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Linux Kernel 2.6.8 Released
J ROC writes "According to The Linux Kernel Archives kernel 2.6.8 is now out. It includes some fixes from 2.6.7. Happy upgrading." You may want to read this earlier story and think twice before upgrading.
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Because we all know no OS is stable without a few service packs applied.
Why are there "2.6.8.1" archives on ftp.kernel.org?
according to kernel.org latest is 2.6.8.1
Due to an NFS bug a brown paper bag release was produced.
Mirrors
Did you note the day? Today is Saturday, also known as "Slow News Day" here on Slashdot. Any story of even minor interest will get posted.
I want my Cowboyneal
News for nerds, stuff that matters...? ;)
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
Damn, 2.6 hasn't been out very long...how in the hell could anybody misread this as being a 2.8 release, unless you are just completely clueless.
because for the more security conscious, it is good to have a more recent kernel, to make fixing when a bug is released trivial
It's Saturday morning, what sort of breaking news do you expect? Perhaps one about the hundreds dead in Florida from the hurricane?
/me mumbles something about drama queens.
Oh comon, cut the dramatics, there's only 2 verified deaths so far.
They just said 4 on TV, but you know there will be more.
The latest is actually 2.6.8.1. The (very short) change log for that version can be found here. Looks like there was an NFS bug in the 2.6.8 release that needed to be fixed.
Has the 2.6 branch been patched with exec-shield yet? I know there is some compatibility issues, but Linus said he was going to allow it anyway.
what about reading the fucking changelog?
I scanned the Changelog briefly and didn't see anything major. I usually grep for 'thinkpad' or 'laptop' (my main system), to see if there is anything nice to try out. There are some laptop_mode improvements (disk IO buffering, keeps hard drive spun down for as long as possible) which should benefit any laptop user.
On occasion, someone will write up a nice summary of highlights. Anyone seen such a thing for 2.6.8?
That didn't have anything at all do do with the kernel.
I believe that it was the way Red Hat installer, Anaconda, installed GRUB, the GRand Unified Bootloader, that was at fault. The Linux kernel is generally quite solid, and I certainly will be upgrading.
the more security conscious shouldn't rely on slashdot as their sole news source.
It was not such a big deal... I had the same problem, i had to enter few commands in console and my windows was working again. I think that i read somewhere that windows is using some old scheme to identify disk partitions or something, and that is why there was a problem...
Because there's a 2 at one end, an 8 at the other and I don't expect Slashdot to be announcing minor releases?
I care, I bet a lot of others care too. Thus /. is serving its purpose for me.
Upgrading your kernel is good for the soul.
Finding a specific change from kernel ChangeLogs is like finding a girl on /.; you've heard rumors, but you'll never find what you want once you start looking!
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
I have no idea why we don't have a hurricane thread running, it's big news. Slashdot is large enough to maybe have direct postings from the site,to actually *break some news*, see what folks got for emergency communications and gear working. I'm monitoring it on a dozen websites and trying to get some info off the emergency shortwave nets. I'm getting some info off of 14.325 and 14.265 megaherz.
I'm repeating this message from OSNews, which had the story first.
I think Linux is a great kernel, but a 42 MB download is really a bit too much for my liking. Much of that is code for hardware that I don't have or features that I don't want. I am a great advocate of modularity, and I would like to see it applied not only to the compiled kernel, but also to the sources. I am aware that this will add some administrative overhead, but it could save a lot of traffic and CPU time.
Here are some ideas:
- Split the distribution in a base that has the common stuff, and optional add-ons for lesser-used network devices, filesystems, etc. etc.
- Employ a BSD ports like system that downloads the sources on request (i.e. when compilation of some part is requested)
- Distribute only the configuration interface, and download only the parts actually needed based on the configuration selected.
I am too occupied now to come up with a proper proposal, but I hope this will set some people thinking.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
They just said 4 on TV
Wow. A few dozen more and they might be rivalling a day's traffic casualties. Wake me up when something newsworthy happens.
There's also an estimated $15 billion in damage. That's a bit more than a day's worth of traffic accidents.
``what exactly is the point of announcing minor versions on /.?''
I so much agree. We already have Sourceforge, Freshmeat, OSNews, and the Linux sites, etc, etc. for that, some of which you can get in slashboxes.
But then, there was a bad screwup in this release, which does make it newsworthy.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
There's also an estimated $15 billion in damage. That's a bit more than a day's worth of traffic accidents.
A lot less you mean. Unless you value lives less than property.
Those problems were not in the kernel per se but in the way the auxillary pieces were deployed -- mainly the boot loader.
PS: This is being written on the system which which I had that issue. Solved now.
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
I know two people in that area. One has no power at home but has it at the office and has checked in via phone and this morning, email, the other isn't answering phone and their server in an indistrial strength colo is down. Jeb Bush has obtained $5M of FEMA funding.
Watch out for snakes! (the largest reptiles expo is in Daytona starting saturday; many venomous snakes there. What an odd hobby)
Need Mercedes parts ?
I have a PC with five partitions. Two of these I use for Windows 2000. The other three are currently used for an AMD64 installation of Mandrake that doesn't have a working video card driver and is therefore almost useless to me. I'd like to install a new Linux there (in fact I need it badly), but I'm scared shitless that I may corrupt those Windows 2000 partitions and will have to spend a week rebuilding the damn thing, not to mention losing the stuff I forgot to backup. So, will any random modern distribution fuck up my Windows 2000? Or has that risk now been removed(1)? What do I need to look for in order to be able to determine this myself? See, that's the point. People are scared of losing existing partitions, and we need to know if that is going to happen or not. Whether it was caused by the kernel, the bootloader, or your uncle Vinny really isn't all that relevant.
(1) I'm just talking about Linux here, what Windows 2000 does on its own is a completely separate subject...
And CNN will not report on the hurricane because ABC is already reporting on it?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
It's news because 2.6.8 is the first release to include the 3ware 3w-9xxx driver I needed desparately, and it's being released just two days after decided to step back to the 2.4 kernel tree to get the machine running!
``And CNN will not report on the hurricane because ABC is already reporting on it?''
No, but Animal Planet and Al Jazeera won't, because it's not their subject matter.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
From the changelog:
From: Guennadi Liakhovetski g.liakhovetski@gmx.de
Update the driver to use the new pci, scsi and module interfaces.
Most of the new options seem pretty normal, but can someone explain this "Default codepage for FAT" option? Cheers...
Grr! Arg!
The OP asked if this Linux kernel version fixes the problem, the reply was that it did not involve the kernel.
The question is answered: No, this does not fix your bootloader. Not Grub nor Partition Magic; Neither Lilo, "the bootloader that has no name", nor any other bootloader are in any way altered by this software.
people who use NFS should wait for 2.6.8.1: 2.6.8 oopses with nfs
Linux updates aren't Slashdot's subject matter?
I hate memes as much as anybody, but... Are you new here?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Perhaps my experience might help you. I had a single WinXP partion and multiple Linux partitions on a 120G drive. When I needed to upgrade the kernel (the most current Linux installed was modified RH9) as well as several other components, I took the plunge. Because of the issues of dual boot problems having been mentioned here on /., I made sure that I had a full backup. Even though it was a 120G disk, I was able to clear out a great deal and reduced the image backup to fit on 2 DVDs.
So, I installed. Sure enough, no XP. Dug into the situation for five minutes on the web and found the advice to change BIOS setting for the multi-boot drive to manually be LBA, as opposed to leaving in the AUTO mode. Now, previously, I would have thought that the LBA mode would have been selected by the automatic setting but, hey, the cost of trying was certainly low. Tried it, it worked.
So, in your situation, I would be curious to hear what your backup status is. If you don't have decent backups, you are always going to be at some risk. I would go with some sort of image backup. This is easy to do if you have linux running but I gather that you may not on this box. Try using Knoppix.
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
on how, ahh, unique, is the feature you're looking for. Yes?
Isn't Linux under some source control system now?
So you should be able to sync your local sources with a public repository at any time you want and don't havve to download huge tar files or fiddle with patches.
Since I'm running the 2.4 kernel without any problems, and I have had massive issues previously with a kernel update. As it is, I know I'm using a really old version of the 2.4 kernel, but I can't justify the risk in updating. I don't want to have to reformat my Linux system again.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
FAT isn't case-sensitive. This isn't related to any codepage issues.
You're out of luck.
doesn't seem to resolve my usb2.0 problems :/
(stupid k7vt2 motherboard).
I think the problem was mostly in the tools (not the kernel itself).
I had the problem on only one of the ~10 or so computers that I setup with FC2. It turns out that a two-line 'sfdisk' command magically rewrote the partition table so that everything worked. (Without the loss of any data.)
and the red hat installer has been fixed on FC2 since then, right? I mean, there's no way they'd just leave the ISO images that erase your windows xp partitions out there to get more bad publicity, right?
More interesting than the usual new US-army toy.
the kernel seems to have a rsync mirror. I haven't tried it yet, but that way you would be able to download the kernel in cvs style by only downloading what you need. this ofcourse only has a adventage when you download new kernel versions all the time, but most people that download from kernel.org seem to do just that. I also like the all in one package. this way I don't have bother 'bout searching for supported hardware. if it ain't in linus tree, it's not worth it for me.
still isn't working after anything newer that I've tried than 2.6.7-rc2. :(
Is there a simple way to know which kernel upgrades include security patches, and which do not? The changelogs are huge, it would be great if someone did the work and shared it with all.
2, 6, 8, who do we appreciate? Linus! Linus!
Someone explain to me how a question related to the risk of installing a new kernel is offtopic in an article about that very same kernel...?
Adjusting the screen brightness makes a slightly larger difference, but not much (maybe 20 minutes between second brightest and most dim).
What really makes the difference is CPU load. If I run a lot of cpu-intensive stuff, and let the system adaptively raise the cpu frequency to handle it, it can cut battery life by more than half! Luckly I can comfortably play movies and do word processing with the CPU locked at the slowest speed (600Mhz), but to do much development work at the same time it really helps to let the cpu ramp up.
So, anyone successfully running a 2.6 kernel on their OldWorld powermac yet?
While 2.4 kernels work fine, ANY 2.6 kernel (stock debian or built by myself) crashes. The system is a UMAX S900 with dual 200Mhz 604e.
I applied some patches against QUIK to remove the kernel-size limit, but that didn't help. (But it did finally let me run 2.4.25-smp).
bzip2 is pretty much 10x slower than gzip in both compression and decompression.
I just looked at kernel.org and did not see the 2.6.8.1 kernel there, only 2.6.8. So were is it? Has the webmaster been informed that his script for adding kernels broke from the new naming system?
no
It doesn't erase Windows partitions, you just have to select LBA mode in the BIOS and it will work again.
Here's more information on the issue (which is caused by the bootloader modifying the disk geometry reported in the partition table), including how to fix it.
-jim
I use Windows you insensitive clod!
Might as well mod this as redundant. Every time there is a kernel release somebody asks why is this here? You don't have to read it, if you are not interested in kernel releases
I didn't see anybody complain about the minor OS upgrade that Microsoft released last week.
There are lot of people that come to this site that are interested in kernel releases, and you do know that Slashdot was primarily a linux site when it first started
We're nerds. Thats important news for us.
Um, well the point is: It doesn't happen every day does it? It's only once every few months. So it is an event, isn't it? /. readership is.
At least if you're interested in Linux, which a substantial portion of the
There has been a significant number of reports on Windows SP2.. I can't see the difference.
for me, going from 2.6.7->2.6.8 fixed some nasty problems with serial ata and boot-order(via chipset)
couldn't boot the machine at all with 2.6.7 so that it would recognize my disk controller and drive with root partition
also the change which moved sata hds from ide to scsi devices caused some gray hair and extra work
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Heck, i'm filled with joy :-)
... = The time of year that the newspapers have stories like: 'New York Fire Department saved cat out of tree', and 'John Petersen got an A+ on his mathematics test' in the New York Times)
I thought, why the f... is the 2.6.8 release posted, until you said that MY controller is supported...
God Bless You All (in U.S.A. terms hahaha)
Well Don't post this kind of 'news',unless it includes upgrades for MY new hardware, ever again.
In the Netherlands whe call it cucombertime (sp?, dutch: komkommertijd
Obviously, not you. Then again you're going to end up with severe intestinal problems, so no one cares about you either.
P.S. Call us back when you figure out the correct use of the shift key(s).
I've always wondered why people use Linux. Why pay $699 for a so-called "operating system" when you get Windows pre-installed for free with every computer you buy? And why pay for a system that requires you to compile every program before you run it and doesn't even come with sound card drivers? I think all these Linux fan-boys are really that SCO astroturfing we have been warned about!
I see that many people have beaten me to it and educated you about the existance of patches, but ... well ... I just can't help myself.
You, sir, are a moron.
OOoohhh!! I bet you use OpenBSD you leet script kiddie, you. Suck my sweaty balls.
And WTF is with your capitalisation? You must be an illiterate redneck.
Anyone know if the issues with VIA chipsets, ACPI and APIC were resolved between 2.6.3 and 2.6.8?
Running a K7T266A, I had do disable ACPI, APIC, and Local APIC, or I'd get hangups and USB wouldn't work.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Well under Mandrake 10, going from kernel-2.6.8.0.rc2.2mdk to 2.6.8.0.rc4.1mdk will cause all sorts of problems (hang at cups starting. Hang at X starting). I've found with some experimenting that it locks up the keyboard when dm starts. Otherwise runlevel three is fine.
Oops, bit of a cock up in the NFS Client code... so much it warranted a mini-minor version... http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/Change Log-2.6.8.1
I'll agree with others... I'm awaiting 2.6.8.SP2 :)
No, actually I'm not.
I prefer to write like one though.
Severe intestinal problems? ... from laughing at linux users?
> Dam
What does Linux have to do with something that holds-back water?