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Linux 2.4.0 Test2 Almost Ready for Prime Time
out of control sent us a quote from Linus from the kernel dev "There's a "test2" kernel out there now, integrating most of the -ac patches, and some code that wasn't in -ac.
Normally, when you integrate almost 5MB of patches, bad things happen.
This time, a miracle occurred. As I uploaded the resultant kernel, a
specter of the holy penguin appeared before me, and said "It is Good. It is Bugfree".
As if wanting to re-assure me that yes, it really =was= the holy penguin, it finally added "Do you have any Herring?" before fading out in a puff of holy penguin-smoke. Only a faint whiff of rancid fish remains as I type in these words..
In short, not only are most of Alan's patches integrated, I have it on
higher authority that the result is perfect.
So if it doesn't compile for you, you must be doing something wrong.
Use a mirror.
The very first response to Linus's post was someone who got compilation errors, and many other people responded with the same problem. Apparently gcc 2.7.2.3, which is listed in the docs as the recommended compiler, won't compile it. :)
The problem is in kernel/sched.c, which has
- __cache_line_aligned spinlock_t runqueue_lock = SPIN_UNLOCKED;
gcc 2.95.2 accepts that, but gcc 2.7.2.3 wants it to beGumbo
use /dev/shm (or /shm, or something else), instead of /var/shm. /var/shm could confuse utilities that don't expect a virtual filesystem in /var (discussed heavily on linux-kernel).
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
It's almost as if there's a bunch of geeks in Vegas betting on when each development release of what kernel will be released.
There are, and I just lost my shirt over this one. Now where will I hang my pocket protector?
The heart has reasons that reason does not understand. - Jacques Bènigne Bossuet
Of course Anonymous Cowards are the most humourous, most informed, most experienced users out there. It's the slashdot paradox. Uhh, yeah...
5 %2572%2535
You should see the cookies slashdot has placed on my machine to track me!
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Brian Seppanen
Minister of Information and Propaganda
Area 54 The Secret Government Disco Labs Provo
you might want to check joe pranevich's article on 2.4. its called "Wonderful world of Linux 2.4" and you can find it http://linuxtod ay.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2000-05-13-003-04-NW-L F-KN.
:)
i believe that udf support is added to 2.4. i dont believe that any journaling system (xfs/jfs/ext3/reiserfs) will make it into 2.4 but you can alway patch you kernel with reiserFS patch and get (imo) stable and fast journaling system.
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
The I/O problems are fixed in 2.4.0-test2, which is what the announcement is about. VM is still shaky (which has an impact on I/O, naturally), but that is not related to block I/O.
2.4.0-test2 contains a largely reworked I/O scheduling layer and several elevators to pick and choose from.
...unless the holy penguin was asking for RED herring.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Linux 2.4.0-pre alpha beta-open test 2.5 is almost ready for prime time, to be followed by Linux 2.4.0-pre alpha beta-open, test 2.6, up to pre alpha beta-open test X, which I'm sure will all have extensive coverage on Slashdot.
Has anyone ever noticed that Slashdot follows kernel releases like ESPN follows box scores? It's almost as if there's a bunch of geeks in Vegas betting on when each development release of what kernel will be released.
There was a bit of a head-to-head between the two memory patches; which one is in the test?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I knew Linus has a pretty big sense of humor, I now have some proof. Any reference known of the Holy Penguin before this README ?
Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too"
--- Bouh !!! ---
a journaling filesystem? (ext3 wasn't stable, last I checked, and SGI has been dragging their butt on xfs). Will the international kernel (the useful one with real crypto) debut at the same time as 2.4? NTFS write support yet? UDF write support for CDRWs? So what's new?
Hi,
/boot and shutdown -r now or are there any libraries or tools I need to upgrade as well? I've heard that the ipchains code has been rewritten (again?)... What about USB?
I've been sticking with 2.2(.16) until now, but if Holy Linux says it's perfect, I'd be willing to give 2.4 a try.
However, I have to ask: What other parts of the system have to be upgraded in order to make a smooth transition? Do I only have to compile the new kernel put it in
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
I've heard Linus claim that before. Either
:-)
:)
1) He's overconfident.
2) He's arrogant.
3) He's being funny.
I'd wager all three of them.
And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports on it, you know they are just evil lies.
-- Linus Torvalds
I kinda like that quote.
Ok, I got test2 running and benchmarked it.
:)
I get 5.5 MB/s read and 2.0 MB/s write on my four disk software RAID 5. I usually (with 2.2) get 18 and 12 respectively. It may of course well be the software RAID playing in here.
On an older (SCSI) disk I get 5.2 MB/s read and 3.9 MB/s write. This is pretty close to what I can expect from that disk. I guess this would indicate that it's only the semi-experimental software RAID-5 code that could need a little improvement.
On the positive side, the system doesn't freeze for 5 second periods while I benchmark it
It think it's safe to say that 2.4-test series are on the right track. There can't be many huge problems left, and the ones currently in the kernel doesn't keep people from testing - which is a very good thing.
...i speak as one of many when i say that the whole cdrom burning infrastructure is pretty thrashed, but recovering.
whether using scsi or atapi, on any distribution, and performing all the steps in the cdrom-writing howto, and using the lastest cdrecord, something is definately wrong.
prior to about 6-8 months ago, i had never made a coaster (unless i did something stupid).
lately, after a lot of kernel rebuilding and s/w updates, i have a debian install that is burning fairly solid.
still occasional kernel messages and lockups, or the scsi just disappears, requiring a reboot.
three machines, three distros, two different writers (1 scsi, 1 atapi), many updates and tests, and i'm down to about 1/10 coasters. a year ago, it was NO coasters.
cd writing is important to a lot of people. something went wrong in the s/w infrastructure for burning cdroms several months ago, and it has yet to totally recover.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Viro still holds a firm grip on the VFS, and refuses to make it stackable. Worse than that, the VFS has specific ext2 functionality built into it. It's a "virtual filesystem" as long as you can make your filesystem look and work like ext2.
Now there's a harebrained idea to add "generic" journaling functionality to the VFS. I assume this is so that when ext3 is finally ready, the VFS will support it well, and all other filesystems will have to then look like ext3.
Take a look at the enormous hacks the HFS and ReiserFS have had to make to work around Alexander Viro and his Virtual Ext2 Filesystem.
Microsoft make it nearly impossible to write new filesystems for Windows NT, because they want everyone to use NTFS. Viro's doing the same thing. So why is it tolerated in an open-source OS?
The reason 2.4 has no journaling filesystem is that there are roadblocks in place to keep it that way. Ext3 will be the first journaling filesystem in Linux. Not because it will be the first journaling filesystem, or the best, but because it will be the one properly supported by the VFS ("Viro File System").
The Reiser-Viro flame wars aside, the filesystem cartel is doing serious damage to Linux. Linux should have a generic, capable, stackable VFS that isn't tied to a specific filesystem, and doesn't provide special support for preferred filesystems.
Adding to the problem is that the VFS is very poorly documented. Changes are made without any foreshadowing. The best documentation available is the source code for the Ext2 filesystem. And that is sad.
Maybe Linus will intercede to provide a better VFS. Maybe the Stark Fist of Removal will pay Viro a visit.
This post is not meant as a flame. The VFS is a serious issue. Linux could have had a journaling filesystem by now.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Read the testimonials on the ReiserFS homepage.
A journaling filesystem is a very high profile Killer Feature. Having journaling in 2.4.0 would make Linux an even more obvious choice where data integrity is of paramount importance.
Lets start a grassroots movement to have ReiserFS merged with 2.4.0!
Yeah, Viro is known for this sort of shit. You should read Him on USENET.
Anyway, my biggest beef with Him currently is that He recently broke POSIX compliance in the filesystem by CHANGING symlink behavior. It's a very annoying change too.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
- They might trample on one another.
- Linus may accept Al Viro's changes, even when they involve changes of VFS design, but be reluctant to accept others' changes to VFS design.
Reiser has suggested that there's a "Red Hat" conspiracy; I don't believe that, but it is sure that there have been some disagreements between ReiserFS developers and Al Viro...I change this, you change that, we break each others' code.
This is different from device drivers, which are pretty independent of one another; the pervasive use of VFS in ext2 means that changes have to filter through someone in order for there to be hope of coherency.
Note that if Linus accepts changes from other people, as well as Al Viro, nothing stops Al from submitting patches that essentially reverse out others' changes in favor of his own. That would be not nice, to be sure.
The side-effect of "patch preferences" is that if Linus accepts changes preferentially, those that aren't preferred won't necessarily take this gracefully, and may decide that there's no point to trying to work on VFS if their efforts are doomed to be ignored.
The strong comments Hans Reiser has made indicate that he falls into the "won't take this gracefully" camp.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Shoot. That should be www.beunited.org. I'm a dumbass.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
that would involve members of the various *bsd cores acquiring a sense of humor...
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
I have a couple of questions for those using the test kernel. /dev and run a new copy of MAKEDEV?
A) By now being a virtual filesystem, has shared memory taken a performance hit? I was in an arguement with another guy in the Inferno post, and I still think that the overhead introduced by making shared memory filesystem based causes a performance hit.
B) What about DevFS? How are people going to upgrade to that? Do you just nuke
C) (Okay three questions) How's the performance? Some guy was saying that I/O is still terribly slow. I encountered I/O slowdowns (from 11.29MB/sec to 4.5MB/sec on my old harddrive as measured by hdparm) in dev kernels > 2.3.99-pre7, but have not encountered them in pre6 and below. Did something just break there?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
("beware, hostile .dk takeover on SlashDot!)"
Great....Danes.
Thank you! I'll be here all week! Try the veal! Tip your waitress!
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
And in other news, more fixes and features were added to Free|Net|OpenBSD last night, bringing them one step closer to their next release.
"I shoulda never sent a penguin out to do a daemon's work."
Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
The test series still have problems, notably with the VM and with I/O throughput.
For most people the test series perform _very_ poor compared to the 2.2 series when it comes to disk thoughput. 2.4-test is as slow as 1/5 of 2.2 for some.
But, 2.4-test is ready for testing. Definitely. Get the kernel, build it, run it, stress it. The developers need all the input they can get. If you have the time, then follow LKML from the archives (from kernelnotes.org or elsewhere), and respond with a benchmark/feedback every time a developer posts a patch.
The 2.4 series has a large number of optimizations over the 2.2 series, so most of the kernel should run a lot better than 2.2. But if your disk throughput is low and your kernel swaps unnecessarily, those other optimizations get you nowhere. AFAIK the only performance-related problems in 2.4-test is I/O and VM related. Once these are fixed, 2.4 is going to be the leanest kernel of them all.
No, no, no. It's the finnish pronunciation which is causing all the problem. Just as "Linus" is really pronounced "Leanus", "herring" is, in fact, "hearing". So the penguin, who obviously doesn't speak very good english, was merely asking if Linus had heard correctly.
Either that, or he was accusing him of whoring...
XOX DOM
Alexander Viro has simplified the VFS greatly during the 2.3 kernel cycle. Linux 2.4 has 37 filesystems integrated into the kernel, this was 28 in Linux 2.2. BUT the total line count of 2.4's fs code is down to 128 KLOCs, while its 166 KLOCs in 2.2! This simplification of the fs architecture is largely due to Alexander Viro's (and Linus') work. 35% more filesystems but 30% less total line count, this is a plain miracle.
ext2fs is 4874 lines in 2.4, 5548 lines in 2.2, a 13% reduction. So in fact, contrary to your assertion, ext2fs was one of the filesystems which saw a *much smaller than average* benefit of 2.4's VFS enhancements.
Hans (or whichever reiserfs developer you are), your whining is pityful. Trying to lobby your filesystem (which bears your name, now talk about being modest) by bashing another kernel hacker who has posted *so many* patches for the generic kernel while not adding even one copyright notice is just plain disgusting. Get a life Hans, when was the last time we saw *any* patch from you showing up on linux-fsdev or linux-kernel?
Thank you Alexander Viro for your contributions, your hard work is very much welcome. Ignore the vultures :-)
--Coke
I decided to try a 2.4 test kernel last night, but I had no idea which was current. I downloaded and tested 2.4 test2 without even realizing it was brand new.
On the down side to this, it wouldn't compile. However, I have't compiled akernel in a long time, and as Linus said, I'm probably doing something wrong.
YOu need to install Wine in order to be able to use windows biniaries, it isn't akernel thing. As a sidenote, not all probably will work, even with wine.
The Linus interview in Linux Magazine (Issue 1.1) makes a reference: "When a bug is found, Alan sends me a patch, and I sprinkle holy penguin pee on it, and it magically becomes official."
Not to be confused with 2.2.2pre4, the "Almost-valentines day", aka "horny greased weasel", aka "Presidents Day" release.
I have been runing test1 since it came out I has been perfectly stable. The only problem with my use is that the APM isn't working quite right, and USB is worth it. I'll have to try this, and hope that is addresses the APM. Oh yeah, And don't mix Maxtor and WD on the same IDE chain with this kernel. They have enabled UDMA, and some Westsern Digital drives chatter with Maxtors when that is on. You should be able to UDMA off in your BIOS. I had this problem, and it starts to errode your fs. Nothing I couldn't fix with apt of course. Right on Linus et al.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
The headline seemed to indicate that this release was "BugFree" and that "if it doesn't compile for you, you must be doing something wrong". Anyone with CS 101 experience knows that just because it compiles, doesn't mean that it's "BugFree".