Slashdot Mirror
Kernel 2.2.12
DrunkenBastard writes "I just noticed that a 2.2.12 kernel was starting to appear on the kernel.org mirror I usually frequent.
" When I saw this submission, the first thing I thought was "And me with my 38 day uptime". That confirms it. I gotta go out ;)
As far as NT running and running and Linux crashing, you are not providing any evidence of your situation or any real information. You can make up anything to suit your argument.
On to the second point. Let me put this so you can understand it, AN APPLICATION SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO CRASH THE OPERATING SYSTEM. If Windows were any good, there would be no way to crash the operating system from an application.
Funny, you have a Beta 3 machine? What applications can you run on it, anyway? I thought they threw code portability away anyway. It's probably just sitting there looking all pretty.
There are lots of security patches for Red Hat, but none that allow someone from a web page to modify your startup files using ActiveX.
Additionally, with Red Hat, you get the fixes much more often, and earlier. No need to wait 6 months for the next service pack. Also, these patches only affect certain services. If you run a tight ship, and only enable important services on the system, you don't even have to apply most of them.
And the last one is the kicker. Now you're blaming it on development environments. Well, we're getting them for Linux. So we'll be able to invalidate that argument pretty quickly.
The fact is, there are a lot of buggy Linux applications that I've seen, but none of them have brought down the system. You obviously don't know what you're talking about.
So you want online kernel upgrades? Sounds like something we do with our systems at work: At EMC, we will upgrade the OS that runs inside our storage systems while the system is online and processing I/Os. (I haven't worked on the code that does the online upgrades, however.)
It's not easy to do, but it can be done.
The tricky part is not the replacing of the kernel code with new code, but migrating between changed data structures at the same time. In theory, you could do it with the facilities in place now:
1) Build the new kernel.
2) Build a program that understands all the differences in kernel data structures.
3) Load the new kernel into memory, but at a different address from the running kernel.
4) Load the translation program as a loadable module--it will need to do several steps:
a) suspend interrupts
b) translate the data strucutres
c) relocate the new kernel to the proper place in memory (possibly using VM tricks)
d) enable interrupts
e) clean up any junk from the old kernel that is no longer in use
f) transfer control to the new kernel
5) Unload the upgrade program
That would be a pain to code, but in theory is possible. For most applications, though, rebooting is acceptable. I doubt that anyone will code online kernel upgrades anytime soon.