Meet Linux Kernel 2.6.2, 'Feisty Dunnart'

hatrisc writes "As of about 10:04 pm on February 3rd, Linux users can grab the official 2.6.2 kernel release from kernel.org. A lot of PPC fixes. Changelog is here." omniru writes "Linux kernel 2.6.2 aka 'Feisty Dunnart' released," and adds some possibly useful information "about Dunnarts, in case you've never heard of them before. Changes include ACPI, Bluetooth, USB, XFS and many more improvements and fixes." gowdy suggests eager downloaders use a mirror.

Comments

linux.conf.au

[Marlor]

Looks like Linus's trip "down under" inspired this kernel release... the Dunnart is a type of Australian marsupial. The Tasmanian Devil is probably the best known example.

Re:linux.conf.au

[Marlor]

Looks like Linus's trip "down under" inspired this kernel release... the Dunnart is a type of Australian marsupial. The Tasmanian Devil is probably the best known example.

Actually, to correct myself, the Tasmanian Devil is not a type of Dunnart, although they both belong to the genus "Sminthopsis".

Re:linux.conf.au

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Looks like Linus's trip "down under" inspired this kernel release...

Good thing he didn't pick up the Crocodile Dundee, Steve Irwin, or a naked aborigena. But then, given the size of the Linux tarball these days, I think Ayers Rock would have been more appropriate than a 50 gram rodent ...

Re:linux.conf.au

[lwells-au]

More correctly, Uluru -- Ayers Rock is the name given to Uluru by the white invaders.... errr, settlers.

http://www.deh.gov.au/parks/uluru/

Re:linux.conf.au

[ozbird]

Actually, to correct myself, the Tasmanian Devil is not a type of Dunnart, although they both belong to the genus "Sminthopsis".

Tassie Devils and Dunnarts are in the same family, Dasyuridae. They are not in the same genus; the Tassie Devil belongs to the genus Sarcophilus (specifically, Sarcophilus laniarius.)

This page has a pretty neat browser of the taxonomy of the Dasyuridae family (amongst others).

I've seen a couple of dunnart species, Fat-tailed Dunnart and Chestnut Dunnart, in the wild. They are cute, particularly when mum has the kids hanging to her back. While the resemble mice, they're actually quite ferocious insectivores (with nasty, big, pointy teeth - well, pointy anyway.)

Re:linux.conf.au

[Hugh George Asm]

Looks like Linus's trip "down under" inspired this kernel release...

It was more than inspiration. Linus did a charitable fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis, and offered to name the next release after the Austrialian animal of the highest bidder's choice. Someone gave a few thousand dollars ($3600 to be exact) to choose this name. Next Linux kernel to get Aussie name

Re:linux.conf.au

[Skiron]

Here is the lkml announcement

Linus' announcement

and the guy who named it here

Nick

Sminthopsis crassicaudata crassicaudata

[radicalskeptic]

Here's a clearer (and much cuter) picture of a Fat-tailed Dunnart (Sminthopsis crassicaudata crassicaudata).

Awwwwwww....

Use a mirror??

[greppling]

Current bandwidth utilization 180.74 Mbit/s

Come on slashdot, you can do better than that!!!

Re:Use a mirror??

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is thinking far too small. Instead of downloading 2.6.2 they should all be rsync'ing the entire server. Think outside the box; PARADIGEM.

Re:Use a mirror??

[CvD]

I know they have a lot of bandwidth, but why aren't they using BitTorrent? This is a perfect application for BitTorrent. It could save them quite a bit of money, I would imagine. Money that could be spent elsewhere? And there's no risk of trojaned source files if they host their own tracker and make their own .torrent files, right? What am I missing here?

Re:Use a mirror??

[StupidGoose]

They really have a 1 Gbit/s connection, but it's (voluntarily) throttled to 250Mbit/s.

Re:Use a mirror??

[Kalak]

Here's my torrent

Call me a Karma whore, but the parent is right, this is exactly the kind of legitimate use BT was made for. (Plus hey, I'm running my orn tracker and made the torrent, so I should get something for my trouble and Karma is about all I'm likely to get.
Be sure to checksum it against the kernel.org checksum

Inside info

[Anonymous Coward]

2.6 Kernel was called 'Heathen Chemistry' along the core programmers before it was released.

Re:Inside info

[Aardpig]

2.6 Kernel was called 'Heathen Chemistry' along the core programmers before it was released.

Heathen Chemistry? Sounds like crystal meth to me. Will those pinko commie gay nazi 'free software' liberals stop at nothing in their maniacal quest to corrupt our children? Is our children safe?

Now we know about RH's evil plans to destroy Linux

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Linux kernel 2.6.2 aka 'Feisty Dunnart' released," and adds some possibly useful information "about Dunnarts

So now Linux' mascot is a dunnart uh?

Well check out this picture from the link in the /. blurb: doesn't that look like a badly wounded rodent implacably attracted by a mentally deranged radioactive red hat?

Scary if you ask me ...

Re:Sminthopsis crassicaudata crassicaudata

[pubjames]

Damn, that is a cute little beast.

Better not show it to Disney's lawyers or they'll be suing it for copyright infringement.

Anything broken? Otherwise why upgrade?

[r6144]

I don't think many people will find upgrading to a stable release of the kernel interesting. For those who upgrade often, is anything broken for you (including security fixes of course, but there doesn't seems to be anything serious recently), or if not, why do you upgrade to a stable release without significant new features?

Personally I upgraded from 2.6.0-test11 to 2.6.1-rc3 in order to fix the famous local security exploit. User-mode linux still doesn't work well, but since the 2.6.0-test3 version of the virtual machine on 2.6.1 hosts works mostly (newer umls don't work), I decide to ignore the problem for now. Unluckily the SMTP server of my mail provider has trouble contacting lists.sourceforge.net, so I can't even submit a bug report :(

Re:Sminthopsis crassicaudata crassicaudata

[dreamchaser]

Disney is lobbying for the CCCA for just that reason. The 'Cute Critter Copyright Act' will put an end to all cuteness unless sanctioned by our new Disney Overlords!

Uh oh

[beuges]

From the changelog:

[Bluetooth] Always use two ISOC URB's

This patch modifies the USB Bluetooth driver to use two ISOC URB's
per RX and TX transfer paths. This is needed for in time transfer
of SCO audio packets over HCI.

Linux is using SCO audio packets too??? Don't let them find out or they'll add it to their lawsuit :P

Re:Uh oh

[raul]

For those who dont know what a bluetooth SCO means: SCO stands for synchronous, connection-oriented and its mainly used for voice transport. (mono pcm 8bits 14Khz, if my memory serves me well, but can also be vocalic encoded). But can also be for other realtime relaible communications (video, signaling).

I dream of fedora...

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, oh man, I can't wait until Fedora 2 comes out with a 2.6 kernel. Then I'll take the plunge and upgrade all my old systems (running a mixture of 7.3, 8.0, and 9.0).

HOPEFULLY they'll get swsusp working so I can actually have a reason to use Linux on my laptop (despite being a Linux-only guy since 1995, swsusp hanging my system on every 2nd or 3rd reboot has forced me into the arms of MS. Well, that as well as Centrino wireless support, and digital video editing.)

XFS/NFS

[vpscolo]

Well with any luck this should include the changes which means that XFS on an NFS server doesn't suck royally

<nathans@sgi.com>
[XFS] Seperate the NFS reference cache code out from xfs_rw.c to simpli
fy management of different kernel versions.

Hopeing that fixes it

Rus

Re:Anything broken? Otherwise why upgrade?

[MentlFlos]

I know that I've been waiting for this. On my box here at work if I run 2.6.0 I can stay up "forever". When I boot into 2.6.1 a memory leak shows up somewhere and I need to reboot every day or so.

I never bothered to track it down, yes I know I'm a bad geek Perhaps if it still shows up I will poke more.

Re:Useful upgrade information

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the informative link. I checked it out, but unfortunately, as a Linux user, I do not appear to be eligible for upgrade pricing. And there is no way in FUCK I'm paying the price they're asking.

So I guess I'll be sticking with Linux a little longer. ;-)

Re:Anything broken? Otherwise why upgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

why do you upgrade to a stable release without significant new features?

It only takes around a minute ("yum update" for me on Fedora 1) so I figure what the heck... since I power down for the nights anyway it's not a problem.

Re:Anything broken? Otherwise why upgrade?

[makapuf]

Because, for any people having an nforce2 board, they will be able to use their ethernet controller on a stable kernel.

Dunnart?

[S.I.O.]

It looks like a small rat. Darl, please consider it as the new SCO mascot: it comes from Linux and can represent your business practices!

Re:Anything broken? Otherwise why upgrade?

[BenjyD]

I'd think that the fix for the "hash key being bound to ctrl-alt-f7 on many British layout keyboards" problem is a pretty good reason for a lot of people to upgrade. Kinda makes it hard to put comments in shell scripts...

Re:Anything broken? IP Masquerading.

[MikeD83]

I am currently having issues that have been carried over from the 2.4 tree. It involves ip masquerading over multiple network interfaces. The kernel log only reads, "MASQUERADE: Route sent us somewhere else." I hope they have fixed that.

where have all the dunnarts gone?

[johnfreez]

*gasp*

Re:Sminthopsis crassicaudata crassicaudata

[joib]

Awwwwwww....


Yum! I'm sure they taste good! ;-)

Dammit...

[Spacejock]

... I'm still compiling KDE 3.2.0

Simon

Discount?

[bazik]

Do I get a discount from SCO if I upgrade from a earlier Version?

Thank

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god they fixed this:

[SCTP] Remove the extra semicolon in sctp_cacc_skip_3_1().
it was REALLY slowing down the performance on my machine!

Re:Thank

[archeopterix]

Thank god they fixed this:

[SCTP] Remove the extra semicolon in sctp_cacc_skip_3_1().

it was REALLY slowing down the performance on my machine!

Greetings, fellow Gentoo user.

Looking for RPMS.

[AltGrendel]

Anyone know a reliable source where I can get 2.6 kernel RPMS for RedHat 7.3? Rpmfind doesn't seem to have any of them yet.

Google wack!

[valentyn]

Feisty Dunnart is a Google Whack! (But will probably not last for long :)

ACL?

[Lussarn]

Does anybody know if ACLs will become standard in 2.6 (Is there even ACL patches out for 2.6)?

Re:ACL?

[imroy]

Yes, ACLs are supported on most filesystems. Ext2/Ext3, JFS, XFS, and the /dev/pts fs. No ReiserFS yet though :(

Re:ACL?

[r6144]

It has been supported in the vanilla kernel for quite some time now, on ext3 (IIRC xfs is supported too).

Note that you need to add the mount option "acl" for the ext3 filesystem. It is documented in the latest tune2fs manpage. Then you can use "setfacl" (the version in RH9 is usable) to set the ACL like this:

a@foo$ touch test
a@foo$ chmod go-r test
a@foo$ setfacl -m 'b:r--' goose.c

The user named "b" can now read goose.c.

USB-Storage?

[ThisIsFred]

Anyone know what happened with the usb-storage module from 2.4.21 to the present? They added support for SD MMC cards, and it works fine in 2.4.24. But, 2.6.1 has a new SCSI driver that gives me up to a 20 per cent boost in throughput, however, the memory card support vanished.

??

Re:USB-Storage?

[iCEBaLM]

It is there, the problem I've been seeing is that if you don't have a card in the reader on boot (module load) then the partitions don't get read and you can't mount it if you swap cards out. Quite annoying.

Weird entry in the changelog spotted!

[mandark1967]

[Patch] Added SCO I.P. to Kernel so we would have a case.

Re:Anything broken? IP Masquerading.

[edesio]

I had the same problem. The patches found at http://www.ssi.bg/~ja/#routes solved the problems.

I intend to send a "minimal" patch to Marcelo soon.

Goooo!

[FIGJAM]

I had images turned off when looking at the dunnart link, so i could read that it was a marsupial. When I enabled images, as it was coming through I saw a thumb but mistook it for a penis... and immediately thought of Richard Gere

Re:How about a Feature Summary/Overview...

[Phaid]

A really good summary of the new features of the 2.6 kernels is in Dave Jones' the Halloween 2.0 document. It also points out a lot of the common problems people have when migrating from 2.4 to 2.6 and how to work around them, so it's well worth a read.

Re:How about a Feature Summary/Overview...

[beat.bolli]

Canonical link: Wonderful world of Linux 2.6

Oh...

[asr_man]

For a moment I thought he had named the release in Darl's honor. But that would be "feisty dimwit"...

It was gonna be 'Wallaby'

[Skiron]

Linus Torvalds has auctioned off the right to name the next Linux kernel

It could have been worse I suppose... ;)

[root@Linux233 linux]# uname -a
Linux Linux233.linicks.net 2.6.2 #1 Wed Feb 4 13:55:28 GMT 2004 i586 unknown unknown GNU/Linux

Nick

Re:Anything broken? IP Masquerading.

[inode_buddha]

Jozsef Kadlecsik:

* [NETFILTER]: Fix NAT leak with fragmented packets, missing conntrack put in ip_copy_metadata()

Re:Anything broken? Otherwise why upgrade?

[Ianoo]

You can put comments in shell scripts?!

2.6 Upgrade Headaches

[Tyler Durden]

This is slightly OT, but gosh am I having problems with upgrading to the 2.6 kernel. The upgrade is from a 2.4.18 kernel running on a SuSE 8.0 installation.

I've upgraded all the software specified in Changes, but it's a real pain trying to figure out what features to include when doing a "make xconfig". I finally got PPP working after some screwing around, but getting the correct sound modules and making them work correctly has me stumped, as well as some other little things.

Is a major kernel upgrade usually such a chore, or am I just an idiot? (Or maybe I just have atypical hardware). There're friends I know who would like to run Linux, but if upgrading to the 2.6 tree is usually so difficult I think I'll suggest they wait until the major distributions come with the new kernel already set up.

Re:2.6 Upgrade Headaches

[Skiron]

2.4.x -> 2.6.x is quite a big step to get right.

I followed this 'how-to' here, and then added some other stuff needed to do also (linked on the page).

Nick

Re:2.6 Upgrade Headaches

[Craig]

getting the correct sound modules and making them work correctly has me stumped, as well as some other little things.

I had some trouble with this, too. I don't know how SuSE handles it, but the solution for me was:

• xconfig & Compile alsa modules for my hardware.
• get & build alsa-tools (or utils?) from alsa.org
• run KDE & use the sound-settings utility to set up the alsa mixer properly.

Then everything seemed to be OK...

Craig

Changelog Translation

[Apreche]

I always love to read kernel changelogs. They are always really long and a great way to visualize just how much work is being done on linux all the time. The problem is, that while they are fun to read, they are not particularly informative to the average joe. For example let's look at some excerpts from the winamp changelog.

* Support for classic Winamp 1.x/2.x/2.9x skins and Winamp 3 ("Modern") skins
* Fancy new modern skin:
- Integrated video, AVS, and Milkdrop support
- Many built-in colorthemes
* Same ol' classic skin for people who want the Winamp 2 feel
* Vastly more powerful media library:
- Automatic background directory scanning options
- Customizable views and columns, graphical view editor
- Internet Radio (SHOUTcast) and TV listings
- Context-sensitive item info viewer
* CD ripping support (AAC@2x in free version, MP3 at unlimited speeds in pro)
* CD burning support (limited to 2x in free version)

and so on. Looking at stuff like this really helps the user like me understand what fixes and changes have taken place. More importantly it allows me to easily determine if any of these fixes or changes will affect me, and how they will do so. This is necessary because I need this information to decide if I'm going to recompile my kernel or not. I propose that in addition to releasing the usual changelog they also make a human readable changelog. Something that would say stuff like this

USB Lego towers work now
SATA works now
Fixed a bug that makes it go faster
Cleaned a warning so it compiles better

etc. etc.

Re:Anything broken? Otherwise why upgrade?

[tntguy]

They're like these things here, except nobody pays attention to them.

Oh. Wait.

Still no fix for file corruption with VIA chipset

[oscarcar]

Ugh.

Bug entry #1842

Both IDE and SATA Via chipset 8237 give file corruption.

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1842