Linux 2.4.18 Released

Kourino writes: "Marcelo announced the release of 2.4.18 a couple hours ago after 4 release candidates, but the tree marked 2.4.18 on kernel.org is missing the -rc4 patch that finally made the kernel releasable. Basically, what's marked as 2.4.18 is really -rc3, and what's marked as -rc4 is what should have become 2.4.18. According to Marcelo on #kernelnewbies, most users won't be affected, but people on SPARC systems should definitely grab 2.4.18-rc4. Your best bet is probably just to get 2.4.17 and patch to 2.4.18-rc4. Seems 2.4 is destined to be an "interesting" release branch ^_^; For the new release, head over to your favorite kernel.org mirror. (Marcelo will set things straight in 2.4.19-pre1.)"

Comments

Few things you should know :)

[Skuld-Chan]

Unless this kernel patched it - the only way I could get any 2.4.x kernels running on older sun hardware (like in my case sun4m systems) was to enable smp support - even if you only have one cpu. I found that if it wasn't enabled the kernel would hang on startup.

2.4.17 is actually quite stable on my old SS20's - one of which is doing firewall stuff right now on att broadband.

2.4.19-pre1 is out now.

[dietz]

Here's the ChangeLog.

That was quick. (It includes a lot more stuff than just the patch missing from rc4).

Re:2.4.19-pre1 is out now.

[gmack]

But wait... just use 2.4.18-rc4!

Re:Sience this patch seems mostly for the Sparc.

[bconway]

The patch in -rc4 causes major problems on all non-x86 platforms. This includes Alpha, SPARC, and PPC, just to name a few.

Re:this is an enterprise ready os?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey if Windows can claim to be enterprise ready with the csrss.exe backspace bug present I think Linux can claim to be enterprise ready.

Linux/SPARC

[uzi]

I believe the problem is on sparc64 (and not sparc32). It's a trivial patch... just a few lines, so it's easy to have been overlooked.

Anyone using a SPARC/Linux machine that wants the latest and greatest should always turn to the
vger.samba.org sparc/linux kernel cvs tree. It's always got the latest stuff for both 64-bit and 32-bit SPARCs (and networking as well).

That said, 64-bit SPARC machines should run fine with the recent kernels. For the 32-bit SPARC machines, I can only comment on the sun4m and sun4c machine. Currently, the sun4m machines should boot and be ok... the sun4c machines do not.

sun4m machines: ss20, ss10, ss5, ss4, lx, classic, javastations
sun4c machines: ss2, ss1+, ss1, ipx, ipc, slc, elc

Re:What a silly thing to do

[felipeal]

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Once he released the new version and posted about it, he couldn't change the binaries. That would means 2 different binaries were released for the same file (even if in a short period of time), and that could cause even worse problems (how could someone know, in the future, which version a file really is? What if a mirror didn't get the new files properly?)

2.4.18 IS OK?

[beezly]

There's a report on linux-kernel that the 2.4.18 tarball is actually ok.

Has anyone had an opportunity to check?

Here's a link to the chap saying it's ok:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel& m=101 467401412021&w=2

Re:How about a new Slashdot feature.

[gmhowell]

There is a slashbox available with this information. Granted, it won't be in the top right, but it will be on a logged-in user's home page.

Re:Just give me a kernel that turns off my compute

[Adrian Voinea]

Yep... just turn on APM this way:

make menuconfig
General Setup -> Power Management support -> Advanced Power Management BIOS support -> Use real mode APM BIOS call to power off

This should fix it :)