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Linux Kernel 2.6.30 Released
diegocgteleline.es writes "Linux kernel 2.6.30 has been released. The list of new features includes NILFS2 (a new, log-structured filesystem), a filesystem for object-based storage devices called exofs, local caching for NFS, the RDS protocol (which delivers high-performance reliable connections between the servers of a cluster), a new distributed networking filesystem (POHMELFS), automatic flushing of files on renames/truncates in ext3, ext4 and btrfs, preliminary support for the 802.11w drafts, support for the Microblaze architecture, the Tomoyo security MAC, DRM support for the Radeon R6xx/R7xx graphic cards, asynchronous scanning of devices and partitions for faster bootup, the preadv/pwritev syscalls, several new drivers and many other small improvements."
Why would DRM be listed as a "feature"?
Oh, wrong kind of DRM?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Balmer... is that you?
sudo apt-get lost
Meanwhile back at GNOME H.Q. the developers are still undecided whether to move the "Ok" button on the default help screen 10 pixels to the right. Most think it would be a good idea but a hard core few insist that such a momentous change requires further study as it may confuse new users.
A new version of the dialogue is expected in 2037.
Eric Allman might well agree.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
different DRM. this isn't 'rights mgmt' drm.
sometimes, 3 letters can mean different things.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Not sure about the story behind naming POHMELFS what it is, but "pohmel'e" in Russian means "hangover". You can only guess...
The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) is a component of the Direct Rendering Infrastructure, a system to provide efficient video acceleration (especially 3D rendering) on Unix-like operating systems, e.g. Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.
It consists of two in-kernel drivers (realized as kernel modules on Linux), a generic drm driver, and another which has specific support for the video hardware. This pair of drivers allows a userspace client direct access to the video hardware.
From WikiPedia.
Karma Whoring FTW!
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
If you're using 2.7.x Intel xorg drivers you NEED this kernel. Anyone struggling with weird freezes, font corruption, and various other troubles - turns out most of these problems weren't in the Intel drivers at all, but in the GEM and DRI code in the kernel. Mine's been rock solid since RC5 for stability, and RC8 finally fixed the problem with fonts under UXA.
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
Just look at RMS vs. RMS. (One has to wonder if that was intentional...)
Still no support for SLA\95% throttling of processing power allocated to VMs.
Case in Point:
VM 1 : 80% Of processor utilization
VM 2 : 20% of processor utilization
: Can borrow up to 20% of VM1's allocation
: if unused.
The scheduler does great things don't get me wrong but when it comes to provisioning systems for various clients some want a garuntee on the level of processing power that is available at any time. This is true in test systems as well where yout Integration, Acceptance, and Performance virtual environments may share Bare Iron with some production VMs.
Now this is old hat easy with mainframes (MIP allocation\weights between LPARS\SYSPLEX) but with more and more focus on VMs and hosted VMs SLAs on processing power is becoming more of an issue.
Nice values are not enough when writing contracts... Great work Linux team but could we get some more granular control over VM provisioning with SLAs in mind? Yeah we can build user space systems to help manage VMs but kernel level provisioning and auditing is something we need with KVM. Gotta have the reports to show the customer you are meeting the agreeded upon SLAs.
And for my own personal use, I'd love to be able to throttle a dos 6.22 VM to 486 speeds so some of those ancient programs can be ran for historical purposes. (Without bombing the processor with dummy NOP and other MOSLO crap so we keep our power consumption down.)
Just some musings as Linux rolls along...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Can anyone explain to me why Linux has so many filesystems? Windows has had NTFS for years (admittedly, several versions, but never any compatibility issues that I've come across), and Linux has, what, 73 or something?! Is it really that hard to get it right?
Direct Rendering Manager
Integrity Management Architecture
Contributor: IBM
Recommended LWN article: http://lwn.net/Articles/227937/
The Trusted Computing Group(TCG) runtime Integrity Measurement Architecture(IMA) maintains a list of hash values of executables and other sensitive system files, as they are read or executed. If an attacker manages to change the contents of an important system file being measured, we can tell. If your system has a TPM chip, then IMA also maintains an aggregate integrity value over this list inside the TPM hardware, so that the TPM can prove to a third party whether or not critical system files have been modified.
From the recommended article, the key dilemma:
There are clear advantages to a structure like this. A Linux-based teller machine, say, or a voting machine could ensure that it has not been compromised and prove its integrity to the network. Administrators in charge of web servers can use the integrity code in similar ways. In general, integrity management can be a powerful tool for people who want to be sure that the systems they own (or manage) have not be reconfigured into spam servers when they weren't looking.
The other side of this coin is that integrity management can be a powerful tool for those who wish to maintain control over systems they do not own. Should it be merged, the kernel will come with the tools needed to create a locked-down system out of the box. As these modules get closer to mainline confusion, we may begin to see more people getting worried about them. Quite a few kernel developers may oppose license terms intended to prevent "tivoization," but that doesn't mean they want to actively support that sort of use of their software. Certainly it would be harder to argue against the shipping of locked-down, Linux-based gadgets when the kernel, itself, provides the lockdown tools.
OK, maybe this is overdramatic, but trading freedom from third-party oversight through trusted computing for the security of first-party oversight through trusted computing seems a little like:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
But I can see both sides. Pondering... what are your thoughts?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I found the kernel thread where the original author of the FS-Cache patches, David Howell, makes it clear that on a quiet network with a quite fast server metadata will take longer from the cache. However, at my work we have very busy large NFS servers connected over the building network which is very busy. When you try to read a large file repeatedly in the middle of the day the traditional NFS caching just doesn't work if the time between reads is more than about 5 minutes. I've resorted to manually copying my datasets to /usr/tmp on the local disk and seen huge performance improvements. (this has other serious issues, like getting confused about which copy you just modified and migrating any changes back to the official NFS copy.) I know this feature makes sense for me and others in similar environments. The problem of course is: (1) it will be years before it makes it into RHEL and (2) it won't be turned on by default, (3) my system admins are weary to trying anything kernel-related that's not stock RHEL. However, if I can show them an order of magnitude improvement in speed, which I think this will do, they might think twice.
If you want a mainframe, maybe calling IBM and ordering one is a better way to go?
Have wireless "issues" been fixed with this release.
I have a laptop with generic realtek rt2500 wifi hardware.
For many kernel releases I have to compile seperate drivers (Legacy serialmonkey) because the "stock" drivers are woefully unstable.
I either lose my connection, painfully slow( have tried the "rate 54" fix) or I cannot reconnect to my network at all.
I don't mind compiling seperate drivers (a huge benefit of open source stuff & Linux) but I am concerned how long I will be able to do this (E.g. something changes in the kernel makes the "external" driver break - in fact actual development of the legacy drivers has ceased - http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)?
I know I should not be moaning about this but this issue has been around for ages and seems to affect a lot of hardware.
This is my only niggle with Linux and I am grateful for everything. Computing become much more interesting and fun again.
Huge thanks to Linus and the kernel developers.
When they say "Support for rt3070 driver for recent RaLink Wi-Fi chipsets", they really mean support for RT2870, RT2770, RT307X, RT3572 chipsets (they're all the same, with just features enabled or disabled, or signal strength improved between them).
This was the one last thing for me to fully switch over to linux. Netgear and alot of other Wireless-N USB adapters use these chipsets, and they are the best around.
Previously, the method of installing this driver was the largest pain in the ass I've ever had to go through as a linux noob (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=960642) and I'm so very very glad to see that this chipset is now supported.
The reason it was so hard is that the normal controlling app for the USB device has many advanced features you normally don't see on a wireless adapter (act as a router, full cisco network compatibility, etc etc).
In Windows, something like this Just Works(tm).
Not always. I had a USB WiFi adapter that I attempted to install on a Windows laptop and after several attempts at uninstalling and reinstalling the driver, I took it back to the store and got a different model. Probably that WiFi adapter just sucked, but still, just because something "Just Works(tm)" for one OS and one piece of hardware doesn't mean that is always the case.
My blog
NILFS2 is the successor to MILFS2, which was based on the "Mother" specification.
NILFS2 is based on the "Nanny" specification, which means it is younger, firmer, *and* keeps the child nodes quiet when you are not actively updating its data.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
No kernel modelsetting in 2.6.30 for anything but Intel chips.
There is some work in progress for ATI chips, but nothing in the mainline kernel.
In the meantime you can use uvesafb in the current kernel to get a framebuffer console if you like it. But you will get a bad vt switching experience.
They should just drop the 2.8. prefix. Linux 30 sounds much cooler than 2.8.30, and man it's got to be light years ahead of Windows 7!
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There's clear roadmap posted here describing features and implications of version numbers.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Don't speak too hastily. http://www.chris-crockett.com/blog/wpg2?g2_view=keyalbum.KeywordAlbum&g2_keyword=chainmail+bikini&g2_itemId=1910
Actually, you COULD use Linux as an OS for a British cigarette vending machine, in which case it WOULD be for fags!
Free Martian Whores!
If Linux is ever going to make it on the desktop, developers are going to need to get their shit together and: make webcams work (they don't in the majority of cases at the moment); stop regressions in graphics drivers; get other hardware working, e.g. iPods; make dual-screen work without spending 20 minutes fucking around (see Lunduke's presentation); get GNOME on to QT and develop a decent HIG (sorry, the current GNOME HIG is an excuse to put off doing anything about bugs, see Apple's for how this should be done); finally pick one -- namely .deb -- package format and stick to it; so developers aren't put-off by the idea of spending days creating packages for different platforms.
I'm sure some smug twat will pop-up and say how they don't care about Linux on the desktop, my answer is: why are you bothering to reply, if you don't care? There are obviously loads of people who do care, just look around at all the advocates. They told me Linux is ready for the desktop, and I tried it, only to find everything's slower, my iPod didn't work, then upgrading hosed my sound and video!
If you're thinking of advocating Linux to someone: stop! Go and do some work on getting drivers working instead, your time won't be wasted and you won't lose any friends.
I loved the last item in the roadmap:
- 2.6.<odd>: still a stable kernel, but accept bigger changes leading up
to it (timeframe: a month or two).
- 2.<odd>.x: aim for big changes that may destabilize the kernel for
several releases (timeframe: a year or two)
- <odd>.x.x: Linus went crazy, broke absolutely _everything_, and rewrote
the kernel to be a microkernel using a special message-passing version
of Visual Basic. (timeframe: "we expect that he will be released from
the mental institution in a decade or two").
God is imaginary
Intel's integrated graphics performance has been pretty progressively worse ever since switching from XAA, and rather abysmal ever since Xorg 1.5. Since then every release of X/mesa/xf86-video-intel made it even worse. Hopefully this release brings the entire GEM/UXA/KMS/whatever stack to a usable state. All this on a 945GM.
What's your experience with it so far? I'll try it out myself in a few days, but I'm eager to hear the results...
With Reiser in jail, the only thing you have left is to blame ext4. :)
Err, excuse me. The application developers.
He who has no
You can get the absolute latest info from the horse's mouth (AKA the ATI dev's that are working on the open source driver) at the Phoronix open-source AMD forums
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
waiting for linux 3.1415
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Like the new compression stuff. Compressed kernel under 1MB again - First time I've seen that for a while.
Now to try it on my Acer Aspire One...
Interesting you'd bring up what "Just Works" in windows.
My wifi card in my home PC doesn't work in windows out of the box, and doesn't have a readily available XP driver. I had to hunt for a generic driver and jump through hoops to get it to work.
On the other hand, the same wifi card, in the same machine Just Works in Linux. No fuss, no command line, no configuration. Just enter my wep key when prompted.
In windows, my sound card doesn't work *AT ALL*. Can't find a driver. Not even from the mainboard mfg.
On the other hand, the same sound card, in the same machine Just Works in Linux.
Go figure... apparently my system is confused :P
Or maybe, its you that it confused. Linux now supports more hardware natively than any other operating system in existance. And thanks to projects like the Linux Driver Project, that develops drivers for hardware for companies *FOR FREE*, thats unlikely to change.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure windows has a place in this world, but Windows should no longer be allowed to lead the market on the desktop. It's far too dangerous.
Thomas A. Knight
Author of The Time Weaver
... rewrote the kernel to be a microkernel using a special message-passing version of Visual Basic.
Oh, so that is what GNU/Hurd guys are up to these days!
Well they changed their whole development methodology that they don't have an unstable branch anymore and do feature releases about every 6 months. So kind of.
That is because the way Windows loads USB drivers it pretty much is a new device to Windows. I have had this happen to customers in the past, here is what you do- But a cheapo USB extender, hell even a 1 foot one will work. Leave that plugged into a USB port in the back. Always plug your USB stick into that. Problem solved.
And to the Linux guys- yes you will occasionally come up with problems with Wifi in Windows, but that still doesn't let Linux off the hook. I can sell a new XP box and have a 95% assurance that anything they buy in Walmart/Staples/Best Buy will "just work" dropping my after sale support costs to zero. With Linux I'm looking at a 600% return rate because a good 85%+ of the items in the above stores will NOT work without research, and woe be unto you if you pick the wrong brand, like the Lexmark all in ones which are very very popular here. Expecting Sally home maker or Joe SMB to go trawling forums every time he or she wants to buy a new gadget is frankly ludicrous. That is why mine and every other shop in town is a Windows only shop. It isn't because we hate your OS, it is because the support costs for Linux will bankrupt us.
And PLEASE don't bring up bundling and support contracts. I would be insane to go bundling as the margins on those things like Wifi sticks and USB printers is just awful unless you are buying Walmart quantities, and nobody wants to buy support contracts, see how much hatred Best Buy gets from the public for trying to force those extended warranties down the customers throats. When I sell Linux here is what happens every single time. They look at Kubuntu box and go "Ooohh" and buy. They go to Walmart and buy some gadget on sale, gadget doesn't work so they bring the PC back to be "fixed" and when they find out it can NEVER be fixed, because frankly Linux support for home consumer class gadgets is frankly piss poor at best, then they want their money back and I'm stuck eating the cost between what it sold for new and what I have to sell it for now as a used item.
From a support and return standpoint it is simply cheaper to add in the cost of an $89 XP Home or a $139 XP Pro if they are an SMB customer. They are happy, I'm not looking at all the headaches, the research, and the 600% return rate, so I am happy. Until I can sell a box to my customer and have assurance that at least 80% of the items in the above stores will actually work in Linux the support and return nightmare simply makes Linux a losing proposition. If you are running server Linux is great. If you are willing to trawl forums before every single purchase then it will run fine. But that just cut a good 95% of the market out, including all my customers. Sorry, No Sale.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
So I've been reading that NILFS is the dog bollocks when it comes to solid-state disks in terms of speed and longevity of the disk. However, what I'd like to know is whether any of the advantages will hold for regular old mechanical disks as well. If so, I'd love to try NILFS. Having a real honest-to-goodness versioning filesystem with instant snapshots on my file servers would be so great, I can hardly find the words to describe it.