the list goes on (note, everthing i list is free with windows)...

Part of the reason that linux has been lacking good software with easily configuration is it's lack of easy IDEs, and rich, but easy APIs to do next to everything.
That's changing a lot now though, which is ofcourse a good thing.

Windows NT may look pretty, but don't let that fool you into thinking there's nothing underneath.

Part of the reason people don't realise NT has a hell of a lot of power (basically it has equivalents of what Unix has and more..) is cause they see they can do all this stuff from the unix CLI, in Windows, you generally have to write an application (and generally in C/C++) to actually see what you can do. That's changing a wee bit now that MS have been working on Windows Scripting, trying to get a few more COM objects that do a bit more with the OS.
Linux still needs to grow up where it's importnant now days, scalability - more use of threading, new io apis like NT's IO completition ports would help with Linux's network speed as well.

I think Windows beats Unix at everything, except for stability - which they're continuing to work on. Windows 2000 still can't beat something like solaris at stability, though it tries hard. But that's the price you pay for supporting a wide array of commodity hardware, rather than using proprietry hardware.

Re:Okay let's see here

[Nodatadj]

> How good is Linux at (Remote Access) RAS,

Telnet?

> Componentization (COM+),

GNOME and KDE both have good versions of this.

> Telephony (TAPI),

Dunno but I remmber seeing an app advertised on freshmeat thats been around since 96 to do this.

> Speech (SAPI),

There's something for it, can't remember what.

> 3D (DirectX),

DirectX sucks.
OpenGL works fine.

> DataAccess (ODBC),

Ummmm,
MySQL, Oracle
.....

> Accessibility (MSA)

Fairly good

> Transaction Servers (MTS),

No idea.

> Message Queuing (MSMQ),

Haven't a clue

> IIS,

Now you're just being silly.
I've forgotten what it's called...
Oh yeah apache

> ASP,

php

> ActiveX,

Com+ in a fancy name.

> PnP..etc

2.3 supports my pnp cards without any hassle.
In fact I've had more luck with pnp stuff
under linux, than under windows.

> ...the list goes on (note, everthing i list is >free with windows)...

Free to obtain,
how much does it cost to have more than 10people using it at once?

Its an alpha you idiot!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Much of the disk buffering, scsi, smp and all the tcp/ip code has been rewritten from scratch and of course you are going to have huge problems since alot of the old kernel code depends on the old code that has been updating! I bet the private freebsd kernel mailing list has similiar bugs with the update to kernel 3.4 to 4! Since much of the ide and usb interfaces have been rewritten from scratch on the freebsd kernel, I would bet that the pre-4kernel would crash and burn faster then you can say hotcake.

I assume you already know this because your a freebsd guru and that you have to have some sort of since of supperority over everyone else who thinks differently then you.


Moderators help stop this anti-linux fud. I admit freebsd does deserve to get a better rap but flamining anyones OS is inappropriate. This is a linux site after all and there are many Bsd sites like daemonnews.com to go to instead. Rob Malta has done some work to include a *bsd section if anyone would prefer to read that but don't flame our OS in our own comunnity website considering we have been very liberal towards *bsd kernels. Flaming just makes you look really bad. Thank god for moderation.

Re:Its an alpha you idiot!!

[hattig]

Slashdot os not a linux site, it is a "news for nerds, news that matters" site. Not that there is much news for nerds anymore, although the last 24 hours is a lot better than the previous months...

All OSs have their problems, some more viewable and obvious than others, and some just release without fixing the errors. At least we can be sure that the 2.4 linux kernal will be mostly bug-free (I bet it will take 2 months before we are on 2.4.6 :-)) when it is released.

FreeBSD is great though - I think you should not judge anything until you have used it, and there are a lot of Linuxites here who do just that! It lacks excellent SMP support though, but that should be fixed soon. I would use FreeBSD before Linux as a server platform, and both of these way before NT of any kind!

~~

adaptec is now supported.

[Anonymous Coward]

go to alen cox,s webiste and you will find somewhere that he has written a driver for the new 2.4 kernel and I believe he wrote one for the 2.2 kerenl as well with his latest patch. kernelnotes.org may have some information about it if its been included with 2.2.

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, lemme get this straight. You're a Linux advocate, and you're bitching about originality? Please let me know when there is ever something in Linux which isn't a (usually poor) ripoff of something done previously. You're either completely clueless or the funniest guy on Slashdot.

Betas. Woohoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but there's money to be made now; have fun waiting on all your beta shit to get finished. As if the other companies are going to stand still while you chase their tailights. I hope you like staring at assholes, because as long as you have that development model, someone else is always going to be ahead of you. Write back when you get a real filesystem, directory services, 3D support, high availability solutions, hardware support, and applications, among other things, for your toy OS, okay?

Re:MODERATE THIS UP!!!

[QueenFrag]

whatever mr. 13373R-than-you. go use the HURD or something. I want smp support.

SCREW YOU!

[Anonymous Coward]

You have broken my Linux fantasy!

LINUX RULEZ!!!!

Posted yet? (Was: Re:Show us the source)

[Anonymous Coward]

So did you post it? All you have to do is paste the source in an email and send it to linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu

Microsoft claims originality, Linus just gets the

[Rares Marian]

work done. Of course Linus invented Gnome, Window Maker, KDE, blackbox. Everybody knows that.

/dev/changer

[fuzzel]

And what about my /dev/changer ???
Apparently there is no more room in the kernel?

see http://unfix.org/jeroen/unfix/proje cts/changer/
--