Glimmers From The 2.4 Horizon

Oestergaard writes: "We're finally going pre-2.4! Linus posted this on the LKML (Linux kernel mailing list): >>I just made a 2.3.51 release, and the next kernel will be the first of the pre-2.4.x kernels. That does NOT mean that I'll apply a lot of last-minute patches: it only means that I'll let 2.3.51 be out there over the weekend to hear about any embarrassing problems so that we can start the pre-2.4 series without the truly stupid stuff. There's some NFSv3 and other stuff pending, but those who have pending stuff should all know who they are, and for the rest it's just time to say nice try, see you in 2.5.x. The pre-2.4.x series will probably go on for a while, but these are the 'bug fixes only' trees. These are also the 'I hope a lot of people test them' trees, because without testing we'll never get to the eventual goal, which is a good and stable 2.4.x in the reasonably near future. Thanks, Linus

Comments

There's more good news than this mentions.

[Anonymous Coward]

First -- and they're not publicizing this much for obvious reasons -- there will be experimental COM/DCOM+ support in the 2.4 series. It's only experimental, relax! They're doing it by Linux means, open source everything, no bullshit. The idea is simply that it's a checklist item for a lot of IT drones, and they can't hold it against us if it's in there. It's also a bit of a pre-emptive strike against MS porting the same architecture when (if?) they port Office. If it's there already, they'll have no excuse not to use it, and things will remain more open and fair.

Nothing will depend on it, either; it's only there for application developers who want it.

Personally, I'm of two minds about it, but more compatibility is always good.

Re:There's more good news than this mentions.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that COM in the kernel is really good for GNOME and KDE, this way they can share their architectures when using Linux. That way instead of having flame wars where one side believes that only if the other side goes down like a 747 that lost both its wings, that they have won, we will have a set up where people pick what they like best from a menu, and then all the apps work with hinting, etc.

Re:There's more good news than this mentions.

[Toshio]

I thought that was already done with oh-some-MS-supporting company (I can look up the name if somebody actualy cares), but not on open source basis :(.

As far as experimental goes, you should have seen the IE (hooked with MS implementation of COM/DCOM services) on some-NIX boxes chewing up resources faster than 1k memory leak in 1-ms timer code (and that's a lot).

I wasn't experimenting with any of the 2.3.x series kernels (last time I fiddled there was with 2.1.x series), but if you take open source definition of experimental (remember experimental ELF binary support) it will work on this kernel and not on next, and work again on next and so on... But the main point is that it WILL WORK! AND I LOVE IT!

It might be on anyones checklist (I don't care about IT drones anyway, since I'm freelancer), but it'll do magic for ME AS A PROGRAMMER. Like (probably, I hope I'm wrong) most ppl. I make my day to day buck with MS products (let's face it: MS sells no matter what you say or do -- fortunately same goes for linux/GNU/... :)). The way it'll help me because I will be able to propose more cost efficient business solutions to potential customers. If I can take their already bought MS transaction server and use it on business tier, put linux on presentation (Web) tier and connect them without much hassle (DCOM comes as a glue) that's what I LIKE. Options for this kind of close integration will be endless.

As far as dependencies go, linux already has orbit which provides component services and things depend on it. The point is no things depend on it. MS might like it a lot, people around me like it a lot (personally I hate it a lot), but if you take away (D)COM from WinNT platform you basically can't even send 'A' to ASCII printer (Win95 comes off beter by being built on top of DOS and gives you option of doing "echo A > LPT1:" but that's where it ends. You might find it a bit tricky [but not impossible] to send FF that would eject the page). I can strip linux (ANY linux) to core and put it on almost any CPU gifted with reasonable amount of RAM.

Bottom line is that this will give my kind of comunity (day to day people that happen to live off computers) power of choice and this is what's all about! GNU is about choice, Linux is about choice, open source is about choice. I like having choices, options, brain food and http://www.userfriendly.org/! If 2.4.x kernel will give me that or any other choise to think about, I'll be first in line to grab it from nearest mirror!

Re:There's more good news than this mentions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing like proving the ignorance of Slashdot readers by posting something obviously untrue and ridiculous, eh?

Of course, it's not like Slashdot comments have the reputation of articles in Social Text...

(see http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/boghoss ian/papers/SokalHoax.html if you don't know what I'm talking about :)

Re:There's more good news than this mentions.

[Fizgig]

Crap, I think I accidentally moderated this up! I didn't mean to! Posting to remove it.

Re:There's more good news than this mentions.

[Anonymous Coward]

and you use your bonus point for this post?

Re:There's more good news than this mentions.

[Fizgig]

Geez, sorry. I'm using someone else's weird trackball, and I thought I had clicked it down and had not. Combined with the fact that Slasdot was actually being responsive, I didn't have time to cancel when I saw that. Maybe +1 should not be default.

Re:There's more good news than this mentions.

[Timbo]

If I had any mod points I'd mod this up... whoever moded this comment down needs their head examined. COM and DCOM are one of few technologies to come out of MS that are actually quite good - even tho they take a bit of setting up.

What about Screenshots ?

[Claude Debussy]

anybody got a url to screenshots of the latest Reiser File System , I'm guessing thats part of 2.4 ,right ?

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[NetHunter]

Reiser? Why not Ext3? I do understand that Ext3 is not better then Ext2 with journal, but still...

BTW, did they move to DevFS? Or still the annoying major/minor thingy?

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[Anonymous Coward]

How in God's name can you take screenshots of a file system?

Dork.

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[Harvey]

Devfs is in, but still experimental IIRC.

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[Teferi]

one word: xcruise. :P
"If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[Harvey]

I don't believe ReiserFS is included (and neither are ext3 and jfs?), and if it was, as an AC pointed out below, it would be pretty hard to take a screenshot, a benchmark or a time to reboot comparison would be more accurate.

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[Virtex]

I remember reading where Linus had said if he was going to put any journalling file system in 2.4, it would be Reiser, simply because it's the only one that has had a lot of testing. SusE has been including it in their distributions, hence the testing.

--

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[jarek]

In what way will devfs remove the need for the major/minor scheme? As far as I know, devfs only provides a major cleanup of the namespace bloat in /dev. Otherwise, drivers are still referenced by major and minor numbers through the vfs layer.

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Reiser is out of experimental stage and ext3 isn't. Ah but I forgot: Reiser==NIH

F|4meba1T ? Maybe, but you know it's the truth....

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[Toshio]

I don't know about ReiserFS and ext3 file systems, but jfs (if you're referring to IBM's jfs) is at such stage that it might appear in 2.5.x series, but probably not at the start of the cycle. Last time I checked the porting page, they were just able to read directories, no chances of even reading files in very-close-future.

It was even mentioned that jfs will cause some major changes deep in kernel and that will probably make it candidate for 2.7.x series more likely than 2.5.x.

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[Claude Debussy]

Moderated down to *Flamebait* .. nice, flamebait my ass, You moderators are smoking crack

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[Anonymous Coward]

NO! yer smoking the crack, the cheap kind

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[whoop]

This probably isn't good enough for Linus, but I've ran with Ext3 for a good four or more months without a hitch. Maybe one, but I blame it on a HD's last days. I replaced it and all is well since. For heavy duty testing, I'd say rpmfind.net would qualify, though I'm not sure how old the message is on the front page. If any of you know what you're doing, and wondered about ext3, I'd say give it a whirl, no more 15-minute fscks when the power to my apartment goes out. ;)

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually get at least 2 hour long fscks when the power goes out. Oh wait, you didn't mean that kind of fsck....

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[gabrielm]

screenshots of the latest kernel with half naked chicks in the background are at kernel.themes.org

Re:What about Screenshots ?

[rl117]

>How in God's name can you take screenshots of a file system?

Make one in a linear framebuffer device:

/sbin/mke2fs -m0 /dev/fb1

dd if=/dev/fb1 of=/tmp/fb-image.raw

HTH,
Roger

Status of 2.3?

[Harvey]

How stable is the current devel tree? 2.3.41 was fine for me... but later kernels either failed to compile or crashed on boot. Are we going to see a long pre- cycle, or is it relatively debugged already?

Re:Status of 2.3?

[CentrX]

Different devel kernels are broken and unbroken all the time. Some hardware configurations will work perfectly, while others will crash and burn. Consequently, it is not definitive that a 2.3. (x + 1) is going to be any more stable than a 2.3. (x)

Chris Hagar

Re:Status of 2.3?

[W6BI]

I started using the devel kernels on three of my machines at 2.3.42. It ran fine, a few of the later versions had compile problems for me, so I just skipped them. I'm currently on 2.3.49, and it runs fine. 2.3.50 fails with a compile error. I'll give 2.3.51 a shot.

I think they're more than good enough for non-critical boxes. YMMV, of course.

- me -

How to work Linux pre-2.4 kernels?

[strredwolf]

Anyone have any pointers or web sites on getting these pre2.4 kernels up and running? I'm going to try to get it running in Slackware 7. Thankfully, I have VMWare up and running and registered...

---
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack

Re:How to work Linux pre-2.4 kernels?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah all you need to do is take a class on C programming then maybe you'll understand what to do. If you can't program you have no business using a pre-release kernel!

Re:How to work Linux pre-2.4 kernels?

[Harvey]

If you can't program you have no business using a pre-release kernel!

I'd have to disagree with this. Programming isn't really required for the pre- series if you're willing to accept failure :) However, a good knowledge of the hardware in your box, and a basic knowledge of lilo are required. Here's an LDP HOWTO on this. Their stuff is usually pretty good

Re:How to work Linux pre-2.4 kernels?

[The Man]

f you can't program you have no business using a pre-release kernel!

Yes and no. Remember that even most kernel hackers aren't familiar with every part of the kernel and can't fix everything that goes wrong. There are kernels that should legitimately be avoided by everybody, and then there are those that pretty much just work. Linus is now aiming explicitly at the latter; the kernels near the end of a development cycle need to get used so that bugs can be found and fixed. With this in mind, it's time for everyone to start using 2.3/2.4pre on all the non-production machines you can find. Bugs won't get fixed if nobody is using these kernels.

In answer to the original question, the best places to look are the Documentation/Changes file, which describes what software you need to build and successfully run the latest kernel, and the mailing list, which is archived at www.kernelnotes.org and other places.

Re:How to work Linux pre-2.4 kernels?

[jdike]

Sorry about the blatant self-promotion here, but if you want to run the new kernel, but don't have a spare machine and are worried about what it might do, check out my user-mode port.
It is the 2.3.51 kernel running in a set of Linux processes. No need for a spare machine, and it doesn't have access to your hardware or filesystems, so it's less worrisome than a native kernel.
Downloads are available here.
Jeff

Re:How to work Linux pre-2.4 kernels?

[Johnny O]

I got 2.3.50 working just great on Slackware 7.
Holy crap what a difference there was in NFS. I NFS mount SCO servers. It went from slug-like to lightning! I plan on building me up a Slackware 7/Xfree86 4.0/Linux 2.3.51 system this weekend. Woohoo....

Re:How to work Linux pre-2.4 kernels?

[Grimwiz]

The trouble with that plan is that the whole reason to bang on these pre-release kernels is so that faults can be caught and squashed when the real one is released.

If you tried to log a fault with a user-mode kernel you'd not get very far on the lkml. Worse, you're going to cause confusion and dilute the testing process.

The only benefit would be if you were an absolute testing god, and could weed implementation bugs out from the inherant kernel bugs, do some fancy debugging from the working system to the broken one and send the lkml a proper fault analysis and patched code. THEN I'd be impressed.

Re:How to work Linux pre-2.4 kernels?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to belittle your impressive work, but this won't really help testing much, since most of the bugs that get squashed by widespread testing are from weird hardware interactions. The best way to find these bugs is for that weirdo with 4 different type NE2K NICs and a some whackass 8bit ISA SCSI card tries to use the kernel.

Is the LKML Public?

[XJoshX]

I was just wondering where if the LKML is public
and if so where do you go to subscribe?

I know squat about the kernal, but I've always found
observing mailing lists to be one of the best ways to learn.

Re:Is the LKML Public?

[Harvey]

The FAQ is here. Check out subscribe info here.

Re:Is the LKML Public?

[Adnans]

Web archive HERE

Re:Is the LKML Public?

[caveman]

Yes, although requests to the majordomo in charge do need to be authenticated (I.e. you send your request, and then reply to it's authentication request it sends you, or it ignores you).
This prevents you maliciously subscribing all your enemies to this, somewhat high-traffic mailing list.

I do join from time to time, although I'm not listening at the moment, mainly because I'm currently snowed under doing other things, and my work mailbox is pushing back the boundaries of disk space mathematics as it is...

Re:Is the LKML Public?

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides the web archive, news:fa.linux.kernel is also probably a better solution than subscribing to the list.

Hmmm...

[BJH]

From the looks of Linus's comments, it's only a move from the (currently very slushy) pretty-much-anything-goes-if-it-compiles-feature freeze to a (slightly more frozen) already-announced-but-not-yet-fully-included-featu re freeze+bugfix stage.

Integration with Apache

[NatePWIII]

Anyone have any information on how this will integrate with Apache, and any news on a multi-threaded version?



Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com

Can't wait to begin spreadin the love

[browser_war_pow]

There are about 12-15 linux users at my high school out of a total body of I believe 1000. That's pretty good considering that there were only around half that last school year. I am looking forward to burning a few cds and spreadin them around so that everyone there can get kernel 2.4 asap. 2.4 looks to be a really big step forward because I know at least another guy who wants to try Linux on his laptop, but it is afraid that PCMCIA and stuff like that might not work.

Re:Can't wait to begin spreadin the love

[adiemus]

I run 2.2.14 on my laptop (from which I'm posting this) and pcmcia works fine. It took a little to get everything set up (cough*X*cough) but once that's done, it runs beautifully. Have your friend check out the Linux Laptop HOWTO if he gets stuck.

Re:Can't wait to begin spreadin the love

[ross.w]

I have an old 486SX laptop that I use as a terminal to my main Linux box over an ethernet link. It runs mulinux using kernel 2.0something and drives a PCMCIA ethernet card with no problems (well it did until my 12 month old son dropped it on the floor, but that's another story.)

There should be PCMCIA support in 2.2 kernels, unless it's a winmodem (i think most laptop modems are?), which isn't suported by anything except Windows AFAIK.

Re:Can't wait to begin spreadin the love

[Anonymous Coward]

The step to 2.4 isn't as big as it was to 2.2. 2.4 is should have USB-support, and network update no other OS has. With 2.4 the load-avgr on server should drop, because of some new code. BTW the pcmcia-code is still based on the current pcmcia-code and should still be added. The code isn't in the linux-tree.

Re:Can't wait to begin spreadin the love

[Anonymous Coward]

"PCMCIA stuff" already works very well. I have had 2.0 and 2.2 kernels running on a couple different Dell laptops. The only real difference with 2.4 is that the PCMCIA stuff will be more integrated with and released as part of the kernel instead of a separate module package. Many PCMCIA cards already work really well and other (most notable 32 bit cardbus cards) are morely in beta but can be gotten to work with some fidgeting. David Hinds does a wonderful job with the PCMCIA support and is also quite helpfull if you have problems getting a supported card working. Go take a look at http://pcmcia.sourceforge.org/ for more information (including which cards are currently supported).

Re:Can't wait to begin spreadin the love

[chialea]

just take a look at the Linux on Laptops page. it was vastly helpful setting up my thinkpad (of course, most IBM's are easy, becasue they use pretty standard hardware -- there's even a Linux driver for the Lucent Winmodem). in any case, you'll get an idea of how hard/easy/impossible it'll be to set up. in most cases, it's pretty easy, especially if there's a CDROM drive built in, (I don't have one -- ftp install is your friend) except for X.

and of course, there are all these helpful /. people around... everyone I emailed about my thinkpad was very helpful (thank you, if you're reading this). nice thing about the Linux community -- there is a Linux community, and people are really nice about helping.

Lea

Re:Can't wait to begin spreadin the love

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, the most problematic part of laptops is usually the video chipset, not the PCMCIA. You may want to check xfree86.org and make sure yours is supported first.

in the immortal words of...

[dirt_merchant]

well i'm not sure who said it, but "It's aboot friggin time!"

New features of 2.4

[Virtex]

Anyone anxious to take the 2.4 plunge, but wondering what has changed might want to take a look at http://lwn.net/1999/0819/a/wwol2_4.html . It somewhat dated -- August of 1999 (anyone know where to find one more recent?), but hopefully most of its content will still be valid.

--

Re:New features of 2.4

[zrpg]

A more recent version that I could find, February 7, 2000, is available at: http://linuxtoday.com/stories/15936.html

Mostly agree.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, we need more interoperability between OSS (especially the UI stuff that GNOME and KDE address), but I don't think that using Microsoft's COM is the right way to do it -- if only because it would be such rotten publicity. "Oh, look, these guys had to borrow ideas from Microsoft to make it work." Blech, we don't need that.

I'd rather push for XPCOM as a compromise solution which both KDE and GNOME could embrace without either one losing face by giving in to the other :) Then, gradually, peace may descend . . . until the next holy war erupts.

Re:Mostly agree.

[Toshio]

It could be argued what is right and what is wrong way to do it. I (for nice example) used to be C/C++ freak programmer (I still prefer C for personal stuff, that I try to write cross platform) and hated all those VB/Delphi/Builder "babies". With time I was forced to use other programming environments and languages and I found out each and every one of them has distinct advantages and handicaps (you just don't get REAL caffeine by drinking de-caf, no matter if you're in NYC or in Calcuta).

At the moment I'm on project involving MS backends, MS tools, MS components, ... basically all MS. It's just the policy of customer to use MS only stuff. I can't go to the customer and say that all his systems are piece of crap, since I've been working with them for some 8 years now, I can't tell him to trash all his existing solutions so I can bring in one open source solution, I can't make a product that won't interoperate with existing software. That is privilege of MSs, IBMs, Suns and others.

What I learned is that nothing can be done by hitting your head against the wall. Yes, it might be rotten publicity, but are we employing PR people to take care of our "faces" (used in japanese sense of the word) or are we trying to do something for ourselves! -- Exclamation, not question mark.

I think we're trying to do something for ourselves. KDE has it's licencing quirks, but it's still popular. It obviously didn't die of bad publicity. Gnome has no licencing quirks and it's popular. What's the catch... I can have Corba, I can have DCOM, I can have my own protocols running around wild... The point is that user doesn't care what does it run on as long it runs well. COM, DCOM, Corba, ... are just tools to achieve that. Nothing more. No bad PR. If MS doesn't want to comunicate with other solutions, it's their problem. Right now it's my problem as well... If DCOM/Linux takes off, it won't be my problem any more [I still like MS DevStudio though... No Linux viable counterpart yet :(].

emu10k1 sources from creative

[tweek]

I happened to notice that the latest sources from the creative opensource website for my SBLive! had a tree for 2.4 kernels now. I guess those guys are ramping up as well.

Re:emu10k1 sources from creative

[kcarnold]

They've had that for a while now. If you look in the Makefile, you'll see that `uname -r`=2.3 gets mapped to the 2.4 defines, so for a while there I was compiling a module for a 2.4 kernel! I went back to the stable because I had some very serious filesystem corruption (like stuff in /lib ... ick!), giving me a good excuse to change distros to Debian.

On the subject of sound, I noticed that Debian does not have a save/load of sound settings (volume in particular) like Red Hat and company do. So I wrote my own little script to do that. If you want it, e-mail me, but it's really very simple so you could probably write it yourself. Another Debian quirk -- ahem, feature -- is that the sound module is not loaded automatically like in RH, but if you put it in /etc/modules with all other modules you want loaded at boot time, there it will be. If you have to give the module any parameters, you can do it there or put them in /etc/modutils/$modulename (I have in ./ne, 'options ne io=0x200', to match my isapnp setting it to io 0x200, for example).

Re:emu10k1 sources from creative

[smash]

Actually, it does :)

The package you are after is called "gom", and once you manage to configure it properly, it will load/save mixer settings on reboot.

I had it working with my old SB16, but since i upgraded to an sb-live i havent been bothered getting the module "installed" correctly. (ie i insmod -f /usr/local/src/emu10k/emu10k.o every reboot by hand..)

On that subject... anyone know the status of an SB-Live driver ever being included in the kernel? Its no longer a binary only module, and I know Alan (cox) has been working on the driver a bit... Its just a pain to recompile/re-download it every time you upgrade kernels...

smash(posted from w2k.... my linux drive died last nite :( )

Re:emu10k1 sources from creative

[kcarnold]

Oh well... didn't do my homework, I guess... thanks, but I think I'll keep my homebrew solution (I might even make it into a Debian package [to store locally] if I really get lazy someday...).

Just add 'alias sound emu10k1' to /etc/modutils/aliases and 'sound' to /etc/modules and you will be all set. gom should set itself to load after modules are all loaded (if it stays in rc[number].d and not rcS.d, you should be fine, otherwise, make sure it has a high S## number.)

I use the cvs, and someday I'll get lazy enough to write a script to do it... so I'd be recompiling/reinstalling it anyway almost every day. The only pain is that to do it right you really need to reboot twice (though it is possible to do it with rebooting once; I have done so). Basically what said script would do is:

cd ~/cvs/
cvs -z9 co emu10k1 # It stores login settings
cd emu10k1
make clean; make; make install
modprobe sound
/etc/init.d/sound start

Ken

Re:emu10k1 sources from creative

[Helge Hafting]

Another Debian quirk -- ahem, feature -- is that the sound module is not loaded automatically like in RH, but if you put it in /etc/modules with all other modules you want loaded at boot time, there it will be.</I>

Why do you want modules loaded a boot time?
The sound modules on my machine loads automatically when some program opens a sound device. So the memory needed for a sound driver is used only when I use sound. The driver is unloaded if it goes idle for a while, freeing up memory.

Re:emu10k1 sources from creative

[kcarnold]

1. If you are using HTML, it helps to turn on HTML mode. Also, you can now use traditional e-mail style quoting ('>'=&gt;) much easier because Slash actually keeps it escaped as such. Never mind.
2. That was one of the reasons that I said that it was a feature. I wanted it done that way because I didn't feel like messing with it at the time. Today I started messing with it, and it's working out much better on autoload/autoclean mode. You just have to alias things properly -- I had to alias char-major-14 to emu10k1. My main concern was getting the mixer settings to stay around. To solve that, I made post-install(emu10k1)='/etc/init.d/sound start' and pre-remove(emu10k1)='/etc/init.d/sound stop', which worked quite nicely for me. So I took out the sound module out of /etc/modules, and now stuff that opens /dev/dsp*, etc., gets the sound module loaded, and also the mixer settings restored. Not that I have to worry that much with 128 MB of memory (though weirdly Linux only detected 64 MB until I put mem=128M in my LILO append=).

Kenneth

Re:FIRST POST!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's this talk about Linux 2.4? I thought Linux 6.1 was the latest one out! Why should I use this 2.4 Linux instead of 6.1?

(yes, I understand the word "irony". Do you understand the words "satire" and "humor"? :)

helping with kernel 2.4

[HeUnique]

Alan Cox just posted a list of jobs that need to be finished before final 2.4 could see the light of day...

Any help around with this?

Re:helping with kernel 2.4

[Anonymous Coward]

The previous poster linked to a relative ("current week") link which was broken almost instantly... Here's the absolute address, which works:

http://boudicca .tux.org/hypermail/linux-kernel/2000week11/1055.ht ml

Compile Problems with 2.3.51

[Hazzl]

2.3.51 didn't compile for me. make choked on the parport device (undefined reference to parport_pc_init_pci() ). Also, I didn't manage to compile in sound support: the io address, irq and dma aren't stored in .config anymore. Seems to me that 2.4.xx is still quite far off... :-)

Re:Compile Problems with 2.3.51

[xtord]

The irq,dma,address is now either probed by the kernel or is given as a option to the kernel at boottime. read the help on the soundblaster option for more info.

Re:Compile Problems with 2.3.51

[Salsaman]

Try adding append="parport=0x378,7" at the start of your /etc/lilo.conf. Change the values appropriately.

Re:Compile Problems with 2.3.51

[jjarv]

There's a patch on the kernel mailing list for the parport problem. The message and patch can be seen here.

Re:FIRST POST!

[ubertroll]

Slackware has Linux 7.0. Don't settle for less!

2.4...

[rbf]

OHH YEAH! I've been waiting for 2.4 for a while now!! I can't wait to see full USB support!!! :)

rbf aka pulsar

Re:2.4...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you need it now, you can patch a 2.2 for USB. It's OK really. The question is does the specific/generic device you want support for have a USB driver? Like some cameras do, some don't--but the generic usb camera module is essentially complete (i think). USB scanner module is not quite complete and only a couple of scanners have support through USB and SANE. (2 current model HP's) While for the really adventurous some buggy/not-yet-part-of-SANE-standard-distribution backends exist for an Epson or two and an Agfa.

Re:2.4...

[AntiBasic]

OpenBSD has had full USB support for a few months now...

Re:2.4...

[Anonymous Coward]

And FreeBSD had it even longer....

But this has to do with Linux exactly how? (did linux take the BSD code for USB?)

Re:FIRST POST!

[Harvey]

Poor fools. Windows is already at version 2000. Just more proof that this "Open Sores" crap will never make it in the real world. Come and use a real OS with a real version number sometime.

Re:How to work Linux pre-2.4 kernels? No problem.

[jarek]

As far as I remember, getting 2.4 to run with say RH 6.1 is no problem what so ever. Just make dep ... and install with your favorite method. A few apps will be hit with quite substantial modifications of the layout in /proc but usually that will not prevent you from getting the system up and running.
Changing to 2.4 from 2.2 is much easier compared to the transition from 2.0 to 2.2.
If you want to try out devfs, read the docs and install devfsd.

For those that don't know how to run a devel

[CentrX]

If you do not know how to "get these pre2.4 kernels up and running" you should not be doing it. For those that say there needs to be as many people running these as possible, I say: if a person can't even figure out how to install the kernel, how much help are they going to be in isolating and helpfully reporting bugs?

Chris Hagar

Re:For those that don't know how to run a devel

[Anonymous Coward]

And how will they ever improve their skills if they follow your (bad) advice? Most people learn from doing...

Re:For those that don't know how to run a devel

[Matthew Weigel]

They will learn by reading the README. It's not difficult in the least.

They're going to have to read the thing first to figure out how to report bugs, anyways.

Re:For those that don't know how to run a devel

[C.Lee]

If a person is really interested in the process of building kernels,
they should also look into the Buildkernel script home page.
http://users.dhp.com/~whisper/buildkernel

good idea?

[Ixnorp]

Looking at past development versions I see:
(Ignore stupid typo or date calculations, I got this info from looking at the dates on kernels from kernel.org so I could be wrong)

1.1.13 - May 22 1994 (cant find a 1.1.0 so I'm guessing its about mid-april or there abouts)
1.1.95 - Mar 1 1995
time elapsed: ~11 months

1.3.0 --- Jun 11 1995
1.3.100 - May 9 1996
time elapsed: ~11 months

2.1.0 --- Sep 30 1996
2.1.132 - Dec 22 1998
time elapsed: ~27 months

2.3.0 -- May 11 1999
2.3.51 - Mar 10 2000
time elapsed: ~10 months

So we've run about the typical time elapsed between dev kernel versions but the current kernel version is half that of normal so it makes me wonder if we're ready yet.

.

Wanted: one clue, will accept good to mint condition.

Re:good idea?

[Harinath]

Well, the 2.3.x series has "pre-patch"es. So each point release in the 2.3.x series is probably equivalent to about two point releases on the earlier unstable release cycles.

Re:good idea?

[T-Ranger]

It is, because linus said so.

At the begining of this cycle it was made very clear, in lots of mediums from /. to the 'normal' press that the developement cycle was too long. Less features were added to the kernel, and some that are 'almost' ready that would have held up 2.4 just diddnt get in. This will give everybody some new feature now, and make the upgrade less painful.

For you to have gone to the effort of finding those date but missed this philosiphy change.. well I wonder :)

Re:good idea?

[eMBee]

1.1.0 came out on april 6th. (check here)

So we've run about the typical time elapsed between dev kernel versions but the current kernel version is half that of normal so it makes me wonder if we're ready yet.

the amount of changes from one verion point to the next is not always the same. you should rather compare times versus changes. considering that the changes from 2.0 to 2.2 where a lot more than what will happen from 2.2 to 2.4 those times just seem reasonable...

greetings, eMBee.
--

Re:good idea?

[garver]

What are you worried about? If 2.3 looks totally different from 2.1 and 1.3 we must be in good shape! 1.3 was plagued by the release-a-day syndrome (remember the YAGWRs, yet another greased weasel releases?) and 2.1 just bit off more than it should chew in a release. It seems to me that in 2.3 we have a nice set of new features and best of all, we get to see them in a reasonable amount of time.

Kudos to the kernel developers.

Re:good idea?

[warpeightbot]

So we've run about the typical time elapsed between dev kernel versions but the current kernel version is half that of normal so it makes me wonder if we're ready yet.

Yes.

Linus set out to only include a limited set of stuff in the new kernel, so that that thumping huge 27-month gap wouldn't happen again. The fact that there have only been 51 blockpoints is a reflection of the decreased new-feature count. As it is, he'd have liked to have been done by December, but you know how things go... as it is we're getting one a year and being lucky to do so, at this rate.

It's still a helluva job, and everyone hacking on it deserves every scrap of recognition they get, in the form of long green or otherwise.

--
"Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?"

"It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food, right?"
-- MacNelley, "Shoe"

Re:good idea?

[dlc]

This definitely is an interesting phenomenon, but I don't think it indicates that the new kernel might not be ready to see the light of day. If you think back to who was using Linux in 1994, and who's using it now, or, rather, who was aware of it then and now, there is significantly increased awareness now. I think the shortened development time is due to more eyeballs.

Cthulhu for President!

Re:Time to mention it again

[Anonymous Coward]

all night long.

Huh?

[Daniel]

I was under the impression that COM/DCOM was some sort of an object-oriented system for remote procedure calls (I guess if you're using objects that should be 'remote method calls'..)
CORBA and RPC don't need kernel support. (well, aside from requiring some sort of network layer, but the kernel doesn't have to know about them) What's special about COM that requires it to go in the kernel? Why not put an NFS server and an httpd in the kernel while you're at it..er, nevermind..

Daniel

e2compr?

[Daniel]

Does anyone know what the state of e2compr support in 2.4 will be? I read in Kernel Traffic that it's not ready for the official kernels, but that someone finally explained to the e2compr maintainer how to port it to the new buffer-cache system..but I haven't heard anything that indicates that such porting is actually occuring. I'm starting to think that I may have to decompress my whole hard drive to try this..which may be difficult given that I'm operating close to capacity ;-)

Daniel

So my question for Nvidia Boosters is

[Anonymous Coward]

With 2.4pre coming soon, how do you feel about not having DRI support for Nvidia riva/tnt/tnt2/geforce in the new kernel? What will you do about that?

Re:So my question for Nvidia Boosters is

[be-fan]

A) I could really care less. I use Windows for any 3D stuff.
B) The new kernel better not have nVidia support. OpenGL in the kernel would not be a good thing. (Or are you talking about the hardware independant DRI driver?)

Re:So my question for Nvidia Boosters is

[Anonymous Coward]

> With 2.4pre coming soon, how do you feel about not having DRI support for Nvidia
> riva/tnt/tnt2/geforce in the new kernel? What will you do about that?

Well if you actually read Linus's posting you'd have noticed he said that he will still be accepting new drivers throughout 2.4.

However, he will NEVER accept a binary-only driver, so that will probably keep Nvidia stuff out for the time being...

Re:So my question for Nvidia Boosters is

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you don't use Be for 3d stuff? You use Windows for 3d and you could [sic] care less? Why then do you use any other operating system at all?

Just talking DRI here. As of 2.3.4X only 3dfx and 3DLabs boards may use DRI. However the specs to implement DRI are available for Ati and possibly Matrox. DRI is necessary to give user space processes using Mesa or real OpenGL direct access to the video hardware. When you build a 2.3 kerrnel you'll see what I'm talking about. There's currently no support for Nvidia boards to use the DRI interface. Only Nvidia can enable this because of their hostility regarding open source hardware support. And they haven't been very timely with working Glx modules (try their latest? ugh!) or DRI.

I'd like to know what Nvidia boosters think about the route Nvidia has taken with regard to Linux and open source--are we happy campers? Do we love our closed spec, obfuscated source buddy Nvidia NOW ??? And how do you imagine you'll feel when 2.4.50 comes around enabling, say fast journalling and other goodies, but changes to the DRI interface break direct rendering for Nvidia hardware again? And no one but Nvidia can remedy the situation ? Well Be-fan you may go back to using Windows and be happy, but Windows has no place on my drives.

Maybe Nvidia based hw has no place in an Open Source system.

Re:So my question for Nvidia Boosters is

[be-fan]

A) I don't use Be for 3d stuff because it doesn't have HW accelerated 3D for anything but 3dfx; Just like Linux.
B) I don't like using windows for 3D, but it has the only usable 3D modlers out there. (BTW the guy who designed the Blender interface was on crack.)
C) I love our closed spec obfuscated source buddy nVidia still. I'm a pretty happy camper. My card runs fast as hell, and I have no religious attachment to Linux/Be/etc.
D) I think you missed the subtlety abou the DRI thing. They only DRI compenent that goes in the kernel is the DRI kernel driver. That is accelerator non-specific. Thus it will work with any card, it is just a system for the DRI driver to communicate through the kernel. It is a symantical thing, no DRI support for a particular card acutally goes in the kernel, it is loaded by the X server which uses the hardware independant kernel driver to talk to the hardware. I really don't care if Linux has no place on your drive. If you aren't willing to use a GeForce just because it doesn't run on your precious Linux, thats your problem. Don't, however, blame nVidia for it. Their product kicks ass. Have you ever run 3D Studio on a GeForce? You'd think you were on an SGI! They will have accel. OpenGL on Linux soon. If you have some problem with it being closed source and propriotry, fine. But I'm just sitting here waiting for Redhat 7 and nVidia's super tweeked OpenGL support. (BTW nVidia's drivers won't use DRI.)

Re:So my question for Nvidia Boosters is

[Anonymous Coward]

(BTW nVidia's drivers won't use DRI.)
I think you're mistaken about DRI. If nvidia don't utilise the Direct Rendering Infrastructure then they would have no direct access to the hardware on linux. In other words, they would have to fork the linux kernel to enable some other non-standard access. I doubt this is in their plans as it would necessitate that every customer using an nvidia board for linux would have to obtain a nvidia patch, then patch and recompile his kernel to get the intended use from the product. They would also face a storm of angry criticism from the community. At least I would hope so.

What the nvidia+va+sgi announcement said in fact was that the nvidia boards would not have to use Mesa. There will be an sgi certified OpenGL driver enabled by the DRI interface. There was no statement about how or when this would be made available.
The controversy is over the question of whether nvidia, who effectively refuse to let anyone else see to the maintenance of their DRI compatibility, will be as responsive to the evolution of that interface in the linux kernel as independent developers and open source enthusiasts would be. Since they have valinux and sgi in partnership with them, presumably the answer is yes, they could be. However, Linus has said that anyone who wants to go this way, ie "closed" wrt kernel interfaces, is completely on their own and will recieve neither aid nor comfort if they become incompatible to any degree. Without a clear policy like that, an important vendor, or in this case a coalition of vendors, could enjoy a certain leverage just by being incomptible with the canonical tree. Realistically, there is some worry as to how that will all work out over the longer term. This move is as close as anyone has ever come to making a proprietary Unix workstation product out of linux. Should that happen then you will hear widespread FUDding remarks of "Unix fragmentation now available for both the Linux platform and the VA-Linux platform" in the trade press. Only it will not be so easy to dismiss it as mere FUD. "I Can't Believe It's Not Linux" slogans for VA-Linux could be in our future. (Redhat 7 is not likely to bring these "tweaked OpenGL drivers" to you unless they pay some form of tribute to VA.)
And so I think nvidia should be pressured to become more open about their specs. Matrox and ati and 3dfx have all taken the pledge, at last, to be open. Encouraging nvidia to do otherwise is at best ethically ambiguous, and definitely backsliding, and maybe even risky. Some people really will do anything for a couple more fps in quake, though.

Re:So my question for Nvidia Boosters is

[be-fan]

There is a reason Matrox, ati and 3dfx have taken the pledge to be open. They are either tiny in the case of Matrox, or dying in the case of ATI and 3Dfx. A market leader has no real incentive to support Linux until it becomes big. And when it does, they still won't need to open the source. Corperate users really don't have the time/resources to hack a graphics driver. Second, I'm pretty sure the nVida GL will not use DRI. They made a statement that DRI was not exactly appropriate for their graphics pipelines. Most likely, it wil just be a patch to the kernel. I don't play Quake that often. I do, however, have a problem with not using my hardware to its 100% just because some OSS guys want their precious, divinly inspired idea to succeed. Hey, there is nothing ethically ambigious about my point. I could care less if their wasn't a single Open Source driver on Linux. You may, and I have nothing against that. I just want my hardware to work, and work at 100%.

Re:So my question for Nvidia Boosters is

[bfree]

You Dork!
I just want my hardware to work, and work at 100%.
How? Suppose kernel 2.4 appears tomorrow, how long before any updates required to the GF drivers are made? For each and every subsequent kernel update, would Nvidia bother fixing or optimising their driver? Will you be forced into choosing between the kernel you want or maximum graphics performance. If some of your other hardware requires an update for maximum performance.......... What about riva tnt support now? Will it be updated as the newest product is, or resigned to the scrapheap. Even if they open the source of a product when they consider it obsolete, a large amount of time would be required for the open source community to understand how the closed source developrs had worked, and how many hackers will be willing to plunge into a corporations source code for an "old" product? You can be sure that it will not be near as many as will attack the driver of the latest and greatest hardware.
You say you are happy with Nvidia's route, and wish to use your hardware 100%, but what about dvd acceleration, video output and inputs. When are Nvidia going to address these issues? Never! Someday a new piece of hardware will appear which they will develop a driver for to provide these functions, but you'll have to upgrade.
I hope you are a rich man, as you allegiance to a hardware manufacturer who is treating the open source movement with such disdain will see you spending vast amounts of money while you are frustrated by the choices closed from you by their lack of source distribution. In the meantime, those who can see beyond the surface and present case know that they will be best served by purchasing hardware which does not require propriety code. They will gain longterm stability, flexability and performance.

Re:FIRST POST!

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahahaha a true man who has read lots of OS design classes not to mention lots of software design classes....
:)

Of course

[pol-pot]

I think there has been a lot more rapid development this time. More resources/developers/changes...

This "kernel" stuff is just like the post office..

[chocolatetrumpet]

the mail's always coming in, and you gotta keep movin' it out... it's no wonder most of you people haven't gone in sane... or, have you all....

well I actually am an appreciative linux user :P

Stuff about kernel 2.4

[be-fan]

I think that those people running the dev kernels could enlighten us about a few things. (Those of use who don't use Linux or don't feel like DLing 12 megs of source and ripping out our current kernel.)
1) Is it an FASTER?
2) How is the stability? Since this is a pre release, it better be pretty stable. The 2.2.0pre series laster 10 kernels or so, so this is fairly close to release.
3) Any new features that would warrent upgrading (aside from the afformentioned speed/stability)
I also have another question. What kind of resource usage are we looking at in this kernel compared to the 2.2x series? I say this because I have yet to see a major OS vendor pull a Be and actually make an already memery efficiant systems use even less memory at the same time it added a bunch of features.

Re:Stuff about kernel 2.4

[PhilBrut]

I think that those people running the dev kernels could enlighten us about a few things. (Those of use who don't use Linux or don't feel like DLing 12 megs of source and ripping out our current kernel.)

You don't need to rip out your current kernel - I have 2.2.14 sitting around as a backup on some of my systems that run 2.3.

1) Is it an FASTER?

Visibly, especially if you have an SMP system.

2) How is the stability? Since this is a pre release, it better be pretty stable. The 2.2.0pre series laster 10 kernels or so, so this is fairly close to release.

I haven't had problems, although things newer than 2.3.48 have been unusable for me for various reasons (not stability related, though). YMWV (your mileage *will* vary), of course.

3) Any new features that would warrent upgrading (aside from the afformentioned speed/stability) I also have another question. What kind of resource usage are we looking at in this kernel compared to the 2.2x series? I say this because I have yet to see a major OS vendor pull a Be and actually make an already memery efficiant systems use even less memory at the same time it added a bunch of features.

The biggest non-speed related advantage is netfilter (a replacement for ipchains that's quite a bit more efficient). Everything else is for performace, scaleability, or both.

On the memory front, it's a mixed bag between taking up less memory or taking up more. The kernel marks more memory as unusable in 2.3 than 2.2 (dmesg indicates that that memory is where ACPI sits, even though I have ACPI disabled on the motherboard).

However, it certainly swaps less, even after several days of use.

WRT memory consider it to be about the same as 2.2.x.

Re:Stuff about kernel 2.4

[CentrX]

Just because it's a pre does not mean that it is stable at all. It merely means that there will be no more non-pending features added. In other words, the focus will be on making it stable, rather than on adding new features. Consequently, this pre/2.3.51 should not be expected to be any more stable than 2.3.50 or any other 2.3.x It is merely the beginning of making the kernel stable for 2.4

Chris Hagar

Re:Stuff about kernel 2.4

[Helge Hafting]

What kind of resource usage are we looking at in this kernel compared to the 2.2x series?

This is a good one. Many improvements use just a little more memory, but there was a big cut. The disk cache system is rewritten. It is faster, and will, under some circumstances, use half as much memory as usual. This gives more cache as well as more free memory.

I can't subscribe

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

I've been sending off subscribe messages every day or two for the last 3 weeks and I STILL haven't gotten a respone back from vger. What's going on?
--

Re:I can't subscribe

[Andreas Bombe]

Your email host is probably in the ORBS database of public relays (which are happily used by spammers to hide their traces). In this case vger ignores you. See http://www.orbs.org/ to find out if you're in the blacklist.

Thank you.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/boghoss ian/papers/SokalHoax.html

I can't see what that has to do with putting COM/DCOM in the Linux kernel (unless you're comparing COM/DCOM to Sokal's essay, and the Linux kernel to Social Text), but Sokal's experiment with Social Text was a terribly important event -- that's why virtually all knowledge of it has been supressed. It proves irrefutably, once and for all, that so-called "academia" is a scam. What these people print in their "scholarly journals" is pure gibberish. This obviously has profound implications, because it shows us how "evolution" and other pseudo-scientific superstitions came to be accepted: The papers on which it is based have long been known to be farragoes of lies, but now we have proven that they were written knowingly, and propagated by an academic community actively hostile to the truth. Even their own authors didn't believe them. Sokal shows us just how far the leftists will go to grab power and hold it.

For the past fifty years, the radical left had exerted something close to absolute dictator power in this country, and they've done it by following Orwell's dictum that he who controls information, controls the culture.

Thanks for trying to bring this to the attention of Slashdot. Everybody needs to know about this.

Re:Thank you.

[Compuser]

The notion of academia inludes both humanities and exact sciences. The hoax made it clear humanities are a subjective field, and their studies are indeed often gibberish dressed in jargon. BTW, there are lots of other pieces of evidence to that effect, such as the proliferation of quacks who claimed (and probably still do) that child abuse is pervasive and who implanted memories of child abuse in their patients. However, it is important to understand that the exact sciences are a much more rigorous field. A theoretical physicist may be able to publish gibberish but others will jump in to correct him. Most journals I know routinely publish replies to other people's work and most have established procedures for such peer review. Ultimately, theory gets verified by experiment. For an experimental physicist, it is possible to make the proverbial data generator and submit fake data, which is why important results are not considered verified until several people routinely see the same thing. It is preferred if people from different measurement types get data that agrees with one another. Also, people do go to other people's labs and inspect experimental setup directly. In fact, many fields are extremely paranoid about integrity and every little aspect of an important work will get scrutinized. In my view, academia and scholarly journals can be separated into two halves: those that speak math and those that don't. The publications of the latter half are not worth the paper they are written on, as Sokal's hoax showed so clearly. The former half however is driving force behind our society and is as real and reliable as the rest of the real world.

Re:Thank you.

[Anonymous Coward]

In my view, academia and scholarly journals can be separated into two halves: those that speak math and those that don't. The publications of the latter half are not worth the paper they are written on, as Sokal's hoax showed so clearly.

And as you have shown quite clearly, you're illiterate. No, hear me out! Sokol demonstrated that "postmodernism" is full of shit. Do you really think he was the first one to say that? No, it had been a common view in the humanities for a long, long time before that. And it really has very little bearing on anything but postmodernism. Do you write off biology because the "creation science" goons are full of shit? They call themselves biologists, right? Well, that settles it! Biology is full of shit!

It seems that you simply don't understand anything but "hard science" (which leads me to suspect that you don't grasp that either, since every hard-sci PhD and I've ever known, and most of the engineers, have had a real interest in the arts) -- and that's okay, but if you think that makes you uniquely qualified to judge everything but "hard science", you're just a nitwit. Read Nabokov's Lectures on Literature (have you ever even heard of Nabokov?!) before you tell me it's "not worth the paper it's printed on". Read Chomsky's writings on language before you write them off. Read Eliot's writings on literature before you write them off. If you haven't read those things, your pretensions to objectivity are a joke.

Furthermore, you go on with your laughable pretensions of objectivity to write off the entire field of psychology on the basis of one group of idiots, who have been under fire within that field for a long, long time. The human mind is a fuck of a lot more complicated than organic chemistry. We don't understand very much about it. Some people are trying. When they fuck up, nail 'em for it, but don't get all whiney and whimpery and write off the good work that some people have done just because others in the same field are boneheads.

Finally: There's nothing sadder than somebody who agrees with a blatant troll. Congratulations. The bottom line is that you're half-educated at best, and you try to bluff your way out of it by attacking the parts you missed. You're pathetic.

Re:Thank you.

[Compuser]

You have completely perverted my argument.
I said in essence that scholarly journals
only make sense for exact sciences. Sure,
people can write essays and studies in
humanities, some of those a given reader would
judge as good, but there is no cumulative
progress coming from them. People don't write
better literature because of some study, so
those studies are only of subjective interest.
For instance, yes I have read most of Nabokov
(though notably not Lolita). Indeed, unlike you
(presumably) I read his works in their native
language. Can you claim that he wrote better or
worse because of reading Belinsky's literary
critique? Would he have written better or worse
if he hadn't been exposed to Russian literary
tradition? What does better or worse mean?
Indeed, the last question is the important one
because without a clear definition of what is
good and what is not you can't have a scholarly
journal as Sokal's experiment showed. It makes
me laugh to think that a humanities journal
would have reviewers. To do what? What makes for
a good article? Once again, what does "good"
mean for humanities papers? Yes, I said
humanities not just postmodernism.
As for psychology: that field used to be all
speculation and no real science. I have read
a lot of Skinner and Freud and Young and a few
other big names and came away with a realization
that these people didn't know what they were
talking about. The only controlled experiment
up until middle of this century (AFAIK) was
Pavlov's dog. Only recently, with the advancement
of molecular-level techniques did psychology
evolve into a real science. Also MRI and related
techniques are helping a lot.
Biology became science with the advent of
genetics. Today, molecular biology is surely a
science.
I am not uniquely qualified to judge anything,
if by that you mean rendering a binding
universally true verdict. But I am qualified to
state my opinion. I do not like to be flamed,
especially by people who can't understand a
simple thesis and apparently love to quote
out of context.

Re:Thank you.

[Mike A.]

Though I agree with some of your points, I want to make one of my own...

It makes me laugh to think that a humanities journal would have reviewers. To do what? What makes for a good article? Once again, what does "good" mean for humanities papers? Yes, I said humanities not just postmodernism.

I don't see why a humanities journal shouldn't have reviewers, if only for the simple reason that it'd be silly to pull the top twelve papers off the incoming pile and call it a journal. Maybe the reviewers wouldn't necessarily play the same "objective" role that they do in a more technical journal, but no one that I know of (except the postmodernists, which was the point of Sokal's stunt) is making any such pretenses to "objectivity".

Re:Thank you.

[Compuser]

Well, so long as there is no claim to
objectivity or impartiality, I guess
having editors would represent added value.

What about Netfilter?

[Turmio]

Are they going to integrate the code for the Netfilter modules into Linux 2.4 or do people need to download/compile/install separate Netfilter modules if they want to do some NAT'ing? Somewhere I read that the Netfilter team goal is to get it into 2.4 but the current version (0.1.18) doesn't even compile with kernel 2.3.51 source. I guess they have to hurry up if we want to have NAT support out-of-the-box for 2.4...

Re:What about Netfilter?

[Paddi D.]

Most current version of netfilter is 0.90.4. It seems that they are currently meging the stuff into the kernel tree. The last kernel known to work with 0.90.4 ist 2.3.48 (2.3.49 can be made working with a patch from the netfilter list).

Re:THIS IS NOT NEWS FOR NERDS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shutup, mofo.

Heh, I don't even know why I'm wasting my time responding to this.

Nobody fucking cares, okay? -- Right, so shut up. Go read your CNN.

Firewall changes

[tilly]

One of the things that was a big headache for a lot of people going from 2.0 to 2.2 was firewalls.

Well one of the changes that people don't appear to be aware of was that it was completely rewritten again.

But relax, the new stuff was designed to be something to be easy to develop stuff on top of. So 2.4's firewall code will transparently work both like 2.2 and like 2.0 did, and there are hooks to do virtually anything you want.

But still if you want to find out what changed, wander on over to the Netfilter page.

Cheers,
Ben

Re:Firewall changes

[Anonymous Coward]

So 2.4's firewall code will transparently work both like 2.2 and like 2.0 did.

Yes--If. That is if you have installed Netfilter and configured it for backwards compatibility. Trying to run ipchains rules on 2.3.xx kernels will just return messages like "The use of Ipchains is not supported by this kernel." Enabling packet filtering (which is the replacement for ipchains according to the kernel menuconfig help file) isn't sufficient to allow ipchains to work transparently. Or it wasn't, ca. 2.3.42

I am just a user out there in TVLand, and I've been kind of hoping/petitioning certain sites like Linux.com to to run an article on transitioning from 2.2 ->2.4::ipchains -> netfilter+iptables. It would make a great newbie HOWTO for someone who's smarter than me. Which is an open invitation for lots of you geeks out there to show us how brilliant you are! So far i've just gotten polite refusals from the sites I've contacted.

Will the need to have firewalling for 2.3xx overcome my innate laziness and stupidity before some perspicacious, valiant soul writes a guide for the netfilter-perplexed? Lord I hope not. That shit be hard to read you know what I'm sayin'?. Will I be hacked meanwhile? (If you want know what it's like to be buggered with Comet cleanser lube, just try it.)

Re:Firewall changes

[kcarnold]

Last time I checked, netfilter was optional. You don't have to compile it in. This makes transition easier.

Re:Firewall changes

[UnknownSoldier]

> and I've been kind of hoping/petitioning certain sites like Linux.com to to run an article on transitioning from 2.2 ->2.4::ipchains -> netfilter+iptables

If you want a good starting walk through, you could start here. It doesn't answer all your netfilter setup questions, but it at least its a great start on Linux security:
http://www.ecst.csuchico.e du/~dranch/LINUX/TrinityOS.wri

You can find David Ranch's homepag here:
http://www.ecst.csuchic o.edu/~dranch/LINUX/index-linux.html

Cheers

but, are they going to fix the eepro100 driver?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since 2.2.10 the eepro100 driver has been broker then little walter who lives in the cardboard box on the corner. Its still even broken in 2.2.15pre series.

Version numbers...

[osu-neko]

The problem is, using the current version numbering scheme, it'll take forever to get to Linux 1776.0, which of course is when the revolution really begins. :) (Yes, I realize that was extremely US-centric, not to mention historically inaccurate...)

--

Re:Yippy

[Anonymous Coward]

Flamebait? Fscking flamebait? How the hell is "Yippy" flamebait? Whatever you're smoking, I want.

cdrom.comm is dead!

[Anonymous Coward]

can't find linux distro or kernels on cdrom.com
what happened?

Re:cdrom.comm is dead!

[Johnny O]

I believe that Slackware is now kept at ftp.freesoftware.com

It has all to do with all the Walnut Creek and the BSD merger stuff...
Johnny O

Re:THIS IS NOT NEWS FOR NERDS!

[Tuzanor]

If you don't care about Linux, and you don't know what XFree86 is, then what kind of nerd are you supposed to be? Tell us WHAT YOU would want to see on Slashdot. and if you don't want to hear stories on certain subjects, there are ways of moderating them down in the preferences, so stop whining. If you don't like it, go someplace else. yeesh

Ultra DMA 66 Support?

[Rahoule]

In the documentation on Corel's Linux website, they mention that "UDMA66 support" will not be available until the "2.4 kernel."

Does anyone know if this means Linux 2.4 will be the first version with built-in support for Ultra DMA66 hard drives and (hopefully) up to four IDE buses like on the ABIT BE-6/BP-6/BX-6 motherboards?

Re:Ultra DMA 66 Support?

[RelliK]

2.4 will support UDMA/66
right now, you can get a patch for 2.2 kernels to support UDMA/66, but it's not part of the official kernel tree.
___

Re:Ultra DMA 66 Support?

[Logicon]

2.4 will be the first stable release with UDMA66 support included with the source. 2.3.x (I don't know what the earliest version that had it was) also has it included. There is also a patch for 2.2.x. Make sure to check the documentation there.

As for four IDE buses, yes, they will be supported. I've used both 2.2.14+patch and the 2.3.x with a Promise UDMA66 add-in controller along with the 2 controllers on my motherboard with no problems. The ABIT motherboards are also supported by the drivers.

Hope this helps =)

Re:Ultra DMA 66 Support?

[kcarnold]

There's a UDMA patch available for the 2.2 kernels. It's linked to in the UDMA mini-howto (see ldp.org). It's basically the same as what's going into 2.4 (aka, in 2.3 right now). However, I haven't had any luck getting it to work on my ABIT BE6.

Don't post flamebait

[DragonHawk]

OpenBSD has had full USB support for a few months now...

And MS-Windows 98 has had it for over a year. What is your point? This is a Linux article, talking about features in current Linux development is on-topic. Starting "My OS is better then your OS" flamewars is not.

Re:Don't post flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the point.

1) Windows sucks. So who cares how long it's had
USB support? _That_ was irrelevant.

2) OpenBSD and Linux are both open-source unix
clones. Similar enough for any USB references to be relevant. Windows is _not_ an open-source unix clone, and thus any references to USB support for W98 are irrelevant.

3) The original poster never pushed any platform.
All they said was that OBSD had USB support for a while. Where did you get this OS 'flamewars' bit from?

Re:Don't post flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were to post on an article about FreeBSD's SMP: "Yeah, but Linux has more finely grained locking, and now a multithreaded TCP/IP stack too!" it would be offtopic and probably be flamebait also. It is also true, but more appropriate for a Linux article (or a Linux vs. mumbleBSD article. Not that slashdot would ever post one of those, for obvious reasons).

Re:FIRST POST!

[anonymous cowerd]

> Windows is already at version 2000.

So what? I seem to remember reading somewhere about a 68000 version of Linux, which would be, like, 34 times cooler and more up-to-date.

But for really a unbeatable version number I don't see anybody anytime soon topping Google.

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

for nothing

[anonymous cowerd]

> Sokal's experiment with Social Text was a terribly important
> event -- that's why virtually all knowledge of it has been supressed.

Pure rubbish; it was not suppressed, but publicly trumpted in such obscure journals as Time Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. In fact, it got about a thousand times more press than such a childish stunt deserved.

> It proves irrefutably, once and for all, that so-called "academia" is a scam.

Basically Sokal's argument boils down to the hogpen notion that, "These here manuscripts is too durn hard for me to understand a word of em, so's they's got to be a bunch a crap!" Well, the terminology of sociology is complex and recondite, as what intellectual specialty's is not? But because a text in computer science, for example, looks like an explosion in an alphabet-soup factory, it doesn't necessarily follow that computer science is nothing but hot air, does it?

All Sokal's contemptible hoax proves is that social scientists can't trust a physicist to act in a collegial manner. Social scientists aren't supposed to know physics, any more than physicists are expected to know sociology, or psychology, or economics. The editors of Social Text trusted Sokal, who proceeded to take advantage of their trust to humiliate them in public for his own inane self-aggrandisement.

Well, they learned one thing, and that's not to trust one of those ill-dressed, ill-mannered, semi-illiterate geeks from the so-called "hard sciences" departments ever again. ("Hard science," by the way, is seriously mislabeled. Think about it, what's harder to model, the physical actions of inanimate objects or the behavior of masses of thinking persons?)

> For the past fifty years, the radical left had exerted something close
> to absolute dictator power in this country

Which country are you posting from? Which planet? Good God, what a load of shit. I swear, that's the stupidest thing I've read all week. How can you present an utter imbecility like this with a straight face?

Sincerely WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

Re:for nothing

[Mike A.]

Um, in the scientists, you aren't supposed to trust any old paper that someone submits. That's what peer review is. If the editors of Social Text had a handle on sociology, they'd have recognized Sokal's submission as the pile of bovine manure it was. They didn't. In their defense, however it seems that they didn't consider themselves a "refereed journal"; but why did they publish something they clearly didn't understand?

The real problem with the post you're responding to, I think, is trying to extrapolate the notion that the editors of Social Text demonstrably didn't have a clue what Sokal was saying (but published it anyway), to other fields and journals. You can't even reasonably extend it to other sociology journals -- if Sokal had submitted his little stunt to some other journal, they may well have recognized it for the nonsense it was. And to extend the results of the Social Text stunt to the field of biology and evolution is, of course, ludicrous.

I do agree with your impression of the fellow you're responding to. He's a right-wing twit - "Absolute dictator power" my ass. But just because the poster doesn't know what he's talking about doesn't mean that Sokal's stunt is insignificant. (Though I also agree that it was a stunt, and doesn't really qualify as a full-fledged experiment - for that, he'd have to have submitted it to a wider range of victims, just for starters.)

As an aside, the poster really should have read the actual article about the Sokal hoax...

Satan Sold Me A Taco...

[Anonymous Coward]

Better then midnight clerks at 7-11.. POLYESTER.NET/POSTOFFICE is your cyber Head-Shop e-Card humor center!@

Same applies

[CentrX]

If a person cannot figure out how to read and assimiliate the abundance of information regarding the downloading, configuration, and installation of either the Stable or Development kernels, what I said above still applies. If they can figure out how to do that, then they know how to compile and install a development kernel, and consequently, what I originally said would not apply to them anyway.

Chris Hagar

Re:Same applies

[C.Lee]

> If a person cannot figure out how to read and assimiliate the
abundance of information regarding the downloading, configuration, and
installation of either the Stable or Development kernels, what I said
above still applies. If they can figure out how to do that, then they
know how to compile and install a development kernel, and
consequently, what I originally said would not apply to them anyway.

Agreed. One should first understand the basics of downloading, configuring and installing the Stable or Development kernels before fooling around with them. People have to realize that fooling around with a Development kernel isn't some kind of game, and if you think it is, you've have no business messing with them.

Re:Is the LKML Public? -yup..

[*borktheork*]

The LKML is very high volume - you might want to look at the archives first. Another *EXCELLENT* site is Kernel Traffic, http://kt.opensrc.org, where the main topics are summed up each week. Do yourself a favour and start over there.

Reiserfs Concerns

[Laven]

Hans Reiser very recently posted the following in response to Linus pre-2.4 announcement. This announcement created a largish problem for reiserfs, as this implies a true feature-freeze when reiserfs is so close to 2.3.

I do hope Linus accepts this last minute reiserfs addition. This is one component that would be of great benefit to Linux.

http://marc.theai msgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=95276159801406&w=2
List: linux-kernel
Subject: Re: Linux-2.3.51, and the pre-2.4 series..(can reiserfs get in?)
From: Hans Reiser
Date: 2000-03-10 20:59:05

We now have a working port of reiserfs for 2.3.49, and I am not sure whether you consider us pending. Can reiserfs get in? Putting us in as an experimental file system until we are accepted by the community as known stable is just fine.
Our 2.2 version seems to be accepted by the users on our reiserfs mailing list as stable.

We'll port it to the new 2.3.51 starting immediately, the 2.3.49 version will hit our webserver in a few hours.

Sorry we tweaked longer than we should have, and created inconvenience for you.

Hans

Smile.

[Quintus]

I really don't see your point in your .sig "Hiroshima '45 Chernobyl '86 Windows '95". Surely any true blooded American redneck should be proud of these glorious defeats of, in order, the Japanese Importers (danged $#@$ car, no trucks), the Bears in the Woods (for not being Beers in the Woods)(*) and the Computer Hackers. Are you insulting our flag?

;-) ;-)

Please, no one take offense, not even (or perhaps especially, given the size of that gun) the American Far Right. ;-)

Please note that in the Real World (Patent Pending), both Chernobyl and, I suppose, (some of) Hiroshima/Nagasaki have my sympathy.

Who owns the patent to the Matrix, anyway?

Crypto support

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if they can just get the crypto support working, I might upgrade. The last working kerneli patch was for 2.2.13.

Yeah, yeah, I know about the export regulations. That's why the kerneli project is situated outside of the United States and is a separate project. Nonetheless, it would be nice if someone who is familiar with all the changes in the loop drivers would fix it to work with the newer kernel versions, ensuring that 2.2.13 encrypted FSes are compatable.

Re:Crypto support

[Spoing]

Now if they can just get the crypto support working, I might upgrade. The last working kerneli patch was for 2.2.13.

Agreed. Encryption support should be in the base kernel, and it's a pain that it can't be because of politics/paranoia. I've upgraded anyway to fiddle around with USB and the improved firewall support.

Does anyone want to comment on doing the modifications to a new kernel themselves? In general, does it require detailed knowledge of the kernel or is it mostly a cut-and-paste operation?

(Yes, I realize that it depends on the kernel...I'm interested in knowing the general case.

stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

the people who know how to do that shit (i.e. are familiar enough with devel tree) read LKML in the first place. Jesus Christ. Like a kernel developer is going to learn what's left to do from a slashdot link. I'd rather such a person not submit patches in the first place.

Try it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Download kernel 2.3.51 and give it a try! If it dont work then send a bug report to kernel people. A major improvment over 2.2, USB, UDMA(was this supported in 2.2?) great! I hope graphic card vendor other than 3dfx,3dlabs will add kernel-level support for direct direct rendering infrastructure(DRI :-) ). Great job all kernel hackers!

Re:Try it!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's no fucking use to me. I can't firewall my PC, so it's back to 2.2.14pre18 for me. (earlier dev kernels corrupted my filesystem)

I wish the netfilter people would pull their fingers out of their arses

when can we get a stable 2.3?

[ijx]

Going to 2.4 is all well and good (a wonderful accomplishment, don't get me wrong), but can we anticipate a stable 2.3, so some of us non-devel wusses out there in the world can get usb support on our machines? I'm frothing at the mouth at the thought of 2.4's full USB support, as well as all the networking goodies in store, but i'd like to see a stable 2.3 come out sometime soonish.

kinda creepy how we're moving into 2.4 when our latest stable kernel is 2.2.14.

-ijx.

Re:when can we get a stable 2.3?

[Anonymous Coward]

A stable 2.3 would be an oxymoron as the versions with uneven minor numbers are per difinition UNstable.

Re:when can we get a stable 2.3?

[RelliK]

This question does not make any sence. 2.3 is a development tree (much like 2.1). 2.2 and 2.4 are the stable trees.

By convention, Linux kernels with the odd minor number (as in 2.1, 2.3, etc.) are development kernels (read: not stable, constantly changing). Kernels with even minor number (as in 2.0, 2.2, etc.) are stable (only changed due to bug fixes). So the "stable 2.3" is 2.4.

___

Re:THIS IS NOT NEWS FOR NERDS!

[acb]

If you don't care about Linux, and you don't know what XFree86 is, then what kind of nerd are you supposed to be? Tell us WHAT YOU would want to see on Slashdot.

News on Star Trek.

Re:THIS IS NOT NEWS FOR NERDS!

[C.Lee]

>If you don't care about Linux, and you don't know what XFree86 is,
>then what kind of nerd are you supposed to be? Tell us WHAT YOU would
>want to see on Slashdot.
> News on Star Trek.

The lastest news is that the Minbari has just declared a jihad against the Federation after Wesley Crusher somehow managed to appear on Mimbar...

Glimmers from the 2.4 Horizon

[a poor scribbler]

2.4 approach
Like axeman before sunrise,
Glimmering faintly.

Is the ia64 code in?

[Anonymous Coward]

How will it run on my quad Itanium notebook?

Heh. Caught you bluffing again. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

You really are illiterate.

From The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1940) onward, Nabokov wrote all of his novels in English, which he learned in childhood. IIRC he learned to read English before he learned to read Russian. The novels he wrote in Europe were written in Russian, but he translated them into English himself, frequently revising heavily. IIRC the only one that didn't get much revision in the translation stage was King, Queen, Knave.

You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Read Speak, Memory by Nabokov. You'll be able to bluff a lot better about the rest of it after you read that one.

I have read a lot of Skinner and Freud and Young and a few other big names and came away with a realization that these people didn't know what they were talking about.

So you read a smattering of work outside your field, and conclude that the authors "don't know what they're talking about". Would you trust Skinner's opinion of a physics paper? Best of all, you go on from this non-sequitur to conclude that other authors you haven't read have nothing to offer either.

You are expressing an essentially religious belief here. You have few relevant facts, and your "logic" is a mass of blind generalizations and leaps of faith.

Re:Heh. Caught you bluffing again. :)

[Compuser]

I do not want to get into a discussion of
Nabokov, mainly because it is not my field.
Nonetheless, Sirin's important works,
e.g. Mashen'ka, Invitation to Execution and
Luzhin's Defense were written in Russian.
True, he translated his own works into English,
but the original writings were in Russian and
from what I understand, bear an imprint of
Russian literary style even in translation.
Some writings, like Camera Obscura were rewritten
to a larger extent such that even its name
cannot be recognized in English translation,
("Laughter in the Dark"). Incidentally, Nabokov
also wrote in French.
Nabokov himself made the point I was trying to
make when he said: "Desperate Russian critics,
trying hard to find an Influence and to pigeonhole
my own novels, have once or twice linked me up
with Gogol, but when they looked again I had
untied the knots and the box was empty."
This is a specific case of denial of cumulative
progress in humanities. It doesn't make
humanities less valuable but it makes the
humanities side of "academia" and "scholarly
journals" pointless.
As for psychology, it's major goal as a science
is to be able to tell what a given person would
do if put in a particular situation, and to be
able to guide or direct a given person toward a
given set of responses. So far neither goal has
been achieved or even approached from a promising
direction. Freud for instance was quick to
acknoledge that his "models" were only useful
so long as we didn't have detailed understanding
of how brain works. In other words, they weren't
useful. And precisely because these people
didn't have an idea of how the brain worked on
a molecular level, they did not know what they
were talking about, by definition. This applies
to all people in the field, who do not study
brain structure. It is important to realize that
people who study human behavior, without studying
the chemistry and physics of it are basically
wasting time.
I think Skinner's opinion of a typical physics
paper might have been: "I don't get it". I would
trust that statement. However I resent the idea
that only professionals in the field can judge
the fields state of progress. Anyone who spends
several months seriously studying the field
should be able to express their own opinion
and expect it to be respected.
Finally, calling science a religion is not new.
During the French revolution, a bunch of psychos
governing the country, proclaimed Reason their
god. Any belief can be called religious.
I certainly beleive that the world we perceive can
be understood in terms of fundamental physical
laws, expressed in the language of mathematics.
This belief is not a dogma, but so far, there is
no counter-example.

Nope

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

Nope, that's not it. I even went so far as to check ALL the MX records for my ISP's domain and none of them are in ORBS. Any other ideas?
--

Curious (Was Re:emu10k1 sources from creative)

[tweek]

Do you have to load the soundcore module first in debian? Just a bit curious. Basically I added this to my /etc/conf.modules

alias sound soundcore
post-install sound insmod emu10k1

And my sound starts up fine. I would like to look at that script though cause right now I just load gmix when I start X and it restores settings just fine but it would be nice to have it done after the module is loaded.

Re:Curious (Was Re:emu10k1 sources from creative)

[kcarnold]

1. All changes to /etc/conf.modules get wiped out when you do a update-modules (some package installations may do that, possibly the kerenel package; I don't know). Make all local changes in /etc/modutils/(whatever file is appropriate). It does what is equivalent to a run-parts in that directory, except it filters by architecture. 2. Depmod should handle all module dependancies, and when modprobe comes and loads the sound module, it'll see the dependancy, and automagically load the depended-on module first. Instead, in /etc/modutils/aliases: alias sound emu10k1 and in /etc/modules (this does not get update-modules-ized AFAIK): sound And you should be set. 3. See the other response to my comment for a real Debian package that does the same thing as my script.

Re: stable 2.3

[CentrX]

All minor-odd numbered kernels are designated Development, a tree where new features can be added to the kernel without sacrificing stability. All minor-even numbered kernels are designated Stable. Consequently, by the very definition of the numbering of Linux kernel's, a 2.3.x kernel cannot be Stable.

Regardless, the very process by which one would make the 2.3 kernel stable would produce a kernel for the 2.4 kernel tree, and consequently be a Stable kernel.

If all you want is USB support, there are patches to add USB support to the current Stable kernel, if you just look around for them.

Chris Hagar

Inclusion of Kernels

[cybergremlin]

Does anyone know what kernel is likely to be in Red Hat 6.2? What about other upcoming distros? What Version of Xfree is likely to be included?

oops

[kcarnold]

I hit Enter to go to the next line, and !#$!#ing IE thought I obviously meant to Submit.

Here:

1. All changes to /etc/conf.modules get wiped out when you do a update-modules (some package installations may do that, possibly the kerenel package; I don't know). Make all local changes in /etc/modutils/(whatever file is appropriate). It does what is equivalent to a run-parts in that directory, except it filters by architecture.

2. Depmod should handle all module dependancies, and when modprobe comes and loads the sound module, it'll see the dependancy, and automagically load the depended-on module first. Instead, in /etc/modutils/aliases: alias sound emu10k1 and in /etc/modules (this does not get update-modules-ized AFAIK): sound And you should be set.

3. See the other response to my comment for a real Debian package that does the same thing as my script.

Kenneth

PS - And I didn't mean to make it Score +1 either.

Results

[kcarnold]

From actually doing what I have described in this subthread, I have found that it is probably best to use a post-install anyway, but for a different purpose. Here's some short excerpts of my conffiles:

/etc/modutils/emu10k1:

post-install /etc/init.d/sound start
pre-remove /etc/init.d/sound stop

/etc/modutils/aliases:

[snip]
alias sound emu10k1
alias char-major-14 emu10k1

In the above, /etc/init.d/sound is my little sound setting saver script. Replace as necessary for whatever script you use (but I do recommend some sort of script; it can get pretty annoying when you set your sound volumes just right, quit your mixer, and your sound module unloads a minute later and when you play some music it blasts your ears out).

I needed to alias char-major-14 (/dev/dsp* etc.) because kmod doesn't automatically modprobe sound. Or does it? Anyway, mpg123 says "can't open /dev/dsp*", so I had to do that.

Email me if you don't have an appropriate script and want one that some 14-year-old hacker [me] put together in 30 seconds.