Linux 2.6.0-test11 Kernel Released

An anonymous reader writes "Linus Torvalds has released his final 2.6.0-test kernel, calling it the 'Beaver In Detox'. Following this release, Linus says that 2.6 development will be led by Andrew Morton. The kernel's name refers in jest to the previous release, which Linus had named "Stoned Beaver". It contains a fix for the aic7xxx driver, proper error handling in do_fork(), some firewire fixes, and correction of a few skbuff leakage points. Download it from a kernel.org mirror."

Comments

Newbie comment

[Murmer]

If you're a new to all this, and you're a little intimidated by all the options you get from running "make menuconfig" or "make xconfig", here's a tip - if you're running Knoppix, or have one of your current kernels around in /usr/src, you can pull over your old configuration files from /usr/src/kernel and just copy them in the new kernel's source directory, if you're willing to compile the source.

Then run xconfig, make sure you've got console support compiled in (this point is key) and off you go. make, make install.

It's worth saying again, no matter how many times it's been said, that Linus and his band of merry coders are doing incredible work. On older machines, like my humble P2/266 laptop, a recompile actually feels faster, a lot faster in fact. If you're running older hardware, it's worth it to give these test kernels a try for that alone, if nothing else.

Re:Newbie comment

[FueledByRamen]

Actually, what you really should do, instead of "make xconfig" after pulling over the old config file, is "make oldconfig". It's a version of the (original, text-based) config that only asks you about configuration items that weren't defined in the file - like if a new feature (and thus a configuration item) is present in the newer kernel. BTW, the name for the kernel config file is .config (it's invisible - note the dot)

The pre-empt problem:

[ciaran_o_riordan]

A full discussion of the pre-empt problem can be found here:
http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1679

This is probably what has been happening to me.
I tried up to -test9, but after a few (2-10) hours, my cpu and disk access would shoot up and RAM usage would slowly increase. I dropped to a tty, typed the username "root", but the cpu load was so hight that login timed out before I was even prompted for a password!
So I had to kill the power on my machine while I could hear that my disk was fully active. I was not a happy camper.

Re:The pre-empt problem:

[Daniel Serodio]

If you really, absolutely must kill the power, use the "Magic SysRq" key! Alt+PrintScreen+S will sync the filesystems, and Alt+PrintScreen+U will remount them read-only.

See /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sysrq.txt.

Re:More Information

[golan]

Also check out this to see stats about the different 2.6.0-testX versions compile warnings and errors by John Cherry from the OSDL.

Torrent

[teoruiz]

As usual, I set a torrent here.