Linux Kernel 2.3.41

sdriver writes "For those of us who enjoy *panic*, *oops*, and suddenly seeing their video BIOS... the newest version is out! Be the first on your block to submit a new patch! ;) " If you don't know where to get it, you probably should stick to your warm and cuddly 2.2.x kernel *grin*. Now outta my way, I wanna crash my laptop!

Comments

A new Linux development kernel.

[cmc]

Well why don't we also post each new FreeBSD 4.0-CURRENT snapshot and each new NetBSD-Current snapshot and each new OpenBSD-Current snapshot to Slashdot, too? It's pretty much the same thing.

Re:A new Linux development kernel.

[JamesKPolk]

Linux *is* more popular. Get used to it. Learn to love your anti-social, slightly weird, people-stare-blankly-at-your-boot-screen status.

Re:A new Linux development kernel.

[JamesKPolk]

I guess my facetiousness was lost on the moderator. Oh, well...

Re:A new Linux development kernel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Might be because Linux has become a consumer system over the years.

I have been long enough with it, read since 0.99.x times. Well, the more popular some piece of software becomes the more versionitis is coming over the people.

I consider it silly to post each and every minor release here too though. People who are using distributions are mostly waiting for the next CD anyway and the others are not looking on ./ for kernel related announcements.

Might be to fill some of the space. At the end of the day ./ lives from attracting readers .. as long as we do not have to live with Man Bites PC ..., although I am reading ./ more for the fun than its informative values anyway.

Re:3rd time lucky maybe

[puetzk]

No, It made 130+ (I had 131 installed). The last batch just were sprayed out lik wildfire :-)

Re:argh

[MrHat]

Um... its fake. Doesn't exist. Kidding. Joke. Ha ha.

Re:AIX code in Linux

[ar32h]

they each have there place...

Using development kernels is more critical today

[[TWD]insomnia]

This is because the newer kernels are using more and more cutting-edge technologies, like USB, AGP, and stuff (and oh man, it seems there are much more advances in the 2.3.xx tree than the 2.1.xx one, and we're only at the patch level 41, not 120-and-some like 2.1.xx) - and we need more and more testers to test this bleeding new code.

I just saw that 2.3.41 has a new CPU listed in, "K6/II/II" (typo here), now I'd like to know if it'll speed up my K6-2 by a factor of 5 :P

I myself don't have this new stuff (USB, FireWire, I2O, I2C), but since USB and AGP support support is the critical part of the 2.3.xx branch, we need ppl to test this. Now if nVidia can release drivers that supports DRI..

Re:Volume Manager, baby

[DJPenguin]

I've been using LVM for ages now and I think it's great. Works pretty much like HPUX's LVM but I don't know how that compares to AIX as i've never used it!

Re:USB support?

[Nima]

Oh oh its stable.. I am using intellimouse explorer and it works just fine

no problems with any USB

Undoing moderation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Marked something as funny and then realized that it would be flamebait to most other people in here.

Re:[PATCH] New Kernel Module: Uptime.o

[QuMa]

Ditto if you mount proc in /dev. But most people don't. Just like most people don't use devfs (yet).
Not that I'm saying devfs is bad or anything, I want to keep as far away from that holy war as Ican.

Bogg off.

[Anonymous Coward]

And shut up, you insufferable pratt.

Agreed.

[cmc]

That's really what I meant. Each devel kernel release isn't newsworthy so much as perhaps Debian releasing a new version of its distribution or FreeBSD 3.4 being released. Those are actual release events, rather than snapshots (which is what Linux development kernel version bumps really are analogous to).

will we see a new FS with 2.4

[Anonymous Coward]

Will 2.4 incoorporate ext3 or reiserfs ? That is my main interest to be honest. ext2 as fast as it might be it doesn't quite cut the mustard these days ...... Will we see a new filesystem for linux in the future that can be run in the / partition? I wanted to try reiserfS but somehow it bothered me that i could not run it as root. I am using freebsd with softupdates now and the steps to upgrade the fs are trivial compared to what i had to do to get reiserfs on my box. The fs was updated very easily. WIth not need to create new partitions or anything else. Will we see something like that for linux in 2.4???

Re:will we see a new FS with 2.4

[Captain Zion]

Reiser, maybe. ext3 is definitely 2.5 stuff.

Re:will we see a new FS with 2.4

[Anonymous Coward]

See this kernelnotes article as no. It is even possible neither is going to be in at first but it is looking slightly better for ext3.

Re:will we see a new FS with 2.4

[Anonymous Coward]

yikes ... slightly better for Reiser ... time to fall into bed.

Re:One exception...

[pest]

I love my MS intellimouse explorer. it is god. now if x would only get the other two buttons working as something. Hell, it even works in USB mode.

pest

ESS Sound FIXED!

[Bilbo]

I've downloaded plenty of "stable" kernels before, so I figured, what the heck, I'll try it...

Well, after a minor bit of fiddling to get it configured and built, I fired it up. No obvious problems. I did see a couple of interesting new things, like NFSv3.

Then I checked my RealPlayer. I've been fighting a problem for a while now, ever since I upgraded my MB to one with a built in ESS Solo 1 sound subsystem. All other sounds play fine (Quake, etc), but RealPlayer always screwed up the sample rates. Everything sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

So, I tried it with the 2.3.41 kernel, and it works now! I haven't read all the release documentation, but there must have been fixes to the ESS drivers.

Obviously, I'm taking my life and data in my hands, but I just wanted to say that there ARE advantages to being on the cuting edge.

Just make sure you have good backups...

wish it had supermount

[robwicks]

That is one of the things I like about Mandrake 7.0.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"

On the subject of kernels

[kcarnold]

I have recently been required to describe what the heck a "kerenl" is to some people in close relation to myself. Of course there is the obvious for us geeks, but there are two other possible interpretations that I can think of:

1. Kernel as a rank in the military -- Why would I want one of them on my computer? And I guess the military has very high expectations of these kernels, because they come out with new kernels every couple of weeks. For some reason, some higher-ranking officers don't replace their kernels that often; maybe they like them. But the new kernels have lots of new personality features, and they are even more tough on those below them. There even development kernels, the kernels who have not yet completed their training but are available for use by those of higher rank who might want to try out some of the new features before everyone else, but there is the possability of an occasional slip-up, possibly causing an "oops!" or even a "panic". Worse yet, these development kernels can cause corruption in the system below them. Some kernels, for some officers, have run for a very long time in some of the military systems, and I am very suprised that they don't get tired and fall to the ground. I guess that's the problem withh kernels in the Bill Branch of the military, but the Open Source troops seem to have little problem with this. Well the Open Source commanding officers get to have an in-depth look at how their kernels are trained, so it is possible that this allows the officers at higher ranks to make better decisions about them.
2. Corn kernels -- Yeah, that fits on my hard drive. I spend endless hours in front of my computer monitor^D^D^D^D^D^Dagnifying glass, examining the various ridges and structures on and in the kernel. I occasionally tap at the kernel to see how the structure responds to stresses. It seems to occupy a lot of people for many hours at a time examining and prodding at these kernels. Sometimes, at lower magnification, the surface of the kernel begins to form the shapes of letters, when viewed by the trained eye. Untrained people are cluless. At higher magnifications pictures sometimes become visible, appearing similar to pictures found in everyday life. Through careful prodding through the prodboard one is sometimes able to coax these pictures into changing. The "mouse" is a fairly new addition to the interface used to study these kernels; it is unknown to us how exactly it influences the kernel without eating it. Micros kernels have always showed a lot of detail initially, but viewing the kernel at a higher magnification showed minute impurities that would cause the kernel to split apart relatively soon after the investigation began. The kernel has remained much the same despite many advances in the apparent detail and complexity as viewed at low magnification. Macintosh kernels started out rathar bland-looking, but they contained many useful features from the beginning that allowed studying to be significantly more efficient. However, until recently, the smaller details of the Macintosh kernels were almost as bad as the Micros kernels. In recent years Macintosh kernels have developed a much more detailed structure at any magnification, and as an added bonus when replacing kernels, some have even begun to taste good (Yum.) Linukernels are regularly updated, but older kernels are still so interesting to look at that people have kept them around for a long time. The development kernels sometimes fall apart due to structural problems, but in general they have offered much more detail. People staring at Linukernels are generally happy with how stable their kernels are and how nice it is to be able to know how the kernels were made. Some people tailor their Linukernels to their specific tastes, something which is usually not possible for investigators of other kernels. The report must be cut short here becuase we are still investigating the role of the "printer" in the kernel investigations. Preliminary findings indicate that often the printer is used to capture a view of the kernel to share with others, but often the output of the printer is much different than the view on the magnifying glass. This may be attributed to a special scanning structure that is able to examine different parts of the kernel and print the results. That is all the information we have at this time.

And we make Beowulf clusters out of these things?

Re:Can I post release info to /. now too?

[kcarnold]

So how is this more important than 2.1-2.2 or any other devel-to-stable releases? (Yeah I know, just wanted to bring up a discussion...)

You moderators sure don't know what's flamebait. Simple reason: No flames. Hah.

Ken

Re:Can I post release info to /. now too?

[kcarnold]

Okay, never mind, this is too deep to start any discussion. I gotta watch how many times I click in the reply lists :-).

Re:[PATCH] New Kernel Module: Uptime.o

[MrHat]

This is a joke. This is only a joke. Had this been an actual kernel patch, I probably would have thought about the device creation/usage issue for more than 2 seconds.

Yep, the admin creates /dev entries, kernel modules and the kernel create /proc entries. Big hairy deal. ;-)

``Unstable''?

[David A. Madore]

What exactly does ``unstable'' mean? Or, more accurately, what does ``stable'' mean? The 2.2.13 and 2.2.14 kernels (supposedly ``stable'') have rather nasty inode leaks. And 2.2.11 and 2.2.12 had a memory leak (which is why SGI based their SGI Linux 1.1 kernel patch on 2.2.10). Hmm... Looks like stability ``leaves somewhat do be desired''.

Featurefulness perhaps? Well, one patch I find extremely useful is the ext3 filesystem. (Now that seems stable enough, despite the frightening version number: 0.0.2c) But Stephen Tweedie hasn't finished porting that to 2.3.x. Another useful patch is the international crypto patch, and that doesn't come for 2.3.x... Or the Openwall security patch: ditto. Hmm... Looks like I'll stick to 2.2.x for some time. (And, no, it isn't exactly ``warm and cozy''.)

I'd like to try the 2.3.x kernels by using User mode Linux, but so far the only thing I've got from that is a core dump.

Sigh...

Re:``Unstable''?

[David A. Madore]

Can you give me your email address so we can discuss this somewhere else than on /.? Else you can write to me.

Re:``Unstable''?

[jdike]

Which version are you using?

Can I have a look at the console output?

As far as I know, the latest (2.3.36) user-mode kernel is stable. If you know otherwise, then tell me what's happening, and I'll fix it.

Jeff

Offtopic...

[Nodatadj]

Hmmm, well done mr moderator.
Give yourself a big pat on the back.
Then get round to finishing that reading course.

Re:3rd time lucky maybe

[tao]

Uhm, yeah, my mistake. 132 was the last one
before the pre-patches.

Re:Unstable warning

[Krakken]

I've been running dev kernels for 2 years now and have never had to hack 'real C'. Yes things get broken, but I watch the linux-kernel mailing list and submit a bug report if I can't find the answer there. Some times its not the code thats broken, but new undocumented proceedures for setup. I test and report, and get a jump new setups. With lilo setup to boot multi versions of the kernel, I can fall back if things are badley broken.

If you can test, do! We all benifit in the end.


Krakken

Hotsying visor over USB on 2.3.41

[doomy]

Due to the generious coding of Greg and Co at Visor Linux USB project, anyone who owns A handspring visor would be able to sync with the USB cradle without having to buy a serial cradle.

Enjoy.
--

Re:Unstable warning

[ffatTony]

If you're into hacking the linux kernel you should join the kernel mailing list and hack away.

If for some reason your hardware is not supported by the 2.2.* tree, go for it. Compilation and use are no different than earlier kernels for the most part. By all means be sane and keep an old kernel ready with lilo if something goes wrong, but don't be afraid just because it says developmental. I've been running the 2.3.* tree with xfree's pre4.0 tree for a while. Unstable certainly does not mean it doesn't work.

Un-Stable? Windowz?

[Barny]

No one can dare complain about unstable linux kernals until they've seen a win 95a having been used for about three years on and off that would only stay UP for about 5 mins. I don't think even the worst kernel would ever be this bad.
My hint to W2K (l)users, get used to blue screens and bios info.

patches, patches everywhere...
where did the green music come from?
Now Starting Window$ 95 w/IE5

Re:A good mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

That site is incomplete. I did a search for "hot grits" and found nothing.

Re:win95a

[fsck]

Lets see, a month is typically 30 days.
A couple of months (2) is around 60 days.
Many months (your words) I take it to be more than 60 days.

Last I checked, win95a was hard coded to crash after about 49 days, due to a bug in the OS, of course it was rare to see a win95a machine work for more than 4 hours, so this bug was rarely seen. Stop trollin /. for bucks and go tell your boss to start innovating any time now.

Re:win95a

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, avoid the ActiveDesktop, DirectX, and any sort of interesting hardware produced after 1997 (like DMA hard disks or any sort of 3D accelerator), and Windows 95 was a fairly stable little OS.

Of course the same was true about Windows 3.1 in 1992, and by 1995 it was a shipwreck. Expect Windows2000 to be OK now, but in 2004 it will be crapping all over it self under the weight of all the poorly thought-out add-ons MS will ship.

Re:AIX code in Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun Sucks! IBM Rocks!

This is not news

[Anonymous Coward]

``Today, it's August 20th, and wouldn't ya know it, students are buying _books_ again. We now take you to Lynn Arin for some exciting on-the-spot coverage of these surprising crowds at the bookstore, and then some reruns of similar but subtly different crowds that appeared at the same bookstore last year at almost exactly this same time of the month.

``Sports and weather, next.''

Seriously, Slashdot. If we want to track development kernels, we friggin' know where to get them.

Interested in development kernels [Union] can't find development kernels without your help = [empty set]

In fact, you apparently know this yourself, as you announce the availability of the kernel and then deliberately avoid mentioning the URL of any of the kernel source mirrors, which is so traditional as to be basically required in Slashdot articles. You know as much, and say it in the article--why are you posting an article targeted at an audience of precisely zero? Please explain yourselves.

Are you really so starved for content that you have to turn this readily-available and numbingly uninteresting information into ``news?'' Just look at the number of comments compared to other ``articles'' if you don't believe me.

What next, you'll announce every single day that ``FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD have all updated the -current tarballs of their sourcecode overnight. If you feel adventurous, go download their source code and try it out! But, beeeee careful, because it's a _development kernel_. Can you say, _development kernel_? Let's say it together. We'll practice again tomorrow.'' Please, spare us.

If we're really as stupid as you seem to think we are, then we're not interested in this information no matter how hard you try to shove it down our neck-hole. We would, however, be very interested in some other articles of the kind you post here that would fit in the same space.

2.4pre1?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been checking kernelnotes.org constantly since early this month believeing that the new kernel should be out any day now. I thought I saw an article here at /. which Alan Cox stated that the next kernel after 2.3.39 would be 2.4pre-1. :-(

Oh well. I would prefer a more secure and stable kernel then one that was released too early. I wonder if its the kernel or the drivers that need more work.


Remember that we need this out VERY SOON because w2k! Can you imagine zdnet benchmarking w2k agaisn't kerenl 2.2. OUCH!

W2k is at least 50% faster then NT 4, the bottlnecks of ntfs have been removed, async i/o code is now in the tcp/ip stack with a feature called i/o completion ports, as well as the bind trick in the mindcraft tests which are now in almost all of the services.


Expect wk2 to be at least 400-600% slower then linux kernel 2.2! If you can bind the i/o of 4 etherent cards to 4 cpu's as well as 4 raid card to 4 cpu's as well as have a new async i/o manager to pick 1 cpu for one i/o task and the second cpu for the next 1 after that and so on, you will have a great benchmarking OS that will squch a single threaded tcp/ip stack with no i/o code in it.

ALAN COX Are you listening? Please release 2.4-pre1 very soon or linux will be in serious trouble with more benchmarking fud from zdnet!

Uh, I got the i/o completion ports info from a guy inside Microsoft. He told me what Balmer has planned the benchmarks agaisn't 2.2 and he plans to launch ads on Television and ads on the net about how much better w2k is agains't linux.

IF you guys don't believe me about the 400-500% performance difference, then you guys just wait untill the launch date and do not say that I didn't warn you.

Re:2.4pre1?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Expect wk2 to be at least 400-600% slower then linux kernel 2.2!"

Oops, I meant "expect w2k to be at least 400-600% faster then linux kernel 2.2!"

Boy, do I feel like an idiot.

Re:Unstable warning

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with this post. I am not willing to "hack some real C". I've writen one useful kernel module which was not very "clean" or efficient. But I do keep on the bleeding edge a lot of the time. I've submitted bugs. Just because I don't know my C well enough to write clean kernel code doesn't mean that I don't run an interesting machine which might just hack up a bug or that I am incapable of getting the right info to the right people to get it fixed.

Re:Unstable warning

[Captain Zion]

As long as the user is aware that the "possible instability (or worse)" could be "filesystem trashing". I had 2.3.33 to 39 triggering BUG() calls in ext2, 2.3.40 had no such problem so far.

I'm also trying to get ALSA 0.5.1 working but it keeps throwing up due to problems to allocate contiguous memory for DMA buffers. It doesn't seem to be kernel related however, since others have it working in the 30's and 40's. The CPiA (webcam II) video4linux driver doesn't like my system as well.

Re:USB support?

[CovertOps]

USB is useful most times, but at others it loves to lock up my system while in windows when I have my combo USB-PS/2 keyboard and USB webcam plugged in at the same time. I'd love to see how it would hold up in Linux. It certainly does eliminate a lot of different connectors and cables and such.

ReiserFS as root?

[Anonymous Coward]

But... you CAN run reiserfs on the root partition. If you have an Ext2 /boot partition (my arrangement), you just have all else be reiser. If you want all partitions to be reiserfs, there's a note in the docs about changing one particular setting (I've forgotten what) for the mount on the /boot partition (or the whole freaking thing if you've only got one). I use resiserfs on a test machine at work, and the only ext2 partition there is a 10 meg /boot. Works great!

USB Digital Camera works fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a Kodak DC240 Digital Camera and USB transfers work excellently with the dev kernels I've tried (2.3.29 & 2.3.40) (I don't have any other USB devices). Get gPhoto with its support for 90+ models, and you're laughing. Hava a look at linux-usb.org for the status of support for various devices.

Re:v2.3.41 -- test it and help us!

[dunkelfalke]

hm i used 2.3 since 2.3.1 and tried out almost every version. never had a problem or a crash anyway. it's pretty stable for me. hope it will be same stable for our new server...

Re:Volume Manager, baby

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much the same.

Kernel TODO list

[Leto2]

I think someone asked this already when another kernel release hit Slashdot, but:

Is there a TODO list for the Linux Kernel?

I know there's a lot of people who would like to contribute back to the linux community, but dont know where to start. I search all of the kernel mailinglist, but the only replies to questions like this are people responding with specific things that need help. I was more looking for a long bulleted list, preferable pusblished on kernelnotes.org or similar.

Re:Tulip driver support

[cide]

Uhm, I thought tulip drivers have been around the kernel since late 2.0.x...

I really wouldn't worry about 2.3 support for it

HTTP vs. FTP

[peter]

You're right about the network load. You forgot about server load, though. Assuming the server is running a traditional ftpd (e.g. wu-ftpd), it forks a heavyweight process (as oppose to a lightweight proc == thread) and execs /usr/sbin/in.ftpd for every new ftp session. Again, this only happens once at startup. But don't forget that ftp is a very stateful protocol. Each invocation of the daemon uses a significant amount of RAM, and you have one process for each connection. (err, I guess apache has one proc per connection, but I don't think it touches much RAM after forking.) IMHO, it would be a Good Thing if ftp disappeared as a protocol for anonymous file transfers of a single file. (ftp has the advantage of being able to tell the client how the symlinks go, which is handy for mirroring Debian with its binary-all directory and binary-{alpha,i386,etc.} directories with symlinks back to binary-all for platform independent stuff, like docs and scripts.) Don't argue that FTP can restart transfers.
HTTP can do that too. Read the man page for wget sometime :)

In case you're wondering, there was a nice debate about this on our LUG mailing list. Take a look at the archives of the discussion:
http://nslug.ns.ca/pipermail/nslug/19 99-June/thread.html (the discussion started with an ftp URI for metalab, and I suggested that http is better/faster
#define X(x,y) x##y

Re:Tulip driver support

[KmArT]

No, the newer version support is NOT in kernel 2.3.x (at least as of 2.3.41). You can get updated drivers at ftp://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/linux/drivers/kern- 2.3 but I'm not sure when that will be merged into the main devel. branch of Linux.

To clarify the one of the replies to your question - yes, Tulip support has been in the kernel for some time. However, support for card which require newer drivers has not been, at least until 2.2.14 (and the version included in 2.3.x is the old standard 0.89H).

I/O Completion Ports

[cpeterso]

async i/o code is now in the tcp/ip stack with a feature called i/o completion ports, ... Uh, I got the i/o completion ports info from a guy inside Microsoft.

I/O Completion Ports were introduced in Windows NT 3.51, not Windows 2000.

Unstable warning

[ppetru]

People, be aware that this is an unstable, development kernel. Don't just use it for being "on the edge" if you're not willing to hack some real C.

Re:Unstable warning

[logicTrAp]

No, actually Linus himself has said that he *wants* as many people to use development kernels, *even if they're not developers*. So long as you don't mind putting up with some possible instability (or worse), there's no reason not to play with development kernels.

Re:Unstable warning

[Andy Dodd]

I think that's implied in the "For those who enjoy *panic*, *oops*...", and also from the "If you don't know where to get it, you should probably sticky to your cuddly 2.2.x kernel.

...

[David Ham]

for those who actually *don't* know where to get it (heh)...

i am a link
--
in a world of deceit, open your eyes

gonna get there soon

[rendler]

Go Linus Go!!!

USB support?

[vtMan2024]

Anyone want to comment on how stable/usable USB support is right now?

Re:USB support?

[tao]

Well, it all depends on what you plan to do with
USB. Keyboard/Mouse/Joystick/Serial ports should work fine,
together with some less common stuff (some cameras,
for instance.) All in all, the USB-support itself
seems quite stable, but the problem is the lack
of drivers for everything but the most common things
(that is, those things that share a common standard or
one of the USB-developers own...)

If you have some device that isn't supported, why not either write a driver for it (IF you know how to do so, of course),
or contact the makers of the device and ask them for a Linux-driver (despite what many companies seem to believe, the consumer is always right. Well, apart from those that buy Micro$oft products, of course; they can't be right in their heads...)

Re:USB support?

[Zurk]

actually this is the best place to start.

Re:USB support?

[Syberghost]

actually this is the best place to start.


Why? The primary recommendation of that link is to go out and buy the book I linked.

Would you prefer a Fatbrain link instead?

Re:USB support?

[Syberghost]

If you have some device that isn't supported, why not either write a driver for it (IF you know how to do so, of course),

Hell, write one even if you *DON'T* know how. You'll learn a shitload.

Start here:

Linux Device Drivers

Re:USB support?

[mohaine]

My Epson 740 (hooked up by USB) works great.
No driver yet for my USB CompactFlash reader though :(


BTW I've been useing kernel 2.3.29 since it came out with no problems. No real reason to upgrade.

Can I post release info to /. now too?

[Nodatadj]

When they started the 2.3 series, I can remember that every decided that we didn't care about the kernel releases, unless they were majorly important. CmdrTaco even said that they wouldn't be posted (IIRC). So why have they started again? This is Freshmeats job.

Or can I start posting my release info to slashdot front page?

Well, I released GNOME-Iconedit last week, so http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~u07ih/gnome-iconedit

enjoy

Re:Can I post release info to /. now too?

[matticus]

well, maybe as 2.3 wanes to a close, they're hyping up 2.4. that's perfectly okay with me. they didn't post for the 2.3.2x or 2.3.3x series except for maybe 39, so maybe it's because this is as close as we can get to 2.4 right now, and that's big news in the linux arena to me.

"how bout i shove my ovipositor down your throat and lay eggs in your chest-but i'm not an alien."

Why announce development series minor number?

[Nicolas MONNET]

It's really non-news: dev. kernel go out very often, and this article does not even mention anything special about it. Not even a security fix or something. Why do you post that?

*panic*...*oops*

[cronio]

Must...be...first...to...download.
*panic* -- it's not on my favorite ftp site!
*oops* -- I shit my pants

Segmentation fault (Core dumped).

I thought kernels were only announce occasionally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Must be a slow news day at slashdot, eh?

At least it's not depressing like most of the recent stuff.

AIX code in Linux

[jamienk]

I read here that IBM is offering Linux kernel developers code from AIX to integrate into Linux.

What does AIX have to offer Linux? Is there anything worth mining? Anything that could help the move towards 2.4?

Re:AIX code in Linux

[jws]

Not an AIX expert, but the volume manager and journalled file system would look sweet in Linux colours. I know that other parties are working on these but the AIX code is widely deployed and pretty mature.

Re:AIX code in Linux

[tao]

Well, I don't know whether they can help us in the
move towards v2.4 (it is after all supposed to be feature-frozen, eventhough this isn't perfectly true...), but for v2.6, it would be great
to receive help with, for instance, porting Linux
to older models of the RS/6000. Also, IBM has a quite
nice filesystem, which would be a treat to support in
Linux, at least for compability reasons.

No kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize CmdrTaco can post whatever he likes, but I always prefer to get my software update news from freshmeat. You guys ARE part of the same company you know.. why not let THEM announce new software and you just stick to interesting news like Kevin Mitnick got raped in jail?

v2.3.41 -- test it and help us!

[tao]

When it comes to these latest v2.3.xx kernels
(38 and on), I've not experienced ANY disk-corruption
whatsoever. There are, however, lost of other bugs,
both known and unknown. Why? Because us (relatively)
few developers can't possibly try every hardware
combination. We have a couple of new subsystems
in v2.3 which needs a lot of testing (USB (even if
it exists in v2.2, this one has been rewritten
quite extensively), FireWire, PCMCIA, I2C, I2O), as well as a lot of new drivers for soundcards, videocards, TV/Radio-cards, disk-controllers etc. The list can be made much longer.

Oh, and if you have an SMP-machine, you should definitely try v2.3.xx; a lot of SMP-related changes has been made, to improve the performance.

So please, unless you have production-machines, give the v2.3.41 or upcoming developmental kernels a try. You will certainly help both yourself and the Linux-community out in the long run.

If (when) you find bugs, submit them to linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu.

Re:v2.3.41 -- test it and help us!

[Holger]

I'd love to give 2.3 a try (and have tried to do so several times), but unfortunately I need to use the newest tulip-driver (0.91g) for my 21143-ethernet-cards, which are not supported by the older driver which still is in 2.3. and the newer one won't compile with 2.3.

Thus, I have to choose between 2.3 without net or 2.2 with net. Guess what the choice is...

Holger

[PATCH] New Kernel Module: Uptime.o

[MrHat]

I would like to take this time to announce a new kernel module, recently ported to Linux 2.3.41 - uptime.o.

Uptime.o creates a /dev/uptime entry with major number 199, minor number 0. Want to upgrade to the latest development kernel but don't want to lose your precious 325 day uptime? Do you (gasp) not have a 325 day uptime? Uptime.o is the kernel module for you!

To use, simply run insmod uptime, and then echo the number of seconds of your uptime to /dev/uptime. The kernel module sets your system uptime accordingly. For example, echo "28080000" > /dev/uptime restores your 325-day uptime. Version 0.0.2 will be enhanced with scientific notation support and support for 512-byte uptime values. An example of what is possible with uptime.o:

10:38am up 50,000,000 days, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.05, 0.07
49 processes: 46 sleeping, 3 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 3.5% user, 7.1% system, 0.0% nice, 89.2% idle

Never become the target of low uptime jokes again! Download uptime.o today - amaze your friends, terrify your enemies, and become king of all that is Linux!

- Hat (with too much time on his hands)

Re:[PATCH] New Kernel Module: Uptime.o

[rendler]

wooooo hoooo uptimes.net here i come!

Re:[PATCH] New Kernel Module: Uptime.o

[Sascha Schumann]

With devfs, modules can create /dev entries as well (if devfs is mounted there).

Re:[PATCH] New Kernel Module: Uptime.o

[QuMa]

uptime.o creates /dev/uptime? Either you mean /proc/uptime, "uses /dev/uptime", or you're a pretty warped programmer.


/Me sighs.... So much for the days of poking in /dev/kmem.

win95a

[Anonymous Coward]

At work we still have a few 486s running the original win95a build, they do data acquisition most of the day and have never really crashed. In fact they can go many months without a reboot. Its all about drivers and hardware. Use good hardware and watch what drivers you install.

Tulip driver support

[Ophelan]

Recently, the tulip ethernet card driver support was added (I believe in 2.2.14)...support for the newer version, that is...previously using certain tulip cards required compiling your own kernel module. Is anyone aware of whether this support is in the 2.3.x series?

Daniel

---

2.3.40 bit me!

[theLime]

Ouch!

Last night my HD began thrashing like I've never seen, the system crawled to a halt, and happily froze.

Upon recovery, files are *everywhere* except where they're supposed to be. I did a quick install on an empty partition, and I'm in the process of saving all the important stuff I can find. I'll then wipe the HD clean and do a fresh install.

This is the first time I have ever had problems with a devel kernel, (and I've been using them for 3 years or so) so it's not too likely, but beware.

Hopefully 2.3.41 won't put me in this situation.

Oh well, at least it happened on a friday so I have time to repair.

The DK distro is here:

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN Entertainment

Re:netfilter

[kcarnold]

Netfilter (at least in 2.3.40) is optional. You can switch a little flag in the Networking config section that looks something like "use netfilter". Help on that says that if it is not enabled, you get good old ipchains etc.

Unfourtunately, I don't think you can enable both at the same time.

WTF?

[redmist]

Correct me if I am wrong, but is this not the sort of think that kernel.org takes care of? I love my Slashdot, but I think that this sort of thing should be posted (especially for devel kernels). If people want to keep up to date on the kernel situation, they can use the kernotes.org Slashbox.

.{redmist}.
-------------------------------------------------

Re:WTF?

[redmist]

I mean NOT be posted (lack of sleep).

.{redmist}.
-------------------------------------------------

Re: "Ph1rst P05t"

[orkysoft]

He didn't say "Ph1r5t P054", now did he? He just repeated the "use stable kernels" opinion.

yay

[matticus]

that's one step closer to 2.4. I'm using 2.3.39 right now, and i'm very impressed by some of the new stuff they are doing. In light of Windows 2000 already needing service packs, it's good to know that the kernel is advancing so rapidly. When i hear about 2.4, i like to evaluate someone's conversion to linux from *other* os's as a gradual process--finding that there are alternatives or equals for every task you can do in windows or whatever. When i turned to linux, there were a few things i didn't think i could do without windows, namely, quake3, terminal server client, use my palmpilot, use icq, write cds, use my parallel port ls-120 drive, and so on. i didn't even know that you could access dos hard drives at that time. but through gradual steps including a voodoo3, reading man pages, getting great new software (jpilot comes to mind), i have eliminated every one of these. this was a 2 year project or so. what is my point? well, i know many people who refuse to use linux because of its poor USB support. i had a friend who bought a computer and wanted to install linux on it, and to his dismay found out his keyboard and his mouse were USB, and his motherboard didn't have ps/2 ports. linux was important enough to him, however, that he bought a new motherboard. we need to be able to help even these people without money-spending on hardware. although linux is free, that is often some area that it is not-almost everyone i know has spent a little extra money to get a new one of whatever peripheral was windows-only, or just didn't work as well in linux. the more the kernel advances, the closer we get to ubiquity;-).

"look at that. breach hull, all die. even had it underlined."-crow

Excuse the heck out of me...

[Resident Geek]

And I hate to seem indignant here, but when the heck are they going to release a 2.4pre? I know, they're working hard, as the continued releases show. But 41 minor releases and no pre's is just absurd. IMO.

Re:Excuse the heck out of me...

[Phaid]

Did you not follow the development of previous kernel versions? There were 95 versions of 1.1->1.2, 99 versions of 1.3->2.0 followed by 14 2.0pre, and 132 versions of 2.1->2.2. So 41 would be an incredibly short development cycle given the trend. If you want to help hurry it along, run the development kernels on a spare box (or your main box if you like) and help squash bugs.

Re:Excuse the heck out of me...

[True Dork]

There were 132 versions of the 2.1 kernel on kernel.org. A large number of which I installed :P. 41 is more than reasonable. They just dont feel it's ready for 2.4 pre which is fine by me!

One exception...

[Andy Dodd]

Microsoft mice are actually pretty nice. Logitech is the master of cordless, MS has the Borg Eye technology, which I WANT. :)

I hope the DOJ splits their input device division into a seperate company - watch every other company rot away into oblivion.

You must be new...

[Andy Dodd]

While Linus has promised that 2.4 will be much closer in time and features to 2.2 than 2.2 was to 2.0, the 2.1 series went well into the .1xx numbers. :) I think it even passed 150, although I can't be sure.

Re:You must be new...

[tao]

Nope, it didn't. v2.1.126. Then came a series of
pre-patches for v2.2.0...

Re:sexual idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently your father did

Anonymous Coward is sick

[jaspast]

To: anonymous coward Re: you are sick, get help. There is nothing funny about Columbine

netfilter

[peteran]

How about all people running ipmasq stuff and such. 2.3.x comes with netfilter, the new way of doing these things. I don't know much about existing modules and such, but have been running my own little subnet with it for a few months now.

I was wondering if anyone has had some trouble migrating from 2.2.x to 2.3.x and if there are some great lessons to learn.

Volume Manager, baby

[Tim Behrendsen]

I would love to have AIX's volume manager, which has everything you want in a partition manager, and more.

Unfortunately, I think they license it from someone else (not sure who), so I don't think they can release the source code. :(

--

argh

[Anonymous Coward]

ya know, i cant remember the exact date linux was first put on the net but assuming it was jan 1 1991, the longest uptime you could have would be 3315 days (until tomorrow anyway). kinda pointless to have anything higher.

not to mention the fact that this will create lots of spam on uptime stats sites (eg uptimes.net).

--Siva (avoiding moderation/post conflics)