2.4.9 Kernel Released

Justin writes: "Linus is off to Finland for a week or so and released 2.4.9. " Here is the Changelog for those of you interested. Yeah, it's probably gonna be a little crowded for a bit. Please post mirrors in the comments.

Comments

Re:how many kernels realeased a year?

[barneyfoo]

Duh. 2.0 was really stable and 2.1 was being heavily worked on. Graph 2.1 in there and you'd get probably 50 or more kernels for that year.

Mirror

[ecliptik]

Here's a mirror ftp://ecliptik.com/pub/linux-2.4.9.tar.gz

Re:Mirror

[Roundeye]

Note: always check signatures when downloading software from unknown sources.

This kernel tarball is identical with the ones being distributed from ftp.us.kernel.org (dynamic mirrors), BUT IT DIDN'T HAVE TO BE. A trojaned kernel distributed from a private mirror could compromise any number of systems.

Always check downloaded files from unknown sources.

md5sum:
ftp.us.kernel.org kernel: 8b0f6c18e9c09ca1e5d0bbbed95f7ef2
ecliptik mirror kernel: 8b0f6c18e9c09ca1e5d0bbbed95f7ef2

gpg sigs match, using:
% gpg --verify linux-2.4.9.tar.gz.sign linux-2.4.9.tar.gz

But -- DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT! CHECK THEM YOURSELF.

My Mirror

[NewbieSpaz]

http://www.angelfire.com/geek/qdata/index.html

GN

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be better as Alan Cox's

Actually a trailing 'x' should be treated in the same fashion as a trailing 's', so it should be Alan Cox'. Sadly too few people are pedantic enough for you ever to see this.

:P

SB Live! driver fixed

[bconway]

Though not a showstopper by any means, the EMU10K1 driver has been fixed from 2.4.8, and is now fully up-to-date. I've been using the drivers from opensource.creative.com since the release of the 2.4 kernel, and this is definitely a welcome change. Check it out!

Re:SB Live! driver fixed

[bconway]

As in: the drivers included up until 2.4.8 were over 6 months old and lacked a lot of features compared to those mainted on http://opensource.creative.com . These are now fixed in the kernel and fully up-to-date, which I consider to be a good thing.

Re:SB Live! driver fixed

[da groundhog]

it should be noted to all the trolls out there, that the emu10k1 user-land tools include an assembler and loader for the cards dsp chip which means that you can not only compile/load the effects it includes (such as chorus and flanger) but you can PROGRAM YOUR OWN EFFECTS (tres cool). And of course this comes with ample documentation.

Re:SB Live! driver fixed

[Azog]

All of the above is true, however... the new driver may not work for everyone.

Alan Cox, for example, tried them out and found they didn't work on some of his machines, so he didn't include the new driver in the -ac patches.

So, it seems they work great for some people but not others. Linus decided to keep them in because the new driver is being maintained, and the old one wasn't - a buggy driver that's being worked on is better than a buggy driver that's being ignored... and the new drivers have much better support for the features of the SBLive.

Anyway, if you upgrade and find that your sound card quits working, you have several choices - revert to your previous working version, or try Alan Cox'es patched version of the kernel (look under /people/alan on the kernel mirrors) or, if you know what you're doing, just take the relevant emu10k files from 2.4.7 or so and patch them into your tree. Alan Cox's kernels have lots and lots of other changes besides the SBLive driver, of course.

A lot of work is being done right now on getting the VM (Virtual Memory) balanced right. It works great for a lot of people, but depending on the workload, it can start to thrash really bad and swap itself to death. (kswapd will run, taking all the CPU time and making no progress.) If you run into this problem or others, read the documentation on reporting bugs (see the /linux/REPORTING-BUGS file) and send a mail to the list. Don't hold your breath waiting for a reply, but it will be read, and it might help the developers figure out the pattern of what situations cause problems and what works well.

(If you report bugs on the Linux Kernel Mailing list, be sure to note what kernel you're running and any non-standard changes you've made.)

Oh, and if you are not subscribed to the list and want to be cc'ed on replies, say so at the top of your email.

(I'm not really a kernel developer, yet, but I hack around in the code and read the list, so I know a little about what's going on.)

Blazing Fast Kernel Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the following blazing-fast mirror:

http://linux.pantek.com/resource/kernel/linux-2.4. 9.tar.gz
http://linux.pantek.com/resource/kernel/linux-2.4. 9.tar.gz.sign
http://linux.pantek.com/resource/kernel/patch-2.4. 9.gz
http://linux.pantek.com/resource/kernel/patch-2.4. 9.gz.sign

Happy compiling!

Re:NTFS filesystem

[Azog]

There is a developer actively working on NTFS support now. It should be safe for read-only mode.
Note that- write support for NTFS is a dangerous, EXPERIMENTAL feature that you have to explicitly select in the kernel configuration. Until recently, it was almost certain to destroy your disk, and it is still not recommended although rumor has it that it "mostly works now".

If you blew up an NT partition running in the "read only" mode, send in a bug report to the mailing list. If you want to experiment with write support, send in bug reports for that too, I'm sure the developer will be interested, but don't expect a lot of sympathy if you wipe out important data.

There's often a good reason why "EXPERIMENTAL" features are called that, even though sometimes it seems political - reiserfs, for example, is pretty safe - reported problems with it usually turn out to be hardware failures.

Re:What will the next 2.4 revision be called?

[norculf]

Actually there was a similar phrase in Linus's book.

Because I had been overly optimistic in the naming of version 0.95, I was caught in a bind. Over the course of the two years it took to get version 1.0 out the door, we were forced to do some crazy things with numbers. There waren't many numbers between 95 and 100, but we continually released new versions based on bug fixes or added functions. By the time we got to version 0.99, we had to start adding numbers to indicate patch levels, and then we relied on the alphabet. At one point we had version 0.99, patch level 15A. Then version 0.99, patch level 15B, and so on. We made it all the way to patch level 15Z. Patch level 16 became version 1.0, the point where it was usable. This was released in March 1994 with great fanfare at the University of Helsinki Computer Sciences Department auditorium.

I never saw anything wrong with version X.YYY, IE: version 0.100, 0.101, 2.4.634, etc...

Re:I can't wait until XFS is standard...

[Adnans]

XFS is great. I have it on 2 production servers (rock solid since installation). However, for my workstation I've recently switched (back) to ReiserFS. I do a lot of large compiles and move huge amounts of code around and that exposes the ONLY weak part in XFS: unlink() time. XFS is doog slow for deleting large directory trees. I sure hope they optimize this, soon.. Other than the long rm times, it's rock solid. The ACL ioctls should be sorted out too soon, so we can have access to extended attributes (I will NOT miss you Be, Inc.)....

-adnans

Re:I can't wait until XFS is standard...

[wowbagger]

My only experience with ReiserFS was on an SMP machine, and it blew chunks (corrupted file system, bad data, kernel panics). I tried XFS and it worked quite well. I've not given Reiser another shot since then (haven't had time). Perhaps they've fixed this bug.

I like the fact that growing an XFS volume to take up more space is simple, and does not require unmounting the volume (in fact, you CANNOT grow an unmounted XFS volume, you MUST mount it first).

So, in a system with hot-swap drive bays, you can add a physical volume to the logical volume group, and just tell XFS to grow. Presto - more space.

I also like the fact that you can move the journal over to another block device. If "you feel the need, the need for speed" you can use a 10MB SCSI battery-backed up SRAM drive for the journal, and a big RAID array for the main storage. Speed and safety in one.

Re:NTFS filesystem

[Anonymous Coward]

Chec out kernel traffic. Writing on NTFS should still be reserved for the more adventurous people.

Re:how many kernels realeased a year?

[Anonymous Coward]

Several new kernels are released each year, according to the maxim "release early, release often." This is part of the open source philosophy as explained by Eric S. Raymond in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." The idea is that when there are many releases, there is more opportunity for users to run into bugs in the system.

Yet Another Mirror

[LyNXeD]

I managed to grab all the 2.4.9 files earlier, and they're now mirrored at:

ftp://ftp.wingnet.net/pub/linux/kernel/2.4.9/

All the standard files for 2.4.9 from kernel.org (bz2, gz, signatures, etc.) are there. Just the 2.4.9 though - no older stuff. Have at it!

pcmcia-cs is broken with 2.4.9

[TheGratefulNet]

fyi - hinds' pcmcia pkg won't build completely with this kernel release (fails on wvlan_hcf.c).

looks like some dangerous changes were made: I see errors that say macro 'min' used with only 2 args. this kinda scares me...

as I've not had much luck with wireless support inside the kernel tree, I've taken to using hinds' pkg instead. so for those who use pcmcia, perhaps wait for the next release..

Re:NTFS filesystem

[Azog]

well yes, that's why anyone who manages to mess things up in read-only mode should send in a bug report, because that would indicate an unknown, serious problem that should be fixed right away.

Problems in the write support are less serious, because they are not on by default and the developers know about them anyway.

I suspect the original poster was using the experimental write support. That used to be so bad that it probably should not have been in the kernel at all, but started getting better around 2.4.5 or so - search the LKML archives for "PATCH" and "NTFS" for details.

NTFS read-only works fine on my dual-boot machine, btw.

Re:Real news: glibc-2.2.4 was released today

[geirt]

Here is the changelog for glibc-2.2.4

Enjoy

Real news: glibc-2.2.4 was released today

[geirt]

Don't forget that the libc is just as important for your computers stability as the kernel. Most applications go trough the libc to access kernel services. Today glibc-2.2.4 was released, go to your local mirror (yes, that is a gnu mirror, not a kernel mirror) and do the upgrade now.

Slashdot: News for nerds ?

Why does the libc get so little publicity compared to the kernel ? I don't get it !

Re:how many kernels realeased a year?

[cowens]

Here are the counts by year. Only the release versions are counted because development kernels can run into the hundreds.

1994 - 10 (1.0.0 - 1.0.9)
1995 - 14 (1.2.0 - 1.2.13)
1996 - 28 (2.0.0 - 2.0.27)
1997 - 6 (2.0.28 - 2.0.33)
1998 - 3 (2.0.34 - 2.0.36)
1999 - 2/14 (2.0.37 - 2.0.28 & 2.2.0 - 2.2.13)
2000 - 5 (2.2.14 - 2.2.18)
2001 - 1/1/10 (2.0.39 & 2.2.19 & 2.4.0 - 2.4.9)

avg number of kernels per year: 11.75
The benefit is that you can have the latest and greatest version now instead of six months from now.

Re:mozilla help?

[DJGreg]

2.4.x changed the way that vma's were merged. VMA's being the sections of virtual memory that you malloc. Mozilla (I'm guessing) has fairly fine-grained memory handling, so it malloc()'s and free()'s often, making for _lots_ of vma's.

The changes in 2.4.9 make contiginous (sp?) vma's merged into one, speeding up walking the list of vma's. Note that previous versions did this already, but only in very few (easy) cases. This change is a bit more 'expensive', but has made a noticable difference in mozilla for me. These changes could also help out lots of other programs that handle memory similarly (can't think of others atm though).

All in All.. i like ;)

Disclaimer: this is my understanding, but as I'm not Rik Van Riel, I'm probably talking out my ass

Freshmeat can send you a mail on new releases

[Walles]

Freshmeat lets you subscribe to notification of new releases of the Linux kernel. They send you a mail each time a new version is released.

Shameless plug: Or you could subscribe to some of my projects :-).

Cheers //Johan