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Linux 2.4.3 Released

Joel Rowbottom writes "Kernel 2.4.3 is out, time to thrash those mirrors kids!" Download, Compile, Reboot, Repeat. If anyone has linkage to changelogs or something, please post them in the comments. I've been reliably running 2.4.x on a few boxes and loving it. Both X and my DVD drive both thank the kernel hackers.

27 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. take off every 'grammar' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3
    Both X and my DVD drive both thank the kernel hackers.
    All your English are belong to us?
  2. Re:Automatic Stanford Checker? by Stormie · · Score: 5

    Does anybody know what the Automatic Stanford Checker is?

    Seems that some guys at Stanford wrote some programs to scan the kernel source for various potential bugs, so that the maintainers could check them out. Here are some examples from Junfeng Yang and Dawson Engler. If you search the LKML archives for "CHECKER", you'll surely find more.

  3. Its Different From Linus's Perspective by On+Lawn · · Score: 3

    Linus has repeatedly said one of his favorite parts of linux is that it is how he wants it to be. No commitee, no voting, etc...

    I think that if there was a CVS, Linus would still run a kernel based on how he liked it and wanted it, and incorporate from the CVS if he wanted to.

    Think of it from his position, he wrote it and people have been helping him this whole time. Even big corporations submit patches to him. Its the ultimate life, the valhala of programming.

    Nevertheless, Linus is actualy a nice guy. Even though he never admits it, and goes out of his way to disprove it, he actualy likes helping people. He's happy to see his operating system be of such great service to so many people around the world. So we usualy wind up getting what we want. In fact, its his ability to please 95% of the Linux users that has kept us from any forks.

    A few distributed managed based forks have started here and there, especialy for such special interests as PPC. It would be interesting if a CVS fork of linux would ever take off.


    ~^~~^~^^~~^

  4. More precisely by FreeUser · · Score: 3

    You are correct, and I was a little fast and loose with my terminology. The MPAA is in a strategic alliance with the DVD Forum. Both are engaged in legal thuggary against the Free Software community, with the DVD Forum leading the charge.

    While the Japanese Anime studios are not, in and of themselves, members of the MPAA (the MPAA is, after all, a consortium of American companies), they do pay royalties and fees to the DVD Forum to publish their material in that format, which fees do play a large part in financing the DVD Forum's attack on Free Software dvd players for Linux and other alternative OSes (including the arrest and detainment of a 15-year old Norwegian programmer).

    I cannot comment on what, if any, Japanese media consortia Anime producers may be a part of, or what, if any, stance they take on Free Software, but I can unequivocably say that, every time you purchase a DVD with any kind of motion picture content on it you are in fact helping to finance a large and very potent attack against the Free Software community.

    If you cannot forgo the immediate gratification of purchasing DVDs and similar consumer products despite the knowledge that doing so harms the very community you believe yourself to be a part of that is your perogative. However, it is disingenuous to use semantics to imply that purchasing a particular product (e.g. Anime DVDs) is not harmful to a particular movement (e.g. the Free Software movement), when in fact the opposite is true.

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
  5. On the other hand by FreeUser · · Score: 5

    ... if it is a slow news day I'd much rather have kernel 0.0.x releases announced than read some review of the latest anime release on DVD, the former which holds little interest for me and the latter which I have been actively boycotting for more than a year now (and I must say in light of the MPAA's implacable attack on Free Software authors and users over the last year, I find it profoundly depressing that a site which claims to be a forum for Free Software news and advocacy will, in effect, promote the products which help to finance such attacks, but that is a rant for another day).

    Which just goes to show there are numerous tastes and interests among slashdot readers, some of whome wait breathlessly for the next point release of any software.

    More seriously, these announcements are I think more relevant early on in the new kernel cycle as more fundamental fixes are typically included ... I would hope such stories would diminish about the time 2.4.11 is being released.

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
  6. Damn by Ravenscall · · Score: 4

    And I just got 2.4.2 running

    That, and Kernel 2.4.2 was just so industrial.

    Back to the noise.

    --
    You say you want a revolution....
  7. ATTENTION CMDRTACO! by Black+Perl · · Score: 4
    From now on, when you post a "new Kernel release" story, please include a link to the changelog. It's always a link on the homepage of kernel.org. Do not encourage karma whores.

    Thank you.

    --
    bp
  8. Re:Query to the 2.4.x users... by Kludge · · Score: 3

    Depends on what you're doing. On our server, 2.4 NFS is about twice as fast as 2.2 and our SCSI RAID disks are about 3 times as fast.

  9. changelog by robinjo · · Score: 4

    -final:
    - Kai Germaschewski: Makefile dependency fixes. ISDN update
    - Chris Mason: another reiserfs tail writing fix
    - unify pte/pmd allocation
    - undo some VIA PCI fixups - conflicting behaviour

    -pre8:
    - Paul Mackerras: PPC update for thread-safe page table handling
    - Ingo Molnar: x86 PAE update for thread-safe page table handling
    - Jeff Garzik: network driver updates, i810 rng driver, and
    "alloc_etherdev()" network driver insert race condition fix.
    - David Miller: UltraSparcIII update, network locking fixes
    - Al Viro: fix fs counts on mount failure

    -pre7:
    - more bugs found by the automatic stanford checker, yay!
    - Andrew Morton: fix SAK locking bugs by moving it into a process context
    - Johannes Erdfelt: USB updates
    - Jeff Garzik: merge Hermes driver by David Gibson
    - Jens Axboe: cdrom merges, ll_rw_blk proper accounting

    -pre6:
    - Jeff Garzik: network driver merge
    - Andrew Morton: fix missed page_table_lock unlock
    - David Miller: Qlogic,FC bufix, page allocation order problem.

    -pre5:
    - Rik van Riel and others: mm rw-semaphore (ps/top ok when swapping)
    - IDE: 256 sectors at a time is legal, but apparently confuses some
    drives. Max out at 255 sectors instead.
    - Petko Manolov: USB pegasus driver update
    - make the boottime memory map printout at least almost readable.
    - USB driver updates
    - pte_alloc()/pmd_alloc() need page_table_lock.

    -pre4:
    - Petr Vandrovec, Al Viro: dentry revalidation fixes
    - Stephen Tweedie / Manfred Spraul: kswapd and ptrace race
    - Neil Brown: nfsd/rpc/raid cleanups and fixes

    -pre3:
    - Alan Cox: continued merging
    - Urban Widmark: smbfs fix (d_add on already hashed dentry - no-no).
    - Andrew Morton: 3c59x update
    - Jeff Garzik: network driver cleanups and fixes
    - Gérard Roudier: sym-ncr drivers update
    - Jens Axboe: more loop cleanups and fixes
    - David Miller: sparc update, some networking fixes

    -pre2:
    - Jens Axboe: fix loop device deadlocks
    - Greg KH: USB updates
    - Alan Cox: continued merging
    - Tim Waugh: parport and documentation updates
    - Cort Dougan: PowerPC merge
    - Jeff Garzik: network driver updates
    - Justin Gibbs: new and much improved aic7xxx driver 6.1.5

    -pre1:
    - Chris Mason: reiserfs, another null bytes bug
    - Andrea Arkangeli: make SMP Athlon build
    - Alexander Zarochentcev: reiserfs directory fsync SMP locking fix
    - Jeff Garzik: PCI network driver updates
    - Alan Cox: continue merging
    - Ingo Molnar: fix RAID AUTORUN ioctl, scheduling improvements

  10. Scyld 2.2 kernel USB code not in 2.4? by leperjuice · · Score: 5
    I'm confused as to why Donald Becker's (creator of Beowulf and maintainer of a good number of the linux NIC drivers) USB code which was back-ported from 2.3 to 2.2 had not been "forward-ported" to 2.4.

    I ask this because one of the USB ethernet devices he supports (the CATC device) is not, as far as I can tell, included in the 2.4 kernel (although the pegasus USB-ethernet device is, but I'm not sure if that's his or not). Does anyone know why there is this split?

    See above for my obligatory Beowulf reference...

    --

    -- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"

  11. Re:Automatic Stanford Checker? by cowbutt · · Score: 5

    It's a set of extensions to gcc (g++, actually) which can be programmed to look for semantic, rather than syntactic flaws in code, automatically. The theory is that if a class of bug turns up once, it'll probably occur throughout a given codebase. More details at http://hands.stanford.edu/.

  12. For those still using 2.2.X by hardaker · · Score: 4

    It should be noted that 2.2.19 was also just released a few days ago.

    --
    The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
  13. Anime Companies are not MPAA Members by Valdrax · · Score: 3

    The MPAA is composed of all the major American movie studios. Japanese companies and the American companies that distribute anime (such as ADV Films, AnimEigo, etc.) are not members of the MPAA as far as I can tell.

    From http://www.mpaa.org/Press/DVD_FAQ.htm:

    What is the MPAA and who are the members?
    The MPAA is the trade association for the motion picture industry. The members of the MPAA are: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc. (The Walt Disney Co., Hollywood Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Miramax Films Corp.); Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, United Artists Pictures, Orion Pictures); Paramount Pictures Corporation; Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures); Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; Universal Studios, Inc.; and Warner Bros., a division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P.

    I don't see a single company that makes or distributes anime in there, unless you count Disney for "Princess Mononoke." If your real beef is with the DVD case, then buy your anime on VHS and be done with it. Don't go casting aspersions on the industry, though.

    I'm the president of an anime club at my college, and the commercial companies have been very, very nice to us about letting us show anime to people in our local theatre. Normally, to do a public showing for a movie, you don't contact the studio. They'll blow you off and send you to the distribution houses, such as SWANK or Critereon. Instead, you those distributors $50-200 for a copy of the movie licensed for public showing. Most commercial anime companies, however, are nice enough to grant permission to show their stuff for free. They realize that without fans, they wouldn't have jobs and will treat people right. These guys are the good guys. They aren't in a position to stick it to their customers and will attempt to please them as much as possible.

    --
    If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
  14. To those that contributed... by macdaddy · · Score: 3
    ...thanks. Many people get overlooked in the process of contributing to such a grand project, so let's not neglect to commend them for their efforts. All of us appreicate your what you do!

    No, I'm not whoring (karma whoring).

    --

  15. Oh My God by skware · · Score: 5

    now they are actively merging Alan Cox in to the kernel, so now we'll have one kernel with multiple personality disorder, instead of two with a singular personality disorder

  16. Re:Kernel Hackers by StorminNorman · · Score: 5

    I know he isn't a kernel hacker, but i use KDE as my primary desktop so...

    The other day, the games-sig of my local LUG (The Linux Gamers League) held a LAN here in Melbourne. One of the people that turned up, to my surprise at least, was Sirtaj Singh Khan, aka Taj, one of the KDE developers (he wrote KView, along with contributing code to various other parts of the KDE Project).

    I took the opportunity there and then to walk up to him, and to thank him for providing me with what (IMHO) is a better desktop system than some of the more commercial efforts out there. (and yes, i know that KDE has it's fair share of bugs, but i don't care. It works for me). He had a lot of interesting things to say about the future of KDE and where he thought that Linux should be going. I could quite happily have given up all the gaming that day, just for the 15-20 minutes that i got to speak with him.

    So, yes, if you ever get the opportunity to meet an author of the open source software you use, then say thank you, especially because these guys aren't getting paid to write this stuff.

    --
    life is a canvas/and the paint is hope and promise/the world is ours/no one can ever take it from us.
  17. Automatic Stanford Checker? by Tom7 · · Score: 3

    Does anybody know what the Automatic Stanford Checker is (mentioned in pre7)? Sounds intriguing..

  18. How complete is changelog? by andy@petdance.com · · Score: 3
    What concerns me is that the changelog is clearly incomplete.

    I only discovered know this because there's been a bug in drivers/scsi/megaraid.c since 2.4.0. Based on a kernel dev message, I've made the one-character patch locally, and all is well. I've checked 2.4.1 and 2.4.2 hoping that the patch would get into the standard distro.

    So today, even though there's no mention of megaraid.c in the changelog, I check a diff between my patched megaraid.c and the new one, and find that it might as well have been rewritten. Diffs galore, but there's no mention in the changelog.

    Maybe the changes are mentioned, but because I don't know who does what, I can't recognize them. What exactly does "Jens Axboe: more loop cleanups and fixes" cover, for example?

    I wonder how many other changes are in there that aren't mentioned in changelog?
    --

  19. Re:Adaptec's going to bury Linux support by shlong · · Score: 3

    You silly, silly person. I know that you're a troll, but I hate to see misinformation spread around.

    http://linux.adaptec.com

    --
    Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
  20. Re:aic7xxx: what's so good? by shlong · · Score: 4

    I know adaptec has taken over this driver, but what kind of improvements are in this kernel?

    1. Active maintainership by the vendor. The author of the previous driver is no longer maintaining it.
    2. More robust. This is not meant as a sleight again Doug. This driver has more bugs fixed. That's the one of the advantages of the previous point.
    3. True U160 support. The old driver only worked with some U160 configurations, and didn't support U160 transfers.
    4. Shared codebase with FreeBSD. This shouldn't surprise anyone, as Justin is a FreeBSD developer. And before you get your panties in a bunch, please remember that the old driver was a port of Justin's work.

    --
    Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
  21. The above troll is dying by CptnHarlock · · Score: 5
    There may be no future at all for the "??? is dying" troll because the "??? is dying" troll is dying. Things are looking very bad for "??? is dying" troll. As many of us are already aware, the "??? is dying" troll continues to lose market share; red ink flows like a river of blood.
    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    Troll leader Anonymous Coward states that there are 7000 users of "BSD is dying troll". How many users of "Red Hat is dying" are there? Let's see. The number of "BSD is dying" versus "Red Hat is dying" posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 "Red Hat is dying" trolls. "Mandrake is dying" troll on Usenet are about half of the volume of "Red Hat is dying" trolls. Therefore there are about 700 users of "Mandrake is dying" troll. A recent article put "Debian is dying" troll at about 80 percent of the Linux market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 "Debian is dying" trolls. This is consistent with the number of "Debian is dying" Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of www.hotgrits.org, abysmal sales and so on, "Debian is dying" troll went out of business and was taken over by "Mandrake is dying" troll who sell another troubled troll.

    Major marketing surveys show that "??? is dying" troll has steadily declined in market share. "??? is dying" troll is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at all it will be among troll hobbyists and dilettantes. "??? is dying" troll continue to falter. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all intents and purposes, "??? is dying" troll is dead.


    Get it through you thick head you boring troll!.. It's not funny nor is it fooling anyone.

    Cheers...
    --
    $HOME is where the .*shrc is

    --
    $HOME is where the .*shrc is
    -- silver_p
  22. Buslogic driver in 2.4.x (x 3) is messed up by martinde · · Score: 3

    If you've got a Buslogic BT948 or BT958, you want to update to kernel 2.4.3. It has fixes for a problem that have caused ext2fs problems for myself and others. I don't see this listed in the changelogs so I thought I would mention it.

  23. Kernel Hackers by tomknight · · Score: 3
    It just hit me, looking at the changelog (that soooo many people have thoughtfully posted here) how fantastic this whole open source actually is. How many of you guys and gals have every stiopped to think about that shitty bug that's always annoyed you, then been fixed. It's due to the hard work and effort of people working on the problem because they want to.

    Step back. Think about the effort that's gone into this product. Find some way to say thank you.

    Tom.

    --
    Oh arse
  24. Re:MIRROR by Diclophis · · Score: 3

    Is this all your girlies can hit me with COME ONNNNN I want to test my connection here... lets see this 'slashdot' effect allready...

  25. MIRROR by Diclophis · · Score: 5
  26. Now I can download a whole new kernel, go through the mess of installing it with weird hardware, and get no new features for what I'm running!

    Not to sound too cynical, but excitement over 0.0.1 upgrades is a little silly, considering that lots of people are still happily chugging away with 2.2, and 2.4 won't really help them.

    "Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."

    --

    IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
    And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
  27. Patch is your friend... by Xibby · · Score: 4

    Remember that if you allready have 2.4.0, 2.4.1, or 2.4.2 source, you don't need to download the full tarball, just the patches. Apply in order until your at the current version.

    cd /usr/src
    gzip -cd patchXX.gz | patch -p0
    or
    cd /usr/src
    bzip2 -dc patchXX.bz2 | patch -p0


    Oh, and access via http seems to be working better than ftp.

    --
    I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.