Kernel 2.5.3 Released

cybercyst writes: "You know the drill... Lets go hit those servers!" As usual, see kernel.org for the download or the changelog. Anyone using 2.5 for anything except testing?

Comments

Using it?

[SilentChris]

"Anyone using 2.5 for anything except testing?"

Are you kidding me? I'm using it to browse the internet right n-

Re:drill

[furiousgeorge]

New people shouldn't be upgrading their kernel...... ESPECIALLY to an unstable development one.

If you don't know how to do it you shouldn't be doing it anyway.

Small Notes

[worldwideweber]

(1) If you get any link errors when compiling your new kernel which refer to lock_kernel and unlock_kernel. Just add #include to whatever files generate the complaints.

(2) If you have any SCSI drives that were broken because of the Block IO Layer changes, then this kernel most likely fixes them. Apparently, the "various scsi driver fixes" includes the parallel port zip driver (ppa.c) for any who care :).

Patches!!

[The Pi-Guy]

Ok ok ok - we all know that kernel.org's got some cashflow problems, so people PLEASE use the mirrors and patches!! To apply the patch, from the older version, CD in, then use patch -p1 kernel-2.5.3.patch (or whatever.) Make sure to make clean first also, just for paranoia. Anyway, have fun.

--joshua
P.S. Not redundant, no one's said this yet.

Aunts and Mirrors

[Jacek Poplawski]

"I just stopped using Windows and now you tell me to use Mirrors?" - said Aunt Tillie, just before compiling 2.5.3 kernel.

mirrors

[Xandu]

Note:

mirrors.kernel.org is NOT the list of mirrors of the kernel, it's the list of mirrors of other sites.

For the kernel, you want www.kernel.org/mirrors/ to find your local mirror of kernel.org (which is usually www.COUNTRYCODE.kernel.org).

Re:mirrors

[hpa]

We don't have any problem covering our bandwidth bills, because ISC graciously gives us bandwidth at no charge. I would like to get another server for redundancy, but that's a completely different issue.

As far as mirrors of other sites are concerned, that's what class-based queueing is for. If we are saturated (which we rarely are) traffic gets prioritized, with outbound mirrors getting high priority and our mirrors of other sites getting low priority.

Re:drill

[sabinm]

If you don't know how to do it you shouldn't be doing it anyway

Riiiight. That's probably why you're still a virgin

What I'd like to see in "New Kernel" announcements

[IvyMike]

Yeah, I know, everybody and their mother whines about, "Why does slashdot post new kernel announcements, wah, wah wah!" And I'm going to do the same, but hopefully I'm a litte more constructive.

What I'd like to see in these announcements is a description of what's changed. Not the changelists; I want the executive summary. Something like "New kernel 2.5.3 released; includes fixes for the FCI bus problems of 2.5.2, as well as the new virtual monitor support!" That would be immensely useful to those of us who don't want to install every kernel and keep track of every new feature, but do like to stay aware of the bigger trends.

P.S. There is no such thing as the FCI bus or virtual monitor support, as far as I know, it was just an example. But if you're smart enough to come up with the executive summary for this release, please, post it. This time and every time.

Re:Future of Linux kernel

[Deven]

I hope you moderators appreciate this is just this guy's idea, and not actually the current release versioning system used for 2.5. The fact that he made 2.5.3 bold would lead you to believe otherwise.

Actually, it was my idea (posted to the linux-kernel mailing list on May 10, 2000), but the other poster above didn't bother to attribute credit for it. (Although I think it was really more of a sarcastic comment on 2.5.3's stability, the way that section was bolded.)

That was an idea I came up with off the top of my head, looking for a way to move the "should be stable but oops, not" kernels out of the "stable" series into the "development" series (thinking of 2.2.0 for example) -- by adding a fourth digit to indicate the status, so that release candidates could get production testing before getting branded as "stable". Once a fourth digit was added, I figured that I might as well try to fill in the other numbers with vague-but-useful state indicators for earlier stages of development. That post to linux-kernel was my first attempt, off the top of my head.

I developed this idea further, in response to some of the discussion on linux-kernel about my idea, but in the end I decided against using it. My brother convinced me that encoding this much meaning into numeric identifiers required a lot of advance knowledge about the system to make any sense of the version numbers, and harried system administrators wouldn't take the time to learn.

I finally decided to use a different approach, where "stable" releases are all-numeric numbers (e.g. 1.0.0) while "development" releases always contain an alphabetic intended-state tag (e.g. 1.0.0.beta.1) and discarding the even/odd notion from Linux. This way, development versions are more self-identifying, and release candidates (suitable for production testing) would have an "rc" tag (e.g. 1.0.0.rc.3).

The idea is that the "stable" release (e.g. 1.0.0) would be completely identical to the last "rc" release (e.g. 1.0.0.rc.3) except for the version number change. If there's a temptation to add "one last patch" (no matter how minor), make a new "rc" version and let it make the rounds first. This would avoid embarassments like 2.2.0 and certain 2.4.x releases, which are marked "stable" by their version number, but were quite unstable in practice...

I tried to include my writeup of the all-numeric system I ended up with before I gave up on it, but Slashdot's "lameness filter" rejected it. Maybe it's a sign. :-) (Interested parties can send me email and I'll mail a copy of the writeup...)