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Linux 2.6.0 Kernel Released
thenextpresident writes "It's here! Just updated on kernel.org, the Linux 2.6.0 kernel has finally arrived! We've been waiting a long time for this, and it had been rumored it was going to be released tonight. Well, it's here indeed. Happy downloading." There's also a changelog online for this long-awaited update.
I run linux as my desktop at home, and I also run it at work in a scientific computing cluster.
I'd like to know what benefits I could expect from the new kernel in each area in which I use linux.
This is great news! I'm excited even though I'm now an OS X dude. Once I find the time to back up my system and repartition I'll be trying LinuxPPC. Speaking of which, if anybody knows of (or wants to write) a non-destructive repartitioning tool for OS X please let me know!
-DA
My thesis project involves a module similar to SELinux and I have found that the best 2.6 kernel for messing around with it is actually the BK tree mantained by the Linux Security Modules (LSM) project. Technically SELinux is one module that is part of the LSM project but the two are often referred to synonymously. LSM is at: immunix and you can check out their kernel branch for extra features that are not yet in mainline 2.6 (and may not get in at all if the kernel maintainers aren't confortable with the changes)
;)
My personal project is actually a big modification of the Domain & Type enforcement that is present in LSM now. but the code is nowhere near ready for inclusion just yet
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
but I *liked* make menuconfig; make clean && make modules modules_install bzimage!!
Excuse my ignorance (I'm not familar with the new 2.6 build system) but I really *did* like the make menuconfig approach. It's been that way since way-back-when so I could probably do it blindfolded. In addition, make menuconfig is great for building a new kernel over a slow (e.g. dial-up) ssh session. I actually rebuilt the kernel on my PC in Virginia from a cyber-cafe in Paris once.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Its great to see this go out in 2003, capping off a stellar year for open source. Mozilla 1.4/5, Gnome 2.4, KDE 3.2 (almost), Apache 2.x...and countless other pieces of the puzzle coming together in an awesome ecosystem.
Corporations haven't just 'taken notice', they are actively pushing this stuff. They are amping up great services behind the new commodity - software.
RedHat and IBM and Novell are leading the charge from the .com side while a huge developer community has taken root in the volunteer ranks.
2.6 was the icing on the cake - the version that really challenges the most established kernels across the entire spectrum. BRAVO!!
In related news, Redhat/Fedora has announced that the next Fedora release will ship with 2.6. They've called it a "stop-ship" feature :) Fedora Core 2 is tentatively scheduled to be released in April 04.
From the following Cnet article:n efd_top
http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5127627.html?tag=
All these quotes apparently came from Mr. Morton himself.
"...the part of 2.6 that communicates with memory is less efficient, imposing a practical limit of 24GB of memory to the 32GB that 2.4 could handle. However, he believes that programmers will address the problem."
Is this reduced limit useful? Why should it be up to programmers to code around? Did I miss something?
"The new kernel also monitors for new events more frequently--1,000 times per second instead of 100--a fact that slows down the system about 1 percent..."
I assume it's to try and respond to events faster but increasing it tenfold, isn't that overkill? I mean, it slows the system down by 1% which isn't horrible and if a real-time app has a problem with it, you can always modify the kernel yourself but couldn't they have upped the polling to 250 which is a decent increase but not a 10x one.
"In addition, 2.6 requires somewhat more memory to run and shows worse performance when it has to use hard drives as extra memory under heavy loads... "
That seems reasonable that it needs a bit more memory but why should it see adverse effects under heavy loads as compared to the 2.4 kernel? Shouldn't they degrade at around the same level or are there some new file system issues that cause this?
Enlighten me.
Linus said it sucks.
1 2/ 09/1341236
In early November, Bill Davidsen
responded to a post on the LKML about a problem someone was having with burning a CD. Davidsen said:
There is a problem with ide-scsi in 2.6, and rather than fix it someone came up with a patch to cdrecord to allow that application to work properly, and perhaps "better" in some way. Since the problem with ide-scsi seems to still exist for other applications, you will probably find you have to work around the problem, by using the -pad option of cdrecord (thought that was standard now for TAO at least) or reading using the ide-cd driver.
Torvalds responded to Davidsen's post by writing:
On 6 Nov 2003, bill davidsen wrote:
>
> There is a problem with ide-scsi in 2.6, and rather than fix it someone
> came up with a patch to cdrecord to allow that application to work
> properly, and perhaps "better" in some way.
Wrong.
The "somebody" strongly felt that ide-scsi was not just ugly but _evil_, and that the syntax and usage of "cdrecord" was absolutely stupid.
That somebody was me.
ide-scsi has always been broken. You should not use it, and indeed there was never any good reason for it existing AT ALL. But because of a broken interface to cdrecord, cdrecord historically only wanted to touch SCSI devices. Ergo, a silly emulation layer that wasn't really worth it.
The fact that nobody has bothered to fix ide-scsi seems to be a result of nobody _wanting_ to really fix it.
So don't use it. Or if you do use it, send the fixes over.
Linus
The back-and-forth between Davidsen and Torvalds has continued, and as a result more and more of Torvalds disdain for the ide-scsi and cdrecord interface has bubbled to the surface. Torvalds has said, among other things, that:
* "anybody who uses cdrecord has either been confused by the silly SCSI numbering"
* "Some people ended up having to boot with ide-scsi enabled to burn CD's, but then if they wanted to watch DVD's (on the same drive), they needed to boot without it."
* "the old cdrecord interfaces are an UNBELIEVABLE PILE OF CRAP!"
* "It's an interface that is based on some random hardware layout mechanism that isn't even TRUE any more, and hasn't been true for a long time."
* "It's bad from a technical standpoint (anybody who names a generic device with a flat namespace is just basically clueless), and it's bad from a usability standpoint. It has _zero_ redeeming qualities."
There's more, but that's enough to give you a sense of Torvalds' unhappiness with the whole approach of both one particular (though very popular) app and the ide-sci module itself.
http://programming.linux.com/article.pl?sid=03/
--AROS is an Open Source AmigaOS clone, and source compatible with AmigaOS! Try the x86 build at http://www.aros.org
Personally, I can't wait for a knoppix with NTFS write support. As a person who spends a great deal of time fixing machines running mostly Windows XP, I'll greatly enjoy being able to fix their fscked up computers without having to actually use windows XP.
Badass Resumes
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Does anybody have a howto on how I can migrate my LVM version 1.0.7 volumes from 2.4.23 to 2.6.0? I know LVM has been replaced by device-mapper. Do I have to run some kind of conversion tool, or will device mapper just magically find and activate my LVMs? I can't find any information on this.
The biggest bonus I got from 2.6 was DMA with ATAPI commands finally works. Earlier kernels would not use DMA for ATAPI commands (read: CD/DVD burning commands) even if DMA was enabled for the IDE device. This effectively limited CD burning to the speed that PIO would work at, which was about 12x on my 900Mhz K7. It also ate up your entire CPU.
:)
With 2.6, DMA works properly with ATAPI commands, at least when using the new ATAPI virtual SCSI bus (NOT the ide-scsi module!). To use the new virtual bus, use 'dev=ATAPI:0,0,0' in a cdrecord command. You may also need to use the latest alpha of cdrecord.
I can now burn 2 CDs at once (multiple burners), at 52x without my CPU load going over 0.2!
Of course, if you had the luxury of using REAL SCSI CD burners before, this won't make a lick of difference to you.
http://www.linux.org.uk/~davej/docs/post-halloween -2.6.txt
Direct booting from floppy is no longer supported.
You should now use a boot loader program such as syslinux instead.
"make bzdisk" continues to work (now using syslinux).
Does this mean what I think it does? No more floppy boot disks? Or am I misreading?
reech bee-yond ur clip-0n