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

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

[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.)

Re:FreshMeat

[SubtleNuance]

. When a kernel is released, I want to know about it. and who in their right mind looks at freshmeat every fucking day?

*me* whistles and taps toe while looking around the room quitely...

ChangeLog...

[Alakaboo]

I love reading the ChangeLogs. Oftentimes they can be quite humorous:

- David Miller: undo poll() limit braindamage

This would have helped Bush during the election.

- David Woodhouse: up_and_exit -> complete_and_exit

Up and at'em, Dave!

- me: make return value from do_try_to_free_pages() meaningful

Do try for meaningful return values.

- David Miller: "min()/max()" cleanups. Understands signs and sizes.

Ouch. // min(-400, 3) == 3 // ??

- Kevin Fleming: more disks the HPT controller doesn't like

And you have to wonder about this one...

- Ben LaHaise: use down_read, not down_write() in map_user_kiobuf.
We don't change the mappings, we just read them.

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:Gigbabyte Mirror Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

This one is a lot faster. But it is currently a version out.

Keep 'em comming

[FreeMath]

Please use mirrors:
http://kernel.org/mirrors/

2.4.9 Changelog

Wow, 2.4.8 lasted a whole week.

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.

Righto....

[Bob McCown]

Please post mirrors in the comments.

Under control

Re:how many kernels realeased a year?

[CMiYC]

As many as needed. There are no set times or numbers. If enough little bugs are fixed, it is released. If a major bug is fixed, it is probably released sooner. In general, you only have three reasons to upgrade.

1) The new one has fixed a bug in something you are using. Such as a new USB driver for your widget.

2) A major security flaw is patched. Which is done way faster (and more publicily) than in most commerical settings.

3) You enjoy cutting your teeth on new shit. Which would be a lot of us. :)

I personally usually only upgrade if there is a dangerous remote exploit or for some functionaility. I only upgraded to 2.4.x for iptables and firewire support. Even though the backport of firewire worked fine for me.

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.

FreshMeat

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

For those of you trols that think "Slashdot isn't Fresh Meat" here is my 2cents:

STFU. When a kernel is released, I want to know about it. and who in their right mind looks at freshmeat every fucking day? NOBODY

So what is the point in starting a bitch session just to bitch? To waste Bandwidth? To blow time at your job? GIME A BREAK!

Now I can update my linux boxen tonight, and have a piece of mind that the IDE driver wasnt working correctly in 2.4.7 for me, is noted in the changelog as being fixed.

have a nice day :)

Re:NTFS filesystem

[Haggis Muncher]

You can fix this by editing "/usr/src/linux/fs/ntfs/unistr.h" and adding the following at line 30:

#include <linux/kernel.h>

and then recompiling. I've not bothered to submit an official patch... there's probably dozens already.

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

[wowbagger]

I can't wait until SGI gets XFS merged into the main tree. I'm running XFS on all my systems, and so I have to wait until SGI gets the changes merged back into their port.

XFS (especially when combined with LVM) is great. No fscks, big files, ACLs, and you can grow a mounted file system (great with LVM and hot-swap drives).

Gigbabyte Mirror Bandwidth

[rapett0]

http://linux.uky.edu/kernel/v2.4/

This mirror is so fast, it will speed your downloads up, even past your NIC/modem's supposed maximums.

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.