Slashdot Mirror
Upgrading Your Current System To Kernel 2.6
An anonymous reader writes "This white paper provides an overview of the process of moving an existing desktop system to the 2.6 kernel. It will highlight other software requirements imposed by the new kernel and administrative changes that you must make when migrating an existing system to the 2.6 kernel. It supplements previous whitepapers in the same series about Customizing the 2.6 kernel [Slashdot discussion here(1)] and porting drivers to the 2.6 kernel [Slashdot discussion here(2)] to the 2.6 kernel."
on Windows update?!? Where the heck is it?
I had all kinds of trouble upgrading to 2.6. Sound and networking didn't work, as well as some of my filesystems. Luckily, I'm smart enough to setup lilo to run multiple kernels, so going back to 2.4 was no trouble to tweak my config file and recompile and try again. I never got everything totally working right. I was going to just wait until the next series of distro releases solved these problems for me, but maybe I should give it another shot.
I'd like to see a nice up to date list distributions that are built around the 2.6 kernel. Trying to update a Mandrake system to 2.6 didn't work for me and these days I don't have the time to track down errors.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
Although it is obvious to many slashdot readers, the summary doesn't even mention the word "Linux".
So maybe we should point out that this is a whitepaper on upgrading Linux systems to kernel 2.6. (And no, I don't think the icon is enough - not everyone has a stuffed Tux on their desk).
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
The painful process of upgrading LVM1 to LVM2. Little documentation on the process, and installing Fedora Core 2 test 1 over an existing Fedora Core 1 gives all sorts of fun. Much hand-holding of your system and other hand-waving is required.
BSD^H^H^H2.4 kernel is dying.
Does anyone else have the same observation?
Speak truth to power.
i tried both 2.6 and 2.6.2 and i must say i wasn't really impressed with either. besides the fact that alot less stuff was echo'ed, the new make xconfig was annoying to work with, and it was actually nicer to just use menuconfig. also, i had a lot of trouble getting the framebuffer to work. right now, i have a dual boot with 2.4.22, 2.6.2, and windows (in order of preference)
With the preemptive kernel option enabled and the kernel module autoloader in 2.6 it does all you would ever need:
Loads any modules you need
Lets you do tasks preemtpively
Boots in a much shorter time (from 2.4.23's 35 sec to ~14 sec in my case)
It's also rock solid in my experience now, a good sound kernel choice that will fit virtually all workstations =)
Matroxfb ain't working. I'm not going to switch until they fix it.
The biggest issue I'm facing with 2.6 is getting module loading to work correctly. Seems that Debian/Knoppix isn't reading through the correct config file at bootup, even with the correct version of module-init-tools running. SpeedStep seems a bit sketchy too, but it's Centrino, so it could just be a matter of time.
Has anyone else had this problem? I've read that it may be a symptom of running a mixed stable/testing system, but I have yet to see a solution for the problem.
...laptop touchpad don't bother going near 2.6 if you don't know exactly what you're doing. I still haven't got the mouse working. I can't even find anyone who can tell me how to confirm if the touchpad is a synaptic.
I'm not the only one suffering this.
Works great on my slackware desktop.
If there are, I didn't see them. All I did was:
apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.2-1-686
update-grub
Two lines on the command line and a reboot and I've been happy ever since.
Oh, wait, we're talking outside Debian. Nevermind.
H0ek
Think you're smart? Prove you've got brains!
I upgraded to the 2.6 kernel about a month ago, and have been nothing but impressed. I got increased speed, my sound works great (ALSA) and with 1280x1024 Framebuffer and Bootsplash (85Hz refresh no-less) even my console is nice to look at.
My NVidia drivers worked flawlessly with the new kernel, as well as my wireless network.
I get oooh's and ahhh's from the co-workers with 3DDesk, and my boss is impressed with my setup, even though he's got a shiny new G5 under his desk.
That's just my experience, though... YMMV
I'm on a chair.
The purpose of Linus et al is not to beat Microsoft. That's statedly incidental. The ultimate purpose is to make a free (as in both) OS which 'just works'.
To that end, sometimes things will have to be broken to improve. The alternative is to support legacy code till the end of days and end up with MS-like bloatware.
Jo(e) average user doesn't want, need, or expect to upgrade their running kernel. So who cares how hard it is?
Justin.
Built my 2.6 kernel, won't run (kpanic), don't care, waiting for Red Hat or whoever to do it for me.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
The term "white paper" is meaningless these days. Now that the marketing departments have gotten ahold of it, "white papers" are usually nothing more than the same information included in the colored brochures, only on a white piece of paper in black text.
The days of "white paper" meaning a strictly technical or educational document are gone. These days, "white papers" are just another form of advertising.
One thing that was a blocker for me to move to 2.6 was my mouse would go a lot faster while in X. I finally found that it was the new input system. Under 2.4 the default XF86Config file would have two mouse input settings, one for ps/2 and one for USB. Under 2.6 both of these were picked up regardless of the mouse being ps/2 or usb so all mouse events, clicks, etc were picked up twice. Removing one of the mouse entries made everything work as normal.
Probably everyone but me knew this, but thought I'd throw it out in case anyone else is in the same boat.
Here's my experience with 2.6 kernel (been running it since 2.6.0 was released).
DVDs look awesome. I had to tweak the hdparms for DMA, but they work great.
Ever since NVidia came out with the latest drivers, things like the UT2k4 Demo fun fantastic.
I was a little hung up on modules... seeing as I rarely use them, it wasn't a show-stopper. The conversion from modutils to module-init-tools was mostly painless.
Recently, I've been playing with MTD, and trying to get a test machine to use 12 out of the 16 megs of an AGP Voodoo3 3000 card's memory as a device I can format or use as swap. I have been unsuccessful. (2.6.3). This is also on a testing machine, not my "main" machine.
On a slightly OT note, planning on building a Mini ITX system with a Via Epia board (one of the 800 mhz ones). Should have the case this week, jury's still out on the mb.
Other than that, no complaints, it's been fantastic. I'm running 2.6.3 on 3 different machines (with different responsibilies) and it feels like there's no going back now!
FLR
Circa 1985...
Stories like this do nothing to help build a convincing argument to Stove users that Microwaves are in fact the better oven. If even seasoned Microwave users have problems popping popcorn, think of how frustrating it would be for someone less technically-inclined.
This is one of many issues that Microwave users have to work out before it can become a true mainstream oven.
Circa 2000...
Does anybody still use a stove to pop popcorn? Just asking.
Except I'm using a Lexmark printer; everything else isn't the same model you described but close enough to use the exact same driver. The only problem I had with 2.6 is that the ivtv driver (for a Hauppauge PVR-250 TV tuner) needed to be patched built by hand; everything else seems to be caught by Red Hat's autoconfiguration tools now.
What trouble did you have installing?
I have a live CD sitting around. I'd like to know if there is a way to backup my kernel (in some other folder or something) and if attempting to install the 2.6 kernel doesn't work I'd just copy everything back. Is there a way to do this? Where do I start?
Anyone else had this problem when upgrading to 2.6? I previously tried upgrading my Mandrake 9.2 install to 2.6 and failed (on boot, no init found, no matter what I tried).
.config file, the system would not boot. For some reason it can't mount the root filesystem even though I have both ext2 and reiserfs support compiled into the kernel. Anyone else experience this? My only guess at this point is that I'm missing some sort of customization that Mandrake did to their version of the kernel.
So I tried Mandrake 10 RC1 (which uses 2.6.2 by default). It booted and runs wonderfully. However, yesterday I tried to upgrade the kernel to 2.6.3 from kernel.org. Using "make oldconfig" (and following the rest of the compiliation procedures) on my Mandrake-supplied
Note: Abit IC7-G motherobard (not sure if that makes a difference).
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
I was under the impression that the old syntax of "root=/dev/hda3" didn't work any more and one needed to specify integer numbers for root=...?
Advice: on VPS providers
I run gentoo on a dual pIII-600 with an ATI radeon7000 / SBlive / intelpro100. Kernels 2.4.18 through 2.4.22 took several hours of tweaking before I could even get the thing to boot correctly. ( 2.2 never had this problem )
Last week I took about 30 minutes and grabbed 2.6.3 did a clean/config/make, which took about the majority of that time, and booted into the fastest Linux box I have ever had.
2.6 booted with OpenGL without any tweaks pushing glgears to 1600fps and ALSA kicked in without errors on the emu10k1. Device drivers posed no issues for either the USB keyboard/mouse or hardrive or nework card.
No 'migration' was necessary for either windowmaker / enlightenment / blender / JACK or any of my other 100 some odd apps.
The one problem I can't seem to find the answer to is how Debian tells the kernel which modules to autoload at boot. I know that for 2.4 kernels, there is a list in /etc/modules. However, with my 2.6 kernel. that file is ignored and I have to manually load all the modules I need after boot. A pain in the ass since I try to keep most of my device drivers as modules, like for my NICs, video card, USB, sound card, etc. Has anyone using Debian and 2.6 kernel found a solution to this?
Sometimes I feel like a nut... Ok so it's most of the time
My Firewire storage devices stopped working and my posts to LKM about it (once when 2.6.0 was released and one just yesterday concerning 2.6.3) have gone unanswered
Dinivin
Just one mouse in my config. But I *did* find that mouse was moving a lot faster in X. But then, *everything* was more responsive with 2.6.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Fedora Core 1 forum posting with people who have already done it. It seems pretty easy from the looks of it. I'm going to do it just as soon as I get some free time...
And for the love of god, please read the whole thread. Don't ever install a kernel with rpm -Uvh. Leave yourself a backup (rpm -ivh).
Get Firefox!
i didnt know there was anything special i needed to do to upgrade. with gentoo, all i did was type 'emerge development sources' and recompile as usual.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
Another possible reason for your mouse speeding up is the 2.6 kernel actually initializing the mouse and setting the precision, etc. You can disable this, and return to "almost 2.4"-like behaviour by adding the following kernel parameter to your boot config:
psmouse_noext=1
I find it easier to just wait for the latest version of my distribution and the install it. When i do that i get the (almost) latest software and kernel versions and it will hopefully be more stable than if i try to upgrade the kernel or libs. I have all my user configurations on a separate paritition so i can just create symlinks from my home dir which makes re isntallation really quick. i use mdk btw.. :)
Sure it is. It's just picky about who its friends are.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Rotten News
I've had many months of experience running the 2.6.x kernels alongside the 2.4.x series on the same machine- and I just dont really see a reason to upgrade.
:)
For me, ALSA doesnt work totally right on my P2040- and 2.4.x gave me the option of using the old OSS drivers. I don't think 2.6.x gives you that option...
Beyond "module autoloading" (which doesnt quite work like it sounds btw), IMO theres not too much it offers.
The preemptive kernel stuff has been available for 2.4 for a long time, as has XFS etc, as have the "special" synaptics drivers.
That, combined with a lack of drivers for a lot of things currently supported in 2.4 makes me not upgrade.
As an aside, I finally just ditched Linux altogether and have very much been enjoying FreeBSD 5.x on that same laptop.
Finally I have a USB mouse that doesnt occasionally die and require a module reload
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
I was going to just wait until the next series of distro releases solved these problems for me, but maybe I should give it another shot.
/home is touched, but beyond that I'm not so sure. Is it ill-advised to "upgrade" to a different distro?
Since I'm still new to running *nix at home, I haven't ever had anything on my dedicated Linux box that I needed to save, so all of my installs have been on a freshly formatted drive.
I am curious about the "upgrade" process - what changes? What is lost? What is moved/renamed? I would expect that nothing in
white paper n. 1. A government report. 2. An authoritative report on a major issue, as by a team of journalists. dictionary.com
I don't try to be right, I just try to make people think
Nah, you weren't alone. I suffered with this for weeks until I saw the input devices FAQ on the lkml.
white paper
An educational report made available to the public that expounds on a particular industry issue.
That from www.investorwords.com. Also,
A short treatise whose purpose is to educate industry customers. See, e.g., Architecture Neutral Distribution Format.
That from hyperdictionary.com.
apt-get update
apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.3-1-686
update-grub
Reboot. Works.
The thing that amazes me is I've had this laptop running over two weeks since the last reboot! OK, so I close the silly thing and let it hibernate, but then I pop it open and I have a three-second startup time! The system uptime on "top" showed 15 days, 20 hours. I've never had this luxury with my laptop when using the 2.4 kernel, ever!
H0ek
Think you're smart? Prove you've got brains!
On this site There is a HOWTO, FAQ and more
From the site:
I tried some other migration howtos, but none gave enough information to provide a flawless migration.
I had to google a lot and it took some time.
Maybe this howto isn't perfect too, but I'll try to update it!
I don't own a microwave you insensitve clod...
trully, I wouldnt' even have electricty but for to power my computers...
that said, I can get DSL out in the sticks.. kind of amazing, since I know people in suburbs who still can't get broadband at all.
popcorn is way better on the stove, just like linux is way better than windows.. you get to do it yourself! think of it as a priviledge!
just my 2 rubles.
"...and I am _not_ intoxicated... YET!" --John Wayne
I installed module-init-tools-0.9.14, which was the minimum version needed at the time. I thought perhaps there was something Debian specific since gentoo has /etc/modules.autoload.d/ with lists for each kernel.
I'll try a newer version perhaps.
Thanks
Sometimes I feel like a nut... Ok so it's most of the time
Man, I keep seeing debian users posting one-liners like this, and I think to myself yet again, "I have to try Debian out one of these days." Is it really this simple? (I'm by no means a beginner at Linux, I just have to overcome some intertia. I started w/ Slackware back in the day, but now use SuSE. Any quick advice?)
If you've done this and know a lot about it, *please* document somewhere, I could really use the help.
I have the same version of modutils and modconf, but I have an older version of module-init-tools, 0.9.14.
I'll try upgrading the module-init-tools. Did you make any changes to any configuration files?
Thanks for your help.
Sometimes I feel like a nut... Ok so it's most of the time
Hello McFly, it was a joke (and one that has been done about 100 times already in this thread). Mod the Johnson up cause that Troll is bogus. Yes, I just said bogus, as in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey!
FYI, the one I have installed on my system is
v3.0-pre9-1. It's the latest in testing, I think.
Je ne parle pas francais.
emerge development-sources /usr/src/linux /usr/src/linux-2.6.3 /usr/src/linux /boot /boot/grub/grub.conf
rm
ln -s
mount
genkernel all
vi
reboot
That is ALL there is to it. It is pretty much the same as upgrading to any other kernel. The only trick I saw was that the kernel needs more parameters than 2.4. It needs "root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc real_root=/dev/hda?" appended, which kernel 2.4 did not need. All the other tools (module autoloaders, etc.) are already 2.6 ready on a Gentoo system
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I have an ati remote that has a mouse pad thingie, works in 2.4 but encountered the same mouse at warp speed in 2.6 as a result. Commented it out for now, but haven't found a solution yet.
It's been moved from userspace to kernel space. I guess there's some technical reasons as to why this is a worthy move, but it has given a lot of people problems. Hopefully this is a one off and it'll be ironed out soon.
CERT SecAD NBSD4536A746
Advisory: Olfactory disturbance during *BSD use
Affected: NetBSD all versions
FreeBSD all versions
OpenBSD all versions
Description: The dead corpse of a *BSD operating system emits a foul, disgusting smell which reduces the
productivity of the users.
Recommended activities: - use nose plugs
- removal of *BSD operating system, replace with Linux or Windows XP
I think the reason for the moderation is that it is both a very old joke and a very unfunny one. It appears almost everytime some release announcement is made on Slashdot.
No, there was more to it than that! 2.6 uses /lib/modules/modules.conf instead of /etc/modules.conf and, IIRC, Debian's update-modules is still designed for the old method (or at least it was when I installed 2.6.0). It actually took me a while to figure out why my modules weren't being loaded properly.
Another problem I ran into, although this is no one's fault but mine, is that the size of all the modules in the kernel image keeps growing. Back when I was moving to a new HD I was still going through all the work of making a custom kernel, therefore I was using less than 40 MB in / and so 80 MB seemed like it would give me room to grow. Of course now that each kernel I install takes up 35 MBs, I end up having to install them to /usr/lib/modules and copy over only the modules I need, which was made even harder with 2.6 because lots of the modules changed location and name. :(
Try passing psmouse_noext=1 to your kernel via grub or lilo. This restores the previous behaviour.
My problem was that the double input made X unusable.
I've tried all versions of 2.6 (2.6.1,2,3) but still get this problem. Everything seems smoother/more responsive except for a problem I have with a game (enemy territory). In 2.4 this game usually loads a map in 20-30 seconds. In 2.6 it takes about the same time but every map thereafter gets longer and longer, until they start taking several minutes. I did a test by launching my own server and just kept reloading the same map. 1st try 32 seconds, 5th try over 4 minutes. If anything it should be slightly quicker as some would be in memory/swap. The only other game I have in linux similar to enemy territory is quake3. It has the same normal load times in both 2.4 and 2.6, but it's maps are much smaller than enemy territory's so it doesn't stress the system as much. This leads me to believe that it's more a swap/memory issue than a graphics driver issue. I did hdparm tests and dma is enabled and I'm getting about the same speed in 2.4 as in 2.6. My system is a p4 1.6 with 128 megs ram gf4ti 4200. Now, I realize 128 megs is low these days, and would probably help aleviate this problem but it seems when a system is stressed in this way 2.4 performs better than 2.6. In 2.4 I can play on a server for as much as I want but with 2.6 I usually get kicked within a couple of new maps due to it timing out. Reconnecting to the server doesnt help, but quiting ET and restarting helps for that initial map, but then the cycle repeats. I don't see a way on this forum of attaching my config, I compiled the kernel myself and have gone over it several times to see if some option could be the cause of this. The first thing I tried was turning off the preemptive kernel option, but didn't help. My system is debian based (morphix distro) and as I mentioned I compile the kernel myself, not a precompiled kernel. I also made sure X doesn't have a negative nice value. You might suggest to throw more ram at the problem and even though it might help, I shouldn't have to as 2.4 seems to get by.
You're not telling us the whole story. He forgot to install the kernel modules, and update modules / mod-init utilities. My guess is that he was in a world o' hurt, since he wouldn't be able to get back on the Internet to download the previous kernel.
-Fred
Install Debian unstable. if it works, good. At that point, call it 'stable' and stop upgrading it.
If you find something doesn't work, update your package cache and download an updated version of that program. If it works, good. At that point, call it "debian stable" and stop upgrading it.
Wash, rinse and repeat.
Not only is it not particularly informative in any sense, it is also basically wrong.
> Loads any modules you need
It doesnt quite work like that- in its default config it basically loads all modules, and doesnt let you unload them- so when you plug something in it has a higher chance of "just working".
This isnt anything special, and GEEWHIZBANG! it actually ends up functioning like a good old monolithic kernel.
> Lets you do tasks preemtpively
Hahah as the AC said - "you can complete tasks before you even knew you wanted to do them"
> Boots in a much shorter time (from 2.4.23's 35 sec to ~14 sec in my case
I don't know about you, but most of my systems booting time is in the init scripts- I saw little difference in actual kernel boot time...
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
do what I did - edit /etc/XF86Config so that /dev/psaux becomes /dev/input/mice. Works fine for me.
C|N>K
Don't try to switch a 2.4 sytem to the 2.6 kernel. Or vice versa for that matter. If you want 2.6, build the rest of the system fresh. Unless you are uber l33t you wont get everything to work perfectly. But if you start from scratch getting everything to work in 2.6 is cake.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
running 2.6 you insensitive clod
realkiwi
From other MDK users I've heard that the 2.6 kernel with mandrake is working great, and though I haven't tried RC1, it's fairly stable at this point. FYI the reason they released RC1 was because of the XFree86 4.4 -> XFree86 4.3 reversion. I'm thinking they should do a RC3 this time around; it seemed kind of quick to go right to RC1.
Oh, and another problem I had was "Error: Unknown pseudo-op: `.incbin'" -- this was fixed by upgrading binutils to the latest version. Aside from these two problems, the upgrade went smoothly.
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
My only problem was that my clock has gone nuts.
With 2.4 it was stable, but now under 2.6 some days it stays the same, other days it might move by 15+ minutes in a 24 hour period (I ntp it back of course)
And sound support for the nforce2 mobo is better.
i upgraded to 2.6.2 sometime back. it integrates quite beautifully with fedora core 1, the gui seems a lot faster, and a bit more stable now. NTFS write support is still experimental.
The purpose of Linus et al is not to beat Microsoft. That's statedly incidental. The ultimate purpose is to make a free (as in both) OS which 'just works'.
Here on Slashdot, the purpose is to beat Microsoft.
I must live a charmed life, think pure thoughts or something, because my 2.6 experience has been nothing but positive.
My first experience was with a Compaq laptop, Slackware 9.0 and 2.6.0-test4. I found that I broke the 2.4 modutils when I upgraded to module-init-tools, but since 2.6 worked so well, I really didn't care. Oh, and I've never had any trouble with that crazy mouse touchpad thingy.
Slackware 9.1 says it's 2.6-ready, and it is. I've installed it on a number of systems and upgraded the kernel easily.
My current challenge is my Sun Ultra 5, which currently runs Debian (woody) with the 2.4.18 kernel it came with. I ended up building 64 bit SPARC gcc and friends as cross compilers on an x86 box. But hello world still doesn't link... :-(
...laura
I recently gave the 2.6 kernel a shot (slack 9.1), and the only thing I've noticed so far is that my external modem (serial port) disconnects immediately after making a connection. I wonder if there is some setting I might have missed or if it's a bug in the kernel. Has anyone had a similar experience?
thanks
As an aside, you can save yourself a lot of trouble in doing a fresh install with some intelligent partitioning. Most systems have an expert mode (or may offer nothing but expert mode, depending on the system) that lets you specify which partition corresponds to which mount point manually and decide which partitions should and should not be reformatted. If you set up /home on a separate partition, you can wipe everything else while leaving your user data alone. That can save you the trouble of having to restore all of your personal files when you install the new system. It's not necessarily perfect- some configuration files may change between versions of your favorite desktop environment, for instance- but it's a big improvement. You should obviously back up your data before doing the install just in case, but you should be doing periodic backups of your system already anyway.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
My setup - Debian on a Dell Inspiron 8100.
;)
:) With the addition of KDE 3.2 getting released this has been a really good upgrade and I would definitely recommend anyone else to do the same...
First of all the menuconfig menus are a lot more well organised and there are a lot more options, too. Configured it up and it booted OK... I've upgraded to every version so far. The good things:
* Much less work required with "external" device drivers. With 2.4 I had to separately compile ACPI, ALSA, the nVidia driver, PCMCIA and Lucent modem drivers. Now it's just the Lucent and nVidia drivers as the other three are now included already.
* ACPI support is better. Won't bore you with the details, but it is
* Everything's faster, although I was using the new scheduler stuff as a patch to 2.4 so it didn't make too much difference.
* probably lots of little things I can't think of right now
The bad things - there seem to have been a few nasty bugs, but that's to be expected with such a big upgrade and most of them have been sorted. Currently ACPI battery support is doing funny things and occasionally reporting that the battery's empty, when it's not. Give it a couple of releases though and it should be all good
For my old COMPAQ Armada M700 the new Kernel brought a nice speed improvement. I have got appropriate reports from other Linux laptop users, too.
this author has written several papers about various portions of linux, configuring and setup.
I actually read his stuff, because it tends to make a lot of sense, and he has really good ideas.
I look forward to more articls from this author.
these are:
mga.ko does not load, it fails.
LIRC does not work as I have heard.
On my laptop the bare HD performance dropped from 14 to 12 MB/s.
As I have patched my 2.4 with O(1) scheduler and kernel preemption I don't see any reason to bother with the latest stuff and invest time just to get it going and not noticing too much improvement afterwards. 2.6 may be even nicer, but I can wait until it has matured a bit and all applications can handle it.
...this will help me. 2.6.1 is the only kernel in the series that actually compiled on my machines. I struck out and 2.6.2, and I just struck out on 2.6.3 a couple of days ago. Both of those fail during module compile. Both fail on all machines I've tried them on.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
cdrecord works with atapi burners now. (I make this blanket statement based only on the fact that I was able to burn a cd this morning).
The trick is:
cdrecord -scanbus dev=ATAPI
cdrecord dev=ATAPI:1,0,0 isname.iso
no boot time kernel options need to be passed (no more hdb=ide-scsi nonsense).
Good luck.
I am running Debian stable, and let me tell ya, its been nothing but trouble trying to upgrade the kernel.
.config file.
First problem, was getting the new module utilitys installed, I had to setup pinning. Not too hard, but was a pain to find some clear docs on this.
After that, I had many issues with getting iptables working. I can't find the damn thing in menuconfig, maybe I am blind, but I ended up just editing the
iptables still isn't fully working, I can't even connect to the internet using the machine it self. Why ? Becuase, bind9 is bitching about the kernel version. dhcpd isn't working either, due to kernel version.
When I migrated from 2.2 -> 2.4, there wasn't this many issues. I understand that the changes are needed, and things will clean up over time. I just wish there was better docs explaining WHAT has to be done.
Another intresting note, is that insmod doesn't work correctly, however modprobe does. Which, is very odd in it self.
I am too frustered after tooling around with it today, spent 2 hours on it. I will try it again next week.
I really want to upgrade to 2.6, since it better supports the opteron chips and better support (From what I have heard) on SATA / raid cards. (I have a 3ware SATA raid controller)
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Debian IS NOT user friendly. Or maybe it is if you have only debian systems and if you are ready to lose your stability if you don't follow the Debian Way to configure something, I don't know.
Guys, a system is user-friendly if it help you. Debian really don't help me. A system that install itself without problem and *just work* is friendly.
I've been using 2.6 since .0 with absolutely no problems (execpt for monkeying with nvidia binary driver patches for a while there).
.2 and .3 too), but it doesn't really seem to have much momentum for getting included.
:)
The only complaint I can come up with (which isn't actually a complaint at all) is that 2.6 is still lacking kexec() support. Randy Dunlap has been doing some work on it including patches for 2.6.1 (works with
I've only rebooted my workstation 3 times since 2.6.2 came out, and 2 of those was a 'kexec -e' reboot. So I haven't had to wait on my annoying Video BIOS, Motherboard BIOS, or Adaptec BIOS in almost a month, which is nice.
Still, I can see why it is not included because it does break non-standard consoles (e.g. fbcon) on kexec reboot. Sure this is offtopic, but everyone else seems to be bitching about their beefs with 2.6 so I thought I would too
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
Ok, thanks for the info. I hadn't read that. I'll give that a try as well.
Thanks again
Sometimes I feel like a nut... Ok so it's most of the time
My biggest problem was non-availability of lm_sensors for the 2.6 series of kernels when I tried them 1 month ago.
In addition, some java processes (tomcat) started freaking out and taking 100% CPU when running under 2.6. Never happened under 2.4 for over a year and a half.
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
Upgrading to 2.6 was a very easy process after I got rid of a few bugs that kept cropping up.. I am a die-hard Slackware fan and been using it ever since the first versions of Slackware came bundled in the paperback Linux books.. (Anyone remember Slackware 98??).. Slack 9.1 came 2.6 ready because it had all of the latest software versions to be used on a 2.6 kernel... It was easy as selecting which modules I required using menuconfig and building the kernel as usual... The only problems I had was with the first 2.6.0 release that came out and the framebuffer driver was messed up or something.. I would compile support in for it and it would boot and I would either get a fragmented bootlogo or I would get a black screen until X started... Until 2.6.2 came out this was a problem for me... Now it's all resolved it seems and I now have 2.6.3 running on both my Slackware 9.1 Laptop and Server... GO 2.6!
I upgraded to 2.6 a while ago, just because I wanted all of the neat goodies it brings with it (QoS, Bluetooth, etc.). My server has no compiler, and I have no "backup" system, so I compile things on various other Linux systems I run.
/dev/null
It basically runs Gentoo, in that I copied the boot CD, stripped out anything I didn't need, and manually installed things like ssh, apache, etc. The upside is that it's small. The downside is that it's a pain in the butt to upgrade.
The 2.6 install worked without too many initial problems, except the whole devfsd being required, and me not getting around to removing the requirement. That is, until I tried to reboot:
server root # shutdown -r now
Broadcast message from root (pts/0) (Wed Feb 25 11:24:11 2004):
The system is going down for reboot NOW!
RK_Init: idt=0xc05dc000, FUCK: Can't find sys_call_table[]
server root #
At this point, I'm blaiming the redhat compiler for stripping out something it shouldn't have. Though, anyone else have any suggestions?
char sig[120] = "\0"
Not to mention that "White Paper", "White Hats", "Black Hats" and "Red Hat" is all very racist these days...
I would like to be the first to congratulate you on posting the 8,388,608th comment to Slashdot. Since this is "news for nerds" I assume there's no need to explain why this number is significant.
I have just one piece of advice for you. If you ever switch to Debian, don't, don't, DON'T go around preaching "apt-get install blah", "apt-get install yadda yadda". It's extremely annoying!
To all you Debian people who're reading is: YES, your beloved Debian system is the best, the most powerful, the most stable, the most upgradeable distribution ever on Earth!!
Happy now?
You're right! FreeBSD 4.x (unoptimized) it's faster than the Linux kernel 2.6.x + GNU tools (optimized). Any thoughts on this?
AGP and FB support BOTH crash the PC on boot. As in, black screen. If I have either agpart or the framebuffer compiled-or both-then it just gives a black screen. Which means my RIVA TNT2 gives even worse performance than it did before (not enough money for a new card) and I can't even have a bootsplash to dull the pain.
*sigh*
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
Was it worth it. If you're keen, probably - boot times are reduced and the system seems more responsive when under load. But for the most part - if you already have fast hardware - you might not notice the difference. A safe approach might be to wait for distro's to catch up - I have no idea how easy it's going to be to upgrade my RH 9 system to RH-Fedora now that I've changed all these things.
Here's the major things I had to do after the upgrade...
I had to stop using ide-scsi for my burner - 2.6.3 can lock up totally if I use ide-scsi. According to the ide-cd maintainer ide-scsi is on the way out. The cdrecord (v2) in RH 9 is capable of using ATAPI devices - see the man page. If you're using k3b, just point it a
I have es1371 on board sound. I found ALSA sound was worse than OSS - annoying clicks at the ends of sounds when transitioning to silence - might be able to fixed with tweaking pci priorities. I found it easy to stick with OSS - if fact, originally after first upgrading, OSS kept working without me doing anything (just make sure enable the OSS kernel build options as well as the ALSA ones).
Rpm has some kind of issue - threading? Using the LD_ASSUME_KERNEL environment variable fixes it. I use the following script to run it:For example:It's also been reported that upgrading to the latest rpm will fix it. You can also use my script to run anything that doesn't like the new threading model - for example, older versions of xine.
Getting 3D under X11 to work was a pain. In an effort to get it to work I downloaded and built the latest X11 driver. But I'm not sure this is necessary because I later found my major hurdle was that the AGP module had been split and I now need to load four modules to get it to work:Obviously which agp related modules to load now varies depending on your hardware. In my case this is a AMD processor, VIA mainboard, and an ATI 9200 graphics card. Here is my modprobe.conf entry:I suspect this is all I really needed to do to get 3D running.
I had to upgrade to lm_sensors-2.8.4 to get temperature and RPM monitoring to function - and I had to reconfigure the settings to get good fan RPM readings. Ksensors needed a rebuild.
I tried 6.1 a month ago. It compiled fine. But I need a driver for my winmodem (no point in a netless machine is there?) which just isn't there yet. So I had to revert to 2.4. Dammit - I'm going to have to buy a real modem, aren't I?
sig under development
done that too many times before. heh.
such a great shortcut/workaround/whatever, and i forget to add +x
*sigh*
OS X has always been short for MacOS 10.
Start off with people who have never used a computer (or at least, never used Windows), and are willing to learn to use one, and they'll learn Linux rather easily. That's how most of us did.
I've sat a long-time MacOS user friend in front of Linux (Red Hat 9). They preferred Windows XP over Linux. I don't know what else to tell you, man.
Comparing arch\i386\mm\ioremap.c and arch\x86_64\mm\ioremap.c from linux-2.6.3-mm1: the line
area->phys_addr = phys_addr; is *hurtly* *eated*.
opotpyrc
Sometimes I think that the linux community (and extrapolating to the free software community in general) should take a little bit from Theo de Raadt's philosophy (and extrapolating, the OpenBSD community's):
There's none of this "We need to convince these windows users" crap. They code, write, etc. solely for their community. What the community as a whole wants, the community as a whole (most of the time) gets... Now Theo, imho, goes way too far, to the point where one could pretty much picture him grabbing a newbie and shaking him, shouting "i dont give a damn about you, boy!" in his face.
but i really think it's detrimental to free software development to put a huge amount of stress on advertising and evangelism... After a point, let the product speak and evangelize for itself.
after all, why do you even care whether the rest of your street is using windows. Sure, there are a few minor reasons, and you don't want MS to keep their stranglehold on the people... but don't try to kid yourself into believing your such an altruist that you so vehemently proselytize without realizing why. Or what you already have.
Did you d/l, compile and install the replacement modutils (I used module-init-tools-3.0-pre9)? The old modutils won't work with 2.6; if you haven't installed the new ones already, safest if you rename the old ones with a .old extension before you do (I think this lets the 2.4 kernel still work AFAIK - does for me).
Also, the build process has been simplified to
make
make install
make modules_install
(the modules compile concurrently with the kernel)
I've used 2.6.2, 2.6.2-mjb1 and 2.6.3 in SuSE 9 AMD64 so far with only a couple of SuSE specific errors.
hope this helps.... someone:) As ever, YMMV
Besides, configuring X is so so so easy these days. So long as you have a chipset that wasnt made in Rwanda in 1943 or something, it really shouldnt be that hard. A few years ago, it was a slightly different story though.
if you have an internet connection, getting X configured is even easier, someone's done it before and documented it with almost any piece of hardware.
for this whole post though, i've been assuming you're having trouble configuring it, not installing it though. I don't often use debian (only when I'm helping my friends out with their boxes' problems), but i've heard that installations on debian are some of the easiest out there.... personally, though emerge (gentoo, of course) works so well for me, it's hard to imagine apt-get any better.
If i've made any glaring errors, please correct. I welcome new info.
I've heard that, too. It's a show-stopper for me. I need ide-scsi so Arkeia can back up to my ATAPI tape drive.
I just finished Gentoo Linux this morning. Installed 2.6.3 kernel, both my USB mouse and my touchpad work concurrently.
Outside of Debian:
/sbin/lilo
make menuconfig
make bzImage modules modules_install
Wow, you beat us by one line. But we get the optimized kernel.
I'd recommend Kuro5hin, but at some point it became a left-wing Bush-bashing website, with the occassional "Here's something funny" brainfart.
You insensitive clod! No more knowledge for you, buster. And you know what? I'm the spirit creature in charge of channeling good pick-up lines. Hope you already have a S/O, buddy.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Question--how did you get your Radeon to work? At first you're told you need to emerge xfree-drm, but then you find out xfree-drm is not compatible with 2.6.
:)
Does 2.6's Radeon support really work for Radeons up to 9000? (I'd find out myself, but I'm still compiling KDE...
I hear all sorts of problems caused by the faulty genkernel.
It's much better to just compile the thing yourself.
I had no trouble with ide-scsi in 2.6.2, only with 2.6.3. Ide-scsi will continue to be supported, but it's recommended to switch. I corresponded with the maintainer of ide-cd: it is a known problem, with a patch available from the maintainer. In my case it was easier/better to make the switch to ATAPI.
Define "basically runs Gentoo." Why don't you just install it normally?
:) Your description is unclear.
Hell, if you have a LiveCD, use that to compile your kernel. What in god's name are you trying to do with that system?
Are there any distros running purely udev? From what I understand, most distros use a backup tarball to populate the /dev directory (i.e., what Gentoo does), which defeats the whole point.
Why shove udev into a stabel kernel when it doesn't even work yet? Now I see why people were pissed off over it.
GCOS, which actually originally stood for "General Electric Corporation Operating System" and which has been immortalized in the "GCOS string" in /etc/passwd is reported to have been jokingly referred to as 'God's Chosen Operating System' by the old GE guys. They might beg to differ about the only one true OS. Though, I agree with you.
Speak for yourself.
Built it, Pack'aged it, Fucked off ..
.. i don't see what the problem is, if you're capable of build a pre-2.6 linux kernel; there is little difference building a 2.6 kernel. Updating the module tools is probably the most "different" task.
Seriously
Thanks for the update. The last I'd heard, there was no maintainer. I don't do any CD burning; I only use ide-scsi for tape backups. And Arkeia only talks to SCSI devices, so I'm kinda stuck if ide-scsi is broken. Glad to hear that it'll still be supported.
Where he bought the sco licenses from...
hell, I'm still at 6.2 (very very very patched) - but it was the last true redhat that I ever liked.
(it also helps that my one commercial program, the frau. mp3 encoder, which I bought for way too much money, needs that ancient version of libc, sigh. that's one thing that keep my linux boxen all at redhat 6.2 - but with all BUT libc upgraded).
it wasn't real hard. I have good usb support, firewire, etc. the rc init stuff works fine, from the 6.2 days, too, with very minor tweaks.
ymmv, but the only really odd thing for me was that I had an old BASH and had to freshen it up before 2.6 would compile and fully build.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
One weird problem I've had with 2.6 is that my cd burner doesn't work at all. Forget burning, I can't even mount the damn thing. dmesg shows: /dev/hdc /cdrom it says: /dev/hdc,
hdc: HL-DT-ST GCE-8481B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
so its detecting it fine but then a few lines down it says:
Unable to identify CD-ROM format.
and when I go:
mount -t iso9660
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on
or too many mounted file systems
Anyone else run into this? I tried it with ide-scsi and without but I can't even access it for reading!
Anyone who has hosted a 2.4 uml on 2.4 + skas3 see a speed difference when doing 2.6 uml on 2.6.3 + skas3?
Because I've done a lot of "desktop" as opposed to server machines recently, here are some pointers.
/dev/psaux, serial is /dev/ttyS01 (serial port 1), and USB requires some extra kernel modules and then /dev/input/mice
/dev/mouse and symlink it to the appropriate place.
Want to find out what your video card is without cracking the case (or another AGP/PCI device), "lspci"
Mouse? PS/2 is generally
Personally I just prefer to use
The monitor settings, I usually use the lowest for a monitor's resolution capabilities and thus far haven't had anything explode.
Soundcards can be a biatch at times, check the rights for non-root users and grab some of the ALSA tools seperately from the kernel.