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Linux Kernel 2.6.6 Released
maradong writes "The new Linux Kernel 2.6.6 has been released just 2 hours ago. The Patch from version 2.6.5 to 2.6.6, which can be downloaded on kernel.org measures 2.4MiB and the Changelog can be found at the known place."
Note that this breaks the loading of Nvidia modules.
Rather annoying since Nvidia knew this issue was coming.
The fix is to back a patch out, but it's a bad idea.
Stay at 2.6.5 if you use Nvidias drivers, for now.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Or Men In Black?
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So that's two places where I've seen it used.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
I'm not trolling here, it is just my knowledge of Linux is limited. It seems like updates to the kernel get released all the time. How is this way of fixing bugs any different than the microsoft update? Vash
KernelTrap has more information about the 2.6.6 release. Looks like lots of good stuff was merged! Laptop mode, CFQ, ...
A lot of changes went in this release, and from what I read on several mailing lists, there are some regressions. For example it seems the IDE cache flush at shutdown fix is causing trouble for some people. I think I will wait for the next release...
Check out the now merged laptop mode. Allows you to really save that battery. It is also good on my home server that uses hostap - there is not too much to write on disk, so I'll set the timeout to something like once a week...
A definite must for laptop users that want a little more operating hours from their batteries.
Does anybody know if the bttv video card issue, the one that would freeze the machine when capturing from a bttv card under heavy system load, is resolved?
I'm not lazy asking about this here, it's just that I looked everywhere in the changelogs and I can't see anything about it, yet the problem is known. Perhaps the problem went away as another was fixed? Anybody has any experience on this?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I'm assuming it's entirely a kernel issue as cat /dev/input/mouse0 or whatever produces nothing when I play with the wheel, but it does for everything else.
[libata] Add driver for SiS 964/180 SATA.
[libata sata_sis] minor cleanups
Anyone using sis964/sata? is it working ok? any major distros you can recommend? (stuck with WinXPPro on my new machine....)
This is not as much bugfixing as it is improving the kernel.
Like writing better code, better memoryhandling, adding new features, improved hardwaresupport and the like.
And unlike Windows Update, you don't have to update the kernel if you don't want to. Very little software do require specific kernel-versions, as opposed to Microsoft where almost everything seems to have kernel tie-ins.
Hope this answers your question.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
and so far it looks prett=20 ]} $}1}&..}=3Dr}'}"}[NO CARRIER]
"It's the smell! If there is such a thing." Agent Smith - The Matrix
Foelisted for daring to suggest that the bastard known as MiB (along with KiB, GiB, TiB...) is somehow more correct or "better" than the well-known, universally accepted, industry standard MB (kB, GB, TB...).
As another poster has already mentioned, MiB is just a made-up atrocity (it's not even a real ISO standard!) which noone needs or wants.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
Can't help you on the build time, but this will save you time on the download, seeing as you already have the 2.6.5 source;
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/
patch-2.6.6.bz2 09-May-2004 20:18 2.4M
No,
Linux updates = good
Microsoft updates = good
Whatever keeps those crappy windows worms at bay is great. The problem with windows updates is:
1) They don't happen often enough
2) They break things
3) They change license while you're not looking
If you're still having problems, I can break it down into even simpler terms.
Hrm, according to this MiB and its bastard relatives have made it into valid SI units.
Why are we letting vendors of hard disks re-scale the units of measurement so that their products appear larger by having bigger numbers on the box, its madness.
Personally I think we should redefine an inch as half a centimeter so we can all go out and score bigtime tonite.
Yeah... because Win2k SP2 didn't break any drivers at all...
If I lived in this strange world that a lot of slashdotters do where hardware apparently works easily and reliably with Windows, I would have never switched to Linux. But, in my world, Windows never loads the right drivers, and loses or breaks the drivers once you install them.
All's true that is mistrusted
It'll only break if you choose the new CONFIG_4KSTACKS option (use 4Kb for kernel stacks instead of 8Kb under the Kernel hacking menu of menuconfig). Leave that option unchecked and it should work just fine (I'm using 2.6.6-rc3-mm1 right now with NVIDIA's driver).
I wish that I could just patch the bits of the kernel that are important to me, and not the whole lot in one go.
/kernel/drivers/net/eci100 and nothing else.. (preferably from kernel configuration).
I would be far more lightly to test betas if I could download driver and filing system updates that relate to me instead of the whole kernel which may have new less stable featuers, my build times would be lower and my system would be more stable.
It would also make it easier to upgrade everything except the broken Nvidia bits....
Oh, I wish i could just patch
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Last week someone from nVidia finally stepped up to the plate on lkml and told us all the real problem with the apic hangs. They'd told the BIOS writers long ago, but from what I can tell, only Shuttle had done anything about it. So they finally released the same info to the Linux community.
Hours after the information was released, the first patch followed. A little feedback and tweaking, and it's into the mainline kernel in less than a week. Kudos to Ross Dickson, et al, for all the work they'd done trying to fix this problem, prior to the official informatino release.
Does anyone know if the patch for either forceDeth or the 3com 2nd adapter on some nForce2 boards is in the mainline kernel, yet?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You should read you own links:
It is important to recognize that the new prefixes for binary multiples are not part of the International System of Units (SI), the modern metric system.
...
Faced with this reality, the IEEE Standards Board decided that IEEE standards will use the conventional, internationally adopted, definitions of the SI prefixes. Mega will mean 1 000 000, except that the base-two definition may be used (if such usage is explicitly pointed out on a case-by-case basis) until such time that prefixes for binary multiples are adopted by an appropriate standards body.
Hopefully, it will remain that no "appropriate standards body" adopts this ridiculous notation!
I'm still shocked that Mibibabyboobybytes has been accepted as a "standard!"
How many thousands of titles (possibly billions of books) have been written based on the FACT that Megabytes and Kilobytes, et al, have all been BASE-2 from the initial concept?
The ONLY people in the entire industry who considers MB/KB/et al to be in base-10 are the hard drive manufacturers, and that's just so they can claim their 230GB drives are 250GB!
You don't go out and buy a 536.89MB stick of RAM, you buy a 512MB stick!
Your video card doesn't have 134.22MB of video RAM, it has 128MB!
I don't know why, I should be used to it by now, but the "standards bodies" still blow my mind with their utter stupidity.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
Granted, I know that is not the case, but 2.6.x is not even 6 months old ( 2.6.0 released December 18th, 2003) at this rate of release are we looking at 2.8 in September? This just seems crazy to me. I thought that's what the "odd" numbered kernels were for, testing. At this current rate of release it sure feels like the supposed "stable" kernels are the ones being tested on.
This isn't meant to be a troll or a flame just an observation. Many of the distros have finally gotten around 2.6, but it sure seems like the kernel devs have given the distro devs a very rapid moving target to hit. I still see all to often recomendations here and other places telling people to use 2.4x for "mission critical" use. Why?
Why is 2.6 not as reliable as 2.4 was?
Why are people in this thread commenting about all the things 2.6.6 breaks?
Why does an even kernel need to break *ANYTHING* isn't that what dev kernels are for?
I love to see progress as much as anyone, heck, I run Gentoo. I just wonder if the Kernel needs to be treated with a bit more care. Would you buy a car from an auto maker, who every month changed the engine in their car?
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
If you wanted an SI unit of information, it would be more sensible to use 10 bits as the basic unit (or even one bit), rather than a byte (which is actually not even a fixed unit, but is usually read as 'octet'). Attempting to graft MB = 10^6 bytes is at least as arbitary (even more so, IMHO) than defining MB = 2^20 bytes.
Youve Slashdotted Kernel.org!
You Bastards!
kernel.org seems slashdotted from here. Good job direct-linking to it in the story.
Mirror to the rescue!
http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6
I just downloaded the patch and am successfully running 2.6.6. :-)
Is it me or was the boot time considerably faster than before? Almost blinked and missed it. Anyone else found that?
Now I just have to clean out init.d.
In SI, the value of M, k, G etc. are not dependent on the unit it prefixes. True, 'byte' is not a standard SI unit, but consistency is still a Good Thing. And orthoganility too: it means the unit defines what you are talking about, and the prefix indicates how many of them you've got. It means that if you could fit 42 bytes per meter on a fictive tape, you can fit 42 kilobyte on a kilometer and not 41.015625 kilobyte per kilometer.
Is the SI prefixes are not useful for a speficif purpose, fine, don't use them. But don't take them and give them another meaning. If you want to use your own prefixes, go ahead and use new names for them.
Now, I agree kibi, mibi etc. sound pretty lame; perhaps someone should come up with better names, but we should stop using M when we don't mean 10^6.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
Not everyone who uses Linux is a kernel hacker, especially nowadays. And yes, there are sites out there that give rundowns of what has changed. But wouldn't it be nice to have an *official* release statement that outlines the changes made? It seems logical to me that the people managing the changes would be able to articulate this the best. I think it would go a long way in making Linux seem a bit more mature.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
There is only one reason for this: to make it like the metric prefixes.
Recalleth this olde giokke:
An amateur thinks one kilobyte is 1000 bytes. A computer scientist thinks one kilometre is 1024 metres.
So, the standards bodies are trying to change it to be in line with their prefixes. However, trying to change existing terms to mean something else is not a good idea.
[PATCH] USB: usbcore blinkenlights
The per-port LEDs on the most USB 2.0 hubs are programmable. And the USB spec describes some ways to use them, blinking to alert users about hardware (amber) or software (green) problems.
This patch is the infrastructure for that blinking. And if you should happen to "modprobe usbcore blinkenlights", the LEDs will cycle through all the ports ... which is not a USB-standard mode, but it can certainly handy be handy as a system heartbeat visible across the room.
Das ist goot, ja!
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Just out of curiosity, what's it going to take to get to kernel version 3.0? Honestly, what changes, additions, etc have to be incorporated until they call it Kernel 3.0?
That declaration would carry some weight if your foe list wasn't that long.
99 foes, many of them with decent reputations. Did you have an unhappy childhood or something?
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
In telecommunications, it is standard practice to use 10-based prefixes. 10Mbps means 10^6 bits per second, and 56 kb/s means 56000 bits per second. In serial communications, it is normal to use a startbit and a stopbit ber byte, so you use effectively 10 bits to transmit one byte.
BTW, I've seen 56kbps modems working at 44 and even 48 kbps. The speed you get depends on the quality of the phone line. Also remember that those modems work assymetrically: the 56 kbps is only downstream. Upstream is the same speed as a 33k modem.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
Damn i just love my 1.95Mb dsl line... Or would you call it a 2Mb? :)
The thing is, IMO, that we DO have a problem - we dont allways talk about the same units and sometimes it mattes!
When using MiB - NOONE (that knows what they are talking about) is in doubt what you mean - but if you say MB - noone really knows.
How kan a term that clears confusion EVER be a bad thing? The problem is people like you to insist on using terms that confuses - hopefully, in 10 years noone would be confused when you say 2MB and means 2000000B...
I don't think computer science needs those foolish names and unit changes to ensure complexity in the units. It is not a commercial game.
Computer science started by changing the names (the meaning of the names, actually). In order to reduce complexity, we need to undo that change.
KISS is the rule.
Exactly.
What is the simplest:
- k equals 1000, Ki equals 1024
or
- k equals 1000 in all sciences, except in computer science where it means 1024, most of the time. If followed by 'B' it mostly means 1024, when followed by 'b' it means 1024 when talking about memory sizes and 1000 when talking about transmission speeds. It all depends on the context.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
Network speeds have always been done in decimal. 10base{5,2,T} = 10 Mb = 10,000,000 bits per second. And Ethernet (in its 10base5 Thicknet variant) is old, dating from 1972. It's not just greedy hard disk manyfacturers.
I don't have a problem with disambiguating them. I just wish the names weren't as stupid. (MiB is okay, but mebibyte?!)
I wouldn't go that far. Not entirely.
I'd say you had a point saying that noone wants these changes. I certinaly don't want or particularly like them. But I can see that if they aren't needed, it's not for much longer.
They aren't "more correct" and they aren't "better". But what they are is clearer. And, like it or not, it's getting to a point where that clarity is needed.
Firstly there's the two types of manufacturer. For whatever reason the HDD manufacturers prefer to use the 10^n meanings. Maybe it's so that they can swipe more money on misleading advertising. Maybe it's some sort of tradition. Maybe it's both - a tradition that just so happens to benefit them. But they're not going to chance.
For memory-manufacturers the reason is clear. When dealing in binary (and unless something happened overnight, memory is still working on digital signals) then you can only really work to the power of two. So they're going to continue using the 2^10n notation.
Secondly you get everyone else. Whether professionals in other disciplines, or merely Joe Average taught in school (or whatever) that kilofoo is always 1000 foo, and megafoo is always 1000000 foo, they're going to have assumptions about what the prefix means that in any other context would be right but in this case would (or may... - damn HDD labels) be wrong.
And even then, if you need to refer to "one thousand bytes" then how else could you shorten it?
Back when computers where still specialist then it wasn't too much of a problem. But now computers are so prevalent that the potential for confusion is too high.
I'd love to get everyone else to change. To me "one megabyte" is "1024 x 1024 bytes" and always will be. But getting every other SI prefix to change to make way for one is unlikely.
Personally I don't "read" KiB/MiB/whatever any differently. My brain still "hears" it as kilo-/mega- or whatever. Probably always will - those "bibibibibi" bits trip me up. But when I see it (or even write it) I know with 100% certainty that the 2^10n is meant (often mentally interpreting it as "binary megabytes" or whatever...). If it's not there, I always wonder. On products it oftenleaves me always searching for the small print to be totally certain of what is meant.
Like it or not, the confusion is there. And something has to be done to reduce it. And, unfortunately, we're the ones in the minority side of the prefix-usage.
Tell that to the hard-drive manufacturers.
TiggsThey don't accept it, or use in in the industry. They may be wrong, but unfortunately they're not exactly helping things any. It means it's a part of the ocmputing industry that's muddying up the waters internally.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
less /proc/config.gz | grep 4KSTACKS
CONFIG_4KSTACKS=y
glxinfo | grep direct
direct rendering: Yes
direct rendering: Yes
Working just dandy here. Using the nVidia 5336 drivers.
Aah. Nail, head. Hit.
It's controversial, it's quite probably needed, yet it's given names that sound so childish that it's simply going to inflame people against adopting them.
Maybe if they'd tried coming up with terms that actually sounded a little more serious then they wouldn't be quite so hotly contested.
TiggsTiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
I've heard for some time about how IBM is supporting Linux. But the 2.6.5->2.6.6 changelog really drove the point home, to me. It's amazing to see how much stevef@stevef95.austin.ibm.com has contributed, probably on IBM's nickel. :-) Keep it up, IBM.
Raj Against the Machine! http://social-butterfly.appspot.com/
The speed you get depends on the quality of the phone line. Also remember that those modems work assymetrically: the 56 kbps is only downstream. Upstream is the same speed as a 33k modem.
If anything I think the old V.34+ modems were more reliable. My old local dialup ISP used to have banks of analog lines coming into the building that were hooked up the USR V.34+ Couriers. Those babies were rock solid (even if it was a bitch to manage 450+ analog lines coming into your building). With compression enabled I could download some stuff at 8-10kB/sec. I always got 33600 baud connections and never got dropped.
Then they upgraded to digital V.90 boxes and the quality went to hell. Would typically connect at 45333 but the actual downloads were slower then downloads (compressed or not) on the V.34+ modems. The connections themselves seemed to slow down over time -- one time I downloaded a Slackware ISO -- by the end of the download the modem had slowed down to about 1kB/s. With the V.34+ modems I could push 3.5-4kB/s until hell froze over. They never had random disconnects (the V.90 bank dropped me all the time).
And don't even get me started on the upload performance of the v.90 modems. Even turning off v.90 and connecting at v.34+ speeds wouldn't help. I canceled my account and got one from the phone company -- wasn't worth paying $19.25 to have the same lousy service that I could get from the phone company for $9.95.
In my experience v.90 was nothing but marketing hype. I hated it.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I can't believe it. After upgrading my USB Webcam didn't work anymore. I find out the pwc Driver is now removed :(
Shit, downgrade again...
(dmcbride@sco.com)
Added proprietary Unix System V lines of code
I think they should make a short version of the change log with a summery of what changed. Does anybody know of such a thing?
KernelTrap.org is fairly close to what you're asking.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Look it's very simple. Bytes are measured in base-2 units, everything else is base-10.
It's bits (small 'b'), so it's 100 x 10^6 bits per second. Which is also 12.5 Million bytes per second, or roughly 11.9MBps.
It's bytes (capital 'B'), so that's 100 x 2^10 bytes per second.
Getting a little silly now. That's 1 x 10^9 Hz (cycles per second).
Ah, this is where all the supposed controversy comes from. The hard drive manufacturers want to use base-10 units so that their drives sound larger than they really are. Everywhere else, base-2 units are used for measurements of bytes (including your file browser).
The only two problems I can see is hard disk manufacturers wanting their drives to sound larger, and marketroids getting the capitalization wrong (bits/Bytes, milli/Mega, ...). None of that is the fault of the units/suffixes, the people who made them, or the people using them. Get over it.
You are close...
When one person says "folder" and another says "directory" the two people sometimes get confused. It's rare, but I've seen it happen.
With Linux and Windows, there is a similar confusion. Modules under Linux -- serve the same purpose and are largely in the same parts of the OS -- as drivers do under Windows.
As for Nvidia, they have installation software that is not too hard to use. It will install the NVidia kernel module for the current kernel. I'm sure you've used similar ones for Windows graphics drivers.
The kernel policies are clear, and do not cause problems for the (quick guesstimate) ~4,000 other 'drivers' bundled with the base Linux kernel. NVidia has chosen not to follow those policies so like the problematic non-WHQL Windows drivers, they can suffer similar problems.
That said, for the most part, I've been very happy with the NVidia cards I have. They were very flaky 2 years ago. Now, they work well...even with the 2.6.x kernels.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.