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Linux 2.2.15 Released
Fluid Donkey was the first of many to let us know that kernel 2.2.15 has come down the wire. It's a fairly large patch (just over a meg), but it contains many updates, including support for Intelligent Input/Output (I20) devices. You can find it in the usual places. (ftp.<two-letter-country-code>.kernel.org if you forgot)
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Most of the changes in 2.2.15 were actually back-ported from the 2.3 series kernels. For example, I helped Kai with some changes to the 2.3 series tape driver, and those changes have been backported to the 2.2.x series kernels (but not in time for 2.2.15, sigh... maybe 2.2.16).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Red Hat release a new version every 6 months...usually April and October. Every year it's been like this. So...don't grab the latest release in September either. :)
Well, there were 20 prereleases. And Alan's diary did note that he had sent a 2.2.15 to Linus. And there was already a 16pre1 out there. A bit more checking and you wouldn't have had this problem. Oh well, it's fun anyway, right? :)
I have always wondered what it is and what it does?
Well, since you don't want to take the 5 seconds on Google to search for "i2o", I did it for you.
Check out www.i2osig.org, or go straight to their Q&A section.
More importantly would it give me any speed improvements on an IDE system?
I'd guess it might, if you had an I2O IDE controller. Check out this list of products.
2. Why are additions being thrown in? Are they at least defaulted to "N"?
I would assume they default to "N" (most things do) but I can't swear to that.
As for the why - they are being thrown in because people wish them to be thrown in, and because it pleases the benevolent lord of the 2.2 kernel, Alan Cox, to grant these people their wish.
Seriously though - the additions being "thrown in" are device drivers, for devices that didn't exist when 2.2 was released. People own these devices and need to use them - you can't just tell them to use a dev kernel, or wait for 2.4. You need to implement these drivers as quickly as possible, test them hard (2.2.15 had about 20 -pre versions before this final release, you know), and then get them out there!
I suppose you could adopt a "bug fixes only" attitude towards changes in the stable major version, but you would really really need to have much more frequent major releases for that to make sense.
They therefore created "water++", or I2O, to fix the problem. I2O is "virtual water", and provides all the liquid refreshment your PC requires.
Unfortunately, some motherboards don't have the necessary aqueducts to support I2O. In these cases, it is necessary to install suitable drivers who can run taxi services to and from the I2O manufacuring plants.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
(This comments are from my severely coffee deprived brain, so it might be wrong on a few points).
I believe DPT got stung with some of the code that was used because they got part of it from the I20 orginization and it has be be kept seperate from the kernel due to licencing issues. But, there has been quite a bit of work being done to get the I20 drivers in the kernel to run the DPT cards, and thus you wont have to use the one provided by DPT.
I haven't look into it for a while, I'll guess I'll have to revisit it now.
Actually, yes. I installed Linux from a single CD on my Sparc 4, Sparc 20 and an Ultra Enterprise 4000. The kernel has had support for the starfire for some time, too, although they wouldn't let me near ours with a Linux CD :-( Oh, and the same kernel image can be used on sun4c machines, too, which is more than can be said for Solaris. That said Solaris does currently scale better than Linux.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I'm upgrading after trying out a DoS I found from (packetstorm I believe) on a friend's 2.2.14 machine, and royally pissing him off in the process. :)
the real at&t mix
Clickitty click.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Your too busy to compile a new kernel yet you find time to read slashdot and post comments?
;)
I'd rather use windows then linux 2.0.x
I have always wondered what it is and what it does? More importantly would it give me any speed improvements on an IDE system?
You don't exist. Go away. --SysVinit Halt
As usual, everyone loves to complain that they just installed the previous kernel when a new one comes out. Here's the solution: download patch, apply patch, make config, compile, vi lilo.conf, shutdown -r now. It takes all of an hour. It's not hard. Stop your bitching.
> 1. This won't make it into potato/frozen.
Most likely not. That's a vital component of a system, and the Debian folks are not going to put a shiny new kernel release into a frozen release that they're in the final testing phases of. Besides, (and you may get differing views on this), as a standard rule of thumb, the first thing you do after installing a system should always be to compile a fresh kernel. I expect the vast majority of Debian users do this as a rule.
> (By the way, what does it take to get Slashdot to notice a story you submit? I :P
> submitted close to 9 stories as an "Anonymous Coward", 3 as Fervent (I was the first
> to make mention of the Limp Biskit-Napster support thing) but no mention of my
> name on the front page. Is Commander Taco some kind of malevolent dictator?)
Haven't you heard? Before being processed, submitted stories are uploaded to a nearby windows workstation and stored in the Windows Registry. As everyone knows, the recovery rate for information stored in the Windows Registry is 1 out of 5. Next time, to account for this try submitting the same story 68 different times under different usernames. I think there's something about this procedure in the FAQ...
i20 drivers are in FreeBSD SNAP 128 and greater. Although they are there, and seem to be pretty stable, they still lack many features; no CDROM support and some bugs.
Linux O Muerte!
seriously, one of the reasons that linux is great is that there is a good amount of maintinance and increasing stability in the 2.0 series... (that's why this is flamebait!!!)
NT 3.5 is still used in a few places because of security probs in 4.0. I know a few ppl who wish it was maintained as well as linux 2.0. now don't make me make another microsoft comparison again!
Uh... Alan Cox (maybe you've heard of him) is the one who coordinates the 2.2 maintenance releases.
For people who can't afford the random breakage that crops up with 2.3.x on their production machines, it's pretty important for bugs to continue to be fixed in the 2.2 series. Also backporting new drivers is pretty nice.
I know you're going to say "2.3.whatever is totally stable for me" but you probably can afford the risk of downtime. Also high loads seem to uncover bugs that most desktop users don't see.
Even more clueless users can be found on Borland's Kylix newsgroups. It's quite amusing to read the baffled Windows coders asking questions like:
:)
"What do you mean Kylix won't support DDE!? How else can we make apps communicate?!" and "I've never seen a Linux DLL, what about you?"
I got a good laugh on an otherwise depressing day after reading that stuff
Every damn piece of wackyness is turned off by default in this kernel, just the way I like it. About time things stoped getting defaulted on just cause they were some developers baby.
On a lighter note, I went and bought the "Linux Core Kernel Comentary." I think this makes me a slashwhore, for running out to by it right after reading the review.
But it means that I will hopefully be adding to the kernel by the fall. Will you?
---
"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Cheers.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
-snip-
Package: kernel-image-2.2.15
Version: 2.2.15pre20-1
-snip-
The pre20 is already there. I guess we will include the real 2.2.15 there two.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
The regular maintainers work on this. It is commonplace for chages made in the development branch (currently 2.3.x) to be "rolled" back into the stable branch (currently 2.2.x). Generally, only those changes that have been in 2.3.x for a while, and are considered "safe" will ever see 2.2.x. Bug fixes just get merged in, since they don't shake things up too badly. New functionality (read: drivers) will probably be marked experimental.
When I say "Darling, guess what! Kernel 2.2.15 was just released hours ago and here we are still running 2.2.14!"
How many people have upgraded software on the sole basis that the new version includes Hungarian support (Besides the Hungarians out there)?
There are actually a large number of us.kernel.org's. (Do an nslookup on it, I count 25+ currently.) They are all independent mirrors that have the same directory structure, or at least /pub/linux.
You were probably unlucky and got one of the slow mirrors. Others may have gotten an updated one.
Check out http://people.redhat.com/mingo/raid-pa tches/ and get raid-2.2.15-A0
Actually, the decimal system specifies a single decimal point!
It's the morons that started the assanine idea that multiple decimal points belong in any kind of nomenclature thaqt are responsible for the confusion. "Best practices" is a zillion industries for a century or more have recognized the danger of using the decimal point as a saparator.
Dashes are the traditional separator character choice where there needs to be a division for convenience: take phone numbers, for example, or the vast majority of part numbering schemes out there.
[FLAME ON]BTW, this "cool, it's like the net" crud of using dots as separators in phone numbers is garbage. Although most people don't know it, there is a correct and standard way to write phone numbers: the IDDD standard, which specifies a leading + followed by country code ("1" for the US, Canada, and the Carribean) and phone number, separated into groups with dashes by whatever convention prevails in that country.[FLAME OFF]
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
I wish they'd use a scheme like 2.2.009 instead of 2.2.9.
When looking through FTP, and trying to find the latest release, it's REALLY annoying to have to look through the whole list to find it. The newest, 1.2.17 is actually quite a bit higher on the list than 1.2.6.
If the project was named 1.2.017 and 1.2.006, we wouldn't have this problem. We would, however run into a problem of only allowing 1000 releases per minor version number, but why REALLY wants to see more than 1000 releases before a new version comes out?
OK, so I finally decide to upgrade my 2.2.10 kernel to 2.2.14 to fix a bug with my ethernet card stalling. And what happens, not 3 hours after I reboot into 2.2.14? They release 2.2.15!
Sometimes I think I have worse timing than the Debian maintainers. (ducks)
http://www.linux.org.uk/VERSION/ relnotes.2211.html
http://www.linux.org.uk/VERSION/ relnotes.2212.html
http://www.linux.org.uk/VERSION/ relnotes.2213.html
http://www.linux.org.uk/VERSION/ relnotes.2214.html
Do you see the pattern here ? The changelog for 2.2.15 will most likely be available at:
http://www.linux.org.uk/VERSION/ relnotes.2215.html
Be patient, have fun :-)
RFC1925
That wouldn't work especially well for a distribution that keeps its kernel image in /boot/vmlinuz instead of /vmlinuz.
--
No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
This is a bit offtopic, as fr THIS version of kernel. I have patched kernel 2.2.13 to 2.2.14 and recompiled it. During the config, (used menuconfig) I noticed there was no etherteam16i module anymore?! When was that discontinued?
Also, where on earth can I find a list of changes between kernel versions? I mean, some changelog?
Thanks in advance!
Sigged!
Luckykaa wrote:
"Most people upgrade based on the assumption that any 0.0.01 improvement must be a huge difference.
I still use a 2.2.9 kernel because I can't quite stop feeling that kernel 2.2.15 should come halfway between 2.2.1 and 2.2.2"
I respond No!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Don't give into the Microsoft numbering scheme. They screwed EVERYTHING up!
They numbered updates to Dos 6.2 as 6.21 and 6.22. That is INCORRECT. The correct numbering scheme is 6.2.1 or 6.2.2. Why? Because 21 is 2 + 19, not 2+1. 2 + less than one would be 2.x, like 2.1, 2.2, etc.
That is how a decimal system works. Microsoft choose the other because it "looks right"
However, by that logic, the upgade path allows Major and Minor X.Y and upgrades off that are tricky... X.YZZZZ However, that means that you can ONLY have 10 minor upgrades per major upgrade, and only 10 patches off that.
That is CLEARLY a bad design. Especially because the correct idea:
Major.Minor.Minor-Minor.Minor-Minor-Minor etc., etc.
Allows infinite numbers of fixes. Within a single major release (Linux 2) you can have as many minor releases (2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, and so on, BEYOND 2.9.) Also, it means taht you can have updates on the minor ones.
Your warped numbered scheme means that you CANNOT go beyond 2.2.9. I mean, 2.2.15 is the 15th revision of the 2.2 Major/Minor combo. Each portion between the decimal points is an integer, not the decimal part.
Alex
I've found this site to be helpful. It's geared towards the PowerPC Linux distros, but should be applicable for almost anyone.
John
generally your news stories have already been submitted about 1x times before you submit yours. Most of the time, they'll post news articles that are well written, and (of course) timely. Don't get miffed if your news piece doesn't make it. Most don't.
:)
Anyway - as far as upgrading your kernel. The best way to learn is to read the kernel HOWTO. It's a pretty good document, if not slightly antequated. It should be included in the dox on your box. If not...you can find it linked to at linux.org - Just make sure to keep a bootable backup copy of your old kernel ready to go just in case something doesn't work right. - or you just plain fuck it up
Happy kernel hacking!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
In other words, you can't wait till 2002. Me either.
ZDnet ran an article on how the 2.4 Kernel release was pushed back. Of course if you look at the talkbacks all the windows zealots jumped all over it, because for once it wasn't Microsoft pushing back the date. Some even called it vaporware. (If you think people who post on Slashdot are clueless take a look at the comments here.)
They misunderestimated me. -- George W. Bush
...but I found it on ca.kernel.org in both full source and patch form.
(By the way, what does it take to get Slashdot to notice a story you submit? I submitted close to 9 stories as an "Anonymous Coward", 3 as Fervent (I was the first to make mention of the Limp Biskit-Napster support thing) but no mention of my name on the front page. Is Commander Taco some kind of malevolent dictator?) :P
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.