Posted by
michael
on from the downloading-now dept.
Marek Kupsta writes: "Linux 2.4.4 is out! Go get it! =)" Check the Changelog. As I write this, the bandwidth meter on kernel.org says 34.4 MBit/s.
127 comments
Re:Since the article doesn't mention them so...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1
Anyone who has the intellect to compile a new linux kernel had really ought to be able to figure out how to get to the official site from which to download the source of said kernel. You, my rubber-bedecked fellow, are simply a karma whore.
Re:Isn't it going too fast?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1
let me guess... you're a democrat
My guess
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1
Within 5 days of 2.4.5 being released we'll see 2.5.0
Re:Joystick version?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1
It contains _parts_ of the input suite (usb, adb, joysticks) .
Packet Dropping
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1
You dont get the maximum speed because your ISP sends firmware updates to your modem which programs it to drop packets if they come in/go out faster then a certain rate. The whole thing relies on the fact that TCP/IP detects packet loss and re-adjusts the transmit rate until the packet loss is reduced.
It's not the most "elegant" solution but it works, and hopefully the packet loss method will be replaced with some kind of ECN based solution in the future.
Incidently, this is also the reason why ping times are much lower on cable modems, because the ping packet is small it goes down the cable at full speed.
You can try this out for yourself with three machines, some ethernet and the traffic shaper in the kernel.
Actually, I have DSL at home, work, and a friend's house. All are faster than comcast@home in SoCal.
DSL: 15-30ms to first hop.
Cable: 60-150 to first hop.
-- There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
Re:swap fixes?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1
yes, the latest and greatest swap-speedup patch is included in 2.4.4-final.
Re:Comments by the coders...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1
This is the funniest shit I've read in a long time.
It's a good thing Microsoft doesn't release it's source code. The same thing might result in a memory overflow or something...
Re:Corrupted people want to know...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3
- Alan Cox: syncup (AFFS might even work, and official VIA workarounds)
^-- That might be it.
zero copy networking!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5
This release includes zero-copy networking, I think (from Dave Miller). Has anyone tried it yet?
It also includes the official IPtables FTP MASQ security fix, which is good. Time to upgrade...;-)
Corrupted people want to know...
by
Mike+Hicks
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· Score: 4
Are there any significant updates to the VIA chipset code that can help prevent people with 586b and 686b southbridges from corrupting the data on their hard drives? --
It's in, in the Filesystem support, as a "Virtual Filesystem."
--
WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
--
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Yer missing the middle layer.
by
cduffy
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· Score: 2
Almost no applications (shells included) interface directly with the kernel. Rather, they make calls to the standard C library, which then interfaces to the kernel. Replace one C library with another (with different kernel backends and the same interfaces) and everything works as it should.
In this manner, a standard compatibility layer is provided, and most apps become fairly portable.
Answering you more directly...
by
cduffy
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· Score: 2
What is the real difference between a shell and an application that looks like a shell?
None. The shell is simply a particular class of application. If it looks like a shell and quacks like a shell, it's a shell.
Does anyone know if the swap fixes listed at http://lwn.net/2001/0426/a/swap-speedup2.php3 were included? I've been seeing some really bad blocking, and I don't see this in the changelog.
Install this on your system, change to/usr/src/redhat/SPECS/ (or wherever is appropriate for your distro), and do rpm -bb memtest86.spec. This will generate a memtest RPM in/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/ (or again, wherever...). Installing this rpm will set up a memtest entry in your lilo.conf -- very handy. We do this by default for all of our installs at Boston University.
Re:Distributed Download Mirror
by
Zooko
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· Score: 2
Coool.
Nice one, Orasis! Hopefully someone will be quick enough to mirror the next release on Mojo Nation as well.
I'm looking forward to the imminent open-sourcing of Swarmcast. I think that the emergent ("p2p") networks are maturing enough that we will start trying to link them together soon. Perhaps the second O'Reilly p2p conference will spark some work in that direction...
Regards,
Zooko
Re:Questions and Observations about 2.4.4
by
Mihg
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· Score: 5
Short answer: No
Slightly longer answer: Adding ACL support to the kernel would require large-scale changes to the entire VFS, as well as the individual filesystems. This isn't going to happen in a stable kernel series. IIRC, this is one of the major goals for the 2.5 development cycle (along with generic extended atributes and maybe named streams), so the ACL support introduced in 2.5 may be backported to 2.4 (but that would be up to Alan Cox).
Although patches currently exist to add extended attributes and ACL support to the current VFS, I don't think that the kernel gods are entirely happy with its architecture. (This has been a frequent topic on the linux-fsdevel list.)
Re:Don't upgrade if you don't have to
by
Mihg
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· Score: 5
2.4.3 does have serious issues.
The reader-writer semaphore implementation is broken, resulting in processes getting stuck in the D state in down_semaphore. Heavily threaded programs (like Mozilla) are most likely to hit this bug, resulting in lots of stuck threads and an unusable program.
(Nothing actually used the rw-sems until fairly recently, which is why this bug went undetected for so long.)
Also fixed: the iptables FTP connection tracking security hole, some potential filesystem corrupting bugs and a bunch of other bugs that weren't likely to affect anybody.
And Dave Miller's zerocopy networking changes were merged in, which is pretty cool.
I guess the (off-topic) question could be, what is the real difference
between a shell and an application that looks like a shell?
A shell is a program you interact with, and in response, it runs programs for you.
Command shells like tcsh, bash, zsh, and even the DOS shell all take their input through
the keyboard. The windows shell takes input through the mouse, primarily, but you can use
the keyboard too/instead. Other graphical shells like GNOME work similarly.
What would an application that looks like a shell but isn't be like? Maybe if you can
type into it and stuff, but it doesn't actually do anything, like bash -n, then that would fit
the description. If it runs programs when you tell it to, it _is_ a shell. It's easily
possible to write such an application for windows. AFAIK, there is a system call that
(essentially)
does a fork()+exec(), so it's pretty easy to make a shell. As others have pointed out, there
are shells for windoze, including cygwin bash. (BTW, to avoid having 16bit code running when
you use the shell (since that seriously slows the whole system down), you can run cygwin bash
inside an emacs shell-mode window. This actually works, and I've got config files that do it. #define X(x,y) x##y
-- #define X(x,y) x##y Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,.ca)
Cygwin is quite slow because it does a lot of work. It's a pretty heavyweight library, because it tries to do a _complete_ emulation of the Unix environment, not just enough to get simple programs to run.
BTW, are you saying that an Athlon is faster than Windows 2000? That's an interesting comparison...:)
As for 2.4 with an Athlon, you're probably seeing speedups because 2.4 has more cpu-spefic speedups, like a memcpy that uses 3DNow. That makes a big difference. #define X(x,y) x##y
-- #define X(x,y) x##y Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,.ca)
The same way as the CygWin guys ported over BASH.
Win32 has a posix subsystem after all, and even if it requires help from an userlevel C library like cygwin32.dll, it can work just as any other POSIX (including Linux) OS.
-- /kinkie
Re:Questions and Observations about 2.4.4
by
mab
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· Score: 1
ACL's are in XFS . its super simple to build a new system with redhat 7.1 and XFS
just look here you can get a bootable ISO that will insstall the XFS kernal and then ask you for your redhat-7.1 cd's to install the rest, as I said this if for a new system. but go for it
he's reading the little bar graph off the web page at www.kernel.org.
please follow links prior to posting, especially if you're attempt to correct possible errors.
complex
Re:Isn't it going too fast?
by
cpeterso
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· Score: 2
The Linux 2.3 tree did not fork from the Linux 2.2 tree until 2.2.8. Be patient, my son. Any bets as to which Linux 2.4 kernel will fork to become Linux 2.5.1?
Re:Linux Service Pack Installer
by
mackman
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· Score: 2
I agree with your claim, however Red Hat 7 actually keeps those files in/usr/include/linux instead of symlinking them to/usr/src/linux/include/linux. This caught me off guard, but now I've found its handy.
Re:Responsible as always...
by
Saint+Stephen
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· Score: 1
I wonder how many net.admins noticed the sudden traffic spike and thought, "Oh, Crap! Another weekend e-mail virus attack!"
--
-- Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Short answer: No, It's not too fast.
by
mindstrm
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· Score: 2
This is not a 'new kernel'. It hasn't got 'new features'. It has bugfixes and improvements on existing features. Whenever fixes and improvements are considered stable, they should be released. Or to quote the OSS mantra 'Release early, release often'.
Too fast? this is no faster/slower than any other kernel in the past.... this is normal.
In my 9 years of linux kernels, I've never put kernels anywhere but/usr/src/linux
And I've never compiled them anywhere else either.
Never caused me a minute of problem.
I'm still waiting for aic7xxx fixes... my main drive often doesn't unmount properly on reboot/shutdown, meaning I have to fsck most times I boot up. please please fix this aleready!
Upgrade if you have no reason not to!
by
Chuck+Chunder
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· Score: 4
Upgrade if you aren't running something mission critical and if the worst that can happen (filesystem corruption) won't be the end of the world (you really want an excuse to install that new distro anyway!)
If you come across a bug then congratulations, you've made a first step in making Linux better. Distribution and use is a vital part of an Open Source development process.
-- Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Distributed Download Mirror
by
Orasis
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· Score: 5
I've put up a Swarmcast mirror of the content here.
Swarmcast is BETA (it gots boogs) software that will soon be released under the GPL. The installation procedure sucks right now but the situation will quickly improve.
Swarmcast is peer-to-peer software that uses the bandwidth of the peers that are currently or recently downloaded a piece of content to help boost everyone elses download. So its basically like having a bunch of partial-horsepower mirrors.
If you're not into that "altruism" stuff then you can just ignore this post and hammer directly on kernel.org.
You can join the Swarmcast devel mailing list here. and let us know what you think.
Re:Distributed Download Mirror
by
wjr
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· Score: 1
Nice one, Orasis! Hopefully someone will be quick enough to mirror the next release on Mojo Nation as well.
Done. ID is q2xKyqtQSDOMA6zW33UmJUjyi5s .
Re:2.4.4 breaks vmware 2.03
by
realkiwi
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· Score: 1
Try 2.0.4
-- realkiwi
Re:How do you compile a kernel on Mandrake anyways
by
rinkjustice
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· Score: 3
Follow this kernel compiling howto carefully and you shouldn't have a problem. The raw link is: http://www.hardcorelinux.com/kernel-howto.htm
come off crisp and play up to the cynic
clean and schooled right down to the minute
Re:Linux Service Pack Installer
by
evilquaker
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· Score: 1
Debian is like Redhat in this regard... all of the necessary files (package libc6-dev) are in/usr/include/linux. I don't even have a/usr/src/linux directory, and I get by fine...
-- To within half a percent, pi seconds is a
nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
I've already installed it and am running it.
by
boarder
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· Score: 2
I downloaded it as soon as I saw it up on/.
I "made" it as soon as I downloaded it.
I installed it and rebooted as soon as I made it.
I am running it right now and I haven't crashed yet. I haven't noticed any difference except that I forgot to load a few modules and stuff. Oh well, I'm not a power user and only use my box as a desktop machine. I did notice that there were a lot of options that weren't available for me to check (reiserfs most importantly). I don't know if they are disabled in this version or if I am just an idiot and don't have a higher level option checked.
P.S. I'm a newbie so don't take anything I've said with more than a grain of salt.
-- IANAL, but I play one on/.
Re:I've already installed it and am running it.
by
inquisitor
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· Score: 2
You have to say "yes" to the "use experimental/development drivers" option before you see Reiser or framebuffers or many of the other interesting features of Linux 2.4.x. It's one of the first options you get asked.
VIA fixes, apparently in this one - and I have a 686B. Downloading the patch right now. This should be good...
TmpFS is an extension of shmfs able to swap off unused memory pages. This virtual filesystem *rocks* . Compiling new software in a TmpFS area is a lot faster than on a conventional filesystem. Since it was introduced, I can't live without it.
But why the hell is TmpFS only in -ac series and never in 'official' releases ? I will have to wait for 2.4.4-ac1 before upgrading.
TmpFS is now rock stable (it wasn't the case in the early times, I agree) . It's fast. It's easy to set up, and it's a very good enhancement to the Linux kernel.
When will TmpFS merged to the main tree ?
Using the "-pipe" option for gcc gives you the same benefits for compilation:
-pipe Use pipes rather than temporary files for communication between the
various stages of compilation. This fails to work on some systems
where the assembler cannot read from a pipe; but the GNU assembler
has no trouble.
This is your admin speaking; Stop consuming my swap space with template instantions!:)
Seriously, tmpfs is cool, but it's dangerous to encourage the unwary huddled masses to use it excessively. I administer several solaris boxen with massive amounts of swap space./tmp is tmpfs, and is therefore huge and fast. My machines stay up for months, if not years, at a time, so there are no reboots to clear the filesystem. Periodically,/tmp fills up with cruft from clueless lusers, and I get the sort of phone calls I'd rather avoid. Sigh.
Developer: Yo, admin guy, I was in the middle of an hour-long build when the compiler claimed it couldn't allocate memory, something about "insufficient swap space" it said. You better fix this, you clueless jerk! You just wasted a half-hour of my time!
Admin: You're the one who always compiles in/tmp, right? And leaves multiple builds hanging out there?
Developer: Yeah, tmpfs rocks, dood!
I'd like to assume that all slashdot readers that actually work on a box administered by someone else are informed and careful enough to avoid making such mistakes. Being a skeptic, though, I'd always pepper any suggestion of using tmpfs with warnings.:(
(Yes, I am assuming that the linux tmpfs is the same as the virtual-memory-based Solaris tmpfs. If it's substantially different, please ignore the above and forgive me for not RTFLMing.)
Re:Don't upgrade if you don't have to
by
mrseth
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· Score: 3
Are you sure about this? From the changelog:
-pre5:
- Mike Phillips: olympic driver update
- Alan Cox: continued resyncing (lots of small stuff, big NTFS merge from Anton)
- Martin Dalecki: cleanup (remove unused and unnecessary get_hardblocksize)
- Chris Mason: fix potential reiserfs journal overflow
- Jeff Garzik: network driver updates
- David Miller: sparc fixes, some network cleanups
Is the amount of bugs constant in time?
by
haggar
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· Score: 2
I was wondering, after following the Linux development since the early 2.0.x days: is the total aomount of bugs in the Linux kernel always constant, instead of decreasing? (maybe a bit like the development of the old IBM System/360 - they were fixing bugs all the time, and all the time they were adding new ones... but this is not a perfect example, as the Linux kernel actually is adding always new features.)
I am a software engineer, and I certainly prefere adding a new cool feature to my code, than fixing old bugs, expecially if these bugs are not critical. Makes me feel kinda good knowing that even much better programmers have the same mentality.
Not only that, it tests to see if your system can handle the high computer usage. If it causes errors, then it could be either bad memory or your CPU is too hot. I had to go through with my Intel Pentium III 600 Mhz upgrade. That is how I found out it was a heat problem. RAM was fine.:)
-- Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Re:Questions and Observations about 2.4.4
by
AntiBasic
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· Score: 2
XFS is really great but XFS is still beta and not merged with the main kernel tree, which is also a BIG problem. Ever see the fallout when Alexander Viro (kernel VFS hacker) takes a newly merged filesystem to task ? It is not pretty.
Next? Alan Cox on a Chip, of course.
by
Jens
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· Score: 2
You should be ashamed of yourself, posting such accusations anonymously. If you fired me within a week then you'll be happy to post using your real name. Why don't you post a response with your name? I stand by the quality of my work. My work is of exceedingly high quality and my clients know it.
And no, I'm no karma whore, and I'm not trying to find a consulting gig by posting articles such as this.
Instead, I'm trying to help out the kernel developers who need people testing their software, and to improve the overall quality of Free Software.
The kernel I feel is of very high quality, but it is challenging for the kernel developers to keep it so, because it can be configured with so many variations and has to satisfy so many needs. That's why it needs an especially large amount of testing.
There are many free and open source software products that I feel do not live up to even modest quality standards, and I'm trying to improve the situation by posting educational articles such as the ones on the Linux Quality Database.
Have a look at freshmeat and see how many programs have yet to reach 1.0 status - many of those programs are in every day use on Linux distributions and in fact cause me and other users significant problems. I'm trying to help remedy the situation by providing advice, guidance and pointers to good tools.
Article on kernel testing suites
by
goingware
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· Score: 4
If you'd like to do some manner of methodical testing of the kernel before putting it into production use, or if you'd like to contribute to quality assurance of Linux kernels, please read:
There are also some tests such as
Memtest86 that you can use for checking the basic health of your hardware (some of which, like VA Linux' Cerberus, can be quite extreme). Memtest86 found a bad PC133 memory module in one of my machines that consistently passes the BIOS startup memory test.
Suggestions for other test suites, strategies for testing the Linux kernel or other things I can write about on the general topic of quality assurance and better software practice are appreciated.
One test that's not mentioned in the article yet is
memtester. It is a user-space program that will run on Linux or other Unix-like OS and will test as much of the memory as it can mlock; I found that I could test about half of my installed memory on a debian PPC macintosh.
Memtest86 is advantageous in that it will test all of the installed memory, but memtester will run on non-PC clone and non-x86 hardware.
Re:Article on kernel testing suites
by
Spoing
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· Score: 5
In a former life, I was the QA lead for a commercial memory tester. Memtest86 is quite good; I've put the boot disk in my CD case of tools.
One misconception that most people have is that the BIOS POST routines actually test RAM. They don't.
The only thing BIOS routines do is check for the existance of RAM, and as a side benifit some failures are detected.
Other failures can't be found with the quick xor tests done in the BIOS because;
They are masked by a cache that is not defective.
Are heat/cold sensitive -- and at boot the system might be OK.
The failure of one bit only occurs after other bits are flipped.
Even a good memory test program like Memtest86 can't find all defects, and definately not on the first pass. As a reasonable sanity check, Memtest86 is highly recommended.
-- A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Re: Article on kernel testing suites
by
Marcel+Waldvogel
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· Score: 1
I found that I could test about half of my installed memory on a debian PPC macintosh.
mlock() on Linux allows only locking half of the physical memory per process. By running multiple (i.e., 2) processes at the same time, you can overcome this limitation. But be aware that mlock()ing too much can hang your system (probably due to too few resources).
Re:Article on kernel testing suites
by
Nick+in+Seattle
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· Score: 1
I am sure that suggestion that the source wouldn't pass muster at his company was a joke.
And actually, I don't think the 21st century started in Europe (maybe Fiji). And I must counter-flame: Europe is definitely not the happening place for the clear technology of the next decade: bio-informatics.
-nick
(posting on my own)
Re:2.4.4 breaks vmware 2.03
by
Martinofka
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· Score: 1
Hm, same here:(
And from some test-N I cannot boot from my SCSI CD-ROM.
Anyone w/info when they'll fix that? They say - works under stable kernels... oh. My ass.
Don't upgrade if you don't have to
by
BierGuzzl
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· Score: 1
Aside from serious performance issues, security bugs and critical features that you need in the new 2.4 series, I _highly_ recommend you wait! New kernel versions are coming out a blazing pace and while it is exciting, it's not giving the released versions the same amount of stress testing that we're used to having. Just like when you buy hardware -- stay a couple steps behind the lead. You'll avoid a lot of nasty bugs and save yourself a lot of expensive headaches.
Re:Don't upgrade if you don't have to
by
teg
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· Score: 2
Look for a BIOS update from your vendor - most mothersboards seem to have gotten one, except the ones from ASUS (unfortunately - I have one myself).. Also, if there is a choice in your BIOS, turn performance down from "Optimal" to "Normal". Using PIO instead of DMA would be beneficial - turn it off in the BIOS.
As for recompilation, remember to run "make mrproper" first - the tree we ship isn't clean (so people can compile modules without having to compile a kernel first).
What kernel to use varies... right now, 2.4.4 should be OK. 2.4.3 wasn't (we made fixes after 2.4.3 was released... but as we were working hard on stabilizing it, upgrading didn't make sense as it didn't solve the disk corruption problems we were seing on all hardware (and which we fixed)). The ac kernels are usually a little bit closer to what we ship (well, they have some patches we have and some we don't) - and you can also find newer kernels in rawhide.
Re:Don't upgrade if you don't have to
by
teg
·
· Score: 5
Of course, it all depends on what you're previously running - if you're running a previous 2.4 kernel from Linus.
Many file system corruption bugs were found by us during development of Red Hat Linux 7.1. The 2.4.2-2 kernel in Red Hat Linux 7.1 should be safe, any kernel released prior to that (our release, not 2.4.2 in general - our kernels has lots of fixes, some made after the official release of 2.4.3)
Re:Don't upgrade if you don't have to
by
the_2nd_coming
·
· Score: 3
that is true for an x.0 kernel or an x.y.0 kernel
but, it is kernel series 2 verion 4 pactch level 4 i.e. 2.4.4 this is much more secure and stable than 2.4-2.4.3 so there is no reason not to update your kernel.
cygwin is great - my life got a little better when I installed in on our NT machine @ work. I put perl on as well and could do things impossible otherwise.
#!/bin/sh
# Note: this is untested code written ad-hoc
# in a slashdot comment box. You decide
# how much you want to trust it.
#
# Usage: lspinstaller <version-of-kernel> <previous-version-of-kernel>
# Must run as root.
# answering "no" to new kernel features is not necessarily what you want, but it's a good place to start
yes n | make oldconfig
mv Makefile Makefile.configged
# I find it's always a good idea to tag kernels with your hostname so you can tell what they're meant for
sed s/EXTRAVERSION =/EXTRAVERSION = `hostname`/ Makefile
make dep clean bzImage modules modules_install
# if you use lilo, this automatically runs it.
# if you use grub, do it manually I guess.
installkernel $0-`hostname` arch/$ARCH/boot/bzImage System.map
echo Windo^H^H^H^H^HLinux has finished installing your new software. Press any key to reboot, but ctrl-alt-delete will probably be more effective.
--
-- It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Re:Linux Service Pack Installer
by
darCness
·
· Score: 2
I would change the "cd/usr/src" line to
/home/youruser/kernel or something similar (I
use "/home/spencer/tmp/kernel" on my systems).
The files under/usr/src/linux are part
of the C library distrobution, and should
only change when the library changes. They should
never be affected by the kernel version.
Take a look at line 59 of the README file
in the kernel source distrobution.
Re:Linux Service Pack Installer
by
mvdwege
·
· Score: 2
And what if your distribution hasn't got/usr/src/linux by default? I'm talking Debian here, in which/usr/src was unpopulated when I installed it first.
Of course at the moment I just make a symlink/usr/src/linux ->/usr/local/src/linux-<current-running-version> . It works fine, it's just that I generally have to recompile third-party modules (nVidia, yech!) when I install a new kernel.
Any more people out there with this kind of situation, i.e. no/usr/src/linux by default? And how do you fix it?
Mart
-- "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
When this was posted, the bandwidth meter read 34.4 Mbps. Five minutes later it was at 40 Mbps. Five minutes after that it was at 50 Mbps. Now it is at 71.39 Mbps.
Can't you guys wait a while and download it from the mirrors?
A network device reads stuff from the Net and puts it in its buffer.
The kernel copies this buffer to the buffer of the userspace application that initiated the transfer.
The kernel transfers control to the application, which can now read its buffer
Now zero copy networking basically skips step 2. This doesn't sound spectacular, but if you're doing something bandwidth intensive, say downloading a kernel, this repeated memory copy operation starts cutting into your efficiency.
Any actual kernel hackers feel free to flame me into oblivion for getting it wrong:)
Mart
-- "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Re:Is it worth my time uplaoding?
by
slamb
·
· Score: 1
I'm quite happy at 2.4. Is there any compelling reason why I would need 2.4.4?
YES! Upgrade now! 2.4.2 ate my ext2 filesystem. And I'm far from a unique case, there are weird filesystem bugs (both ext2 and reiserfs) in early 2.4 kernels. Lots of information about this on Kernel Traffic: (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9).
Given all these problems, I'd say: don't run 2.4.x on a server yet. Run it on your desktop if you are daring (I do, even after it ate my filesystem.) but make backups of anything really important. Keep up-to-date on them; don't let a fixed bug eat your filesystem.
Is it worth my time uplaoding?
by
Darth+Turbogeek
·
· Score: 4
I'm quite happy at 2.4. Is there any compelling reason why I would need 2.4.4? I haven't really kept up with what's new and what's improved.
I must say 2.4 been pretty good. It was the first one I could use acceptibly on my notebook (Inspiron 5000) and I really dont want to go through that all over again if something screws up.
And one final thing.... If I want a Service pack for W2K, it's pretty dead easy to install. Is there anything being done to make upgrades seamless?
-- "Old Rallydrivers never die - they just fail to book in on time"
I was up on all of those besides Tcsh and KDE. KDE doesn't surprise me that much, but how do you port a Linux shell to Windows?
From my (admittedly) basic knowledge of OS theory, a shell pretty much takes the input\output from the kernel and then manipulates it.
But in all ways that Windows works, a certain set of programs takes the input\output from kernel32.dll and works with it...or is it possible to place a program not made by Microsoft on top of kernel32.dll? Or is the Windows port of tcsh not a real shell as such, but just a text manipulating application that looks like a shell, that requires the Windows shell to pass it information?
I guess the (off-topic) question could be, what is the real difference between a shell and an application that looks like a shell?
-- Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Re:More offtopic OS theory /etc
by
Glowing+Fish
·
· Score: 1
That is the last time I trust ispell to do my thinking for me!
You are right, though. I was meaning to edit that thing out of beta, but unfortuantly the temptation to show it off won over my modesty.
-- Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Re:Mandrake me please
by
Glowing+Fish
·
· Score: 2
Sorry, there is no spoon.
-- Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
More offtopic OS theory /etc
by
Glowing+Fish
·
· Score: 2
If anyone wants to read my childish, oversimplified overview of OS theory (since this post got so many responses, someone might be interested), it's at:
Re:More offtopic OS theory /etc
by
oconnorcjo
·
· Score: 1
Nice ideas. I just wish you had proof read the spelling and grammar. It is obvious that you spent some time thinking about this analogy but you obviously didn't spend much time editing your "paper".
Posting early without being informed and checking up on something before you shout out "error!" is a mistake. Incorrect information is no uncommon on Slashdot, but download speeds and things of this nature are well known among those of us blessed with nice internet connections.
Losing karma is not the worst thing that can happen on Slashdot, looking foolish is (yes, I've done it myself enough).
-- "The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
oops. strangely that page is the one that i hadn't read - it says that it's pretty major to include this code in the kernel so they're waiting for 2.5 devel to begin.
-- No, I did not read the f***ing article!
Re:2.4.4 breaks vmware 2.03
by
kervel
·
· Score: 5
insert this into/usr/src/linux/include/linux/skbuff.h below the line/* Internal */ Each quotation is a new line (remove the quotes before you paste) "static inline atomic_t *skb_datarefp(struct sk_buff *skb)" "{" " return (atomic_t *)(skb->end);", "}".
from openprojects irc 'apt'
Comments by the coders...
by
autocracy
·
· Score: 5
$ egrep -r -e "(\bfuck\b|\bass\b|\bshit\b)"/usr/src/linux #How to find all this...
"don't fuck up. This is why we have... James M... say fuck enough... all the algo is pure shit and should be replaced (From tcp in IPv4 - makes you feel good, eh?)." The whole IP NAT for FTP thing is "eloquent like `fuck'." The irnet_irda module is made to "Give a kick in the ass of ppp_generic so that he sends us some data".
The people who put together te setup code for the i386 arch were curious to know "What lunatic came up with this shit?" The IA64 arch includes some "weird ass code needed for error injection". MIPS/cobalt setup is referred to as "Oh shit, this is so crappy..."
SysIRIX has "2,191 lines of complete and utter shit coming up..." There's more of that for MIPS, though - "Big shit, we now may have two dirty primary cache lines for the same..." I don't even want to hear the end of that! In fact the MIPS/Irix people seem as if they just "Don't Care, a rats ass we couldn't give". That same file includes 10 iterations of "XXX AFS shit".
HyperSPARC has is "Verified, my ass..." The developer for a SPARC checksum code wants to merely "give up. I'm serious, I am going to kick the living shit..." The SPARC kernel process claims that somebody should "fuck me plenty". I agree:) At least they think SPARC64 is "One bad ass cpu". Then again "are two fold. Firstly, they cannot pair with jack shit,".
Everyone should "Remember: "Different name, same old buggy as shit hardware." Speaking of which, one of the SCSI drivers contains to lines of "shit". "... We don't want to fuck directly..." So we'll do it second-hand!
ASM has so much "More PROM shit. Probably has to do with VME RMW cycles???" They've been having to "having to fuck around with the syscall interface themselfes." Ultimately, everyone agrees that "If you don't see why, please stay the fuck away from my code."
REAL/.ers only have a karma of 49...
-- SIG: HUP
Re:2.4.4 breaks vmware 2.03
by
willamowius
·
· Score: 3
That fix works nicely, but I prefer not to modify the kernel file, and inserted the code in bridge.c in/usr/lib/vmware/modules/sources/vmnet.tar (right below the include of linux/skbuff.h).
2.4.4 breaks vmware 2.03
by
willamowius
·
· Score: 4
Beware: vmware 2.03 doesn't compile under Linux 2.4.4.
Well, I do read the articles, but this had nothing to do with the linked article. I just though he had left out a zero or something. Although I don't know what type of dyslexia caused me to think that an M was a K.
If Pico is the reason to switch to Unix, then we are all screwed.:)
How do you compile a kernel on Mandrake anyways?
by
X-Dopple
·
· Score: 2
I've tried it before, but I've just found out the following.
a) the 2.4.x kernel barfs if there's no initrd to go with it and the ramdisk image
b) if the kernel DOES work, it is extremely unstable, booting me back to the login prompt or just locking up altogether with a kernel panic. What's the advantage of modularlizing vs. putting it in the kernel? Which is faster?
c) If I get rid of all of the ridiculous shit that Mandrake decides to include (1000Mbit Ethernet card suppor built-in? Why?) and compile it, it still barfs.
d) ReiserFS support is non-existent in make menuconfig, unless I do some magic ritual of checking certain checkboxes
e) I keep getting write_intr errors at around sector 3500 of my hard drive. Is it a bad hard drive, or is it just Linux?
Has anyone else had printing problems migrating 2.2.x to 2.4.x?
Nope, but we've had some autofs problems with our Solaris machines trying to automount (and failing) NFS-exported directories on RH6.2/Linux 2.4.x kernels. I think it was related to nfslock. The latest NFS-utils RPM from RedHat fixed that.
We're using 2.4.x for UDMA, USB, and ReiserFS...so 2.4.4 will be deployed almost everywhere by Monday afternoon.:)
Thus sprach DrQu+xum.
-- DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
Windoze 2000 is actually NT OS/2 Version 5,
which is fully POSIX compliant
(D:/WINNT/SYSTEM32/POSIX.EXE exists, as a hint for you)
So you can do partial UN*X-like system on top of NT,
and NT's console (cmd.exe, not command.com) is
actually quite a useful tool.
And the other proggys in/bin/sbin and/usr/...
may be ported, too - even to DOS, cf. DjGpp
--
-- My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And/. still does not get UTF-8 right in 2012. Wow.)
I actually _have_ written both a.DLL in NASM
and a.EXE (console app) in C.
There is no need to include a kind of (linux)
kernel into a Win32 app, as NT (and even Win32s)
provides enough APIs to get everything working.
I use.DLL calls such as MessageBoxA and no
direct "kernel calls", as well as under Linux
i.d.R. I don't use INT &h80 but libc5 calls.
(Even under 2.4.* libc5 still works greatly!)
--
-- My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And/. still does not get UTF-8 right in 2012. Wow.)
Re: Mirrors not up-to-date
by
mirabilos
·
· Score: 2
No wonder. They have to mirror it first,
and if the master mirror is/.ed, the
mirrors can't mirror;-)
--
-- My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And/. still does not get UTF-8 right in 2012. Wow.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Re:How do you compile a kernel on Mandrake anyways
by
RiffRafff
·
· Score: 1
> b) if the kernel DOES work, it is extremely unstable, booting me back to the login prompt or just locking up altogether with a kernel panic. What's the advantage of modularlizing vs. putting it in the kernel? Which is faster?
Putting everything in the kernel makes it more bloated (obviously). Modules are called only when needed, reducing the initial kernel size.
> d) ReiserFS support is non-existent in make menuconfig, unless I do some magic ritual of checking certain checkboxes
Not Mandrake's fault. Assuming you're in xconfig, that's all defined by the kernel package.
> e) I keep getting write_intr errors at around sector 3500 of my hard drive. Is it a bad hard drive, or is it just Linux?
Doubt if it's Linux. Sounds more like a bios config problem, or your hard drive's going south.
-- "I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Hmmm.... On my computer at work, I am running Windows 2000. I am also running Emacs, Pico, and a version of csh. I could also use the cygwin library to run GNOME (maybe even KDE).
However, my experience is that my Athlon running Kernel 2.4 handles them faster...
Actually, I noticed a major performance boost going to 2.4 with the Athlon. I will have to try this new version.
Has anyone else had printing problems migrating 2.2.x to 2.4.x?
Just how is this flamebait. Nakoruru has aplogized repeatedly for a mistake of the kind that most people make on a fairly common basis. There is absolutely no reason for the way people have carried on about this.
-- "If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
Tcsh isn't the only shell that's been ported to Windows. But to answer your question, that's not the way Windows works (In recent versions, at least.) All apps interface with the kernel through it's DLL calls (OK, not *ALL* apps, but any that use the GUI.). There isn't really a 'shell', even Explorer (The standard 'desktop' you see when you boot) is just another App. When you run a command prompt (Using 9x's command.com, or 2000's much-improved cmd.exe), all you're really doing is invoking an appication that provides a minimal execution environment for command line apps (Those being the ones that can't [don't] directly access the kernel.) So, any app that can provide that environment can execute those apps. This includes things that act like command interpreters, such as shell ports (I know several people that swear by bash under 2k), but can also include full blown GUI apps that provide a 'hidden' environment for a command line app, providing input to the process and capturing it's output. (Sort of like a tremendous badly implemented subprocess pipe.)
So, there's you're offtopic answer.
Now, so this entire post isn't totally offtopic, as I'm writing this the kernel.org bandwodth meter is down to 30.11, so I guess the initial rush is over. I wonder how many people download the new kernels just to say they did, but never actually install them...
This is simply not possible. DOCSIS cable modems, as well as most propietary modems on the market, have a maximum speed of somewhere between 27 and 33 Megabits/sec. Of course, these speeds are never reached. most cable connections seem to get 20kbytes/sec to 500kbytes/sec.
34Megabits/sec would be like 3,500kbytes/sec, which is like 3.5MB a second. A significant load.
Re:How do you compile a kernel on Mandrake anyways
by
berzerke
·
· Score: 3
To run pptpd, you have to patch the kernel. A howto at here describes how to patch and recompile the 2.4 kernel. If you aren't interested in pptpd for linux, just ignore the patches but follow the rest of the directions.
It works on Mandrake. There is even a sample configuration file for the kernel with Reiserfs support. Be sure and check the CPU type though.
As I write this, the bandwidth meter on kernel.org says 34.4 MBit/s
30 seconds after writing this the meter droped to 2kBit/s..
Questions and Observations about 2.4.4
by
Zeio
·
· Score: 3
I was wondering if the Samba/Extended ACL stuff was merged into to the Linux source tree yet? I was frustrated today to have to go and get Samba 2.2.0 and have to go messing around with patching the kernels.
It's nice to see USB getting some more attention/fixes even though it was given a late start.
-- Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
The Linux development team has only accomplished 26% of what they plan on implementing into kernel 2.4, and that's already been a huge accomplishment. Think of all the hardware implementations, updates, and "new things" the final 2.4 kernel will have. (Maybe it'll even support more hardware than Windows:D)
I found some surprising egrep results from the linux source code. Here you go:
Linus Torvalds used...
fuck 11 times, or 9% of the time
shit 31 times, or 26% of the time
bitch 12 times, or 10% of the time
ass 10 times, or about 8.5% of the time
bastard two times, or about 1.7% of the time
dick one time, or about 0.8% of the time
hell 50 times, or 42.7% of the time
Total swear words used: 117
A few examples:
"/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/sunhme.c:/* Remember: "Different name, same old buggy as shit hardware." */"
"/usr/src/linux/net/core/netfilter.c:/* James M doesn't say fuck enough. */"
"/usr/src/linux/arch/sparc/kernel/process.c:/* fuck me plenty */" (this one's my favorite, hah.)
I hope they fixed some of the rampant bugs. Most of the programs I own (Word, Frontpage, Photoshop) wouldn't even run under the earlier versions of the 2.4 kernel.
Maybe now my productivity will be restored. KTS:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Utensil.
-- KTS:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Utensil.
There is no contradiction.
Too bad someone removed KMALLOC_MAXSIZE from include/linux/slab.h. Now drivers/media/video/buz.c is broken and won't compile. Doesn't someone at least try compiling *all* the modules before releasing a new kernel?
Anyone who has the intellect to compile a new linux kernel had really ought to be able to figure out how to get to the official site from which to download the source of said kernel. You, my rubber-bedecked fellow, are simply a karma whore.
let me guess... you're a democrat
Within 5 days of 2.4.5 being released we'll see 2.5.0
It contains _parts_ of the input suite (usb, adb, joysticks) .
You dont get the maximum speed because your ISP sends firmware updates to your modem which programs it to drop packets if they come in/go out faster then a certain rate. The whole thing relies on the fact that TCP/IP detects packet loss and re-adjusts the transmit rate until the packet loss is reduced.
It's not the most "elegant" solution but it works, and hopefully the packet loss method will be replaced with some kind of ECN based solution in the future.
Incidently, this is also the reason why ping times are much lower on cable modems, because the ping packet is small it goes down the cable at full speed.
You can try this out for yourself with three machines, some ethernet and the traffic shaper in the kernel.
yes, the latest and greatest swap-speedup patch is included in 2.4.4-final.
This is the funniest shit I've read in a long time. It's a good thing Microsoft doesn't release it's source code. The same thing might result in a memory overflow or something...
- Alan Cox: syncup (AFFS might even work, and official VIA workarounds) ^-- That might be it.
It also includes the official IPtables FTP MASQ security fix, which is good. Time to upgrade... ;-)
Are there any significant updates to the VIA chipset code that can help prevent people with 586b and 686b southbridges from corrupting the data on their hard drives?
--
It's in, in the Filesystem support, as a "Virtual Filesystem."
--
WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Almost no applications (shells included) interface directly with the kernel. Rather, they make calls to the standard C library, which then interfaces to the kernel. Replace one C library with another (with different kernel backends and the same interfaces) and everything works as it should.
In this manner, a standard compatibility layer is provided, and most apps become fairly portable.
What is the real difference between a shell and an application that looks like a shell?
None. The shell is simply a particular class of application. If it looks like a shell and quacks like a shell, it's a shell.
--
I noticed
--
I noticed
It's getting about time to leave everywhere
Good for them. Like I said, that's what we do with BU Linux. ("Gee"?)
I've got a src rpm for memtest86 2.5 at http://www.mattdm.org/misc/memtest/memtest86-2.5-2 .src.rpm.
/usr/src/redhat/SPECS/ (or wherever is appropriate for your distro), and do rpm -bb memtest86.spec. This will generate a memtest RPM in /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/ (or again, wherever...). Installing this rpm will set up a memtest entry in your lilo.conf -- very handy. We do this by default for all of our installs at Boston University.
Install this on your system, change to
Coool.
Nice one, Orasis! Hopefully someone will be quick enough to mirror the next release on Mojo Nation as well.
I'm looking forward to the imminent open-sourcing of Swarmcast. I think that the emergent ("p2p") networks are maturing enough that we will start trying to link them together soon. Perhaps the second O'Reilly p2p conference will spark some work in that direction...
Regards,
Zooko
Short answer: No
Slightly longer answer:
Adding ACL support to the kernel would require large-scale changes to the entire VFS, as well as the individual filesystems. This isn't going to happen in a stable kernel series. IIRC, this is one of the major goals for the 2.5 development cycle (along with generic extended atributes and maybe named streams), so the ACL support introduced in 2.5 may be backported to 2.4 (but that would be up to Alan Cox).
Although patches currently exist to add extended attributes and ACL support to the current VFS, I don't think that the kernel gods are entirely happy with its architecture. (This has been a frequent topic on the linux-fsdevel list.)
2.4.3 does have serious issues.
The reader-writer semaphore implementation is broken, resulting in processes getting stuck in the D state in down_semaphore. Heavily threaded programs (like Mozilla) are most likely to hit this bug, resulting in lots of stuck threads and an unusable program.
(Nothing actually used the rw-sems until fairly recently, which is why this bug went undetected for so long.)
Also fixed: the iptables FTP connection tracking security hole, some potential filesystem corrupting bugs and a bunch of other bugs that weren't likely to affect anybody.
And Dave Miller's zerocopy networking changes were merged in, which is pretty cool.
A shell is a program you interact with, and in response, it runs programs for you. Command shells like tcsh, bash, zsh, and even the DOS shell all take their input through the keyboard. The windows shell takes input through the mouse, primarily, but you can use the keyboard too/instead. Other graphical shells like GNOME work similarly.
What would an application that looks like a shell but isn't be like? Maybe if you can type into it and stuff, but it doesn't actually do anything, like bash -n, then that would fit the description. If it runs programs when you tell it to, it _is_ a shell. It's easily possible to write such an application for windows. AFAIK, there is a system call that (essentially) does a fork()+exec(), so it's pretty easy to make a shell. As others have pointed out, there are shells for windoze, including cygwin bash. (BTW, to avoid having 16bit code running when you use the shell (since that seriously slows the whole system down), you can run cygwin bash inside an emacs shell-mode window. This actually works, and I've got config files that do it.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Cygwin is quite slow because it does a lot of work. It's a pretty heavyweight library, because it tries to do a _complete_ emulation of the Unix environment, not just enough to get simple programs to run.
:)
BTW, are you saying that an Athlon is faster than Windows 2000? That's an interesting comparison...
As for 2.4 with an Athlon, you're probably seeing speedups because 2.4 has more cpu-spefic speedups, like a memcpy that uses 3DNow. That makes a big difference.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
I'll hold off until that (or at least until the current patch for 2.4.3 is tested)...
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
From the cronjobs reporting to the Linux Counter:
2.4 - 110 out of 422, 26.1%
2.4.4 - 2 out of 422, 0.5%
Watch this space.
Since just about everything is slashdotted, could someone please insert it into freenet so we can hammer on that instead?
So THAT'S what's been causing mozilla to die on me! Watch me upgrade...
I wonder if NTFS support can write to Win2K now... maybe I can fix my #$%^&(* Win2K drive without reinstalling...
--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
"bio-informatics."
Oh yes. So clear.
Please clarify.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
The same way as the CygWin guys ported over BASH.
Win32 has a posix subsystem after all, and even if it requires help from an userlevel C library like cygwin32.dll, it can work just as any other POSIX (including Linux) OS.
ACL's are in XFS . its super simple to build a new system with redhat 7.1 and XFS
just look here you can get a bootable ISO that will insstall the XFS kernal and then ask you for your redhat-7.1 cd's to install the rest, as I said this if for a new system. but go for it
he's reading the little bar graph off the web page at www.kernel.org. please follow links prior to posting, especially if you're attempt to correct possible errors. complex
The Linux 2.3 tree did not fork from the Linux 2.2 tree until 2.2.8. Be patient, my son. Any bets as to which Linux 2.4 kernel will fork to become Linux 2.5.1?
cpeterso
I agree with your claim, however Red Hat 7 actually keeps those files in /usr/include/linux instead of symlinking them to /usr/src/linux/include/linux. This caught me off guard, but now I've found its handy.
woo hoo 8 whole megs a second
I wonder how many net.admins noticed the sudden traffic spike and thought, "Oh, Crap! Another weekend e-mail virus attack!"
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is not a 'new kernel'. It hasn't got 'new features'. It has bugfixes and improvements on existing features. Whenever fixes and improvements are considered stable, they should be released. Or to quote the OSS mantra 'Release early, release often'.
Too fast? this is no faster/slower than any other kernel in the past.... this is normal.
In my 9 years of linux kernels, I've never put kernels anywhere but /usr/src/linux
And I've never compiled them anywhere else either.
Never caused me a minute of problem.
I'm still waiting for aic7xxx fixes... my main drive often doesn't unmount properly on reboot/shutdown, meaning I have to fsck most times I boot up. please please fix this aleready!
Upgrade if you aren't running something mission critical and if the worst that can happen (filesystem corruption) won't be the end of the world (you really want an excuse to install that new distro anyway!)
If you come across a bug then congratulations, you've made a first step in making Linux better. Distribution and use is a vital part of an Open Source development process.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I've put up a Swarmcast mirror of the content here.
Swarmcast is BETA (it gots boogs) software that will soon be released under the GPL. The installation procedure sucks right now but the situation will quickly improve.
Swarmcast is peer-to-peer software that uses the bandwidth of the peers that are currently or recently downloaded a piece of content to help boost everyone elses download. So its basically like having a bunch of partial-horsepower mirrors.
If you're not into that "altruism" stuff then you can just ignore this post and hammer directly on kernel.org.
You can join the Swarmcast devel mailing list here. and let us know what you think.
Try 2.0.4
realkiwi
http://www.hardcorelinux.com/kernel-howto.htm
come off crisp and play up to the cynic
clean and schooled right down to the minute
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
I "made" it as soon as I downloaded it.
I installed it and rebooted as soon as I made it.
I am running it right now and I haven't crashed yet. I haven't noticed any difference except that I forgot to load a few modules and stuff. Oh well, I'm not a power user and only use my box as a desktop machine. I did notice that there were a lot of options that weren't available for me to check (reiserfs most importantly). I don't know if they are disabled in this version or if I am just an idiot and don't have a higher level option checked.
P.S. I'm a newbie so don't take anything I've said with more than a grain of salt.
IANAL, but I play one on
TmpFS is an extension of shmfs able to swap off unused memory pages. This virtual filesystem *rocks* . Compiling new software in a TmpFS area is a lot faster than on a conventional filesystem. Since it was introduced, I can't live without it.
But why the hell is TmpFS only in -ac series and never in 'official' releases ? I will have to wait for 2.4.4-ac1 before upgrading.
TmpFS is now rock stable (it wasn't the case in the early times, I agree) . It's fast. It's easy to set up, and it's a very good enhancement to the Linux kernel.
When will TmpFS merged to the main tree ?
{{.sig}}
- mirrors organized by country
- UK
- US
In general, the form is www.country.kernel.org where country is the country's two letter code. For example, NZ is a link to New Zealand's mirror.Slashdot should maintain topic pages for each category with links like this, yes?
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
No, you get 80 to 100 KB/s.
34MBits is 3/4 of a full fiber DS-3.
Are you sure about this? From the changelog:
-pre5:
- Mike Phillips: olympic driver update
- Alan Cox: continued resyncing (lots of small stuff, big NTFS merge from Anton)
- Martin Dalecki: cleanup (remove unused and unnecessary get_hardblocksize)
- Chris Mason: fix potential reiserfs journal overflow
- Jeff Garzik: network driver updates
- David Miller: sparc fixes, some network cleanups
I was wondering, after following the Linux development since the early 2.0.x days: is the total aomount of bugs in the Linux kernel always constant, instead of decreasing? (maybe a bit like the development of the old IBM System/360 - they were fixing bugs all the time, and all the time they were adding new ones... but this is not a perfect example, as the Linux kernel actually is adding always new features.)
I am a software engineer, and I certainly prefere adding a new cool feature to my code, than fixing old bugs, expecially if these bugs are not critical. Makes me feel kinda good knowing that even much better programmers have the same mentality.
Sigged!
Not only that, it tests to see if your system can handle the high computer usage. If it causes errors, then it could be either bad memory or your CPU is too hot. I had to go through with my Intel Pentium III 600 Mhz upgrade. That is how I found out it was a heat problem. RAM was fine. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Incorrect information is no uncommon on Slashdot
Neither is bad grammar.
XFS is really great but XFS is still beta and not merged with the main kernel tree, which is also a BIG problem. Ever see the fallout when Alexander Viro (kernel VFS hacker) takes a newly merged filesystem to task ? It is not pretty.
http://www.alancoxonachip.com/
Home Page
And no, I'm no karma whore, and I'm not trying to find a consulting gig by posting articles such as this.
Instead, I'm trying to help out the kernel developers who need people testing their software, and to improve the overall quality of Free Software.
The kernel I feel is of very high quality, but it is challenging for the kernel developers to keep it so, because it can be configured with so many variations and has to satisfy so many needs. That's why it needs an especially large amount of testing.
There are many free and open source software products that I feel do not live up to even modest quality standards, and I'm trying to improve the situation by posting educational articles such as the ones on the Linux Quality Database.
Have a look at freshmeat and see how many programs have yet to reach 1.0 status - many of those programs are in every day use on Linux distributions and in fact cause me and other users significant problems. I'm trying to help remedy the situation by providing advice, guidance and pointers to good tools.
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
-
Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel
There are also some tests such as Memtest86 that you can use for checking the basic health of your hardware (some of which, like VA Linux' Cerberus, can be quite extreme). Memtest86 found a bad PC133 memory module in one of my machines that consistently passes the BIOS startup memory test.Suggestions for other test suites, strategies for testing the Linux kernel or other things I can write about on the general topic of quality assurance and better software practice are appreciated.
One test that's not mentioned in the article yet is memtester. It is a user-space program that will run on Linux or other Unix-like OS and will test as much of the memory as it can mlock; I found that I could test about half of my installed memory on a debian PPC macintosh.
Memtest86 is advantageous in that it will test all of the installed memory, but memtester will run on non-PC clone and non-x86 hardware.
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Hm, same here :(
And from some test-N I cannot boot from my SCSI CD-ROM.
Anyone w/info when they'll fix that? They say - works under stable kernels ... oh. My ass.
Aside from serious performance issues, security bugs and critical features that you need in the new 2.4 series, I _highly_ recommend you wait! New kernel versions are coming out a blazing pace and while it is exciting, it's not giving the released versions the same amount of stress testing that we're used to having. Just like when you buy hardware -- stay a couple steps behind the lead. You'll avoid a lot of nasty bugs and save yourself a lot of expensive headaches.
cygwin is great - my life got a little better when I installed in on our NT machine @ work. I put perl on as well and could do things impossible otherwise.
#!/bin/sh
/usr/src
$ 0.tar.gz
# Note: this is untested code written ad-hoc
# in a slashdot comment box. You decide
# how much you want to trust it.
#
# Usage: lspinstaller <version-of-kernel> <previous-version-of-kernel>
# Must run as root.
ARCH=i386
cd
wget ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux-
# make sure we only have a linux-oldversion dir
rm linux || mv linux linux-$1
tar xvfz linux-$0.tar.gz
mv linux linux-$0
ln -s linux-$0 linux
# recover our kernel configuration
cp linux-$1/.config linux-$0/.config
cd linux-$0
# answering "no" to new kernel features is not necessarily what you want, but it's a good place to start
yes n | make oldconfig
mv Makefile Makefile.configged
# I find it's always a good idea to tag kernels with your hostname so you can tell what they're meant for
sed s/EXTRAVERSION =/EXTRAVERSION = `hostname`/ Makefile
make dep clean bzImage modules modules_install
# if you use lilo, this automatically runs it.
# if you use grub, do it manually I guess.
installkernel $0-`hostname` arch/$ARCH/boot/bzImage System.map
echo Windo^H^H^H^H^HLinux has finished installing your new software. Press any key to reboot, but ctrl-alt-delete will probably be more effective.
--
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
When this was posted, the bandwidth meter read 34.4 Mbps. Five minutes later it was at 40 Mbps. Five minutes after that it was at 50 Mbps. Now it is at 71.39 Mbps.
Can't you guys wait a while and download it from the mirrors?
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Why exactly does using 71.39% cause a problem?
As usage tends towards 100%, speed tends towards zero and packet retransmission increases.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I just finished donwloading, configuring and compiling 2.4.3 pre8! Thats unfair!
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
I'm quite happy at 2.4. Is there any compelling reason why I would need 2.4.4?
YES! Upgrade now! 2.4.2 ate my ext2 filesystem. And I'm far from a unique case, there are weird filesystem bugs (both ext2 and reiserfs) in early 2.4 kernels. Lots of information about this on Kernel Traffic: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9).
Given all these problems, I'd say: don't run 2.4.x on a server yet. Run it on your desktop if you are daring (I do, even after it ate my filesystem.) but make backups of anything really important. Keep up-to-date on them; don't let a fixed bug eat your filesystem.
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux- 2.4.4.tar.bz2
Or any mirror near you! Just goto:
http://www.[countrycode].kernel.org/pub/linux/kern el/v2.4/linux-2.4.4.tar.bz2
For example, Albania is abbreviated "al" so you would go to:
http://www.al.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/lin ux-2.4.4.tar.bz2
Ever need an online dictionary?
I'm quite happy at 2.4. Is there any compelling reason why I would need 2.4.4? I haven't really kept up with what's new and what's improved.
I must say 2.4 been pretty good. It was the first one I could use acceptibly on my notebook (Inspiron 5000) and I really dont want to go through that all over again if something screws up.
And one final thing.... If I want a Service pack for W2K, it's pretty dead easy to install. Is there anything being done to make upgrades seamless?
"Old Rallydrivers never die - they just fail to book in on time"
Why didn't somebody call me!!! I didn't find out untill 11:20!!! I got 2.2 x 10^2 KB/sec from kernel.org. Got to love the cable modem.
Now it is at 71.39 Mbps.
They are on a 100mbps connection.
Why exactly does using 71.39% cause a problem?
--
From my (admittedly) basic knowledge of OS theory, a shell pretty much takes the input\output from the kernel and then manipulates it.
But in all ways that Windows works, a certain set of programs takes the input\output from kernel32.dll and works with it...or is it possible to place a program not made by Microsoft on top of kernel32.dll? Or is the Windows port of tcsh not a real shell as such, but just a text manipulating application that looks like a shell, that requires the Windows shell to pass it information?
I guess the (off-topic) question could be, what is the real difference between a shell and an application that looks like a shell?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
That is the last time I trust ispell to do my thinking for me!
You are right, though. I was meaning to edit that thing out of beta, but unfortuantly the temptation to show it off won over my modesty.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Sorry, there is no spoon.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
If anyone wants to read my childish, oversimplified overview of OS theory (since this post got so many responses, someone might be interested), it's at:
ursine.dyndns.org/~mnoelharris/brainlinux.html
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Like the subject says. I just downloaded 2.4.4 and TmpFS is now part of Linus' tree too. Must have been part of merging Alan into the tree :-)
Posting early without being informed and checking up on something before you shout out "error!" is a mistake. Incorrect information is no uncommon on Slashdot, but download speeds and things of this nature are well known among those of us blessed with nice internet connections.
Losing karma is not the worst thing that can happen on Slashdot, looking foolish is (yes, I've done it myself enough).
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Does this include the newest joystick routines (version 2.1 I think)?
Mainly this stuff: http://www.suse.cz/development/input/
If not it'd be good to see them appear in a kernel some time soon :)
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
insert this into /usr/src/linux/include/linux/skbuff.h below the line /* Internal */ Each quotation is a new line (remove the quotes before you paste) "static inline atomic_t *skb_datarefp(struct sk_buff *skb)" "{" " return (atomic_t *)(skb->end);", "}".
from openprojects irc 'apt'
"don't fuck up. This is why we have... James M... say fuck enough... all the algo is pure shit and should be replaced (From tcp in IPv4 - makes you feel good, eh?)." The whole IP NAT for FTP thing is "eloquent like `fuck'." The irnet_irda module is made to "Give a kick in the ass of ppp_generic so that he sends us some data".
The people who put together te setup code for the i386 arch were curious to know "What lunatic came up with this shit?" The IA64 arch includes some "weird ass code needed for error injection". MIPS/cobalt setup is referred to as "Oh shit, this is so crappy ..."
SysIRIX has "2,191 lines of complete and utter shit coming up..." There's more of that for MIPS, though - "Big shit, we now may have two dirty primary cache lines for the same..." I don't even want to hear the end of that! In fact the MIPS/Irix people seem as if they just "Don't Care, a rats ass we couldn't give". That same file includes 10 iterations of "XXX AFS shit".
HyperSPARC has is "Verified, my ass..." The developer for a SPARC checksum code wants to merely "give up. I'm serious, I am going to kick the living shit..." The SPARC kernel process claims that somebody should "fuck me plenty". I agree :) At least they think SPARC64 is "One bad ass cpu". Then again "are two fold. Firstly, they cannot pair with jack shit,".
Everyone should "Remember: "Different name, same old buggy as shit hardware." Speaking of which, one of the SCSI drivers contains to lines of "shit". "... We don't want to fuck directly..." So we'll do it second-hand!
ASM has so much "More PROM shit. Probably has to do with VME RMW cycles???" They've been having to "having to fuck around with the syscall interface themselfes." Ultimately, everyone agrees that "If you don't see why, please stay the fuck away from my code."
/.ers only have a karma of 49...
REAL
SIG: HUP
That fix works nicely, but I prefer not to modify the kernel file, and inserted the code in bridge.c in /usr/lib/vmware/modules/sources/vmnet.tar (right below the include of linux/skbuff.h).
Beware: vmware 2.03 doesn't compile under Linux 2.4.4.
Well, I do read the articles, but this had nothing to do with the linked article. I just though he had left out a zero or something. Although I don't know what type of dyslexia caused me to think that an M was a K.
no, he is not an idiot, he is right. I screwed up, and now I'm paying for it. I was talking about how much bandwidth I get.
I've tried it before, but I've just found out the following.
a) the 2.4.x kernel barfs if there's no initrd to go with it and the ramdisk image
b) if the kernel DOES work, it is extremely unstable, booting me back to the login prompt or just locking up altogether with a kernel panic. What's the advantage of modularlizing vs. putting it in the kernel? Which is faster?
c) If I get rid of all of the ridiculous shit that Mandrake decides to include (1000Mbit Ethernet card suppor built-in? Why?) and compile it, it still barfs.
d) ReiserFS support is non-existent in make menuconfig, unless I do some magic ritual of checking certain checkboxes
e) I keep getting write_intr errors at around sector 3500 of my hard drive. Is it a bad hard drive, or is it just Linux?
Has anyone else had printing problems migrating 2.2.x to 2.4.x?
:)
Nope, but we've had some autofs problems with our Solaris machines trying to automount (and failing) NFS-exported directories on RH6.2/Linux 2.4.x kernels. I think it was related to nfslock. The latest NFS-utils RPM from RedHat fixed that.
We're using 2.4.x for UDMA, USB, and ReiserFS...so 2.4.4 will be deployed almost everywhere by Monday afternoon.
Thus sprach DrQu+xum.
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
joe, jstar for being exact ;-)
--
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
Windoze 2000 is actually NT OS/2 Version 5,
/bin /sbin and /usr/...
which is fully POSIX compliant
(D:/WINNT/SYSTEM32/POSIX.EXE exists, as a hint for you)
So you can do partial UN*X-like system on top of NT,
and NT's console (cmd.exe, not command.com) is
actually quite a useful tool.
And the other proggys in
may be ported, too - even to DOS, cf. DjGpp
--
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
I actually _have_ written both a .DLL in NASM
.EXE (console app) in C.
.DLL calls such as MessageBoxA and no
and a
There is no need to include a kind of (linux)
kernel into a Win32 app, as NT (and even Win32s)
provides enough APIs to get everything working.
I use
direct "kernel calls", as well as under Linux
i.d.R. I don't use INT &h80 but libc5 calls.
(Even under 2.4.* libc5 still works greatly!)
--
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
No wonder. They have to mirror it first, /.ed, the
;-)
and if the master mirror is
mirrors can't mirror
--
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
Put some p*rn on that server.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
> b) if the kernel DOES work, it is extremely unstable, booting me back to the login prompt or just locking up altogether with a kernel panic. What's the advantage of modularlizing vs. putting it in the kernel? Which is faster?
Putting everything in the kernel makes it more bloated (obviously). Modules are called only when needed, reducing the initial kernel size.
> d) ReiserFS support is non-existent in make menuconfig, unless I do some magic ritual of checking certain checkboxes
Not Mandrake's fault. Assuming you're in xconfig, that's all defined by the kernel package.
> e) I keep getting write_intr errors at around sector 3500 of my hard drive. Is it a bad hard drive, or is it just Linux?
Doubt if it's Linux. Sounds more like a bios config problem, or your hard drive's going south.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
However, my experience is that my Athlon running Kernel 2.4 handles them faster...
Actually, I noticed a major performance boost going to 2.4 with the Athlon. I will have to try this new version.
Has anyone else had printing problems migrating 2.2.x to 2.4.x?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
- Alan Cox: more resyncs (ARM down, but more to go) - Alan Cox: more merging (S/390 down, ARM to go).
Oh my GOD!!! Alan Cox is being merged into the Kernel!!! They have his ARM merged in now, what next, WHAT NEXT?????
--Volrath50
Question is - did AMD drop their NDA silliness for sharing the bug workaround or did the kernel developers just hack it (by reading NDP twice)
I expect the latter but I'm psyched anyway!
As always - thank you kernel developers!
--
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Just how is this flamebait. Nakoruru has aplogized repeatedly for a mistake of the kind that most people make on a fairly common basis. There is absolutely no reason for the way people have carried on about this.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
Tcsh isn't the only shell that's been ported to Windows. But to answer your question, that's not the way Windows works (In recent versions, at least.) All apps interface with the kernel through it's DLL calls (OK, not *ALL* apps, but any that use the GUI.). There isn't really a 'shell', even Explorer (The standard 'desktop' you see when you boot) is just another App. When you run a command prompt (Using 9x's command.com, or 2000's much-improved cmd.exe), all you're really doing is invoking an appication that provides a minimal execution environment for command line apps (Those being the ones that can't [don't] directly access the kernel.) So, any app that can provide that environment can execute those apps. This includes things that act like command interpreters, such as shell ports (I know several people that swear by bash under 2k), but can also include full blown GUI apps that provide a 'hidden' environment for a command line app, providing input to the process and capturing it's output. (Sort of like a tremendous badly implemented subprocess pipe.)
So, there's you're offtopic answer.
Now, so this entire post isn't totally offtopic, as I'm writing this the kernel.org bandwodth meter is down to 30.11, so I guess the initial rush is over. I wonder how many people download the new kernels just to say they did, but never actually install them...
This is simply not possible. DOCSIS cable modems, as well as most propietary modems on the market, have a maximum speed of somewhere between 27 and 33 Megabits/sec. Of course, these speeds are never reached. most cable connections seem to get 20kbytes/sec to 500kbytes/sec. 34Megabits/sec would be like 3,500kbytes/sec, which is like 3.5MB a second. A significant load.
To run pptpd, you have to patch the kernel. A howto at here describes how to patch and recompile the 2.4 kernel. If you aren't interested in pptpd for linux, just ignore the patches but follow the rest of the directions.
It works on Mandrake. There is even a sample configuration file for the kernel with Reiserfs support. Be sure and check the CPU type though.
As I write this, the bandwidth meter on kernel.org says 34.4 MBit/s
30 seconds after writing this the meter droped to 2kBit/s..
I was wondering if the Samba/Extended ACL stuff was merged into to the Linux source tree yet? I was frustrated today to have to go and get Samba 2.2.0 and have to go messing around with patching the kernels. It's nice to see USB getting some more attention/fixes even though it was given a late start.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
The Linux development team has only accomplished 26% of what they plan on implementing into kernel 2.4, and that's already been a huge accomplishment. Think of all the hardware implementations, updates, and "new things" the final 2.4 kernel will have. (Maybe it'll even support more hardware than Windows :D)
I found some surprising egrep results from the linux source code. Here you go: Linus Torvalds used...
/* Remember: "Different name, same old buggy as shit hardware." */" /* James M doesn't say fuck enough. */" /* fuck me plenty */" (this one's my favorite, hah.)
;)
fuck 11 times, or 9% of the time
shit 31 times, or 26% of the time
bitch 12 times, or 10% of the time
ass 10 times, or about 8.5% of the time
bastard two times, or about 1.7% of the time
dick one time, or about 0.8% of the time
hell 50 times, or 42.7% of the time
Total swear words used: 117
A few examples:
"/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/sunhme.c:
"/usr/src/linux/net/core/netfilter.c:
"/usr/src/linux/arch/sparc/kernel/process.c:
Pretty neat results
--
Maybe now my productivity will be restored.
KTS:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Utensil.
KTS:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Utensil.
There is no contradiction.
yet another mirror here.
Kernel 2.4.4 what is it now extra-extra-crispy?
-----------
Rootnode.org
-----------
Rootnode.org
Rock Journalism: Open source style.
Too bad someone removed KMALLOC_MAXSIZE from include/linux/slab.h. Now drivers/media/video/buz.c is broken and won't compile. Doesn't someone at least try compiling *all* the modules before releasing a new kernel?