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Linux Kernel 2.6.11 Released
Xpilot writes "Linus Torvalds has just announced the availability of the newest Linux kernel release, 2.6.11. The newest addition to Linux that's stirring up some excitement is the inclusion of Infiniband support. You can get it from the usual mirrors at http://kernel.org/mirrors."
And beyond!
does that mean it goes PAST 11?
Looks like Knoppix jumped the gun by including the 2.6 kernel in the new distro. If they had just waited a few hours...
InfiniBand, which is derived from its underlying concept of "infinite bandwidth,"...
Umm... I don't know about you... but that description didn't help me much... infinite bandwidth? What is this? How is this? How does linux get past physical hardware limitations that other os's can't?
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
...before the site is slashdotted...
The Linux world is bracing for the final release of the new Linux 2.6.11 kernel, which will include a long list of driver updates and patches, with InfiniBand support perhaps being one of most interesting new additions.
Late last night, Linux creator Linus Torvalds issued the fifth release candidate for the 2.6.11 kernel. The first 2.6.11 RC was issued on Jan. 12; the second on Jan 21; the third on Feb. 2; and the fourth on Feb. 12.
In the RC5 posting, Torvalds indicated that it was likely the last RC before the final release.
"Hey, I hoped -- rc4 was the last one, but we had some laptop resource conflicts, various ppc TLB flush issues, some possible stack overflows in networking and a number of other details warranting a quick -- rc5 before the final 2.6.11," Torvalds wrote.
"This time it's really supposed to be a quickie, so people who can, please check it out, and we'll make the real 2.6.11 asap."
The long list of updates in the 2.6.11 kernel includes architecture updates for x86-64, ia64, ppc, arm and mips, as well as updates to ACPI (define), DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure, which permits direct access to graphics hardware for X Window System users), ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, which provides MIDI and audio functionality to the Linux), SCSI (define) and the XFS high-performance journaling filesystem.
The 2.6.11 kernel will also be significant in that it includes driver support for the InfiniBand (define) interconnect architecture. InfiniBand, which is derived from its underlying concept of "infinite bandwidth," is a switched fabric interconnect technology for high-performance network devices that is common in a number of supercomputer clusters.
The upcoming inclusion of InfiniBand support in the Linux kernel is a major step according to the InfiniBand Trade Association.
"The inclusion of InfiniBand drivers in the upstream Linux kernel is a significant milestone," Ross Schibler, CTO of InfiniBand vendor Topspin Communications, told internetnews.com.
InfiniBand support was available previously in various Linux distributions, but it wasn't part of the mainstream kernel.org Linux.
"This now means that anyone that downloads a kernel will have automatic access to the software," explained Schibler. "It also means that any upcoming distributions (Red Hat, SUSE, etc.) will have the software included on their CDs. Previously SUSE had it on a distribution, but only in the 'unsupported' directory."
Schibler sees the inclusion of InfiniBand as a testament to the maturation of the technology.
"Now that the technology has matured to such a point that Linus has accepted it into the kernel, the way is paved for greater distribution of the code and accelerated deployment of the technology," Schibler said.
The previous Linux kernel.org release, version 2.6.10 was issued on Dec. 24 after two release candidates. Linux distribution began including the 2.6.10 thereafter with Red Hat's Fedora Project being one of the first.
Fedora Core 3 initially shipped with the 2.6.9 kernel and then upgraded to the 2.6.10 kernel on Jan 13. Mandrakelinux's 10.2 Beta 3 also includes the 2.6.10 release. SUSE Linux 9.2 currently includes the 2.6.8 kernel.
Including the most recent kernel into a distribution is not a particularly easy task. The upcoming Debian, code-named Sarge, will only ship with the 2.6.8 kernel. In a release update e-mail, Debian Sarge release manager Andreas Barth related that a meeting was recently held to review the status of which kernel they would include.
"The team leads involved eventually decided to stay with kernel 2.6.8 and 2.4.27, rather than bumping the 2.6 kernel to 2.6.10," Barth wrote. "This decision was made upon review of the known bugs in each of the 2.6 kernel versions; despite some significant bugs in the Debian 2.6.8 kernel tree, these bugs were weighed against the additional delays that a kernel version bump would introduce in t
This is off-topic but I'll ask anyway because a lot of people want to know.
/*
I have to patch the vanilla kernel in the following way so that cdrecord works for non-root users.
--- drivers/block/scsi_ioctl.c 2005-02-28 11:14:10.000000000 +0000
+++ drivers/block/scsi_ioctl.c 2005-02-28 11:14:42.000000000 +0000
@@ -228,9 +228,9 @@
return -EINVAL;
if (copy_from_user(cmd, hdr->cmdp, hdr->cmd_len))
return -EFAULT;
- if (verify_command(file, cmd))
+/* if (verify_command(file, cmd))
return -EPERM;
-
+*/
* we'll do that later
*/
I don't want to have to do this of course, because it's a potential security breach.
Question: is there a user space solution to this? Has anyone coded the Linux micro-permissions into cdrecord yet? Solaris is supported but not Linux. Is this a political issue?
Infiniband is the home planet of Buzz Lightyear
Absolutely correct. Linux is clearly no higher rank than major.
And G4 laptops with an ATI finally get sleep support thanks to BenH's work!
(I know, "why would you want to run Linux on a Mac". Don't bother asking).
blah
I'm running 2.6.10 and the NVidia X Driver won't compile against it ... someone tell NVidia to keep up with this!
The UK mirror isn't showing 2.6.11 yet, perhaps it might be best to wait a little bit so they catch up instead of hitting kernel.org
However, Con Kolivas maintains a patchset for desktop users which incorporates a fix that allows the nVidia drivers to work at his kernel patch page. If you don't want the other stuff and just the nVidia fix, you can find the patch split out, and instructions on which patches to apply in his announcement of his patchset release. Check out the -ck patch though, it has a lot of cool stuff.
(yay, I actually got a story submission in...hi mom!)
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Does ACPI suspend work on more laptops? Inability to suspend is a major problem with Linux on laptops right now, as there are more and more ACPI-only laptops. The situation is considerably worse compared to APM, in my experience.
Windows is a general OS, and a 5 star pain in the ass.
I like the serial and usb2 fixes. Looks like it's tested as a pretty stable revision. If anyone gets this installed before I do, post some impressions if you would.
Kernel junkies of the world unite! Your next fix has arrived!
# urpmi --test magict ic-develi magick
The following packages contain magic:
libmagic1
libmagic1-devel
libmagic1-sta
magicdev
magicpoint
mirrormagic
php-
php-mime_magic
Never confuse volume with power.
So it's now _officially_ all bug-free.
Torvalds, you scoundrel you!
Next you'll be telling us the kernel was made by the toothfairy for a lower TCO than windows...
Oh wait..
May the Maths Be with you!
zanders at nvForums has posted patches to improve performance with 2.6.x kernels. Here's the thread:4 6676
t achmentid=10558
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=
This is the cumulative patch:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/attachment.php?at
>InfiniBand, which is derived from its underlying concept of "infinite bandwidth," is a switched fabric interconnect technology for high-performance network devices that is common in a number of supercomputer clusters.
So that works only for supercomputer clusters ?.Interestingly, the ChangeLog has some very small number of entries. The one I found most fun was:-
I mean, other wise they would end up as "-1" or "0" (when you assume in code that "0" or "1" for 1 -bit fields). How did a sign-extension in the IDE (must be heavily used) be missed till version 2.6 ??. Typically, this looks like the average release - some bug fixes and a couple of big features which nobody (well almost nobody) would use on their boxes.Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Maybe now my DVD writer will work without me performing voodoo...
Then again... maybe not
Great! Now just resubmit it a few times and whoever is asleep at the wheel today will gladly post it again...and again...and again.
Infiniband welcomes careful drivers.
:-D
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Hey parent is not a troll , he is just a bumpkin.
...for everyone who didn't know what it is as well:
/ 04 /windows.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/02
I'm new to Linux (only just tried Ubuntu and had a bad exprience)... can anyone explain what use the kernel is to the average user? I thought it was just used for a base of distros... It doesn't make sense to be able to upgrade an OS mid... use..?
I like muppets.
Does anyone know when reiser4 will be included? I use it on pretty much all my partitions and to use it I have to use extremely experimental kernel patches.
Finally! Looks like there are a lot of bug fixes in this one.
I hope the big memory leak I've been seeing with 2.6.10 have been fixed in 2.6.11. I had to disable HIGHMEM just to keep the machine running more than a few days, and that unfortunately means it's limited to 896MB LOWMEM.
I wonder if this release will finally fix the unregister_netdevice problem that can easily kill most systems ...
Trolling? Is slashdot trying to tell me that linux is not a kernel? wtf?
Linux 2.6.11 SCO 0 Better luck next time
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system:
In general, the operating system is the first layer of software loaded into computer memory when it starts up. As the first software layer, all other software that gets loaded after it depends on this software to provide them with various common core services. These common core services include, but are not limited to: disk access, memory management, task scheduling, and user interfacing. Since these basic common services are assumed to be provided by the OS, there is no need to re-implement those same functions over and over again in every other piece of software that you may use. The portion of code that performs these core services is called the "kernel" of the operating system. Operating system kernels had been evolved from libraries that provided the core services into unending programs that control system resources because of the early needs of accounting for computer usage and then protecting those records.
So that is the OS and the kernel. A new kernel version is new drivers and updated system services, which is a good thing. This is not the same as upgrading Win2000 to winXP or changing Linux distros as those involve many many more programs, libraries, & systems as compared (what is collectively known as an Operating System) to a kernel.
For those of you that are unaware, since the poster doesn't explain at all what Infiniband is, I will explain it for you.
Infiniband is a high-speed, low-latency interconnect used heavily with beowulf clusters (currently). Infiniband, like Myrinet, addressed many of the problems that are inherent with using interconnects like ethernet.
The biggest problem with any TCP/IP based transport, in the world of supercomputing, is latency. The amount of error checking that is involved creates latencies that bring fine-grained (lots of memory reads/writes/swaps) calculations to their knees. As many clusters use MPI (Message Passing Interface) for sharing memory between nodes, a low-latency interconnect was needed to replace ethernet and TCP/IP. People have worked on reducing latencies over ethernet by designing raw transport stacks, relying on the switch and the quality/brevity of the ethernet connections (using short, shielded cables proved useful), to ensure accurate data transport, but none of these methods have proven viable.
Infiniband has also been used as an interconnect for network storage devices as there are obvious advantages to this; eliminating much of that latency makes reads and writes to a device much simpler thus reducing overhead and improving overall throughput.
More information on Infiniband can be found here at the Infiniband sourceforge page. This should give a sufficiently technical overview of what it does without any of the marketing talk.
pfft, you can just apt-get java if you google a little for it. Or just use the ubuntu sources. As for the browser.. don't close it, why would you close it, put it on another workspace. You sound like you need an RPM based distro. /installed linux last week
Does anyone know if any work is being done on the rather irritating problem I (and a fair few others) get with the 2.6 input system? Every time I use a mouse that goes through a KVM switch or a USB->PS2 adapter, the mouse would spazz around crazily and syslog would fill up with:
:(
lost synchronisation, throwing [1|2|3] bytes away
Adding psmouse.proto=imps made the problem go away for most usage, but it still occurs under very heavy load, which makes mplaying UT impossible
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
... update your SCO licenses! /rimshot
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
to get infinite pr0n? God, I love Linux!
Computers are useless. They can only give answers. --Pablo Picasso
You can use Infiniband as a LAN, for storage, or maybe for within a box. You could say that Infiniband starts where Hypertransport leaves off.
For the short-haul usage, Infiniband is kind of big in terms of chip real estate. You can't cram it into a corner of a little FPGA like you can with RapidIO. For the long-haul usage, 1 gig or 10 gig Ethernet might be a better choice.
Note that Intel, originally the primary sponsor behind Infiniband, no longer gives a damn. But hey, if you have money to burn...
Generally the updated kernel is not useful to the average user, especially not for desktop users. The major updates that interested me were: the first bootable installation CDs, then the live filesystem CDs. If you have access the a high speed connection, try downloading "Live linux filesystem" distributions. These are great for learning and experimenting with. Good Luck!
Who had been running 2.6.9 or earlier and just finished making a 2.6.10 kernel for the first time (e.g. because they suddenly needed new hardware support).
*rhand* *grouse*
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
ck is a nice patchset. For something with slightly more, CKO offers everything ck does with Reiser4, Supermount, Alan Cox's -ac patchset, software suspend, updates to libata/ALSA/Bttv, and more.
If anyone knows how to donate small amounts of money to the developers, please let me know: both ck and cko are on my list of projects to eventually donate to (linked to from my URL).
It's nice to see someone give a good answer about Linux instead of screaming "lU$3R, l0$3R!!!".
Thanks
The linked changelog is only the changes between 2.6.11-RC5 and the final version, that's why it's so short. Is there a complete changelog available somewhere?
Also, does anyone know what the status of inotify support is? I think a lot of people would be glad to see it merged, as apps like Beagle require it and the new Gamin daemon (a FAM replacement) should work much better with it.
It's like deja vu all over again.
Step... Drag... Stumble... Drool.
It's already in (Gentoo) Portage
emerge sync && emerge development-sources
Illegal? Samir, This is America.
There doesn't appear to be a full changelog yet, but I have been following the release candidates, and it appears that Parallel ATA (AKA "Ultra ATA") Hard disk support is still not in the kernel.
This is frustrating. I had purchased an Ultra ATA Hard disk drive (which came bundled with a Serial/Parallel ATA controller), and I had it working fine under SUSE Linux 9.0. What I didn't realize at the time was, Promise made proprietary drivers for SuSE Linux, and no other distro.
I have wanted to switch over to Fedora Linux for some time now, but although it is able to detect my SATA card and load drivers for it just fine, It does not recognise the PATA connector, and does not locate my hard drive, as a result.
There does appear to be a patch available for this, but it is still officially "in development", and I am concerned that it will not make it into the mainstream kernel in time now for Fedora Core 4 to be able to recognize my hard drive, and install to it.
This is so frustrating. What is the holdup? PATA support appears to have been discussed for almost a year now and it is still not in the kernel. There appear to be a lot of Ultra ATA hard disks on the market; I can't be the only one encountering the frustration of not being able to install a modern version of Linux due to lack of driver support.
It's a valid concern and I hope it gets fixed somehow. This subthread needs a plus 5. That's like one of the things I clicked on this article for, to see what if anything important to the average linux user actually got fixed in the new kernel, or what the new features are. Cd burning is a valid issue. Instead, 7/8th useless banter.
I want slashcode to have keyword filtering, you could take a quick glance, choose the top 3-4 keywords the (what is to anyone "you", your choice) drivel subthreads are in, the stuff you really have no use for, then reload the thread and actually follow a tech discussion. We don't use a numerical karma system in meatspace for conversations, it's all based on keywords, people can tune out walk away from stuff they aren't interested in, here, you either let someoone else decide for you with karma, or have to spend a long time reading when you might only really want to read a few selected replies in the whole string. Keyword filter, stuff you want, and stuff you don't want would *fix* this.
The karma number system is beyond broken at this point, it doesn't work, even with metamoderation. It's a nice theory, but it just *does not* work.
Here is another alternative. Each article has an option, one or the other or both. You can read a page (with keyword filtering),AND/ OR, each article automatically spawns a chat channel with some IM or IRC channel, and the chit chatters can go over there in real time and do their chit chatting and "petrified grits in russia you ignorant jerkoff" drivel. Save the web pages for actual meat, use the chat channels for the little cutsey pie jokes and mini flame wars and whatnot. It has to be a channel for each article posted, not a generic "slashdot" channel. Channels stay up for 24 hours, then get automatically ended. Anyone who wants to then can log their own, some people like the chit chat banter, others don't. I am forced to rely on a karma system that is hideously broken and will not get fixed because it is a design flaw in general terms, or spend 10 times longer reading than is necessary at 0 or -1 even just to actually find anything important.
It means that physical hardware limitations are the ONLY limitations. I think the "underlying concept" is that it should scale up as more connections are added. Other standards had inherent limitations so that adding more or better quality connections would help up to a certain point. Infiniband is not only for linux.
For those of us who don't have the time to wade through the changelog to identify all the important release information for this release ...
Does anyone have a non-kernel expert of what changes/updates/features/*important* fixes this release brings us?
anyone know if the X series of thinkpad IBM laptops will suspend properly now? mine doesn't return from sleep, and won't even begin to suspend to disk properly. (thinkpad x30)
then again, X goofs up for me with the bios 'hybernation' feature too. though I think that's independent, as it still "works" - just with screen garbage on resume.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
...
Wow. What operating system have you been hiding under?
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
I am sick and tired of the next Kernel announcement talking about its support for some esoteric system or system that most of us don't use. If the linux distros want to be on desktops, the support for commonly used devices has got to improve by a LARGE amount.
Nice troll, mr LJ wanker.
I just compiled the 2.6.10 kernel last night. I mean after several attempts over the past few years I finally got Gentoo installed (previous attempts had dependency clashes which I as a Gentoo newb didn't want to deal with). I must say that the documentation has improved though I still don't understand why the don't provide a few more scripts (hopefully cobining the partitioning, mounting, and chrooting phase --- I always seem to miss a step for forget to mount one of the partitions *GRR*).
I guess I could have checked the recent kernel news... I'm sure an RC or two had been released. Well it's not a big deal and I've got other stuff to emerge. I just think it's funny that I'm living the troll.
PS- the only reason I'm trying Gentoo is that I want a distro I could continuously upgrade and I wanted always the newest KDE and I figured Gentoo has the best tested bleeding edge packages. The performance, the control, and the "bloat-free" I could care less about... after all I run KDE! :P ...still miss my SuSE though. :(
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
A lot of current development is going on at the OpenIB project.. in fact, that's where the actual 2.6.11 IB kernel bits came from.
I am running the 2.6.10 kernel, i have no issues at all compiling the Nvidia drivers. I use NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6629-pkg1 fyi. I do manualy un-tar and make;make install, and cp nvidia.ko /lib/modules/2.6.10/kernel/drivers/video/ Please ask around before making baseless flames.
If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into your own beliefs?
He may have hidden under Windows, but at least he saw everything!
Google knows all.
:)
err...actually, google knows all who know all
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
That's because you have several as-yet unnamed learning disabilities.
Read: You'rea a goddamn idiot.
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori
VIA's support for Linux on EPIA boards is crap and I can't compile accelerated framebuffer for CLE266 and vesafb doesn't work for EPIA.
X11 driver works, but I need terminal emulation on framebuffer and also directFB should be quite a bit faster than X11.
VIA is offering source, but that source doesn't compile on 2.6.10 or 2.6.11.
It seems that there were quite some changes in fbdev in that time and I can't make that source to work with 2.6.11.
The long list of updates in the 2.6.11 kernel includes . . . updates to ACPI (define), DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure, which permits direct access to graphics hardware for X Window System users), ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, which provides MIDI and audio functionality to the Linux), SCSI (define) and the XFS high-performance journaling filesystem.
I recently ran into a bad data corruption bug with 2.6.8.(some debian specific patch number) where my NFS mounts of an XFS were corrupting files and doing block switching after we got to a certain fill level full on our raid5 arrays. Switched back to ext3 and all was well...
If anyone else knows anything about this I would be interested...
As another example, there's still no real (noncommercial) support for WinModems under Linux. Reverse-engineering is time-consuming and, these days, fraught with legal peril. As such, it makes sense to concentrate on getting a full feature suite in the areas where specs are available, rather than wasting ages trying to get one device to work cos the blasted manufacturer won't tell you what's in the box.
My feeling is that, when the full specs of these devices are made publically available, Linux support will follow in months. If that.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Hell, ANYONE that installs Linux with the hope of actually using to to do things is a goddamn idiot!
I haven't been able to mount an msdos formatted (/VFAT formatted) device since I think 2.6.7 on my albook. Works fine on my Intel machines. Has anyone else noticed this? Is it fixed?
... I haven't reported it. Too worried about wasting someone's time since I didn't do a thorough enough web search ... hoping this gets an answer quickly (even if its "yeah, it's broken for me too)...
No
Sorry to hear that. With the Ubuntu Guide, it takes me five minutes.
Open Source Sushi
I always find that very weird. Gentoo is one of the best distros and yet it has a torturous install process. I'm all for letting people tweak what they want but maybe they could provide a simpler install for those of us that don't actually care about all the optimization.
I cannot use 2.6.11. There is a bug in the keyboard & mouse input code for the hardware on my machine (Dell Inspiron 1150)
2.6.11 works great.
You should consider why no one takes you seriously.
...it wasn't just a whine. Go re-read it again. I offered at least some idea of an alternative to the numerical karma system. Of course, I am also in favor of banning AC posts and having people use an ISP supplied email addy to get an account too, just to get rid of foul mouthed cowards and trolls like you. Not my call there but I would vote for that if it was an option somehow. I appreciate slashdot a lot, I think it serves a purpose and I like contributing what little I can, but it has obviously gotten hijacked by jerks.
Schibler sees the inclusion of InfiniBand as a testament to the maturation of the technology.
"Now that the technology has matured to such a point that Linus has accepted it into the kernel, the way is paved for greater distribution of the code and accelerated deployment of the technology," Schibler said.
Its a very satisfying feeling to hear 'Our technology is now mature enough to work with linux' rather than 'Linux is now mature enough to work with our technology'. The maturity of Linux then seems to have been largely accepted as a given, rather than being seen as a new kid on the block, or a hobbyist OS as it once used to be.
Kudos to Linus and the developers for many years of excellent work!
Five minutes? What sort of b0xen are you running? A 200Mhz with PIO hard-drive? Takes me a matter of seconds...
I want to convert my Windows XP desktop over to dual boot (for games, I must keep windoze) and I can't seem to access support.ati.com, thus I cannot download their (reportedly awful) linux drivers. I have a radeon 9600 XT... can someone help me find an alternate location to download them?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nice, lets hope Alan Cox makes a patch soon !!!
neo2k