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Linux Kernel 2.4.6 Released

If the prospect of fireworks wasn't enough to make you happy today, there's a new Linux kernel in town. (Note: be patient; some of the mirrors aren't yet updated.) sheol writes of the new 2.4.6 release: "Yep, it's out there. Run, jump, dance in the streets. Drink and be merry. Prepare yourself for a full kernel recompile." Reader dschl says: "Looks like fixes to the Reiserfs bugs in 2.4.5 are included." Here's the changelog as well.

202 comments

  1. Re:Fireworks? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Actually they are celebrating their independence AFAIK. They are obviously not aware of the fact that her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II has revoked it during the election-fiasco last year as this document proves:

    NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE

    To the citizens of the United States of America, In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

    Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The rt. hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

    To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

    1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed".

    2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.

    3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard.

    4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys.

    5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

    6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.
    Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005.

    7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 97.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "shit".

    8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day".

    9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

    10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.

    Thank you for your cooperation.

  2. Re:Fireworks? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1
    Oh, we noticed. Maybe you didn't see the reply:

    November 8, 2000

    To the Subjects of Her Majesty, the Queen of England,

    In the light of your failure to prevent us from kicking you out in the 18th century and doing as we damn well please, we hereby notify you that you can keep it down over there before we take notice.

    Sure, historically America really doesn't pay much attention to the rest of the world. But when someone does catch our eye, we tend to carpet bomb them to a pre-industrial state. It may not be right, or fair, but it is a trend. I suggest you keep it in mind.

    To aid in your realization that you should pipe down, the following facts are listed:

    1. American English is distinct from British English. Our aluminum is a lovely silver color, and we do not 'armour' our tanks, thank you.

    2. When you can tell the difference between an Alabama and Louisiana accent, I'll pay attention to the difference between a Londoner's and a Yorkshireman's accents.

    3. Rather than "God save the Queen"; you should learn "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". After all, if it weren't for American soldiers you'd speak German today, twice over. And if it weren't for American bread, butter, etc., you would have been starving while we saved your little old island from the Hun.

    4. If I were to throw an American football block on a football player, he'd be out ofthe game and I'd be ejected. If I were to throw a real tackle on a rugby player, he'd be maimed. The pads in American football are to keep you from being crippled or killed. Just because rugby players tear their ears in a group hug called a 'scrum'doesn't make them tough. You want tough? You put YOUR arms in theair while a 322 pound (46 stone) man slams into you at a dead sprint and still catch the ball. That's tough.

    5. If you can't settle the French's hash, find someone else. After all, they have lost to everyone *but* the British this century.

    6. The irony of a Brit complaining about American cars is too much. I've driven British cars and they're like a Hyundai, but poorly made. When someone else comes up with an idea as good as the muscle car, we'll think about it.

    To sum it all up, we really aren't interested in your opinion.

  3. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I prefer Linux over Windows for a workstation for a number of reasons.

    1) Virtual desktops
    2) Multiple workspaces
    3) Decent window manager: icewm.
    4) Looks great, unlike Windows' ugliness.
    5) Decent terminal emulators

  4. Re:great by Isaac-Lew · · Score: 1

    Get the patch, and/or try the mirrors (it's on linux.nssl.noaa.gov for instance).

  5. Re:international (crypto) kernel problems by imroy · · Score: 1

    I thought that patch-int-2.4.3.1 was breaking before 2.4.5 for me, so I'm surprised you were OK with that version.

    The only problem I've had is that something's changed in the toplevel Makefile and patch rejects some of the changes to that file. Check in Makefile.rej. Notably, 'crypto' has to be added to the end of the SUBDIRS variable and CRYPTO has to be defined as well. Just pull those lines out of the reject file. It's pretty simple.

  6. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by imroy · · Score: 1

    *not* run Linux? What's the point of that?
    What's the point of having a computer environment that you own, yet don't have complete control of? ;)

    Anyway, to give this post at least some substance I'll describe my comfy little computer setup:

    • Athlon workstation: 750Mhz, 192MB, 46G disk, G400 Max, 19" monitor, SB Live, DVD drive.
    • K6-III server: 400Mhz, 128MB, 14.4G disk, Ricoh CD/CD-R/RW drive, OnStream 30G tape drive.
    • Sun SparcStation LX: 50Mhz(!), 96MB, 4G disk.

    Ok, it's not 31337, but it keeps me happy and lets me play around with all sorts of fun things. Yes, even the SparcStation runs Linux :) Debian [GNU/]Linux to be exact. Makes everything nice and uniform. Just use apt-get everywhere!

    Oh, and it's all in my bedroom here. So I guess I get extra geek points for that...

  7. Still no AMD AGP Drivers for 761 chipset by snort · · Score: 1

    At least that I've seen in the change logs, ugh. WILL SOMEONE PLEASE FIX THIS - LINUX IS UNUSABLE ON MY SYSTEM UNTIL THIS IS FIXED

    1. Re:Still no AMD AGP Drivers for 761 chipset by kikta · · Score: 1

      Works fine on my system. I have the Asus A7M266 mobo with that chipset and I'm running Linux-Mandrake 8.0 with the nVidia drivers. Ironically enough, with the AGP driver for win32 installed (& also with the reference drivers), I'm having strange stability problems in Win98 SE. Email me & we'll arrange a prisoner exchange. ;-)

  8. Re:Reasons to upgrade? by yusufg · · Score: 1

    Won't the backing out of the page_launder changes cause problems for servers with heavy IO loads ?

  9. Re:Troubles by Spirilis · · Score: 1

    That's interesting; I have a VIA686-based chipset, but not the VIA onboard sound (C-Media CM8738 onboard sound), actually an Iwill KK266 motherboard (rev. 1.2), and I've not seen any lockups at all. DMA mode with the CDROM causes some random hardware lockups, but they go away briefly. I've never had a lockup due to my HDD; then again all I have is an ATA33 and an ATA66-based HD, and the ATA66-based HD sits in standy mode a good portion of the time (it's my media/swap disk drive and this machine has 256MB RAM in it, so swapping doesn't occur too often)

    --
    the real at&t mix
  10. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by Daeron · · Score: 1

    FreeBSD All the Way ....

    Except for my DECstation 5000/33 ... NetBSD/pmax has to do there :-))

  11. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by morbid · · Score: 1

    Ctrl-Alt-[+|-] (on the numeric key pad) do the trick without having to shut the X server down :)

    --
    I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
  12. Re:Fireworks? by ink · · Score: 1
    It's good to see the America Sense of Humour in full effect.

    With a sense of humor like yours, it's understandable that someone would mistake it for Whiney Europeanese.

    The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

    --
    The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
  13. The New Kid Is Available From Norway Mirrors ! by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 1



    As usual, the Norway mirrors are carrying the new kernel.

    2.4.6 is NOW on ftp://ftp.no.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/

    Come and get it !

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  14. Re:Does Disc IO Still Block Pthreads? by mandolin · · Score: 1
    Linux threads are implemented as processes which share memory, filehandles, etc.

    Unless people start to integrate the new Next Generation Posix Threading Project and, unless they hacked around *all* the blocking system calls .. well at least the slow ones that can return EINTR.. the entire process will block.

    Reading the manual from the 1.0.0 src rpm, it looks like they wrapped read(2)/write(2) among others, but send*(2)/recv*(2) (off the top of my head) aren't wrapped yet. It is on their TODO list to get this integrated with glibc at some future point. Hopefully those issues will be worked out by then.

  15. Re:Fireworks? by Bryan+K.+Feir · · Score: 1

    What I want to know is: why don't we British have an independence day?

    Well, Guy Fawkes Day isn't quite the same thing, but there are a lot of people out there who celebrate it as if they should work to make it an Independence Day by following through on Fawkes' failed plan...

    (For the non-Brits, Guy Fawkes plotted to blow up the houses of Parliament with a keg of gunpowder, only to get turned in by one of his co-conspirators. On November the fifth every year, Guy Fawkes is burned in effigy.)

    Remember, remember, the Fifth of November,
    The gunpowder treason and plot.
    I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason
    Should ever be forgot.


    -- Bryan Feir

  16. Re:2.4.6 dies horribly by Dionysus · · Score: 1

    Check out the comments section when gcc 3.0 was released here on Slashdot. Apparently, some people had some problems with kernel oopses when compiling the kernel with gcc 3.0. Also, from what I understand, the linux kernel is not completely ANSI compliant (which is why predecessor of gcc 3.0 (egcs?) couldn't compile the kernel). Think most of the problems got fixed though (haven't had problems compiling with gcc 2.95.x).

    --
    Je ne parle pas francais.
  17. Re:2.4.6 dies horribly by Dionysus · · Score: 1

    Which gcc? Make sure it's not 3.0. Would think that one will give problems, since it just came out (do a gcc --version).

    --
    Je ne parle pas francais.
  18. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by ghira · · Score: 1

    My main computer runs AmigaOS 3.9.

    My second machine has Linux and FreeBSD
    at the moment, and will probably gain
    BeOS, OpenBSD, Solaris and Plan9 sooner
    or later.

    --
    -- You've got to get a hat if you want to get ahead.
  19. I guess define "use". by SonOfSam · · Score: 1

    Well, Win2K and occasionally various flavors of Linux. Id argue about "use" though. I forced myself through a 28.8 kbps download and install of Slackware a few years back, and have had a certain amount of respect for it since. While I still have not to this day built a linux box and used it for more than a month straight, I find myself keeping up with the latest, and occasionally installing the latest distributions just for grins. 2.4.6 is a good thing.

  20. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by jawad · · Score: 1

    I use Win2000, cuz i haven't bothered to learn how to install linux/*bsd on my computers. If anyone in the RPI (i.e. Troy, NY) area is willing to help me out, drop me a mail! (I know, I could use how-to's, but I just don't want to deal with them.)
    ~jawad

  21. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by blinx_ · · Score: 1

    I should be counted in on that one - havn't had a windows partition in years - for gaming I have a playstation.

    --
    Resistance is not futile - www.gnu.org
  22. Re:Fireworks? by wangi · · Score: 1
    Well seen as it's the 4th I'll allow myself to go off on this tangent...
    Yeah, that's when we kicked the English's butt. :)
    • It wasn't the English the American Colonials were fighting, it was the British.
    • In many ways it was a British Cival War, the Americans were holding to the ideals which were fought over in the English Civil War (Cromwell and all that).
  23. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by realkiwi · · Score: 1

    I use Mac OS X on my Mac

    --
    realkiwi
  24. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by kubrick · · Score: 1

    It usually comes free with a new PC anyways!

    Oh, believe me, you're paying for it all right :)

    --
    deus does not exist but if he does
  25. 2.2.x ? by jefe289 · · Score: 1

    I'm just wondering... what percent of the slashdotters have switched over to 2.4.x from 2.2.x

    I haven't because I don't want to bother upgrading my whole installation.... or worry about any potential conflicts

    1. Re:2.2.x ? by drewness · · Score: 1

      I haven't upgraded yet, because I have a Dell Inspiron 8000 which has a funky PCMCIA chipset (or maybe it's the BIOS; I never have gotten the damn thing to work right.) and you have to compile PCMCIA with "PnP BIOS Resource Checking" which does not work with 2.4 (and the documentation says this "shouldn't be a problem for anyone", but hey. ).
      My desktop computer has a Geforce2 and I was pretty sure that the older drivers from nVidia only had kernel modules for 2.2.x so I played it safe, but now I'm just too lazy.

    2. Re:2.2.x ? by Punto · · Score: 1
      I haven't because I don't want to bother upgrading my whole installation.... or worry about any potential conflicts

      I had 2 issues: the modules didn't load correctly (this is actually very serious), the solution was to 'apt-get install modutils'.
      The second was the the masquerade settings, I just upgraded to iptables (had to read a couple of howtos and stuff). I think there is a module for ipchains support on 2.4

      Overall, my life is better with 2.4.2

      --

      --

      --
      Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!

    3. Re:2.2.x ? by klmth · · Score: 1

      Actually, i found the switch particularly painless, even with redhat 6.x. It was merely a matter of compiling and installing the new modutils.

    4. Re:2.2.x ? by Chalst · · Score: 2

      Linus starting the 2.5 branch officially is a good sign that he considers the current revision of 2.4 to be stable enough not to be the main focus of work.

    5. Re:2.2.x ? by psergiu · · Score: 2

      2.4 is faster than 2.2 but is not that stable.
      I tried it on all the machines i have but on some (some p1 desktops and laptops) i had to revert to 2.2 because 2.4 crashed WAY too much and too often. (ranging from system freezes to scads of oopses an panics). The problem is that 2.4 uses the hardware at 110% potential but if the hardware is flakey (as those pentiums were) - it will bomb.
      So: stay with 2.2 on "Production"-grade machines and on machines whose hardware you don't trust 100%
      --

      --
      1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
    6. Re:2.2.x ? by WWWWolf · · Score: 4
      I haven't because I don't want to bother upgrading my whole installation.... or worry about any potential conflicts

      The change from 2.2.x to 2.4.x is surprisingly painless (much less painful than any "user-level" major change, like back when the day when going from libc5 to glibc2 practically needed reinstallation of the whole dist). No recompilation or reinstallation of stuff was necessary.

      Personally, the only thing that needed special attention was the firewall thing, and even that wasn't top priority (because the kernel has an ipchains comparibility mode). Ultimately, the conversion of my firewall script from ipchains to iptables was rather easy.

  26. Re:National Holidays by Fafhrd · · Score: 1

    I dunno - St. Patrick's Day seems to be celebrated worldwide for some reason, which I've never seen happen with any other national holiday...
    Here in Brazil we never celebrated it. St. Patrick is almost unknown here. As a largely catholic country, we do celebrate other saints, like St. John, St. Peter... But I never saw any St. Patrick celebration.

  27. Re:Save bandwidth... use patches. by Fweeky · · Score: 1

    Or alternatively if you don't want to mess about with patches which will inevatively screw up, rsync your old tarball with the new one :)
    --
    mysql> DELETE FROM world.human_race WHERE iq < 100;

  28. Re:Poor RAID performance in 2.4.5? by snookums · · Score: 1

    Did you ever try software RAID on a 2.2 kernel?

    If the performance and scalability were better on 2.2 than 2.4 then there may be a bug or missing feature in 2.4 that should be looked into.

    If the performance is comperable for 2.2 and 2.4 then the problem is most likely a bottleneck in your hardware (like the IDE bus contention mentioned by another poster).

    --
    Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
  29. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by alphaque · · Score: 1
    FreeBSD 4.3 standing up to be counted.

    But seriously, with the charged nature of things, isnt a question like this loaded and bound to evolve into a religious war ? So most folk here use linux, but then others pick FreeBSD or OpenBSD or NetBSD. To each his own, eh ?

  30. Re:reiserfs problems??? by dschl · · Score: 1
    From the Changelog
    -pre9:
    - Chris Mason: reiserfs PF_MEMALLOC handling
    -pre4:
    - Chris Mason: ReiserFS pre-allocation locking bugfix
    -pre3:
    - Chris Mason: reiserfs mark_journal_new and bh leak fix
    - Neil Brown: knfsd updates, including ability to export ReiserFS filesys

    Also, there is a patch available for 2.4.5 at the Namesys website, where they stated on June 21:
    Quota and KNFSD patch for 2.4.5 is renamed ( linux-2.4.5-reiserfs-quota+knfsd+umount-fix.patch. bz2) to indicate explicitly that it also contains umount-fix patch.

    --
    Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
  31. Re:Fireworks? by treke · · Score: 1

    July second, I think (maybe the first). If I had to guess it was probably a celebration. It celebrates the establishment of the Canadian government.

  32. Cinco de Mayo vs. Mexican Independance Day by stefanlasiewski · · Score: 1

    Sept 15, 1810: Mexican Independance Day (When Mexico left Spain).

    May 5, 1862: Forces from France, England, Spain and a large rival Mexican army (But mostly France) were defeated near Mexico City; after attempting to re-occupy Mexico.

    --
    "Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
  33. Poor RAID performance in 2.4.5? by Shanep · · Score: 1

    I'm getting really poor performance (30% slower!) out of the 2.4.5's RAID-0 (up to 2.4.6-pre5). Back when I was using software RAID with the 2.2 kernels, I was actually getting a performance increase (whoa!) with RAID-0 of 50% or so, across my two 20Gb 7200rpm Seagate UDMA drives (hda and hdc).

    Anyone else noticed this, or is it just me?

    hda and hdc of course, with hdparm -A1c1d1k1m16u1X66 /dev/hda and hdparm -A1c1d1k1m16u1X66 /dev/hdc set after boot.

    hdparm -t /dev/hda6 and hdparm -t /dev/hdc6 shows the same transfer rate, yet the benchmark of the corresponding stripe of those (hdparm -t /dev/md0) is about 30% slower! Timing dd bs=128k if=/dev/??? of=/dev/null for hda6, hdc6 and md0 gives the same results across the whole partitions.

    PII-300, top is not showing greater than 30% CPU usage from hdparm or dd during the tests so CPU is not the problem (and it was flying under 2.2). I have tried plenty of chunk sizes up to 128k.

    Hopefully 2.4.6 will fix it, but the md updates in (pre5?) did not.

    --
    War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
    1. Re:Poor RAID performance in 2.4.5? by bug1 · · Score: 1

      I gave up on software raid under linux during the .2.4-test phase.

      I couldnt even get someone to admit there is a problem.

      They all say they are getting linear performance increases, i used to be able to get 80& performance increas with 2 drives, but adding any more drives (i had 4 way raid 0) made no difference to performance.

    2. Re:Poor RAID performance in 2.4.5? by RelliK · · Score: 3

      Maybe that's because you are using IDE drives. Although you can plug in 2 IDE drives per channel (giving you a total of 4 for 2 channels), only *one* of them can work at a time. While one is working the other one is waiting. Unlike SCSI, the two drives *cannot* share the bandwidth of the IDE channel and work simultaneously. So the only way you can get a linear increase from IDE is if you use two drives on two *different* IDE channels. I suspect that's your problem.
      ___

      --
      ___
      If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
  34. Re:Fireworks? by Tsujigiri · · Score: 1
    I would suggest April 21 myself.

    The day (in 1653) that Oliver Cromwell cleared the "Rump" (the then corrupt parliment that was essentially still loyal to the defeated monarchy) and replaced it with the "Parliament of Puritan saints" (which proved equally innept). Although it was finnaly a failed overthrough of the monarchy (the monarchy was returned to power in about 1660, two years after his death).

    Anyone got a Brittish independance day suggestion?

    "I'll take the red pill, no, blue. AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH........"

    --

    "I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
    - Monty Python meets the Matrix

  35. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by innit · · Score: 1

    1) Virtual desktops
    2) Multiple workspaces
    3) Decent window manager: icewm.
    4) Looks great, unlike Windows' ugliness.
    5) Decent terminal emulators

    1) I find them a pain in the arse, therefore they're a subjective "benefit"
    2) Isn't that the same as 1) ?
    3) Subjective
    4) Very subjective
    5) You haven't used many Windows terminal emulators have you

    My point: Everything's subjective. Some think Windows is "ugly". I personally like it.

    Xx Stuii!

  36. Re:Download time by Bandman · · Score: 1

    Suprisingly I'm getting 60k. I wasn't going to say anything, so now I've probably jinxed it. DAMN! lol...
    Enjoy

  37. Re:Time to start the 3.0 pool! by Bandman · · Score: 1

    Depends on how much you like mopping...

  38. Re:Fireworks? by geekster · · Score: 1

    Ooh ooh! Don't forget us danes (4th of may).

  39. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by andrewjnr · · Score: 1

    Damn Straight! I have people bagging me out for using 2K on my desktop at home. I am a firm believer in using Linux on the server, but until some drastic improvements are made on the desktop side I will continue using M$ software. It usually comes free with a new PC anyways!

    --
    -AndrewJNR, NSO, The Don College
  40. Re:small patch, but has more USB by MicroBerto · · Score: 1

    Do you really update your servers on EVERY kernel release? That sounds like a fair amount of work and potential downtime..

    Mike Roberto
    - GAIM: MicroBerto

    --
    Berto
  41. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by aunchaki · · Score: 1

    I run Linux on my Alphas, because it's a bit more mature than FreeBSD, but my laptop and ix86 machines are all FreeBSD.

  42. Re:Really guys.. by chegosaurus · · Score: 1

    > GNU/Linux has proven to be such a good
    > operating system that it is competing against
    > Windows

    In much the same way that British tennis players compete at Wimbledon. (i.e. despite much flag-waving they are completely insignificant and never figure for very long.)

    > I really don't care about compatibility with
    > Windows

    Naturally. You're way to 31337 to care about some lame-ass shit that your little sister might use.

    The original troll was actually pretty near the mark, and got the responses it earned. The Linux community reminds me more of the old Amiga community every day.

    Oh, and look up "litany" before you use it again.

  43. sob........yes, i am a luser, i still use windows by Indy1 · · Score: 1

    ok, i plead guilty, i still use Windows, 2000 professional on my laptop and my main machine. However, i do use linux (red hat 7.1 ) on my file server and my Nat/Dhcp box. I am not a uber-linux geek (yet), so switching to linux on the desktop isnt quite practical for me. Hopefully one day, i am sick of M$ shenaigans.

    --
    Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
  44. Re:2.4.6 with XFS soon... by Woko · · Score: 1

    I'd like to see a RedHat reiserfs installer.
    Even a generic installer for your choice of RAID & filesystem

    ---

    --
    ---
    Silence is consent.
  45. Re:National Holidays by biohazard99 · · Score: 1

    I wish you could find it on tap in Lexington Ky. Its only on tap at 2 bars that aren't on my side of town.

  46. Re:National Holidays by biohazard99 · · Score: 1

    Its got the perfect cool quotient it

    • is a Catholic's Saint's Day, St. Pat allegedely drove all the snakes from Ireland
    • is a day to celebrate Ireland
    • Happens near the start of spring in Europe, North America, and Asia
    • lies on or around Mid-terms and/or Spring Break for American college students
    • gives cities a viable excuse why their waterways are an abnormal color
    • last, but not least, cheap Guiness bread in a bottle

    Going back to that first one, perhaps we should celebrate St. Patrick's day by getting drunk and doing nasty things to lawyers :-)

    --And thats for talking about the Queen on Independence Day -- Little Bill Dagget after beating English Bob: Unforgiven, 1993.

  47. VIA 82cxxx_audio Fixes by worldwideweber · · Score: 1

    By the way, for anyone having problems with the
    VIA 686a or 686b onboard sound (AC 97), this
    kernel fixes the strange sounds on most systems (it certainly did on mine).

    --
    w o r l d w i d e w e b e r
    1. Re:VIA 82cxxx_audio Fixes by omnirealm · · Score: 1

      I wrote with one of the developers of XMMS, and he complained like none other about the poor quality of the AC'97 hardware. When I used the AC'97 sound drivers in the Linux kernel, I would frequently get long periods of popping noises whenever I played a game. The Alsa mailing thread is full of people having trouble with the Alsa 0.9.0beta4 drivers and the Via686a chipset; I myself was unsuccessful at getting them to work. In a nutshell, I just recompiled the kernel with "Sound=y" being the ONLY thing related to sound that I enabled, and then installed Alsa driver version 0.5.11. Everything works beautifully :-)

      --
      An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
  48. Re:Really guys.. by worldwideweber · · Score: 1

    Firstly, for those who have been waiting for support for specific hardware, the kernel is important. As the kernel normally includes a litany of new drivers with every new release.

    Secondly, while GNU/Linux has proven to be such a good operating system that it is competing against Windows, this is not the intention of those that spend their free time developing parts of GNU/Linux. There are two major goals of the GNU/Linux community:
    (1) Create quality software (which the open and distributed model of GNU/Linux development helps accomplish); and (2) Give users the freedom to choose. I would argue that these are the things that actually MATTER.

    Thirdly, and I really don't care about compatibility with Windows, if you check out SAMBA and other projects you will notice that there have been significant steps in that direction.

    Lastly, you (like everyone else) is free to develop for Linux. If there was a demand for any type of product for linux, there would be a legion of geeks to fill that need. So if you are specific, you might see the software you need in no time ;).

    --
    w o r l d w i d e w e b e r
  49. Not that hard by Svenne · · Score: 1

    I have switched, and it's really not that hard to do it. The only thing you absolutley need to upgrade, if you're using a fairly recent 2.2 system, is modutils. That is, if you're running any version less than 2.4.
    If you're on a modem, you'll have to update PPPd too, but both modutils and pppd are just a "./configure;make;make install" away.

    ---

    --

    Slagborr
    1. Re:Not that hard by larien · · Score: 2

      Or, in Debian's case, apt-get install pppd; apt-get install modutils :)
      --

  50. Re:Fireworks? by slamb · · Score: 1

    Other free countries have their days of independance [...] September 16th for Mexico (although I'll admit I had to look that one up)

    That doesn't sound right to me. Isn't it cinco de mayo (May 5th)?

  51. Re:Fireworks? by hitchhacker · · Score: 1

    what is tacky? google or my post?
    google changes their logo for many holidays.
    It changed for Chinese New Year for instance.

    -metric

  52. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by R.Caley · · Score: 1
    I am not sure what is messy about
    rpm -ivh program.to.install.rpm

    It's not the makeing stuff that is messy, it's the general agangement of the system. It still gives the feel of `download a kernel, download some other stuff, throw it on a CD and ship it'.

    As a quick example, do `man hostname' and then try and use that information to set the hostname. On RH 7.1 at least it gives two possibilities bioth of which are wrong.
    _O_

    --
    _O_
    .|<
    The named which can be named is not the true named
  53. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by R.Caley · · Score: 1

    We just got a Linux machine. Coincidentally a customer just asked us to put stuff on RH. What a mess. If this is wht it's like now I grateful I never surcumbed to the temptation to give it a try in it's earlier incarnations.
    _O_

    --
    _O_
    .|<
    The named which can be named is not the true named
  54. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by mauryisland · · Score: 1

    Redhat 7.1 and Mandrake 8.0 here. I can do everything I need to do on either one of these boxes. My wife has weaned herself off of Win98, as well, which was something of a feat. I've gotten three of my neighbors onto Linux as well, with one couple never having a computer with anything but Mandrake on it.

  55. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by Dahan · · Score: 1
    Redhat 7.1 and Mandrake 8.0 here.

    I believe those are both Linux distributions, actually...

    As for me, my computers run Win2K, NetBSD, NeXTStep, and GS/OS :)

  56. Re:Troubles by dlapine · · Score: 1
    The fix is simple. Grab the latest the via drivers set, 4in132 and install it. There may also be a bios update that fixes this problem as well.

    The problem was: copy 100 megs in 1 or more files at a time from one ide drive to another drive. system locks hard, requireing a reset at least, and sometimes a power cycle. You know that its fixed when it doesn't do this again.

    Small tip: grab and install the via busmaster drivers 3011 as well, selecting the miniport option. This lets windows "see" the correct info about your harddrives (i.e. IBM DTLA 305020 is reported as such and not "drive type 47") without any performance hits.

    These files are available at: http://www.viahardware.com

    --
    The Internet has no garbage collection
  57. Re:What a suprise by Explo · · Score: 1

    It must be terribly difficult to just skip stories that you are not interested about.

    --
    Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
  58. me by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

    My desktop is mostly nt4 with the occasional boot into win2k. My firewall on the cable modem is running OpenBSD on a sparc2 and my IBM Thinkpad 390x runs NetBSD 1.5. Totally linux free.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  59. Re:Fireworks? by SLi · · Score: 1
    Wow. Nice to know we have a war veteran from those times here. I thought you wouldn't get eternal or semi-eternal life even in the US.

    Well, I can't know everything, I'm just one of those ancient Europeans who still live in tribes or something ;)

    Or, said more straight: Stop that nazi-like flag waving. It makes a) you look stupid and b) less stupid people wonder if you really are as stupid as you seem.

  60. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by SLi · · Score: 1
    I don't think Linux is useless as a desktop OS, though it depends on what you want or need to do with it. There are many of us who use it exclusively as a desktop OS. I do at home.

    And I really prefer doing it this way - at work I need to use Windows, and I must say I really feel I have the power on my fingertips only when using Linux (or some other unixish system). The feeling, it's like only being able to do what M$ (and other companies) thought you would like to.

    Sure, it doesn't have all those new fancy games. I don't really care, because I have better and more relaxing use for my time.

  61. Re:Time to start the 3.0 pool! by SLi · · Score: 1
    But of course (and for different reasons than you think). The versions before 2.0.x were also 1.3.x. 2.5.x will be a development branch.

    In general, x.y.z is a development branch if y is odd, otherwise a stable branch.

  62. Re:Time to start the 3.0 pool! by SLi · · Score: 1

    Umh. Somehow misread your comment in a terrible way. Sorry :-(

  63. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by technoid_ · · Score: 1

    BSD for life.

    Actually running FreeBSD on most machines, but still have a running NeXT slab in the corner running NeXTstep 3.2.

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do - Lew of GO magazine
  64. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by pigeonhed · · Score: 1

    Could not agree more with your experiences. I do use Mandrake at home along with Win2000. My wife and son however cannot stand Linux and I understand why it can still be a bit technical and unusual for the casual user. Most of the distros out today are still "growing up" so for the vast majority of home users it is still not a permanent thing. Should also mention my son due to his gaming habits will be locked into MS for the future.

  65. Re:Fireworks? by Andrewkov · · Score: 1
    Yes, Google also changed their logo for Canada day on July 1st. I wonder if they would change it for my upcomming birthday??

    ---

  66. Re:Fireworks? by Lozzer · · Score: 1

    Independence from what or whom?

    --
    Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
  67. Re:Really guys.. by jpietrzak · · Score: 1
    Arrogant attitude? Most People don't contribute anything to free software. No money, no time, no effort, no nothing. You want a Linux to be a viable replacement to Windows for most people? Give me a good reason why someone creating a piece of software for his or her own pleasure should care in the least about a group of users who are going to do nothing more than moan about how it isn't enough for them.

    Honestly, I understand that it's important to produce good software. But you have to understand that it's the people who provide the time, the expertise, or the money, whose voices are heard. And right now, that's certainly not the general Windows-using public. The first law of business is to satisfy your customer -- and in the world of open-source software, customers are generally other developers, not some group of anonymous users.

    --John

  68. Re:Really guys.. by jpietrzak · · Score: 1
    Remember, Linux is open-source software. Those who write the software do so for their own reasons, and thus determine success or failure on their own terms. Simply put, if you don't contribute to the creation of the software, your opinion doesn't matter. (It's not like you're giving any money to these people.)

    --John

  69. Re:Fireworks? by Cryptnotic · · Score: 1
    Because you didn't have the common sense to kill your king and get a real government the way the French did.

    Cryptnotic

    --
    My other first post is car post.
  70. Re:Does Disc IO Still Block Pthreads? by Cryptnotic · · Score: 1
    pthreads is not an implementation, it is an API. There are user-space pthreads implementations which implement "threading" without using separate processes or OS-supported threads. These implementations suffer from the "one 'thread' blocks, they all block" situation, as a reasult.

    In Linux, thread creation is implemented via the clone() system call. Threads look like any other process, they just happen to share a memory space with other processes. Anyway, if one thread does a blocking call to read() or write() or some other blocking call, it does not stop the other processes in Linux. It hasn't for a long time, at least not since before kernel 2.2.

    Cryptnotic

    --
    My other first post is car post.
  71. Re:Linux is dying by Queuetue · · Score: 1

    Actually, Linux is doing pretty good - read the changelog.

    Now, I agree that some linux-based companies aren't doing too well, but this really has almost nothing to do with Linux. Take a look at the non-linux-based companies.

  72. Thanks ( looking for a more expressive word) by Joan23 · · Score: 1

    This kernel release has been relieved me a lot.
    It has solved a problem that prevented me to record CD's successfully (with a heavy IO load the system even hanged up!) plus some ISDN problems.

    Although I don't live in the USA I would have make some firework if I could today.

    Thanks a lot to all the people involved.

    OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo O
    ( ronson ad jazzfree point com )

  73. international (crypto) kernel problems by xercist · · Score: 1

    Has anyone else had this problem?

    I use the patch from kerneli.org, and yes, I applied a patch meant for 2.4.3 to 2.4.5, it works great. I have a loopback aes-encrypted filesystem used to store important things, but after patching 2.4.6, compiling, and booting, I can't mount the encrypted filesystem! It tells me the cipher doesn't exist in the kernel, even after I manually insert the module.

    Anyone from kerneli.org here? answer me this: why arn't you as obsessed with the latest releases as I am? 2.4.3 is obsolete! ;)

    --

    --

    --
    grep "xercist" /dev/random ...you'll find me in there someday
  74. Re:Fireworks? by Golthar · · Score: 1

    Not biased, its only because of the fireworks that I noticed its the 4th Not American either :)

  75. Re:Fireworks? by dadragon · · Score: 1

    It is interesting how all of the top places to live, according to the UN are constitutional monarchies.. Canada, Australia, Denmark, Norway, etc.

    --
    God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
  76. Re:National Holidays by dadragon · · Score: 1

    It's the Irish national holiday. It's celebrated on March 17 of each year. People wear green and teenagers drink lots of green beer that's sold at pubs, at least here in Canada. Not in the US however because in the land of liberty, adults can't drink until they're 21. Odd how you can vote but not drink.

    --
    God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
  77. Re:National Holidays by dadragon · · Score: 1
    Well it is Ireland. Saskatchewan should declare independance and have huge pissups in its name too, it is said that the last thing people say in every other province before a motor accident is "SHIT!" or something similar

    In Saskatchewan it's more like "Hold my beer and watch this!"/P?

    --
    God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
  78. Re:Fireworks? by dadragon · · Score: 1

    Do you know when Canada Day is? Do you know WHAT it is celebrating?

    --
    God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
  79. Re:National Holidays by dadragon · · Score: 1
    Is that the redneck state in Australia? Saskatchewan is considered to be a redneck province in Canada.

    I guess one difference is that in Queensland (qld?) they'd be pissed to the gills on Foster's or some other Ozzie beer. Here it'd be Molson. Or Labatt, or maybe Mike's Hard Lemonaid.

    --
    God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
  80. Re:National Holidays by dadragon · · Score: 1

    It probably comes from BC too :) One of Canada's many exports :)

    --
    God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
  81. Re:How about 2.5.x by SnapperHead · · Score: 1

    Not until they fix the damn memory mangement problems. They only seem to be getting worse, I hope 2.4.6 resolves most of them.
    until (succeed) try { again(); }

    --
    until (succeed) try { again(); }
  82. Re:Sonypi and Motioneye patches for Sony Vaios... by LordWoody · · Score: 1
    Try 2.4.7-pre2

    From: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/testing/pat ch-2.4.7.log
    -pre2:
    - merge with Alan (USB, zoran, sony motion-eye, rio, dmi-scan)


    --
    Never meddle in the affairs of dragons,

    --
    Never meddle in the affairs of dragons,
    for you are crunchy and good with catsup.
  83. Re:Time to start the 3.0 pool! by justin_w_hall · · Score: 1

    Not to mention that they're working on 2.2.20 still :)

    ---

    --

    ---
    "how can the same street intersect with itself? i must be at the nexus of the universe!" - cosmo kramer
  84. Re:Fireworks? by Jodrell · · Score: 1
    Excuse me, you pretentious asshole -

    Nice to see you've taken my post in the spirit in which it was intended. It's good to see the America Sense of Humour in full effect.

    I live in America and am very aware of British holidays that we don't celebrate like Boxing Day and May Day

    Boxing Day is just a day to get over the hangover from Christmas Day. May Day passes unmentioned around here most years.

    am very aware of when the Magna Carta was signed (June 15th, 1215 at Runnymede).

    You know more than me then ;)


  85. reiserfs problems??? by crazney · · Score: 1

    since when.. i've been using 2.4.5 for ages - with reiserfs - and have had no problems...

    --
    stuff
    1. Re:reiserfs problems??? by Dr.+Sp0ng · · Score: 2

      since when.. i've been using 2.4.5 for ages - with reiserfs - and have had no problems...

      There were problems with exporting a reiserfs partition over NFS, which was quite annoying... this may have been fixed in 2.4.5, though. If so, I'm not quite sure what the problems fixed in 2.4.6 are, but probably other wierd interactions that most people don't encounter.
      --

    2. Re:reiserfs problems??? by egjertse · · Score: 3
      AFAIK, the problem was related to the unmounting of ReiserFS partitions - in which case you'd rarely notice it as you'd normally only unmount during shutdown. Dunno, might cause the box to hang while running rc.S.

      Slackware 8.0 - which ships with 2.4.5 - comes with a small patch to fix that particular problem.

  86. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by netsharc · · Score: 1

    If you're really that interetesd, try Linux from Scratch. You build everything from zero, it's great, it got me learning about what goes where. It does take a lot of time though, and the "book" only goes as far as explaining how to get a default Linux system running, which, without any user apps, is kinda useless. It doesn't even have X. The network works, but it doesn't mention browsers or mail programs, the rest, you have to do yourself. Although they do have hints files, which you can consult when you want to install neat things such as X, Gnome, or what-not.

    --
    What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
  87. Re:Reasons to upgrade? by Spock+the+Vulcan · · Score: 1

    Yeah, Alan is slowly being "merged" into the kernel, going by the Changelogs :)

    Btw, I had terrible issues with 2.4.5 exhausting all available swap space, and causing the machine to come to screechless halt. I've been running the pre6 patches for a while now, and it's fixed. So upgrading might be a good idea.

  88. Re:Rhyme by the+Atomic+Rabbit · · Score: 1

    How low we sink for the sake of karma. I mean, ripping off the poor Anonymous Cowards? Hah.

  89. Re:Fireworks? by druse · · Score: 1

    tacky, but so very american.

    --
    "To blow recursion, you must first blow recus
  90. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by spikeovsky · · Score: 1

    Mac OS X for me when I can. OS 9.1 sometimes. Win 98 at work.

  91. Re: 2.2.x by jamesots · · Score: 1

    I'm still on 2.2.x because I have 230 days of uptime and I want to get to 365! And I reckon that since my server has been running for 230 days on 2.2.x there's not much call for an upgrade.

    Now if I was running Linux on my desktop it would be a different matter.

    --
    Ho hum for the life of a bear
  92. Re: 2.2.x by jamesots · · Score: 1

    Not much. Mainly just automatic internet dial up and NAT. Some Apache, PHP, JSP, file sharing. It just sits in the cupboard and does its stuff, while my Win2k box sits under my desk and does its stuff. (Hasn't crashed for a few months, but I do switch it off every night!!).

    --
    Ho hum for the life of a bear
  93. Re:Fireworks? by juju2112 · · Score: 1

    lol.... hey i was only joking. Don't take things so seriously..

    -- juju

  94. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by jsmaby · · Score: 1

    I use linux on my main system, Irix on a couple others, and OpenBSD at home. I personally don't really enjoy Windows or MacOS since I've gotten good at the command line. My favorite is OpenBSD, but the more I look at the source the more I don't like it.

    --

    Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

  95. Re:Download time by jsmaby · · Score: 1

    I actually got 533.74 kB/s even from the main server. Perhaps everyone avoids the main server right after a release because they know it will be slow :)

    --

    Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

  96. Re:National Holidays by NoOneInParticular · · Score: 1

    What's St. Patrick's Day????

    Worldwide != AngloSaxonia

  97. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by karma+kameleon · · Score: 1

    Hey, thanks for the very cool link, I'll check it out! I'm sort of a do-it-yourself kinda guy anyway, and this looks like a great way to learn...

  98. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by karma+kameleon · · Score: 1
    I keep wanting to like/use Linux, I really do. Every once in a while I download a bunch of ISO's, take a deep breath, install 4-5 different distro's, play with each one until I break it, and move on to the next.

    Still haven't found the "right" distro for me, for some reason, but I do know that I like Debian's installation/configuration, Mandrake's GUI/advanced feature set, Slack's ascetic tendencies, and Red Hat's ubiquity. *shrug*

    So sometimes I feel a little weird reading Slashdot all the time, but I do believe in open source, so I don't question it... at least I'm not alone. ;-)

  99. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 1
    Sad to say, my primary boxen is running Windows 95. I tried to get a dual boot system going, but I couldn't get RedHat to install (I'll take another stab at it, honest). I have a cheap computer running RedHat 6.2, but I don't turn it on much.

    Having said that, I've got my Windows 95 box loaded up with Perl, the Apache http daemon, GCC, Mozilla, and all sorts of other goodness. If you haven't mastered Linux, I would encourage you to at least download other Win32-compatable binaries.

    I do have to say that, once you tweak the themes, Gnome desktop looks way cooler than any of the WinXX's.

    --

    You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

  100. small fix for VIA MVP3 by Jacek+Poplawski · · Score: 1

    ....and this kernel has still broken support for VIA MVP3, you will see it when trying to use fast video, for example when playing movies - you will get about 10 fps instead of 30. Solution is in every -ac patch, but it's very simple, you have to find file:
    /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/kernel/pci-pc.c
    and delete one line :
    { PCI_FIXUP_HEADER, PCI_VENDOR_ID_VIA, PCI_DEVICE_ID_VIA_82C598_1, pci_fixup_via691_2 },
    that's all! your kernel will be fast again (that fixup is not needed for old VIA motherboards)

  101. Re:Does Disc IO Still Block Pthreads? by cmclean · · Score: 1
    maybe someone could point me at the right place to ask this question

    You might be able to get the info you want from one of the linux-kernel mailing list archives, as good a place as any to start.
    Regards,
    cmclean

    --
    "Any similarity between the hooting of a million eager monkeys and Slashdot is purely coincidental." -THEFLASHMAN
  102. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by forbin420 · · Score: 1

    Good suggestion...

    I'm sure the l337 Cowboy Neal OS would be the clear winner though :)

  103. 2.4 has AMD optimization by 2ms · · Score: 1

    I think it's *alot* faster on AMD machines cuz of whole host of AMD optimizations. I noticed a big difference in latency while running X on my k6-III+ machine. I've also had no problems whatsoever with stability (no more nor less stable than 2.2), despite the cheap FIC mb with VIA chipset, and other hardware I don't trust 100%, but this is only a desktop system. So, for desktop use at least, performance advantages of 2.4 can be very noticable while stability is still, for example, a million times better than Windows.

  104. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by ffsnjb · · Score: 1

    Not I, my friend...

    Windows for the workstations, cuz dammit, I like games, and I have hardware no one would ever want to write FreeBSD or GNU/Linux drivers for. FreeBSD for the servers, because it's the best tool for the job.

    --
    "Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
  105. Re:Why Bother? by grammar+fascist · · Score: 1

    You'll know that the system crashed when your laundry comes out bright blue and covered in silly numbers!

    Crashed? It'll do that as a matter of course! And I just can't wait to get all those lovely MSN butterflies all over my clothes!

    --
    I got my Linux laptop at System76.
  106. My Mileage (yours may vary) by OpCode42 · · Score: 1

    I've installed slackware 8.0, kernel 2.4.6 and xine with libcss and the dvd plugin. My system has never run smoother. Thanks to all who work on these projects :)

  107. Old new people! by ShawnX · · Score: 1

    You already know that 2.4.7-pre1 is out the door now don't you? ;-)
    ---

    --
    Everyone wants a Tux in their life.
  108. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by perlchimp · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't a niftly crafted poll be a better way to ask this question?

  109. Re:Fireworks? by Pogue+Mahone · · Score: 1

    What I want to know is: why don't we British have an independence day?

    --

    --
    Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
  110. Re:Fireworks? by anon757 · · Score: 1

    Wow, who peed in your coffee today?

  111. Re:2.4.6 dies horribly by Craig+Ringer · · Score: 1

    2.95.4 Thats what gets me - 2.4.5 works _perfectly_ compiled on the same system. I think its time to dump those oops()es and submit a bug report in case somebody else has some ideas (or a RTFM because of something I missed of course)

  112. 2.4.6 dies horribly by Craig+Ringer · · Score: 1

    Wondering if anybody else has had this happen - my machine is running a version of 2.4.5 I built about a week ago on Debian (woody). Works perfectly. 2.4.6 boots, loads /sbin/init, and spews a stream of oops()s and such across the screen before hanging completely. SAME CONFIG (though i've 'make mrproper'd & 'make menuconfig' not copied across .config of course).

    I can build a 2.4.5 kernel perfectly on the same machine, it works. No complier errors for either 2.4.5 or 2.4.6 builds. Its an AMD Duron 850, KT133A board chipset, scsi & ata66, 2 100mbit ethernet.

    Anybody seen this kind of bizarre behavior before?

    1. Re:2.4.6 dies horribly by Abcd1234 · · Score: 2

      Actually, AFAIK, GCC 3.0 compiles the kernel just fine...

    2. Re:2.4.6 dies horribly by cdipierr · · Score: 3

      This is one of the Via bugs. Don't compile with Athlon optimizations, use the K6 series instead and you'll be ok.

  113. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by cb0y · · Score: 1

    Thats still a lame ass hacker interface, is it so hard to make a popup menu to select the reses, whenyou click RIGHT MOUSE button on the desktop?

    Its fucking trivial to code, and you dont have to cycle which is lame ass.

    JEez, even the mac does it better with its control strip, something like that needs to be DEFAULT, not a wierdo download from some .cc address that 404s 1/2 the time.

    LEARN to design, as well as code.

  114. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by cb0y · · Score: 1

    WIn2k as my desktop, and linux as my 'router' hack box, irc box.

    ANother linux box at work as a server
    another linux-ppc box on an older mac
    Win98/Linux (redhat6.2) on my Laptop

  115. Re:2.4.6 with XFS soon... by kluro · · Score: 1

    Actually, there is one:
    RedHat 7.x + ReiserFS

    But don't use resierfs for /boot, as the version of lilo shipped with RH7.1 is unable to read reiser.

  116. Re:2.4.6 with XFS soon... by berzerke · · Score: 1

    Actually, I've sucessfully used lilo 21.5 to boot reiserfs. I know it isn't supposed to work, but it did. Of course, I've since upgraded to 21.7.

  117. Re:National Holidays by Marcus+Brody · · Score: 1

    No other national holiday gives you an excuse to drink shite loadsa guiness...

  118. Re:Troubles by Harka+Steinhart · · Score: 1

    > Being a relative newbie to Linux does 2.4.x have
    > support for the ATA 100 Promise controller you
    > spoke of? I switched my hard drive off of that
    > because I couldn't use it in Linux at the time.
    > Does the 2.4 kernel support it?

    Yes, the Promise Ultra ATA100 is supported, as are the 66 and 33 versions. There's also a new card out...the Ultra ATA100/TX2, which will work with 66 MHz bus speeds (also backwards compatible with 33 MHz).
    However, at this point Promise does not have a Linux driver available for this card and it's also not yet supported in the kernel. An attempt to install Linux to a hard drive on the TX2 controller will fail with a "no medium found to install to" error. Promise.com's support has told me, that a driver is in the works, but would probably not appear until "a month or month 1/2 from now" (said on 28th of June 2001).
    Their web site's data sheet however lists Linux as supported OS, which seems very misleading at this point in time. As answer to my question, why it's listed as supported but shipped without such support I was told, that "they probably wanted to get the product out quick". So for now, do not get the TX2 card! Stick with the Ultra 100 and things should be OK.

    Harka

  119. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by Hostile17 · · Score: 1

    We just got a Linux machine. Coincidentally a customer just asked us to put stuff on RH. What a mess. If this is wht it's like now I grateful I never surcumbed to the temptation to give it a try in it's earlier incarnations.

    I am not sure what is messy about

    rpm -ivh program.to.install.rpm

    or

    ./configure && make && make install


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    Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power - Benito Mussoli
  120. great by lightfoot+jim · · Score: 1

    yet another 60 minute download over my 57.6kbps modem

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    The state is the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everybody else. ~F. Bastiat
    1. Re:great by xcene · · Score: 3

      60 minutes? The patch is only about 1.4mb (bz2).

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      -- close but no sig
  121. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by deaddrunk · · Score: 1

    Included in the price is not the same as free, especially in the case of Win2000.

    --
    Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
  122. Re:erm ? by mightyflash · · Score: 1

    I wonder when SUN will sue you for it ... ;-)

  123. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by archen · · Score: 1

    maybe a more interesting question would be, how many Linux users don't have a windows partition (or separate machine) for games?

  124. Re:2.4.6 and Tulip network driver is completely br by foonf · · Score: 1

    I don't think this has been working right since 2.4.5, actually. Or rather, from what I have gathered, it may work...with the various Tulip clone chips that driver mainly supports. This isn't a big deal, though, since if you have a real DEC 21x4x you can also use the de4x5 driver, which works just fine in 2.4.6.

    --

    "(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
  125. Re:Reasons to upgrade? by victwenty · · Score: 1

    If you're using 2.4.5 in a production env, I would definately upgrade to 2.4.6 or downgrade. 2.4.5 has some serious VM problems that I have seen cripple a couple desktop boxen with low mem (128m ram + 256m swap). Dirty pages in cache aren't properly released and swap gets used instead but in some cases pages in swap aren't cleared either and with only 256m of swap it can get ugly relatively quickly. Larger boxes seem to remain stable but use swap excessively. We've done some testing with 2.4.6-pre8 and things are good again. In general, I would say that it's a good idea not to upgrade production boxen to the latest kernel rev right after release, unless there are security implications. Better to wait a little while for the community to do some extra QA for you. The kernel mailing list is a good place to check.

  126. Re:It's fine! Probs gone. by Prolixium · · Score: 1

    What's this, another user actually has problems with the 8139too module? I thought I was the only one...off to download 2.4.6!

  127. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by grahagre · · Score: 1

    I have Windows2K running at work, BeOS 5 at home (w/ rhat, yeah i know.) i also ran QNX, Plan9, AtheOS, V2_OS at one time or another on my home system.

  128. Re:Time to start the 3.0 pool! by leitet · · Score: 1

    Err... Thinking of that 2.2.x went all the way to 2.2.19, what makes you think that it has to go from 2.8.0 to 3.0?
    We could be stuck in 2. all the way to 2.734.0

  129. Re:Really guys.. by reflective+recursion · · Score: 1

    If you want it to dominate the world...

    CODE WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT!

    Otherwise.. quit being a damn free software leech and bitching. No one creating this wonderful software really gives a damn if Windows is still around in 2040. Linux will still be here. Oh, I'm sorry. All you want is high quality free (as in beer) software.

    Get this in your thick skull:

    MICROSOFT IS NOT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD.

    If Linux was just another Windows, then whats the point? Just go buy Windows. I'm sorry, don't have the money? THAT IS NOT WHAT FREE (AS IN SPEECH, AS IN FIRST AMENDMENT, AS IN MODIFY CODE HOWEVER YOU SEE FIT BUT ABOVE ALL NOT ABOUT FREE AS IN PAY NOTHING AND LEECH OFF HARD WORKING PEOPLE) IS ABOUT. Go read gnu.org's web site for christ's sakes.

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    Dijkstra Considered Dead
  130. Re:Really guys.. by reflective+recursion · · Score: 1

    I think his point was most programmers don't give a flying fuck if Joe "point-click" Bob has to use Windows.

    You don't think Windows users coming to free software coders begging them to create something for _them_ is arrogant?

    Personally, I'm sick of people bitching about Linux not being viable for the desktop.

    The one thing that pisses me off the most is this:
    Most of these ignorant Windows users just want a free operating system and software. They are not here for the ideology of freedom. THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO PROGRAM SO HOW THE FUCK DO THEY USE THEIR FREEDOM GAINED? And then they have the balls to demand ALL proprietary software as FREE (BEER) SOFTWARE. Thus, destroying the job market for PROGRAMMERS. First, they leech their hobby and personal pleasure. Then they demand their professional activities revolve around creating stuff for free (beer). The original poster even went as far as insulting programmers.

    It is very easy to sit on the side demanding software be free. It is a different story if your income and life is directly involved.

    Suggest easier ways to do something. Fine. Claiming free software is buggy, bloated, whatever is not constructive criticism.

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    Dijkstra Considered Dead
  131. Re:Really guys.. by reflective+recursion · · Score: 1

    >I love the concept of Linux.

    Which concept:

    a) The fact that you do not pay a dime for it?

    b) The fact that you have freedom of information and the ability to do whatever you please with that information?

    If you like all that Microsoft software, then why not use it? Why not help out with KDevelop? I sure would if I were you. I'm not so sure how large Adobe is, but I'm fairly certain the Gimp developers do not have the resources to play catch up with Photoshop. Why not help out and add another resource to the project?

    >Please, people.. Wake up and focus on the things that actually MATTER.

    Matter to who? You obviously. So quit IE, get out of Windows and come help your free software developers! I sure don't care about any of those things you mentioned.

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    Dijkstra Considered Dead
  132. Re:National Holidays by nixxy · · Score: 1

    Funny i saw a joke about that relating to States of australia, only qld was the one where they said "hold my beer and watch this"

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  133. Re:National Holidays by nixxy · · Score: 1

    I dont think its worldwide, I know its celebrated in many countries other than Ireland. I put it down to the fact that large number of irish people live is different countries and like most people bring their customs with them. But i could be wrong i could just be that ireland wants to have mass organised pissups in their name
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    "There is a thin line between genius and insanity and I can't walk straight"
  134. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by nixxy · · Score: 1

    Here I have 2 98SE machines, my personal box which is dual boot 2k/debian and my gateway which is lackware.. although I rarely use debian as I have a shitty sound card that I can't seem to gt working (not that I tried too hard).

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    "There is a thin line between genius and insanity and I can't walk straight"
  135. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by nixxy · · Score: 1

    my gateway is up 68 days. thats a little more than the 20mins you claim, although it isn't running X when I ran X on my PC it went fine, once I got it configured I had no problem with it in fact the GUI with some WM's was preferable to windows

    <Asking for flame>
    As for drag and drop who needs it? its a feature for idiots who are unable to learn keyboard shortcuts or lack the coordination to right click.
    </Asking for flame>

    I do agree with some of what you said some of the GUI's dont look too good, but then again they haven't been in the making for the past 10 years like windos and other os'. Not that you should need a GUI to use a machine

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    "There is a thin line between genius and insanity and I can't walk straight"
  136. Re:Time to start the 3.0 pool! by Richard+Bannister · · Score: 1

    Woohoo! Linux flying cars and Microsoft washing machines. Which is more cool, then?

    --
    http://www.themeparks.ie
  137. National Holidays by Richard+Bannister · · Score: 1

    I dunno - St. Patrick's Day seems to be celebrated worldwide for some reason, which I've never seen happen with any other national holiday...

    --
    http://www.themeparks.ie
    1. Re:National Holidays by kilgore_47 · · Score: 2

      here in california, i know people with medicinal marijuana perscriptions who are "underage". Thats right, they can legally get high, but arn't allowed to drink. Though I personally prefer pot over liquor any day, I think it should all be legal in the first place. The laws arn't working; they're just making it cooler because there's a societal taboo being broken.

      Moderators: Yes, this is WAY offtopic from the new linux kernel. Do your bussiness. My +1 Bonus will protect me at first, but I know I'm in the wrong and can only last so long.

      ___

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      The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
  138. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by Richard+Bannister · · Score: 1

    To add to my own post - I run Mac OS X as my main operating system. I did try Red Hat 6.1 on a PC ages ago, and I liked it, although I felt that some basic configuration (like changing the monitor resolution, for example) was a tad on the complicated side. Of course it may be easier now...

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    http://www.themeparks.ie
  139. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by ibib · · Score: 1

    Mac OS in a couple of flavours ranging from 8.5 -> X

  140. Another mirror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    The mirrors usually get borked for a few days, so.. I'll put up one as well. :)

    ftp://ftp.stenstad.net/mirrors/linux-2.4.6.tar.b z2
    http://ftp.stenstad.net/mirrors/linux-2.4.6.tar. bz 2

  141. Re:2.4.6.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    stop praising linus

    so many more people work on Linux than he does.

    Praise the men and women who did their work to make Linux what it is today.

  142. small patch, but has more USB by davidu · · Score: 2

    This patch is pretty small and has some cool USB fixes for the desktop.

    I'll be updating my desktop later today (is it tomorrow now? I don't know)

    My servers will sit tight at 2.4.5 though, there's really no reason to upgrade.

    -davidu

    --

    # Hack the planet, it's important.
  143. Re:2.4.6 with XFS soon... by Micah · · Score: 2

    I've been running 2.4.6pre2+CVS XFS on a server for 19 days now. No problems. I probably will upgrade to the final 2.4.6 once the official XFS 1.0.1 comes out.

    I upgraded to this "beta" version after I had minor FS corruption using the kernel supplied by SGI's Red hat installer. Happened after only about 2 days of uptime.

    System has an Abit VP6 MB (some kind of VIA chipset) and a SCSI drive.

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  144. No wild sex on the streets... by kju · · Score: 2

    Yep, it's out there. Run, jump, dance in the streets. Drink and be merry.

    Thank you that you took Caution and haven't asked for wild sex in the streets. You know, geeks and sex? This could have caused serious depression on the readership of slashdot...


  145. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by WWWWolf · · Score: 2
    Just out of curiousity... how many other Slashdot readers beside myself don't use some flavour Linux on one of their principal computers?

    I consider my Commodore 64s some of my principal computers. I haven't yet seen Linux running on those, just some "lightweight" UNIXes...

    I also use Win98SE for games, sound and digital video editing and such for which Linux is not yet the best solution. Aside of that, it's all Linux.

  146. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by Omnifarious · · Score: 2

    When Microsoft stops being evil, I'll consider their products on their merits. Until then, I'll treat it like a fish _should_ treat a baited hook because that's exactly what it is.

  147. Re:Time to start the 3.0 pool! by Erik+Hensema · · Score: 2

    I've asked this question once on lkml. It seems 3.0 will come when usermode applications have to be relinked (eg. not likely anytime soon).

    kernel traffic link.

    --

    This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.

  148. Re:Troubles by Mullen · · Score: 2


    As a Sys Admin who is in a group that runs alot of 6 way 4 gig systems, Linux 2.4.x sucks.

    Yes, it has all the cool stuff we want; support for alot of devices, better SMP, and larger memory handling, however, its just not stable under high load.
    I just hope that the Linux Kernel people can get their stuff together and make a stable kernel.


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    Linux O Muerte!
  149. Re:Fireworks? by sharkey · · Score: 2

    Tell you what. I'll throw some tea into the river in remembrance of you, my British friend.

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    --
    "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
  150. Re:Fireworks? by JabberWokky · · Score: 2
    Even though it only applies to them, they seem to want to ram it down everyone else's throats.

    Excuse me, you pretentious asshole - I live in America and am very aware of British holidays that we don't celebrate like Boxing Day and May Day. I am very aware of when the Magna Carta was signed (June 15th, 1215 at Runnymede).

    Other free countries have their days of independance - July 14th for France, September 16th for Mexico (although I'll admit I had to look that one up), and July 4th for the United States of America.

    Get over yourself - either you would prefer that the Slashdot crew censor themselves of all human comments (which would turn this into a stock rumor site), or you want to impress your own set of values and references upon the site. Either is a bloody narrow-minded point of view. There is a reason it's called the World Wide Web, and I'm not going to bitch if the Register mentions a British holiday in a story.

    --
    Evan

    --
    "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  151. Available in Freenet, too by vs · · Score: 2
    For the heck of it, I'm uploading the .tar.bz2 to Freenet right now. It's a copy I grabbed from one of the mirrors, PGP signature verifies, too.

    If you're running a Freenet node, you can grab the kernel source using the following key:

    freenet:SSK@sUOkGXJDjktWahCNZmvg0sDkEKgQAgE/foldr. org/linux-2.4.6.tar.bz2

  152. Me! by DarkMan · · Score: 2

    There is only one linux machine in my group, an old 486 that does print sharing protocol conversion (Samba to lpr).

    We have Windows (98 / 2k depending) on the desktop, AIX and Solaris on our number crunchers, HP-UX on the cluster, and an Alpha on Dec Unix in reserve (Old alpha, not that fast). There's an SGI Indy doing print serving and visulisation software in the corner. Oh, and UNICOS is what we use on the CSAR.

    We do scienfic computing (Solid state physics), and reliabiltiy is important - particularly when your talking runtimes over around a month. PC hardware doesn't cut it, until you get into the range where UNIX boxes are similar prices. Hence the range of Unixs, and very little linux.
    --

  153. Re:Sonypi and Motioneye patches for Sony Vaios... by jmauro · · Score: 2

    Don't feel so bad. There are a lot of Video4Linux drivers left out. The sony one is under heavy development and probably won't be included until it's done. There is no reason for including something that is under so much development in the kernel now. You can always patch, so what exactly is the problem.

  154. Re:ummm by CAIMLAS · · Score: 2
    It's called 'hate of superiority'. Our country is superior both economically and militarily over the rest of the world, thus we are seen as the Bad Guys and those who push things on others. It's probably true, to a large extent, but that's why we're hated. Even if actual superiority doesn't exist.

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    Caimlas

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    ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
  155. Dammit, Janet... by ncc74656 · · Score: 2
    ...I just upgraded the home server from 2.4.3 to 2.4.5 last night while trying to figure out what the hell was going on with masquerading (turned out to be an error in the script that enables/disables masquerading). Oh well, the uptime isn't even to 24 hours yet...

    (Yes, I checked for a newer version first, as I downloaded the 2.4.[45] patches a while back. This probably would've happened around 2200 PDT, and it was ftp.us.kernel.org that I checked.)

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    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  156. Re:Fireworks? by ncc74656 · · Score: 2
    It's good to see the America Sense of Humour in full effect.

    With a sense of humor like yours, it's understandable that someone would mistake it for Whiney Europeanese.

    Maybe that's the real difference between "humor" and "humour."

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    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  157. Sonypi and Motioneye patches for Sony Vaios... by pastie · · Score: 2

    ...had been going into the 2.4.5-ac kernels (at least the sonypi one, not sure about the motioneye patch for the C1 camera), but are nowhere to be seen in the release kernel :( I thought that Alan Cox had merged all of his patches in for this release, or has Linus decided they aren't worthwhile?

    *sobs*

    Ah well, I'll just have to patch it myself again then, as us Vaio users aren't important enough for Linus (even though he has a C1 himself...)

  158. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by Anonymous+Squonk · · Score: 2

    Windows 95 at home, Windows 2000 at work.

  159. Re:Does Disc IO Still Block Pthreads? by KidSock · · Score: 2
    ...any thread (at least under pthreads) that performs disc IO may block the entire process and prevent other threads from running.

    Well, I thought threads were implemented as Light Weight Processes (this is why Java and other programs such as realplayer show up in the process table more than once) so I don't see how this is possible.

  160. Re:Time to start the 3.0 pool! by Cryptnotic · · Score: 2
    I'm not sure why you would guess this. Linus jumped from 1.2.x to 2.0.0 for the "Linux 2.0" release. So I think that it is likely that we will see a "Linux 3.0" sooner rather than later.

    Cryptnotic

    --
    My other first post is car post.
  161. ReiserFS bugs in 2.4.5? by AntiNorm · · Score: 2

    I'm using the ReiserFS implementation in 2.4.3, and have had no problems at all with it. Am I missing something here?

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    DOOR!!

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    I pledge allegiance to the flag...
    of the Corporate States of America...
  162. Re:Fireworks? by dadragon · · Score: 2
    July 1st. It celebrates the confederation of Canada into one single Dominion (The Dominion of Canada) into on single entity consisting of 5 provinces instead of 5 separate colonies. Canada was established by the British North America Act (BNA Act), passed by the British Parliament on July first, 1867. The BNA act served as our constitution until 1982, 50 years after we were finally granted full autonomy and the ability to set our own constitution and foreign policy (Statute of Westminister, 1932). Canada now consists of 10 provinces and three territories: Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island were the originals, British Colombia joined in 1870 (IIRC), Manitoba (1872, IIRC), Alberta and Saskatchewan were 1905, and Newfoundland was in 1949. It used to be called "Dominion Day" until the 60s when we stopped being officaly named "The Dominion of Canada", which IMHO is far more cool than simply "Canada" :) The Government as it stands today was established as a constitutional monarchy with a democratically elected Parliament (House of Commons), and appointed senate actually running the country on behalf of the reining monarch. A person entitles the Governor General is our head of State, the Queen's representative in Canada, she has more or less the same powers as the President of the US but she is appointed by OUR Parliament.

    Not a bad guess though. Much better than the man on "The Weakest Link" who thought Canada used to be part of Spain, and declared independance in 1812 :)

    --
    God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
  163. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by DarkEdgeX · · Score: 2

    A fair question, if slightly off-topic-- I use Red Hat Linux 7.1 in a dual-boot config with Windows 2000 Server. On my server system (dual Pentium III 800's, with 1.25GB PC133) I run Windows 2000 Server exclusivly. I usually find myself more in Windows than in Linux, but I use Linux to develop apps/etc.

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    All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
  164. So -pre9 became -final, yes? by aussersterne · · Score: 2

    I was about to bitch about this because I just barely went to -pre9 on several machines, but from the ChangeLog it looks like '-pre9' became 'final' so I can just let those stay in place.

    Or is the ChangeLog not yet complete? (Say, ChangeLog-pre1?)

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  165. Time to start the 3.0 pool! by wrinkledshirt · · Score: 2
    Okay, I'm going to guess that Linus isn't going to make the jump from 2.4 to 3.0, but will instead go to 2.6 and then 2.8, and then 3.0. Now, assuming that it's about 18 minor increments between versions, at the rate of around 1 per month, that'll mean 18 months + 18 months + 12 months, for a grand total of 48 months. So, that'll be June, 2005!

    By that point, Linux will be powering all our flying cars, I bet!

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  166. Re:Troubles by jpmoney · · Score: 2

    VIA Chipsets (KT133A) are also causing problems on *gasp* windows machines. Check out Real World Tech's latest industry update (found here). Its on the second page in the first paragraph. Basically if you stick an SB Live soundcard on some of the KT133A based mobos you get, you guessed, data corruption.
    I guess this just adds to the cannon fodder


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    unf.
  167. Re:Drink and be merry! by gr0ngb0t · · Score: 2

    you just need to know the barman...

    thanks Todd (barman at my local, and flatmate too... lifes good :)

    buuuuuuuuuuurp...

  168. It's fine! Probs gone. by mightyflash · · Score: 2

    I have been using the ac-series until prepatch 18 and experienced problems with the 8139too modules.
    Nice that these problems seem to be away now with 2.4.6.
    Also I noticed the presence of an option for the MIDI-part of my via82cxx onboard-soundcard.
    Havent't tried it yet though...

  169. Download time by Richard+Bannister · · Score: 2

    Dunno about that - if the site has been slashdotted, a 1.7MB file may take several hours :)

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    http://www.themeparks.ie
  170. Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by Richard+Bannister · · Score: 2

    Just out of curiousity... how many other Slashdot readers beside myself don't use some flavour Linux on one of their principal computers?

    --
    http://www.themeparks.ie
    1. Re:Who *doesn't * use Linux here? :) by innit · · Score: 5

      I've always used Windows NT based OSs on the desktop and Slackware Linux on the server.

      People seem to think they have to choose between the two operating systems. I used them both at the same time. They both have advantages and disadvantages. Windows is a well rounded, stable workstation OS, Linux is a stable, powerful server OS.

      In reverse, I would consider them both to be useless. Why sacrifice one set of advantages? Use them both!

      xx Stuii!

  171. Fireworks? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    What fireworks? Is something happening today?

    1. Re:Fireworks? by Jodrell · · Score: 3

      Apparently the Americans are celebrating some kind of holiday. Even though it only applies to them, they seem to want to ram it down everyone else's throats.

      Maybe I'm biased, though, being British ;)

      Mind you, there is a certain poetry to the release of the latest Linux kernel on a day people celebrate Freedom.


  172. 2.4.6.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3
    2.4.6.8
    Who do we appreciate?

    ... Linus

    :-)

    1. Re:2.4.6.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

      No, don't stop praising Linus... start praising everyone!

      Why do people have the attitude that there isn't enough thanks to go around?

  173. Re:Reasons to upgrade? by jgarzik · · Score: 3
    Won't the backing out of the page_launder changes cause problems for servers with heavy IO loads ?

    The page_launder changes were backed out and then Linus wrote his own fix for the problem. So, no.

    Jeff
  174. Drink and be merry! by sheol · · Score: 3

    So where is all this free beer everyone is always talking about?

  175. Re:Why Bother? by Richard+Bannister · · Score: 3

    Of course it will. Just wait - you'll be running Windows XP on your washing machine within ten years. You'll know that the system crashed when your laundry comes out bright blue and covered in silly numbers!

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    http://www.themeparks.ie
  176. Re:Troubles by jgarzik · · Score: 4
    What I gathered from the kernel mailing list, the problem seems to be that VIA has shipped a whole series of different chipsets with bugs using the same version number. The problem is that there is no way one could make a nice workaround.

    Well, not exactly wrong :)

    The bigger problem is finding out what exactly is wrong. The only information available so far has been reverse engineered (AFAIK) and posted on the 3rd party site viahardware.com. So far all the information we have is "before BIOS update X" and "after BIOS update X" snapshots of the system setup.

    It's pretty easy to figure out real quick which systems are broken. It's tougher to figure out what is broken, and what the right fix is.

    Jeff
  177. Reasons to upgrade? by jgarzik · · Score: 4
    My servers will sit tight at 2.4.5 though, there's really no reason to upgrade.

    No doubt I am biased, but I disagree.

    There are noteworthy VM fixes, buffer I/O deadlock fixes, and vfs fixes.

    Plus the usual raft of driver fixes and merges from Alan Cox's tree. See Alan Cox's changelog as a supplement to the official changelog from Linus. Linus compresses many changes from Alan into a single word in the changelog, "merges."

    Jeff
  178. Re:Does Disc IO Still Block Pthreads? by Erik+Hensema · · Score: 4

    LWP's are Solaris-specific. Linux threads are implemented as processes which share memory, filehandles, etc.

    Linux threads can't block other threads since there is no difference to a process. And offcource, a process can't block all other processes ;-)

    You may want to switch to another pthreads implementation. Quite a few (at least three) implementations exist and you're probably using the all-userspace implementation. This one simulates threads in userspace and doesn't use native threads.

    AFAIK the later glibc 2.x implementations use native threads.

    --

    This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.

  179. Re:Troubles by Gorgonzola · · Score: 4

    Well, not exactly wrong. What I gathered from the kernel mailing list, the problem seems to be that VIA has shipped a whole series of different chipsets with bugs using the same version number. The problem is that there is no way one could make a nice workaround. As the owner of a motherboard with a VIA 686 chipset I can assure you that is a real PITA. I encountered the most horrible lockups. Luckily enough I had a Promise ATA100 PCI controller and ever since I put my HD on that one my system has been rock solid.

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    -- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
  180. Troubles by KidSock · · Score: 4

    I have been reading Kernel Traffic regularly (looks like there's a new one tonight incedentally). Seems like there are some problems they've been having trouble sorting out. To my knowledge (again, limited to KT), they are still pending and in fact the latest kernels would be considered rather unstable for a stable series. In particular, the Virtual Memory subsystem has problems. I don't understand the details but higher memory systems >256MB can run into FS corruption. And last I heard they've written off VIA as an incompetent chipset manufacturer meaning they haven't a clue why VIA machines lock up. Someone *please* flame me for being wrong!

  181. Does Disc IO Still Block Pthreads? by ralphbecket · · Score: 4
    [Sorry if this is the wrong forum; maybe someone could point me at the right place to ask this question if so.]

    I believe that despite what the documentation says, any thread (at least under pthreads) that performs disc IO may block the entire process and prevent other threads from running. This is a problem the Flash high-performance web server had to get around by using multiple processes just for disc IO. Can anyone tell me categorically that this bug has been fixed or give me some idea of when it will be fixed?

  182. Save bandwidth... use patches. by simpleguy · · Score: 5

    Allow me to remind you not to download the WHOLE kernel tarball over and over again.

    Use the kernel patches and patch your kernel source as described in the Kernel HOWTO.

    This will save you precious time, bandwidth and will cause less load on the servers.