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Linux Kernel 2.2.14
So everyone and their unkle wrote in to tell us that Linux 2.2.14 has officially been released. If your uptime isn't to sacred to ya, it may be worth upgrading. You know where to get the good stuff if ya need it.
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Why is it that everytime I download the kernel, a new one comes out the nex damn day?!?!?!?
1. wow. 2. your point is ..? 3. good for you 4. right
Untar the source into /usr/src/linux, type "make menuconfig" then select all appropriate crap that matches your hardware. The save it and do "make dep && make clean && make zlilo". Reboot. :-) The menuconfig part I guess would be the most confusing to a newbie.
No, OpenVMS is the better choice!
Zane
I had a 108 day uptime which was killed when my apartment building burned down.
So it could be worse.
Thanks. I was just about to say the same thing. Most of the exploits I see are due to vulnerabilities in various user-level daemons -- wuftp, sendmail, and so on.
Are there any real exploits that target the actual kernel of a remote machine? I've seen plenty of kernel patches over time, but most of those seem to involve things like lockups and filesystem corruption. Remote exploits have to come in *somewhere*. If your net daemons are secure, there shouldn't be a way to get at the kernel in the first place.
And if the exploits exist in userland programs, there should be no reason to shut down a box to replace them -- unless the new user programs require a kernel upgrade (which they very well might).
thanks to this new kernel, the last pieces of the enterprise cookie are now comfortably within linux.
in similar statements on mailing lists, alan cox has proclaimed the new linux superiority over solaris and irix in the SMP arena. they cant touch linux for scalability or superior SMP implementation.
way to go alan! and way to go LINUX!!
You need redundant power supplies, unplug one and plug it in to the new UPS, then do the same with the second cable ixm
Yes, you don't get it at all. Your computer has information on it, I assume. And you never want to access that information when you're not at home? Or your computer never has anything to do accept when you're sitting there, physically in front of it? Are you sure you aren't a recently-released Prisoner of Bill, a recovering Microsoft victim who still doesn't understand the wonders of having a real computer?
hope it's good!
Exactly. What happens if friends and family need something from your computer? You expect them to go over to it physically? God, that's so 1950ish. Is this what Microsoft does to people's brains?
It's not from an anonymous Vogon poet, it's by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, captain of the Vogon Constructor Fleet in charge of demolishing Earth. Since he announced his name and intentions to the people of Earth, he's anything but anonymous.
Where on earth can I find a list of changes from 2.2.13 to 2.2.14. Nothing on kernel.org and nothing that I can find in the /usr/src/linux tree either (after applying the patch). Seems like kernel.org would have that readily available to prevent people from just downloading stuff if they don't need it. Of course, this is just part of the annoying trend that it is harder and harder to find useful information on the web.
I've got 224 days of uptime. I, obviously, have not been upgrading right away. Its gotta come down sooner or later....
I've been told that most UPS's are less reliable than the power here so I'm UPS-free.
8:16pm up 256 days, 6:21, 1 user, load average: 0.07, 0.02, 0.00
(my 486 file server running 2.0.36...haven't rebooted since I the day I installed Linux on that machine)
You could always run on that kenel, then once a new one comes along, install that, switch all you processes over, kill the old kernel, and be happy. You would get a good uptime, though maybe not good preformance.
But, uptime is really what matters!
I don't know if you were joking or not, but I did think about a similar solution. And I do think that some people actually would consider this. But I would do it in a less dangerous version (even if I still wouldn't recomend it to anyone). It works if the computer already is conected to the power outlet through a multi conector extention chord with a built in power switch. (My computers always are, there are never enough conectors otherwise.) You need your long (multi conector) extention cable, and a short (homemade) male-male chord. People that don't imediately see how to do it should leave it alone, so I won't give an explanation. But I can say that you should *never* have any free, power conected, male contacts. And before you conect two power sources, check the polarity and *phase*. If src and dest power outlet have different phase it obviously won't work. On the other hand, never do anything like this, you will probably just burn down your house. /Definitely Anonymous
How is the post I am replying to be offtopic? Don't the moderators read the article? And I quote:
/. accounts shove it
" If your uptime isn't to sacred to ya, "
Jeez.
My system went down on a power hiccup on Jan 1 2000 not that I'm hung up on uptime anyways. 2.2.13 seems to be working OK here so I'll hold off on the upgrade anyways. Not in the mood to build and install yet another kernel ATM. There are no advantages to me, everything's working fine thank you. Fucking idiotic moderators sac them all!
Yeah I got 2
-- AC
no comment
It has this amazing new secret feature. #less /usr/src/linux/README
>2) AGP has nothing to do with any webcam I have
>ever seen. Perhaps you mean USB?
Perhabs he wants to hook up a camcorder to his video in on his video card?
Frankly I think you should just install Debian GNU/Linux and pay less attention to the issues inside the community if they don't interest you. Perhaps it is YOU who are too pre-occupied with the 'Linux ramblings'. If you are only interested in using the technology, do so! Your decision was based on politics after all...
This is Linux Service Pack what? 10? 11? 23?
Better think before you write then ....
...
Its 2^32 microseconds
Did Linux nfs improve with this kernel release?
In previous 2.2.x releases, clients do not come up or even unmount clealy nfs filesystems.
What about LOOSEdows ...
:-)
i always was annoyed when i had to type "win" to start LOOSEdows (those old loose3.1-days) just as if computing were a game and starting "win"dows would be something like instant winning
LOOSEdows is from now on put under the GPL
dbcc's and 17hr queries - quess who is using Microsoft SQL Server. Seems you get everything you deserve when you use SQL Server. When are you going to ever learn? Do you know that the upgrade to a full licence of SQL Server trashes any and all development / test databases you might have run using the Evaluation licence version? -- Any company that can do that doesn't deserve the privilige to store your data in my opinion. Stick with Oracle. (P.S. you did hear that they slashed their prices by 30-35% recently?)
>And the pipe is still open, just very slow data throughput.
I think that might violate some of Microsoft's NT patents....
Some people don't need to have their computer doing something 24/7. And personaly, I find this 'My computer has been up for over 200 days' very similar to the 'My dick is bigger than yours' conversations we had in grade school. It's great if you run a server that people depend on being up 24/7, but for home use, who cares.
When will we be able to reinstall a new kernel without rebooting?? This feels too much like Windows to me!
Well it's that time of year again, when a new Linux kernel emerges from it's cave to face the dawn of a brave new world. Will it be afraid of its shadow? Perhaps. My point is quadfold -- 1. Linux crashes like a bitch 2. Linux doesn't support a lot of hardware 3. Linux is a pain in the ass to install/setup/use 4. Linux is easily hacked But that's beside the point, I mean, it's the best we've got. As for me, I will be upgrading, hopefully it will work better (but I suspect it will merely work DIFFERENTLY). Let's face it: two out of five dentists agree, Linux is the best thing since sliced bread. You may be a bit puzzled as to what I am talking about, so I will give you an example: You have a box, and inside this box, is a cat, and some other molecules. Now add some poison, too (why not?). Naturally, the poison WILL kill the cat, because Bohr is a fool on roller skates. So now you are saying, "So what, I have a dead cat in a box." That's correct. "What should I do with it?" I don't know, you're the one that killed it! I only hope it was nobody's pet. This is a good time to tell you about my friend Noone (nOOn-EE), who has a PC running linux, and a cat named Belfry. One day, Belfry turned up dead. (How unfortunate, don't you agree?) "She was an old cat." Whatever. But now noone uses linux to connect to the internet and make a homepage, "A Memorial to Belfry." Isn't linux great?
i've been running 2.2.13 on a media gx 166, and it's been working ok. it's made me realize that a 1 gig drive is just not enough and neither is 32 megs of ram. i had early problems with it, but my cpu fan was dead and after replacing that i had less crashes. also, I've never been able to configure X with Xconfigurator, I've always used XF86Config. if you want to get in touch, i'm at mfbprod@juno.com
Well I tested the code - got the boot logo ;)
:(
Guess it works fine now, but there is still a bug in the python code
Just use 'make menuconfig' instead of 'make xconfig' for now....
-- always interested in other people's experiences.
Actually I copy the old kernel to a backup lilo entry and the new one over the old. So if the new one doesn't work I just type safe at the lilo prompt. 2.2.3 killed networking for me.
For all you uptime nut, I have the perfect solution.
An OS and system that does not and never shutdown or reboot, not even an off button.
Every other day its "frame rate" would drop to 1e-5 Hz, and it would allow "administrative" input.
Internally the code flushes memory and streams new data from storage, but of course that is just its feature of "real-time" maintenance.
It will manage to display a giant busy icon that remains stationary for about 20 minutes. The OS is still "up", just merely performing the most trivial task possible while it is in "maintenance" mode.
And the pipe is still open, just very slow data throughput.
This OS and system will have infinite uptime, and you can show off to all your friends.
As I walk into the valley of death (must make Access 2000 database over vnc, either that or forever be tied down to being the only one able to administer the php/mysql scripts. Not something I want if I intend to continue dating (Only reason Linux isn't up on tho back room box)) I can only think of one thing: All the braggers and naysayers, go start a friggin business expand like a H bomb mushroom and show us which one of you can recover faster when your supplier^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hvendor decides they don't like the producer of software that you depend on, or when the market for your particular type of business dries up, which one doesn't depend on committees and advisors to spend months to figure out a strategy. Which of you could adapt on his own? The click and drool retard or the guy who knows his business and the tools he uses?
Unless I've seen Linux running on a 64 or more CPU box.
It was 49 days, but the problem was fixed (a patch is available).
There is a dmesg floating around from someone at Sun that shows Linux booting on either a 14 or 16 CPU ultrasparc. neat-o.
His main reasoning was that "Rob said so"
He offered nothing of his own, just some sort of tacit approval from someone named after Mexican food.
You can now get your head out of Will's ass.
Wow..you sure know a lot of people...can I play with you at recess. Grow up.
-) Well at least on this machine. The server works fine with the older kernel it's got. I ain't changing that machine for love or money. Well maybe for money.
USB mouse, keyboard, and the start of audio has been in the 2.2.x series for _at least_ the past 3 patchlevels.
;)
There is a module floating around for support for the AGP GART on various chipsets, but I don't know which kernels its included in (certainly not 2.2.x by itself).
Boy, you must feel like a fucking moron now.
VIA's GART is well supported, as they have been very forthcoming with the info. Intel on the other hand....
Not what he's talking about, I don't think. Sure, you've been able to use AGP cards as plain video cards for a while, but it's only recently that people have been getting the stuff that actually makes it AGP (gart?) working, at the glx project (Utah?). I don't think that's in the stable kernel.
What is new and improved in this kernel?
I am sorry I can't answer this for you yet (just started downloading 2.2.14 right now), but I have a Matrox card at home, and an ATI at work. I love the lil penguin pic at bootup ;), but I found there must be a problem, not with the kernel code as such, but with the xconfig python code when selecting the ATI framebuffer, it just wont let you select the damn thing. At work I used "make menuconfig", which allowed me to select the ati frame buffer support and all the other options that come along with it, but it still has a few problems with changing the resolution (it will only use the default even if you pass the option to the kernel through lilo) but that might be because I have an ATI RAGE PRO AGP and the docs for the matrox framebuffer are fantastic, but there doesn't seem to be *any* docs for the ATI driver (although this could be covered under the VESA docs). :)
Basically I think the framebuffer if one of the best ideas for the kernel IMHO, but requires quite a bit more development and integration with SVGALib (ie maybe there is just one lonely guy/gal with a Matrox card hacking away and needs some help??), if I were a programmer I prolly would, but maybe the guys at Loki or something could give him/her a hand. If you want games on Linux, we need the kind of abstraction that DirectX has (the only kewl thing to come from M$), and although there is a couple of things happening in the werld of X, this will give that same layer to the console, which in some cases may be very preferable, and may lead to even more intresting developments that we the users have not yet even drempt about
Rob said so. If Rob told you to jump off a bridge would you do it? In your case, yes.
Who cares what Rob says? It is obvious you live your life through him. When is your book about him going to be out?
I suggest you all check out the glx project, which
uses a gart kernel module for AGP.
g400 + OpenGL + gart = sweet_X
http://glx.on.openprojects.net
IIRC, it was based on an operating system called "Tripos". Which was developed at Cambridge UK by the same guy that created the BCPL language - this may be the wrong spelling, but I think it was Richard Whitby-Strevens. Or something.
Whoops! I miss-read the question. The above refers to AmigaOS not BeOS
Or is this just a Windows or Winix box?
Ok here is a fun newbie question. I just installed Red Hat 6.1 last month, and i was wondering 2 things. 1st, as a home user should i upgrade to the new kernel, is there anything in it that i will notice and love. And 2nd, how hard is it to upgrade a kernel. Is it just a matter of downloading and compiling it, or is it a lot more complex?
I really hope you aren't thinking of Rob as a role model, that'd just be silly. If you want role models for geeks, skip the current generation of hype-monkeys and go back to their "
parents". People like McKusik, Thompson, Ritchie, Kernighan, etc. Hell even Stallman would be better than the web hype-monkeys.
I read recently that supermount was going to be integrated into the 2.2.14 kernel. I'm currently running the prepatch #17 and don't see it anywhere in the configuration. Is it included in this official release? (For those unaware, supermount automagically detects when new removeable media is inserted and saves you the trouble of typing umount/mount).
"Forging ahead at ungodly speeds" (is that the same as saying "slow"? j/k) is typically not the way to enhance security. OpenBSD was submitted to a "comprehensive" audit that supposedly fixed a lot of security issues.
There are a whole bunch of PPPoE clients out there now. At worst you need to patch the kernel. Some are actually userspace. I don't know if the PPPoE "feature" will be included in 2.4. http://www.suse.de/~bk/PPPoE-project.html
These Winix people are *weird*.
You forget: these Winix kids don't even know who McKusick and Thompson *are*.
Has anyone, ever, anywhere, seen a post about Microsoft or Microsoft products that didn't involve a dollar sign or the suffix 'doze'? I found the dollar sign thing funny for about a minute -- that was over five years ago. My plea to you Microsoft bashers: come up with a new joke already! Thank you.
Rebooting was a 20th Century thing. We are in the 21st here (ignore the loony A.C. Clarke). What is the hold up?
(* Hides under the table as Dexter's Lab fans throw hyper-vacuoidal rotten eggs at him :)
Or, given that I've not actually contributed to the kernel (yet), should I be playing the role of Mandark? Haha haha haha haha haha! :)
Seriously, this is great news! I was beginning to wonder if they were going to set up a proper set of development digits for it, with it's own -ac and -pre trees.
Now all I have to do is get the floppy drive working (it's an ex-parrot, right now), upload the new patches, and wreck havoc on my hard drive.
(Beware! Beware the Phantom Flan-Flinger!)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I would normally never respond to something like this, but...I actually laughed at this one.
My uptime on one machine was up to 154 days until my UPS died a painful death this morning in the face of a power outage. While this isn't a too impressive uptime, I was none the less disheartened. Well, I suppose now is as good a time as any to upgrade.
And at 48 days uptime, I'm a little wishy-washy. I've always updated the kernel right away, but man, that's a wicked good uptime.
-Will the Chill
Creator of RPerl, Scouter, Juggler, Mormon, Perl Monger, Serial Entrepreneur, Aspiring Astrophysicist, Community Organiz
IMHO
Windows is what Windows is, and that's a good general purpose Desktop OS with more useful applications then linux has fat, sweaty, sausage fingered geeks. Every OS has it's advantages and disadvantages, and losing yourself in religious OS fervor puts you at a distinct disadvantage in terms of your capability to recognize and exploit technology and software to accomplish the task at hand.
the sinister mister earache.
Of course you probably know that and are trying to trick us in to thinking you don't care about long uptimes to make us think you have a long penis. What kind of excuse is that? script kiddies? puh-leeeze. you might as well have said that you don't want to ruin the environment by consuming the electricity needed for longer uptimes. like anyone would believe that.
So I'm calling your bluff. I bet you've got really long uptimes.
And for the record, my uptime is just the right size. Not too big, not too small. So don't even bother asking.
I'm not actually planning on doing it, as I'm not proficient enough to recompile and replace a kernel yet, but I need to know how soon I have to try and take this step.
thanks.
I recently switched from Linux to OpenBSD and NetBSD on my ix86 and Alpha machines after a year's evaluation of the free *BSDs on a couple of spare boxes; now I'm going to detail the reasons for the switch and elicit (hopefully constructive) feedback from /. readers.
Mind you, I did not switch for any political reasons (i.e. - GPL/FSF vs. BSD/MIT/X) - I actually prefer the 'restriction' of always-available source-code+improvements of the GPL and am philosophically aligned with the FSF.
Nor did I switch for preferring a 'Cathedral' development model over the 'Bazaar'.
Though I'm quite happy with most of the developers and contributors, I switched because I am becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the general, overall _attitude_ and _focus_ of the Linux community and, moreover, the practical and pragmatic potential pitfalls that I see Linux moving towards.
Here's a synopsis of my view:
1. Preoccupation with Microsoft
Why is the Linux community _so_ vocal about their dissatisfaction/hatred of Microsoft Corporation? Isn't this obsession somewhat absurd?
If proprietary and monopolistic are so terrible, why the soft spots (much less criticism at least) over Apple, Be, Sun or other Unix/hardware vendors? All of the above are really no better than MS and would *love* to be in Microsoft's place, reducing consumer choice and limiting their own liability.
How is this a liability to the Linux community? How about the proposed khttp? Four years ago, a kernel service like this would be unthinkable and considered an anathema to good Unix design; the post-Mindcraft attitude makes this permissible.
Is 'one-upping' NT4+IIS by introducing real dangers all that necessary to win corporate/popular mindshare? Why is this happening?
2. Lack of focus and the 'World-Domination' syndrome
Lack of focus for the general Linux community probably stems from the 'Bazaar' development model. While not necessarily bad (it is indeed the most democratic and fair development model, much more so over *BSDs), now that Linux has become more popular, the community now suffers from the 'World Domination' syndrome.
Does _every_ device need to be supported under Linux? Even devices whose quality and performance are questionable, when similarly-priced, higher-quality devices are available?
Personally, I use devices and only spec devices to others that I know are well-supported and whose vendors provide specs/development help to developers. For example, I only use Buslogic Multimaster and QLogic ISP-based SCSI controllers because they work, they don't time out, and their support does not vary (greatly) from one firmware revision to the next. The manufacturers have seen Linux as a viable market from the beginning and have provided specs/documentation to minimize the amount of reverse-engineering for developers. These are the vendors we should support, and perhaps the others will see free software as a viable market as well.
However, the Linux community wants *every* device supported, seemingly again to 'one-up' the other OSes (*BSDs, but particularly MS) and 'win over' more users. And as a result, the quality of support for many devices ranges from excellent to severely abysmal...
Can we decide on a range of devices to support (the level proportional to the amount of support from the vendors) and _really_ support those devices?
3. Lastly, the details and fine-tuning code.
For the most part, the kernel maintainers do an excellent job considering the volume and rapid rate of development on the kernel. Even so, is this rapid rate of development really conducive to a necessarily better kernel and/or OS? Also, are we ignoring potential pitfalls with the 'release early and often' methodology?
The details (an admittedly minor but poignant detail): disk device files and partitioning:
Let's compare this to the *BSD world... addressing the issues above.
1. The *BSDs are obviously not MS-friendly, but they don't seem to have many loud-mouths (i.e.- ESR) disparaging the Gates Empire at every opportunity. Though beset by lack of publicity (I believe they are waiting for the Linux hype to subside before pursuing the limelight), their users are growing, and increasingly including many ex-Linux users :(
2., 3. The *BSD teams are exceptionally well-focused, and that shows in the overall quality of code and distributions. Certainly the development is far less democratic, but it seems the users truly benefit from the focus on 'getting it right the first time.'
The hardware support (peripherals, not architectures since NetBSD supports just about arch) in *BSDs is limited in comparison to Linux but there is a marked difference - nearly all the supported hardware works well. For a new user (or a boss you're trying to impress), this is definitely preferable to wide-inclusion/spotty performance that we have under Linux.
Also, NFS works perfectly under *BSD. This is probably the number one reason why I switched.
Although the IP stack under Linux is good, it's even better on *BSD.
*BSD pays attention to the details. Bug fixes are fairly rapid (though not instantaneous as under Linux) but the maintainers always strive to make *correct* bug fixes - that is, fixes that won't become a potential problem six- ten- twelve- months from now...
*BSDs use proper disklabels, partitioning and device file naming schemes from the start; no need to worry about managing multiple host adapters, etc.
Sorry for the ranting... actually, I hope this will be considered constructive criticism.
The Linux community _does_ have an unusually high proportion of talented programmers, but, because of some of the more _social_ issues above, may lose mindshare and advantage to other free OSes...
~AC
Okay, I'll concede... Actually, I find that the Debian distribution, with its long release cycles, thorough and robust package management and exceptionally high-quality (in the Linux world) packages is the Linux distribution that approaches the quality of Net/OpenBSD. They obviously have extremely stringent standards (though not quite at *BSD level) and seem to attempt to 'get it right the first time'. Kudos to the Debian team!
- you have some hardware, and a driver for it was added/fixed in the new kernel
- there was some grevious security hole that was fixed (not the case with this release)
- there was some grevious file corruption bug that was fixed (again, not the case)
- for some reason, you upgrade a different piece of software, and it requires a newer kernel (far more common when upgrading from 2.0 to 2.2 than from 2.2.13 to 2.2.14, so it probably won't apply)
- you feel the need for whiz-bang features, in which case you're probably already running the unstable kernels
:), and consequently you wouldn't be asking this question
usually, reason #1 is the reason for upgrading. if you look at the changelogs for stable kernels, you'll find that the vast majority of changes are tiny (or occasionally not so tiny) fixes with obscure pieces of hardware that run on obscure systems (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration). anyway, unlike with the 2.3 kernels, you won't find any new whiz-bang features in the 2.2 kernels, so if you don't need to upgrade, don't!NcFTP Software makes alot of great claims about the loads that their server can handle but I have yet to run into a heavily hit server that is running one. It would make a much cooler selling point if they could say it survives being a mirror of stable Linux kernel updates.
Applied immediately the 0.02c ext3-patch, patch
had no problems (except two obvious rejects of
2 lines of code in the kdb-patch, and further
2 lines in the ext3 patch), but it failed to
compile... I guess I'll have to wait until
Stephen Tweedie fixes this. And of course, the
missing ext3 is the sole reason that keeps me
from trying out 2.3.x-kernels.
Kirth
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
No. It works as another PCI bus (which it really is - AGP is just a modified PCI bus), so AGP cards work fine, you just can't use the GART (graphics address remapping table), which is used for 3D texturing using texture data from system RAM. Support for this is in the 2.3.x kernel, but it doesn't seem to be very well-supported as yet...
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
1) AGP has been in the kernel for quite some time.
As I said in another post, AGP is not explicitly supported in the current stable kernels, it's just used as another PCI bus (which is largely how the system treats/sees it). 2.3.x includes developing support for the special features of AGP (texture data in system RAM and (maybe?) DMA support).
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I've used patch with other srcs before and not
had any problems but for some reason I can't
figure out how to get it to work with the Linux
src. I have the linux-2.2.12 src and the files
patch-2.2.14 and patch-2.2.13. What do I need to do?
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Jan 4 17:58 linux -> linux-2.2.12/
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 1024 Jan 4 17:40 linux-2.2.12/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 Nov 14 18:28 lost+found/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 3111595 Jan 4 17:37 patch-2.2.13
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 7269094 Jan 4 17:37 patch-2.2.14
yowch. better be careful there... ever filled /? It ain't pretty.
Uptime is an important thing at times. On servers which thousands of users access regularly you had better not keep the machine down for long. Some admins who don't fully understand what they are doing are all too ready to install the newest software on busy servers occationally creating problems. Problems result in downtime which users don't normally like.
Sure if you are running a single user machine upgrade by all means but the only reasons to upgrade real servers are if the new kernels has security patches and possible imporovements in the drivers for your specific hardware. Otherwise keep the uptime high, the users appreciate it.
Why do you want to make a monolithic kernel (minus the scsi controller)?
Building a modular kernel isn't that hard, just a matter of putting " make modules ; make modules_install " after your " make dep ; make clean ; make zImage ; ".
There are several cons of building a monolithic kernel these days. In my experience the first think I have is that, for me, it's too big to be a monolithic one (even with make bzImage).
That's why I build everything I can as modules.
They're simple (IMO) and smart. If set up right (usually the case) they are only loaded when a program needs them and unloaded shortly after I turn off the program (my bttv modules do that anyway). That ensures that it only uses the RAM it needs and no more.
One question though, that SCSI controller isn't the one you hook up your scsi harddrive to (I'm assuming your harddrives are SCSI only..) is it? in which case you'll HAVE TO build support for it in the kernel itself (no modules here).
Yeah, you can tell this is just soooo accurate.
Their #1 uptime system is a HPUX box that's been up for over 100 years.
it's a figure of speech meaning essentially: infinity + 1.
i've seen the expression formulated as "everyone and their [dog|uncle|brother]".
-l
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i just want to point out security holes
with rule "not unless you need to fix a bug, or gain a feature." you can consider not to upgrade just because of for example tulip driver error because you are not experiencing troubles even when using tulip card. :)
BUT if this tulip bug is security hole you SHOULD update even when usual usage is OK. hackers are not producing usual thinkg on systems
disclaimer: take it as advice to newbies.
hany
exactly. i just "explained" special case of bug fix to newbies (i hope).
hany
2) formulate a useful bug report?
take a look at /usr/src/linux/REPORTING-BUGS (2.2.X).
hany
To be honest you shouldn't worry as the uptime for Linux boxes in general is as high as most other platforms already.
It is not uptiem alone that sells an OS to other people. If you can upgrade your kernel to take advantage of new functionality then that is more likely to make Linux appear robust, usable and so on.
Nice. People at kernel.org must be really happy now when you've shown THAT link instead of the mirrors-link. Of course, it might not be mirrored everywhere yet..
Not only IDE corruption -- filesystem corruption in general. Flushing all blocks would also mean flushing all _dirty_ blocks.
In addition, I've got some TCP/IP problems I hope 2.2.14 will fix, like returning fd 0 on accept() and generally breaking under high loads.
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
To be fair, AGP DMA transfers aren't supported by Linux, AFAIK, since Intel won't let go of the specs.
Also note that there are two (or more) AGP specifications that would have to be supported: Intel's, VIA's, and whoever else puts out an AGP chipset.
jf
I've used ATI MACH64 FB driver before (back in 2.1.13X I think). Do you have a different chipset?
I figured security fixes were lumped in with bug fixes, but I get your point. :)
----
VERY VERY difficult, if not impossible ("hot-swapable kernels"). Been discussed some time last year, check kernel archives. The HURD would more likely be possible to do this being a microkernel.
my $.02
Steve
Yes, S/390s are very cool - I used to be sysadmin for a UNIX on Amdahl (IBM mainframe clone). It was so fast at I/O that grepping a big file (producing no output) was instantaneous - I thought the grep command wasn't working but it was just going blindingly fast, on a mid-1980s vintage mainframe at that...
As for Linux on VAX, see http://www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/~atp/linux-vax/ - there is a port in progress, though right now NetBSD seems a better choice for everday use.
Of course, somebody is hoping to port Linux to the AS/400 - see http://users.snip.net/~gbooker/as400.htm for details.
Given that the AS/400 has such an unusual architecture, it seems like a very difficult port, far more so than the S/390, but you never know...
PPPoE is in the 2.3 series, so I imagine it will be in the 2.4 series. Right now, building there are kernel patches to get it to work, which seem to give the least overhead, and there are a few userspace apps. You can find almost everything that's available here. (The one by David Skoll is apparently the best userspace app.)
Wow, I must be some kind of kernel hacking God (kidding) because I have been using AGP with the stable kernel for about a year. Me thinkest thou art mistaken, my friend.
-=-=-=-=- osjedi uses Debian GNU/Linux. -=-=-=-=-
"... but I don't know how to make it so that I am using ONLY the latest module..."
/lib/modules/2.2.14; when you boot/run with 2.2.14, the only modules that get loaded will be the ones from that directory.
When selecting what to include in or exclude from the kernel, choose "m" to include items as modules.
After you do "make zImage" or "make zlilo" or "make vmlinux" or whatever your choice for building the monolithic part of the kernel, issue "make modules" to build the modules, and then "make modules_install" to install all of the modules. If you don't already have this version of the kernel/modules installed, you've got nothing to worry about here--2.2.14's modules will all be in
-rozzin.
Not particularly, asshole. I was correcting his acronym error, not indicating that USB support wasn't available yet.
BTW, USB support is included in the standard 2.2 kernel. Look under linux/drivers/usb.
PS: Go crawl back under your rock and die, you stupid piece of shit.
I know that some of the S/390's come in massively parallel configurations - like 12. Well, OK, it's massively parallel for me. Does the kernel have a limitation on the amount of processors? I thought that it was four per box.
Thanks. I just hope that everyone realizes that not everyone is a well established junkie yet - I knew where to get them but maybe some folks did not.
we can only be offline for ten minutes every month"
You can have that, and keep up with new kernels also. Install every stable kernel that comes along, while keeping a copy of the running one. Just don't reboot.
Now, if the machine have to boot anyway (such as power failure, or the new kernel have something you must have) then you get the newest kernel. If that turns out bad, reboot to the old one that you kept.
Just got the email from the Linux Kernel Distribution System ... 2.3.36 is out.
Here is the patch
. . .
Here is the full source
1.3L, 3 moving parts, 280 HP, no Turbos, wanna Race? RotaryNe
the GART acts like a TLB for your AGP video card. It is chipset dependant. Basically, that huge texture you have allocated in your program from 0x4000 to 0x0A000 is, in reality spread all over physical memory in little page sized chunks (like most virtual memory). The GART makes all those little chunks look like a contiguous texture, by mapping the virtual address that the video card has to the various parts of physical memory on the motherboard. I'm not sure how it handles textures that have been paged out to disk, I assume it traps out for software to handle, just like the TLB does, or it may require you to MLOCK_ALL your textures into RAM.
Last I checked, VIA was being very open with the programming info required to operate the GART, but Intel was playing games. This may have changed lately.
It's just a weird expression we have to imply a lot of people. An example:
:) But then again, so is every other language.
"It used to be that only a few people had personal computers, but now everybody and their [uncle|brother|mother|cousin] has one!"
Hope that helps. English is a strange language indeed
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
What's the fuss about Tulips? They're fast, stable, and light. Occassionaly, when I cannot find a Tulip, I try NE2000's, which just aren't quite the same.
uptime isn't the inverse of downtime, as odd as that may seem. It's quite possible to have very little down time but not years of uptime, it seems to me that in most cases 1 minute of downtime is quite acceptable when it allows you to fix problems. I think that the 45 seconds worth of reboot time to get important new features in the kernel is well worth it, even if it does ruin the whole uptime thing... I personaly think that the best way to measure uptime isn't in hours or years, but in percentage.
-Ted
My cat absolutely loves tulip petals... As soon as he sees tulips, he charges and eats them away in no time... Weird animal...
Well, if your database has been cranking for 17 hours to do the end of the month report, you crash, and you spend 7 hours running dbcc's untill your database server is back up, than you would count in my book as "having a day-long outage".
And that's excluding the time figuring out *why* the system crashed.
The only claim was that having an uptime ny longer than the most recent necessary security patch is stupid.
Not at all. That's why there are firewalls. Besides, for the majority of real computers out there (not counting the toys at peoples homes) net connectivity is just an extra, not a necessity.
-- Abigail
But you don't always have off-peak hours. Take a company with offices in in New York, London, Tokyo, Los Angeles and Singapore, and a central mail server. There are no off peak hours.
And even if there are off-peak hours, there's often so much to do, you cannot do it all in the maintainance window, and some things have to wait.
-- Abigail
You got that all wrong. It should read:
The fact a script kiddie can send a single IP package to your machine is not a Good Thing if your computer is running any sort of task that has any importance.
If you really, really have to have (Inter)net connectivity on your box with a critical task (which seems unlikely) one should use a firewall.
-- Abigail
Stable is pretty good.
I beg to differ. The NFS is still quite broken.
Usually Alan Cox posts a very detailed and informative changelist on www.linux.org.uk which is much more useful than the stuff you can find on KernelNotes or Cutting Edge .
Hmmmm I've got a machine here running kernel 2.2.13 that's been up for 76 days now... but I guess I'll probably break down and reboot the system soon. Perhaps I will recompile the kernel, but hold out for an 80 day uptime before rebooting. :)
Oh please, get a clue. People don't break into systems because of the kernel, most break-ins are via the system daemons and other user-space programs. You want a secure system, run nmap on your box and then close down/firewall any service you aren't actually using. Common "insecure" services are sendmail and FTP.
65535 seconds to be exacly (0xffff)
----------------------------------------------
the pun is mightier than the sword
I know people are working on pppoe for linux now, but will it be in 2.4?
The point being made (if I read it correctly) is that Rob and Co. aren't particularily noteworthy, just infamous. Not the same thing, and certainly not to be emulated above other CS luminaries.
Theoretically it's possible to do that now. But if you aren't Terje Matheson or on of the L0pht guys, it might be difficult.
If they can change your kernel, they can change the value reported by uptime.
Because it is an open protocol, cheating happens. Just like in Quake. But everybody with some brains in his head can separate the not-so-accurate-ones from the others. By the way...cheaters are usually no longer than about one hour in the list; by then the admin has disabled their account. Offcourse the statistics only make sense for OS's of which a lot have been registered so think of it what you like. For people that consider uptimes interesting, it is there. If you don't...well don't look.
0x or or snor perron?!
Now you probably know the origin of my nick...
0x or or snor perron?!
Superiority - You are correct. I've had Windows NT and even 95 boxes up for months at a time.
(pendantic) impossible. maybe you had 95 up for 54 days at a time, but any longer is not possible without system lockup. I think it was some sort of timing bug
erm wouldn't that be a HUGE security risk? ie someone cracking into your system, replacing vmlinux with a new insecure vmlinux, rebooting, and changing your uptime to never show it?
Pardon me if I don't jump right up and download/compile it: I'm waiting for patch-int-2.2.14.X. I'm willing to bet that I'll never see hide nor hair of it anywhere on Andover, either :/ C'est la vie, pero por la tras ;)
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
it's a good thing you're not in holland, Michigan. People have gone to jail for damaging tulips before, and I don't wanna know what kind of punishment munchin on one will bring ;)
-niteq
I saw 3 of them (S/390), one is very old - water cooled.
HuH?? Who are you kidding?? There is no such phrase as "hold up any well"...Unless you want to hold up any oil well in the couny, but that's beside the point. My point happens to be that the correct English for that phrase is:"My arguments never hold up VERY well..."
Okay, so I'm anal.:) Pppplahman:)
Pardonez moi, ma petit choux de Pays-Bas, but tout le monde et sa tante a dit ca en la France pendant touts les annis.
[Or something. I don't really speak French].
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I've just erased all that is Microsoft so I live with only Linux from now on. I have just installed RedHat 6.1 with the updates and whatnot from a few hours ago... I'm downloading the linux-2.2.14.tar.gz file (not the .patch file) from ftp.us.kernel.org, and I'm reading a page on upgrading the kernel from Linuxnewbie.org at the same time. However, I can't put my finger on how to properly install and use the new 2.2.14-bundled modules. I know the computer will "modularize" everything else when I follow the Linuxnewbie directions, but I don't know how to make it so that I am using ONLY the latest module for my Adaptec SCSI controller (the "aic7xxx" module) and nothing more. The last time I used Linux, I remembered something to the effect of "the aic7xxx module is already loaded (possibly the 2.2.12-20 version, from an initrd file)" during the bootup sequence. Obviously I screwed up something back then. Even more, I will have to take care of the 3dfx Voodoo3 stuff and the Sound Blaster Live! support for the latest kernel as well. What should I do?
--
Thanks a lot for that advice.
--
This would be a good time for somebody to post the email addresses for clueless reporters in the print media and zd net. We could all write in about what a great achievement this is and how it could crush windows 2000.
....
I would laugh my guts out if this showed up on the seven o'clock news right after "don't open email from strangers 'coz you might be vapourized". Something like this happened a couple of months ago about AOL
While this is true for the most part, I find it particularly annoying when I have to 'restart my computer' every time I change the smallest little thing. Be it my DNS servers, or my screen resolution (yea.. I know.. they fixed the resolution thing). Uptime also possibly shows how long since a CRASH. I can't count the times that netscape crashes on me at work, and then KEEPS crashing, crashing AFTER it is closed, and an OS that doesn't ALLOW me to open the 'task manager' if there's a critical error, but forces me to 'restart' is really annoying.
Well, someone commented that the patch was rather large, 1390 kb, the biggest to date for 2.2,
yet...
just out of curiosity, I loaded up "voices from the Hellmouth" from hof, and the grand total was 1783kb..
Vote Technocratic! Government by killer robots!
Er, shouldn't that be a dowtime limit, not an uptime limit? There is a subtle difference...
Have fun !
RFC1925
1) AGP has been in the kernel for quite some time.
2) AGP has nothing to do with any webcam I have ever seen. Perhaps you mean USB?
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Okay, first of all I have to admit that I did not yet try out either 2.2.14pre18 nor the final one but somewhere between 2.2.14pre12 and 2.2.14pre16 the kernel lost the ability to boot my PC if I do not insert a medium into my IDE-Zip!! I get lots of "Lost interrupt" messages during probing of that device. It's not a show-stopper but unnerving. Any ideas what caused this change in behaviour?
Cheers
I've had similar errors on a Linux server, random filesystem corruption, damaged files and directories. The problem manifests itself only with the high disk activity, such as running pretty loaded squid cache. It seems what I was right suspecting bad motherboard (VIA 82C586-something, Celeron Slot 1). Turning off PIO, UDMA (it has fairly new IDE drive) and UDMA support in kernel seems to help. No problems so far, 20+ days uptime (it was no more than a week before). Squid cache directory was damaged every time. The kernel is 2.2.13, but I don't think filesystem corruption is kernel related in my case. Never, never buy cheap motherboard for a server and actively protest even if your boss tells you about limited budget. Bad hardware could be a whole can of worms. I hope I will get this bad motherboard replaced soon. Of course I can't reproduce the problem with Windows 95, high server load needed for the problem manifests itself. Sad story...
Why fix bugs that dont exist and add features you don't need? If security isnt an issue, and on an internal network it may not be as big of one, why take chances upgrading a critical component that is currently working fine. Now if security is an issue, or you want/need the new features by all means upgrade. But if it aint broke don't fix it.
treke
Your webcam is probably USB not AGP (unless it plugs into a slot inside of your case next to your video card : )
As the kernel needs not support for AGP.
Only your BIOS's chipset is concerned with the fact that the card is AGP..
That and your display manager (Your X server, for most of you) must support the chipset on the card.
Your X server (for most of you, the an XFree86 server) needs to be concerned. Not your kernel.
-bugg
It seems to me that it was true many moons ago that BSD (pick your favourite one) was the secure os of choice, but now, with linux development forging ahead at ungodly speeds, is there really much of a difference? Has anyone done a decent comparison lately?
Sounds like a devel (2.3.X) sort of thing to me. Keep in mind this isnt the sort of thing we are likely to see in the "stable" 2.2.X series.
The first time I heard of the port to S/390, my response was something to the effect of 'You'd better start sharing those drugs, pal..'. Granted, I heard about it a month before the official announcement from an IBM employee, but still. S/390 was huge leap; AS/400 shouldn't be too far off.
.sig: Now legally binding!
I assume you mean USB????
*ahem*
.... ;)
Programming skill has a great deal to do with uptime if you happen to be writing kernel modules
--
bje
Yep. We eat them as dressing on our sandwiches instead of iceberg salad ;-)
Actually, apparently they're horrible to eat, but people did eat tulip bulbs during the hunger winter in 1944/45. Basically all potatoes, onions and other foodstuffs had been sent out of urban parts of the country, and the only vaguely edible thing left was tulip bulbs.
Kind of gives a new perspective on the hunter/gatherer habits of man...
Oh yeah, and a happy 2000 to all of you.
The two major differences between us being that you posted anonymously, and were moderated at a 0. Just because I like to talk about my uptime doesn't mean I'm bragging. And CmdrTaco even said, IF your uptime isn't sacred to you, update the kernel. If Rob will acknowledge that uptimes are important, then that's good enough for me.
-Will the Chill
Creator of RPerl, Scouter, Juggler, Mormon, Perl Monger, Serial Entrepreneur, Aspiring Astrophysicist, Community Organiz
Sorry, guys. What I MEANT to say was that this was a good uptime considering it's running kernel 2.2.13.
-Will the Chill
Creator of RPerl, Scouter, Juggler, Mormon, Perl Monger, Serial Entrepreneur, Aspiring Astrophysicist, Community Organiz
Actually, I'm currently studying under one Dr. Cooke, who happens to be close friends w/ the likes of Ken Thompson and Vaughan Pratt. I've talked extensively w/ Dr. Cooke about such people, and have even showed interviews given by my prof w/ Thompson at one of the *nix group meetings I run at school.
Furthermore, I'm very good friends w/ a volunteer at GNU, and keep up w/ all of RMS's posts and such. Not to be outdone, I've also humbly requested the presence of ESR at a meeting of mine in April, and he's accepted the invitation.
I think it's safe to say I'm not giving into the "web hype-monkeys". I simply stated that I share many of the same view and opinions.
-Will the Chill
Creator of RPerl, Scouter, Juggler, Mormon, Perl Monger, Serial Entrepreneur, Aspiring Astrophysicist, Community Organiz
The source code is available here:
http://www.kernel.o rg/pub/linux/kernel/v2.2/linux-2.2.14.tar.gz
What came before the Big Bang? Hum, it must have outside of time...
That's fine. Percentage uptime is a good measure of that - not the length of each uptime. I would rather have a computer go down once a month for 1 minute than once every two years for a day. (Not that going down once every month will prevent you from having a day-long outage.)
No one is saying that Linux is bad. Well, ok, the guy you were replying to wasn't. The only claim was that having an uptime any longer than the most recent necessary security patch is stupid.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
No, no, I think we should use MTBF as a measure of system stability, so we can punish machines for restarting, only to decide that they need to restart again. (Hmm. Wonder what OS I could have in mind?)
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Yes. ptrace can provide a freeze/unfreeze, if
.config file to and
you can marshall the open pipes somehow; with
a "hibernate" system call that shut everything
down in a resumable state you could resume from
a new kernel with your uptime intact
Additionally it seems that the promise of modularity, which is that you will only need to
get the upgrades for your particular hardware, is
not being kept at all; I find myself downloading
millions of lines of code to fix problems with hardware I do not own when all I want is one particular feature.
I wonder how tricky it would be to make a database
that you could upload your
download the patches pertaining to what you will
actually build... Comments?
heh, for some reason i think you meant USB astrotek...
.16.
AGP is a slot usually used for video cards on your motherboard, USB is those flat 1/2 inch ports in the back of your computer, that your webcam/scanner/mouse/whatever is plugging into.
USB support for the linux kernel has been dreamed of for a while now. If i remember right if was in 2.2.13 but was Experimental. So I'd give it til 2.2.15 or
tyler
twice, acctually...
as my system doesnt do anything critical, logs are the only thing that suffers from a full / , of course, I could just setup a logd on one of my macs or so.. but I don't have a need for that.
I'm still on 2.2.10, compiled around 150 days ago (had a powersupply mishap :/) .10, but nothing for me.
/usr
;)
otherwise running stable, some ppl tell me about problems with
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda1 39M 35M 1.2M 97% /
/dev/hda2 136M 91M 38M 70%
hmm... haha. no space for the 2.2.14 source anyway
There's a port in the works, latest patches were sent today (if it's 4.1. 2000 in where you're from).
Address is http://www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/~atp/linux-vax/ and there's a link to all source and cross-tools and the patches.
However, there's always NetBSD.
NOSPAM@REMOVETHIS.NO.SPAM - you'll find the real address somewhere
Don't listen to this please. The less downtime you guys have the better! Everyone else go ahead.
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
How can you say that programming skill has nothing to do with uptime? It can't all be luck. Bugs cause crashes, crashes cause downtime.
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
If I write crappy code on Linux, and it crashes, I have a core file to look through, and a lot of work to do. If I write good code, then I have an application that works well. Either way, the uptime remains the same.
You can counter this by saying that bad (programming) skill would crash the OS if you were working on a system such as the Mac or Win9x, and thereby destroy the uptime. However, most of the time uptime does not consern the people who use these OSes for work, and the average user probably does not even know what uptime is.
Conclusion: uptime and programming skill are (unless you are doing kernel development) unrealated.
it's not like the voodoo3 even _uses_ AGP features for anything. and everybody knows that's all that matters. ;-)
i'm just happy that the kernel can see that the slot's even there!
Tetris rules.
You don't upgrade a kernel for fun, only if there is an urgent need for it, to get something to work that is broken / not supported. This idea is really stupid.. What do you want to keep up?
A website? Bit difficult if you unload the kernel
Anyone know if they'll ever be including the High Point ATA-66 controller drivers in the kernel? the patches have been around for a while.
...but figured that correcting my correction would be too degrading, not to mention utterly boring for anyone reading. Yeah, anal.
Common interpretation seems to go against what I had intended to say. I really meant that, for every kernel release, the stable branch should be mostly static (and compared to the development it almost is) in general. I'm not a kernel insider so I don't know these things, but why IDE and [N]FS are broken should not be a concern today. After a few patchlevels to fix any bugs discovered by the increased number of systems running the stable kernels, the stable branch should stay static unless some very important bugfix or highly demanded feature comes along that can be integrated easily and without introducing [m]any bugs. The kernel developers should then concentrate fully on the development kernel, not worrying about the stable branch at all, and prefect the development branch. Then, when the development kernel runs out of things to fix and improve, it should be released as the stable and basically kept the same after that. Hmmm... that vaguely sounds like the original intent of the two-branched kernel.
Just curious (don't have enough time to search for myself), why is NFS, etc., "broken"? Was it "broken" in the older (2.2.2) patchlevels? And if so, why didn't the NFS maintainers fix it before releasing the kernel as stable? (See above)
If you think that this sounds like some pathetic, stupid, wrong, whining Linux newbie, then you are likely correct; I am not "in the know" as much as others.
Stable is pretty good. Concentrate on the devel branch and get us 2.4, guys. Any work on 2.2.x is going to be practically scrapped anyway come 2.4. I'm happy with 2.2.13.
Okay, maybe there are a few minor bugfixes. Ah well, my arguments never hold up any good anyway.
What exactly do you mean by "old kernels"? (good grammar OFF) The current stable branch as opposed to devel? Early patchlevels of the current stable? Old stable (2.0.x)? (good grammar sort of ON)
I can't argue with "well tested." This is definately a necessity in a production, or even casual user's environment. However, I do contest your latter two points. First, the C libraries do not change, or should not change, from kernel to kernel. The only user-space C code that could change is the kernel include files, which are relatively simple (thus much less prone to error) and usually do not change much, if at all, from kernel to kernel. (Where there are changes, they usually do not involve the set of functions used by user programs, only kernel administration programs such as modprobe, ipchains, etc..) Thus there is also little or no concern about the programs that can run under that kernel.
I must also point out (the approprateness of the following point to the discussion is based on your definition of "old kernel", as questioned earlier) that an individual patchlevel is not itself updated when bugs are fixed. It is brought up to the next higher numbered patchlevel. The problem is that these new patchlevels can also introduce new features, which may (and usually does) involve questionable (that is, not guaranteed to be bug-free) code. Then, when these bugs are found, the patchlevel increases again, and more questionable code may be introduced. The developers wind up spending too much time on the stable branch and rarely coming out with something that is truely stable. This was my point (see my "Addendum" reply if the point seems unclear). Leave the stable branch the same if possible. No new features. Leave that for the new devel. Just make it and keep it bug-free.
That would be a suitable conclusion, but I have a few more issues. With no flamebait intended, I think that Microsoft's Win95 to Win95 upgrade was a good thing. They fixed a lot more than one bug (though they clearly added some), improved the UI, and added some handy features like taskbar toolbars that made the OS upgrade worthwhile. It isn't a very difficult upgrade in any case (though the cost may be prohibiting to some and annoying to most others). If uptime is critical and the system is any more than a small server, the administrators would use (I'll stick with Microsoft products here) Windows NT / Windows 2000 anyway.
I cannot argue with you or anyone else that there are systems which absolutely must remain up. In fact, this absolutely supports both my original and revised points. The IDE and NFS issues would not be here if the kernel developers only fixed bugs in the stable branch and made sure that the development branch was bug-free before releasing it to the masses. Keep in mind, however, that, at least in most cases, you are not required to upgrage your kernel. If a hospital or airline is using an older version of the kernel and it works fine for their purposes, then they do not have to upgrade to the latest kernel.
That's all.
Ah well, my arguments never hold up any good anyway. should have read My arguments never hold up any well anyway.
I often catch other people on that type of error; I should catch myself also.
1) It took like 5 hours to compile 2.2.12 on a 486dx2 with 8MB of ram. It didn't work because I forgot to change some stupid option about the type of microprosessor (it was compiled for pentium). I used menuconfig, so I didn't go through _everything_.
2) For 2.2.13 it took 15 minutes (on a p233mmx with 40 mb), I went through every little option (in fact, I used config instead of menuconfig). When I reboot, the network doesn't work (I'm using the machine for masquerade).
So, I'm stuck with 2.0. that comes with debian.. Maybe I'm used to 'intelligent' and 'wizard' installations.. But I'll keep trying..
--
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Well I just noticed that also has linux-2.2.14 and they have a lot of crypto in the kernel that isn't in the official kernel.
(That is why they doesn't put it on u.s. mirrors... (Crypto-regulations...))
Is the ATI framebuffer able to be used on PC's? Does it work in this version?
-I only condemn hypocrisy in other people...
Then if you want to have hot swapable kernels, I think you have to pray for HURD.
In HURD it will be possible to replace almost all the kernel without reboot.
Why can't people take what was said at face value and just get on with their lives?
There was no value judgements made in the small blurb that suggested those with long uptimes are more elite. It was merely a way to suggest that, if you've nothing important going on, get the patches and install them.
People react to small twists of phrases in these news entries like they're prophecies given by god, and feel that's an invitation to nitpick details far beyond the context they were used in.
Try not to be so frigging sensitive, folks. Read the news entry, glean what it means, and forgive the guy for putting a twist of levity into his news post. If you want a soapbox where you can rant againt people who brag about uptimes, go make yer own website.
Spare us from having to read over the top of you using each news post as a springboard to rant about your peeves.
hmm, underneith ie, from a shell it looks like unix, but as far as i can tell its setup as single user. The GUI is not exactly like anyhting else i know of, but not totally unlike X. It boots really fast, from POST its maybe 14 sec. on a cel.333 with 64MB. It uses a 64bit FS, is geared to media production or uhm at least using lots of multimedia stuff. I can't really find a whole lot i can mess with meaning, i can't find config files i'd like to. But I don't really use it much, just wanted to see what its like. It is very fast.
Basically it's compiling the new kernel copying it over the old one and that's it.
Uhm, bad idea. You should always keep the old kernel. What if your new kernel doesn't work? Since you copied over the old one (which is known to work), you're screwed.
--
http://gammatron.weblogger.com
Woo hoo! Looks like with this one, I can use my new joystick with Linux now! The Logitech Wingman Extreme Digital 3D wasn't in 2.2.13, although the same minus the 3D was, but I didn't notice the different name when I bought it. And just when I'd bought a book on device drivers so I could fix it myself, they go and pop this in!
Good... bad... I'm the one with the gun.
ProofReading Markup Language - and yes, I find typos.
What's wrong with "web hype-monkeys" ?!?!
Zach Brown's Maestro audio driver is also included in kernel 2.2.14, for many of us this is a god send. I went to Zach Brown's webpage at redhat and retrieved the driver, but many users with the same notebook computer (toshiba Satellite 1555CDS) will be glad to see it in the kernel. If you have a notebook and wonder if your unit can utilize this module do lspci and look for something along the of "ESS Technology Maestro" in there. I know there are better ways to do it, but I don't have time to list them in a manner to avoid confusing the new users.
There is a difference between uptime as stored in /proc/uptime and system availability to users. Certainly, it would be nice if both could be kept up indefinitely, but real world issues prevent this from happening. If you have a server which thousands of users access, I would hope that you have some fault-tolerance mechanism is place. I would also hope that one performs the neccesary upgrades at off peak hours.
hmmm.. sounds like a confused windows user. flame me if i'm wrong, but I think the patch for win95B to use AGP required installing USB support...
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Your webcam is probably USB
Or FireWire(TM) aka i.LINK(TM) aka IEEE-1394. High quality digital motion cameras (camcorders, etc.) tend to use the faster FireWire ports on Power Mac G3s, newer iMacs, and newer [LW]intel PCs.
Does any one out there really use Gnome or KDE?
I use GNOME.
WM is my favorite
To each his (or her) own.
I'm tired of start menu's (This also includes stylized "K"'s and "little feet")
The Mac "start"ed it all. It put its start menu in the upper left corner.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Tetris rules
No, Tetris sucks. The game of falling tetrominoes may rule, but Tetris sucks. Care to refresh your memory?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Then if you want to have hot swapable kernels, I think you have to pray for HURD.
Or work on HURD yourself.
In HURD it will be possible
f0r 5kr1p+ k1dd135 (for script kiddies)
to replace almost all the kernel without reboot.
Security is always an issue. Maybe it's even a "known issue." Micro$oft Crapdows (any version after 3.11) has thousands of known "issues," and I'm not talking Korn CDs here.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It is not the amount of uptime you have, it is how you use it. If you have an internal system that maintains a db that is used by the billing department between 8-6, it is alright if the system goes down after 6 oclock or upgrade/repairs.
Hell you could have a really bad percent of uptime, reboot at 6 and bring the system back up at 8 in the morning, the majority of the time, the system is down.
But when the system needs to be acessed (8-6) it is up running and fully funcational and secure due to the patches/upgrades that was done at 9 at night. When the system needs to do billing transactions, it is up and running great.
It is not the amount of uptime you have, but when and how you use the uptime. At least that is what my gf tells me.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Just for the record I am not a small man, nor is my uptime.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
...gullible, as I'm sure you've heard. We are all also arrogant and rebelious blokes, and, seeing as how I live in Washington state, all I drink is fancy coffee. :)
BTW, isn't it also true that Holland (or parts of Holland) are below sea level? I seem to remember something about dikes in my Americanized Hollish folklore memory banks....
I knew you had them, but you eat them too?
There are so many fixes in many areas and some significant re-design which took time to debug. Some of the new goodies that interest me include PCI parallel port handling (for your parallel port cdrom/cdrw), Matrox G400 frame buffer support and Network Telephone support.
I hope a lot of people can try out this release. And remember, if you find bugs, report them :)
- Etam
Right now it isn't in 2.2.x nor 2.3.x kernel tree yet. There is a patch out there that can add this feature. My best guess is that it is not stable enough to be included yet.
- Etam
i hafta confess im a dutchman myself too, but i havent seen a couple of wooden shoes for a long long time! and tulips... as far as i know, i have never TASTED one! :) Just for the heck of clarity, ok? i dun wanna the folks think we r just a weird race of ppl... :)
No, in this case it makes sense. It's more of a motherboard chipset thing than a video card thing. AGP lets you transfer large amounts of texture memory (or something like that) over the AGP bus, using main memory as texture memory. You can't do that without changing the kernel (or writing a module). It's not a graphics library issue.
As far as I can tell, AGP support has been in the kernel (as part of the PCI driver) since at least version 2.0.34, dated 1998-07-04. So it's been in there for at least a year and a half. Whatever problems you're having with your webcam, it should have nothing to do with "missing" AGP support.
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Open mind, insert foot.
The original poster was complaining about AGP support because he wanted to use his Webcam. Digital cameras give simple 2D images, since when does this require kernel-level GART support?
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Open mind, insert foot.
For all of you that say AGP cards work in the kernel already, that's only half true. The Utah GLX has a kernel module that lets you use all the nifty fast memory transfers over the AGP interface. Sure the kernels can run AGP video cards, but this makes them much faster (or so I understand). The patch was already merged into the 2.3 kernels, but not the 2.2 ones. You can get it from the project's CVS server.
Supermount isn't integrated into 2.2.14, however I have the patch mirrored here:
http://www.fargocity.co m/~ccondit/supermount-2.2.14-1.patch
This has been modified from the original supermount patch to patch cleanly on 2.2.14-final (md.c failed before).
They were a big problem around 2.2.10, were claimed to be fixed in 2.2.11, but happenened for me and a few others as late as 2.2.12. Hopefully they're all ironed out by now.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
I saw on Kernel Traffic that there were some freaky filesystem corruption problems in the 2.2.x series... and I think I may have experienced this. Anyone know if this has been nailed down yet?
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Checklist posted earlier was for 2.3.x -> 2.4
:)
This article was about the 2.2.14 release.
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Let me get this straight; you think somebody will replace your kernel with whatever they want, reboot, and the uptime will be your tipoff?
And you think this hypothetical hacker will be savvy enough to code holes into the kernel (as opposed to into the utilities, such as login, which authenticate users), but won't be savvy enough to fake the uptime?
Uhm, sure, yeah, that'll happen. You'll be warned of it by the monkeys flying out of my butt.
Yes, in that extremely bizarre contrived case, it would be a security hole. However, if we're assuming the attacker can replace the kernel with one of this choosing, *EVERY* Unix-like OS has that hole. They have the hole now.
If your system is that owned, you shouldn't be trusting what any piece of software on it tells you, not even the BIOS if you're flash upgradeable.
We do all we can to fix bugs, but we can't fix them unless people report them (ok, we do sometimes when we stumble over silly code by accident, when doing rehauling of code or when having little else to do, but those cases are not in majority.)
linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu is the place where you report your problems. Good luck!
AGP? Methinks you mean USB...
Boy, your face must be red right about now
Wouldn't it be possible to make a VM that boots the new kernel, then copies itself into the older kernels memory space?
:-)
Yes I guess that would work. The main problem would be getting hold of the other kernel's memory - you wouldn't have to do any copying at all, but you have to get the memory from somewhere. Presumeably you'd be running under VMWare, or better, an open source vm os, and there would be some kind of api for sharing memory among the various client os's. You'd use that to recover the memory from the halted os. Then figure out how to hot-swap your VM os and you're done.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
but some stuff is still broke (for my set-up, anyhow).
I don't think that checklist posted earlier was completed.
*sigh* i guess that'll be worked out in the 'ac' patches...
KernelNotes.org has changelists and things but hasn't been updated for 2.2.14 yet.
Measure the uptime in terms of processor speed, so having a faster processor so you can reboot faster is less of an advantage...
AGP is supported in the stable kernel since many moons, my friend - why don't you check it again.
I agree that you should never perform a necessary upgrade just to preserve an uptime value, but I strongly disagree with your claim that a long uptime is meaningless.
A long uptime on an active system is proof that the system doesn't have significant resource leaks. The same logic applies to systems that don't require frequent disk "defragmentation", etc.
Resource leaks, by themselves, aren't dangerous other than the fact that they force you to reboot the system to recover the lost resources... but they are excellent indicators of the overall quality of the software. In my experience, all program with significant resource leaks have *always* had an unusually large number of other bugs... and the times that someone has tried to eliminate the leaks just to shut up their noisy boss they ended up fixing a large number of unrelated bugs.
Note I did not say that they "found" those bugs - many of the bugs were due to wild pointers that simply disappeared once the programmer took care to properly manage their resources. IMHO, the second most powerful bug-finding strategy, after fixing all warnings issued by the compiler, is elimination of resource leaks.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Up that number by five or so. (We've got at least that many /. readers here) I've got two of them thirty feet from me. I won't get to play with them as intimatly as I'd like to, (I'm the 'low-end' guy, and we're only holding them for resale) but they won't leave without a 'Runs Linux' sticker over the shrink wrap.
I really wish someone would port Linux to one of the older rev AS/400's.. I've had a few chances to snag one off of a scrap deal, but w/ no OS they're useless to me..
.sig: Now legally binding!
I've got a couple of boxes with MediaGX processors that I bought for $50 a piece...not as good of a deal as I'd originally thought considerring how f*cked up they are. I know Alan Cox has done some work with MediaGX processors to deal with some of the problems. One of the Linux Grrls gave me a pretty specific explanation of the problem (Thanks Kira :) Now I'm wondering if there will be better support in the 2.4 kernel.
The 2.2 kernel boots and runs fine until I try to do something radical like startx. 2.3 however, detects that it's a MediaGX at boot up, but locks up after 'checking the hlt instruction.'
numb
Wow, I can't believe that Tom Christiansen actually posted stuff about this.
If you'll follow the link that he gave to Computer, you'll see that Dr. Daniel Cooke is listed as one of the guys that wrote the article interviewing Ken. As I said in a previous post, Dr. Cooke received permission from Computer and Bell Labs to show SPUUG (South Plains Unix User Group; Texas Tech's little group that I coordinate) an unreleased video of him interviewing Ken in person. Alot of different material than that in the printed version.
Also, Dr. Cooke mentioned to me several times that he received QUITE a bit of flame from the Linux community when that stuff that Ken said was printed, even though he was just the one who wrote it up for Computer.
Again, I can't believe Tom actually posted about this stuff. Wow. Let me just say that backward: woW.
-Will the Chill
Creator of RPerl, Scouter, Juggler, Mormon, Perl Monger, Serial Entrepreneur, Aspiring Astrophysicist, Community Organiz
One very important thing in 2.2.14 is telephony support.
:-(
This could be an area were Linux could really shine. Telephony is all about reliability and can be very price sensitive, especially when you are trying to put together systems for small companies.
I should know, I work for a company producing exactly these kind of systems, unfortunately on NT
For more details see this article on LinuxTelephony.
from the way i see the linux kernel, as long as your video card works good for u, the kernel doesn't need to mess with the video card alot, leave that to the grahics libraries to do, that's why u don't see much of anything in the kernel configuration about graphics, about the only thing i think the kernel might have to do with agp is provide access to that stuff to other progs, but isn't htat why there's graphics libraries?? i'm no kernel or linux expert tho, so this is just what i think, more than likely not the real facts.
Look at Bobby Fischer's anti-semitism, or Einstein's belief in the solid state universe, etc.
Someday Linus will be 50 or 60 and he'll say that the hot new idea is a piece of crap.
It seems to me that people are first anonymous, then we find out about them from some great accomplishment(s), and then they become yesterday's news when the environment that created them changes.
If his comments about Linux being worse as a firewall than Windows are actually attributable to him, then it is obvious, at least on this topic, he is walking, breathing anachronism.
Finish Human Genome Project. Opensource DNA. Figure out what it does. Improve it. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
When does AGP get put into the stable kernel? and is the unstable one any good. I WANT MY WEBCAM =)
us.kernel.org doesn't have it, but tux.org does. It's a 1.3 meg patch.
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Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
I've said it before, and I'll say it again; what we need in order to put a stop to this whole stupid argument for all time is a writeable /proc/uptime.
Let people fudge their damn uptime and all the BS will stop.
The changelist will be appearing here at some point in the future.
:)
Hopefully soon
æeee!
The kernel is so out of date that any random script kiddie can grab an exploit or buffer overflow from bugtraq and root the system, obviously not a Good Thing if your computer is running any sort of critical task.
I think you missed something important. remote and local exploits come from userland programs. bind, pop3d, etc. The kernel might have DOS problems, but AKAIK there are no remote root exploits for the linux kernel itself.
Christopher McCrory "The guy that keeps the servers running" chrismcc@gmail.com http://www.pricegrabber.com
It's called respect. I have a very high amount of respect for Rob, and others like him. The very simple fact that many geeks today aren't able to find suitable role-models in their everyday lives will lend this argument even more credibility. I will accept, to a certain extent, Rob's posts to be pretty authoratative. I've read /. for years, and am able to honestly say that I agree w/ pretty much everything the guy posts. Is it so bad that I happen to share roughly the same opinions w/ someone who is substantially more noteworthy than myself? It's not always about being a follower, you know...
-Will the Chill
Creator of RPerl, Scouter, Juggler, Mormon, Perl Monger, Serial Entrepreneur, Aspiring Astrophysicist, Community Organiz
-Superiority of an operating system
-Ability to administer a computer
-Programing skill
-"Eliteness/coolness"
Let us take this point by point:
Superiority - You are correct. I've had Windows NT and even 95 boxes up for months at a time.
Administration ability - depends on the circumstances. I have a colocated web server that I have been working on quite heavily since I installed it, and I haven't been within 30 miles of it since it was turned on 50 days ago. Uptime is currently at 50 days.
Programming skill - has nothing to do with uptime
Eliteness/coolness - while not quite the same thing, I am very close to closing a business deal with someone that I have been trying to get to sign on with me for months. In the end, it was the uptime that mattered. Or, more specifically, the fact that the machine didn't flinch during a live load test (real content, real users, no simulations) with this person present. The uptime is like a victory -- you can point to it frequently, and then show someone your logs to prove that your machine can do what you say.
Uptime == bragging rights in some circumstances.
Ok, I admit, I submitted. It could be the fact that I'm from Holland (nope, not Michigan, just that little country somewhere in europe where they wear wooden shoes and eat tulips ;) and I don't understand the expression. ;)
AFAIK my uncle doesn't even know where the powerswich of his son's computer is, so I don't think he submitted a post about a new kernel
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If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
How many Linux kernel bugs have there been that allowed users to gain root access? How many were fixed between 2.2.13 and 2.2.14?
:)
Some high-availability (am I using the right term there?) systems actually have uptime requirements (such as "we can only be offline for ten minutes every month") that make it risky to upgrade with every new kernel. Particularly since new kernels can introduce new bugs.
My point is that it can be irresponsible to upgrade without knowing what the upgrade does, just as it can be irresponsible to not upgrade.
All that aside, not everyone is running mission critical servers. Some people use their computers for fun, and long uptimes can be a source of amusement.
I personally have two systems with long uptimes, and I will not be upgrading them. They're non-critical systems, and not worth messing with. Besides, I like to see how long it's been since the last power failure.
I remember Alan saying at one point that he was considering adding the current ext3 sources into the kernel. Anyone know if he's done this yet, or will that be going into the 2.3 tree?
On the other hand, for a visible machine with a static IP address, hosting web pages or other advertised services, you have to keep ahead of the script kiddies. But not all machines are in that category, far from it.
Have a look at IBM's homepage and search around for some information on them. They have BANDWIDTH.
This is at least cool, if nothing else. Now if just anyone could port Linux to VAX, things would be chilling.
Now that win2000 is supposedly comming out, and it supposedly needs fewer reboots, Linux uptime counters are going to have much more competition. Therefore, I call for hot-swapable kernels! I do not want to stop what I am doing, just to upgrade (or down-grade) my operating system! I want an uptime measured in decades!
Old kernels are still important, for several reasons:
1) they are well tested
2) the C library for that kernel is well tested
3) the programs for that library are well tested
the importance of this can't be overemphasized. There are a lot of situations where it's much more important to work with a known quantity than to get the ultimate bit of performance or flexibility.
It's worth noting that one of the most damning complaints against Microsoft as an "enterprise class" OS & application suite is the fact that they have repeatedly demonstrated a cavalier attitude towards making big changes in a way that forces users to upgrade everything to fix a single bug in the kernel (e.g., Win95->Win98) or application (e.g., Office file formats).
That's why Linux, and all real enterprise-ready OSes, allow fairly independent maintenance paths for all major versions of the kernels/libraries/applications. It's a bit more work for the developer, but it's criticial when you're talking about systems which *must* remain up. (E.g., if a hospital's systems go down due to an unexpected bug in an upgraded OS, patients may die. If an airline's systems go down due to an unexpected bug, they can lose millions of dollars in lost bookings and contractual penalties for delays.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
FYI - if you want the changelog for 2.2.14, just look at the last 2.2.pre14 kernel changelogs. Linuxtoday has a copy here:
http://linuxtoday.com/story.php3?sn=14481
It is a fairly long list of things. The S/390 port is there. Some nice-sounding bugfixes are there, so I'll probably recompile tonight. Also, supposedly it should now compile fine with gcc 2.95.
Off course not all systems run under the same conditions; windows computers are probably more often turned off at night than VMS systems, SunOS is usually used on high-end hardware while Linux often runs on crappy hardware and OpenBSD-systems probably have better admins than Linux-systems (no offense, but most unix-newbies tend to use Linux, not *BSD). But still I dare say that the uptime is a real good measurement for the stability of an operating system.
Apart from that I agree with the fact that one should not fail to upgrade because one wants to get the highest uptime possible. On the other hand, people shouldn't upgrade when there's no need to; if there are no new features/fixes in the new kernel which apply to your system, don't upgrade :)
Check http://www.uptimes.net for a list of uptimes per OS. There are about 500 hosts in the list, so it ought to give a rather clear view of the situation.
0x or or snor perron?!
[...time passes...]
Alright, here you go. Read this, which I got from IEEE Computer Magazine:
Delving deeper, we have this article by Eric Raymond in Linux Today, in which he clarifies what Ken said, as follows: The really bad news, of course, is that Ken was wrong about the volatile and irrational reaction by the members of the Linux community against those who cast aspersions on the current state of apotheosis of Linux--or of the FSF, for that matter. This kind of thing most certainly does happen, as all here can doubtless attest. So much for the good old days."If your uptime isn't to sacred to ya, it may be worth upgrading."
Uptime should *never* be sacred to any computer user in the sense that preserving a high uptime should not preclude one from installing a neccessary software or hardward upgrade. What is important is that an operating system has the ability to run stably and for extended periods of time such that the use of the computer is not impaired. I've known quite a few users who claim ridiculously high uptimes (ie. > 1 year). The kernel is so out of date that any random script kiddie can grab an exploit or buffer overflow from bugtraq and root the system, obviously not a Good Thing if your computer is running any sort of critical task.
Uptime is just that: a measure of how much time has elapsed since the last reboot of the system. It does not measure any of the following things:
-Superiority of an operating system
-Ability to administer a computer
-Programing skill
-"Eliteness/coolness", whatever that is