Linux Kernel 2.4.4 Released 127
Marek Kupsta writes: "Linux 2.4.4 is out! Go get it! =)" Check the Changelog. As I write this, the bandwidth meter on kernel.org says 34.4 MBit/s.
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Linux Kernel 2.4.4 Released
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"What man has done, man can aspire to do." -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight
Re:Since the article doesn't mention them so... (Score:1)
Re:Isn't it going too fast? (Score:1)
My guess (Score:1)
Re:Joystick version? (Score:1)
Packet Dropping (Score:1)
It's not the most "elegant" solution but it works, and hopefully the packet loss method will be replaced with some kind of ECN based solution in the future.
Incidently, this is also the reason why ping times are much lower on cable modems, because the ping packet is small it goes down the cable at full speed.
You can try this out for yourself with three machines, some ethernet and the traffic shaper in the kernel.
Re:swap fixes? (Score:1)
Re:Comments by the coders... (Score:1)
Re:Corrupted people want to know... (Score:3)
zero copy networking! (Score:5)
It also includes the official IPtables FTP MASQ security fix, which is good. Time to upgrade... ;-)
Corrupted people want to know... (Score:4)
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Re:TmpFS (Score:3)
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WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
Yer missing the middle layer. (Score:2)
In this manner, a standard compatibility layer is provided, and most apps become fairly portable.
Answering you more directly... (Score:2)
None. The shell is simply a particular class of application. If it looks like a shell and quacks like a shell, it's a shell.
swap fixes? (Score:3)
--
I noticed
Re:memtest86 src rpm (Score:1)
memtest86 src rpm (Score:3)
Install this on your system, change to
Re:Distributed Download Mirror (Score:2)
Coool.
Nice one, Orasis! Hopefully someone will be quick enough to mirror the next release on Mojo Nation [mojonation.net] as well.
I'm looking forward to the imminent open-sourcing of Swarmcast. I think that the emergent ("p2p") networks are maturing enough that we will start trying to link them together soon. Perhaps the second O'Reilly p2p conference will spark some work in that direction...
Regards,
Zooko
Re:Questions and Observations about 2.4.4 (Score:5)
Short answer: No
Slightly longer answer:
Adding ACL support to the kernel would require large-scale changes to the entire VFS, as well as the individual filesystems. This isn't going to happen in a stable kernel series. IIRC, this is one of the major goals for the 2.5 development cycle (along with generic extended atributes and maybe named streams), so the ACL support introduced in 2.5 may be backported to 2.4 (but that would be up to Alan Cox).
Although patches currently exist to add extended attributes and ACL support to the current VFS, I don't think that the kernel gods are entirely happy with its architecture. (This has been a frequent topic on the linux-fsdevel list.)
Re:Don't upgrade if you don't have to (Score:5)
2.4.3 does have serious issues.
The reader-writer semaphore implementation is broken, resulting in processes getting stuck in the D state in down_semaphore. Heavily threaded programs (like Mozilla) are most likely to hit this bug, resulting in lots of stuck threads and an unusable program.
(Nothing actually used the rw-sems until fairly recently, which is why this bug went undetected for so long.)
Also fixed: the iptables FTP connection tracking security hole, some potential filesystem corrupting bugs and a bunch of other bugs that weren't likely to affect anybody.
And Dave Miller's zerocopy networking changes were merged in, which is pretty cool.
Re:Marvelous News (Score:1)
A shell is a program you interact with, and in response, it runs programs for you. Command shells like tcsh, bash, zsh, and even the DOS shell all take their input through the keyboard. The windows shell takes input through the mouse, primarily, but you can use the keyboard too/instead. Other graphical shells like GNOME work similarly.
What would an application that looks like a shell but isn't be like? Maybe if you can type into it and stuff, but it doesn't actually do anything, like bash -n, then that would fit the description. If it runs programs when you tell it to, it _is_ a shell. It's easily possible to write such an application for windows. AFAIK, there is a system call that (essentially) does a fork()+exec(), so it's pretty easy to make a shell. As others have pointed out, there are shells for windoze, including cygwin bash. (BTW, to avoid having 16bit code running when you use the shell (since that seriously slows the whole system down), you can run cygwin bash inside an emacs shell-mode window. This actually works, and I've got config files that do it.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Re:Marvelous News (Score:1)
BTW, are you saying that an Athlon is faster than Windows 2000? That's an interesting comparison...
As for 2.4 with an Athlon, you're probably seeing speedups because 2.4 has more cpu-spefic speedups, like a memcpy that uses 3DNow. That makes a big difference.
#define X(x,y) x##y
knfsd-reiser patch in? (Score:2)
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Adoption rate of new kernels (Score:4)
2.4 - 110 out of 422, 26.1%
2.4.4 - 2 out of 422, 0.5%
Watch this space.
Re:Download Location (Score:1)
Re:Don't upgrade if you don't have to (Score:1)
I wonder if NTFS support can write to Win2K now... maybe I can fix my #$%^&(* Win2K drive without reinstalling...
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Re:Article on kernel testing suites (Score:1)
Oh yes. So clear.
Please clarify.
Re:Marvelous News (Score:2)
Win32 has a posix subsystem after all, and even if it requires help from an userlevel C library like cygwin32.dll, it can work just as any other POSIX (including Linux) OS.
Re:Questions and Observations about 2.4.4 (Score:1)
just look here [sgi.com] you can get a bootable ISO that will insstall the XFS kernal and then ask you for your redhat-7.1 cd's to install the rest, as I said this if for a new system. but go for it
Re:34.4MBits/s? (Score:1)
Re:Isn't it going too fast? (Score:2)
The Linux 2.3 tree did not fork from the Linux 2.2 tree until 2.2.8. Be patient, my son. Any bets as to which Linux 2.4 kernel will fork to become Linux 2.5.1?
Re:Linux Service Pack Installer (Score:2)
Re:Responsible as always... (Score:1)
I wonder... (Score:4)
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Short answer: No, It's not too fast. (Score:2)
Too fast? this is no faster/slower than any other kernel in the past.... this is normal.
Wow. (Score:3)
And I've never compiled them anywhere else either.
Never caused me a minute of problem.
grrr... (Score:1)
Upgrade if you have no reason not to! (Score:4)
If you come across a bug then congratulations, you've made a first step in making Linux better. Distribution and use is a vital part of an Open Source development process.
Distributed Download Mirror (Score:5)
Swarmcast is BETA (it gots boogs) software that will soon be released under the GPL. The installation procedure sucks right now but the situation will quickly improve.
Swarmcast is peer-to-peer software that uses the bandwidth of the peers that are currently or recently downloaded a piece of content to help boost everyone elses download. So its basically like having a bunch of partial-horsepower mirrors.
If you're not into that "altruism" stuff then you can just ignore this post and hammer directly on kernel.org.
You can join the Swarmcast devel mailing list here. [sourceforge.net] and let us know what you think.
Re:2.4.4 breaks vmware 2.03 (Score:1)
Re:How do you compile a kernel on Mandrake anyways (Score:3)
http://www.hardcorelinux.com/kernel-howto.htm
come off crisp and play up to the cynic
clean and schooled right down to the minute
Re:Linux Service Pack Installer (Score:1)
I've already installed it and am running it. (Score:2)
I "made" it as soon as I downloaded it.
I installed it and rebooted as soon as I made it.
I am running it right now and I haven't crashed yet. I haven't noticed any difference except that I forgot to load a few modules and stuff. Oh well, I'm not a power user and only use my box as a desktop machine. I did notice that there were a lot of options that weren't available for me to check (reiserfs most importantly). I don't know if they are disabled in this version or if I am just an idiot and don't have a higher level option checked.
P.S. I'm a newbie so don't take anything I've said with more than a grain of salt.
TmpFS (Score:5)
But why the hell is TmpFS only in -ac series and never in 'official' releases ? I will have to wait for 2.4.4-ac1 before upgrading.
TmpFS is now rock stable (it wasn't the case in the early times, I agree) . It's fast. It's easy to set up, and it's a very good enhancement to the Linux kernel.
When will TmpFS merged to the main tree ?
Here are the mirrors (Score:5)
- mirrors organized by country [kernel.org]
- UK [kernel.org]
- US [kernel.org]
In general, the form is www.country.kernel.org where country is the country's two letter code. For example, NZ [kernel.org] is a link to New Zealand's mirror.Slashdot should maintain topic pages for each category with links like this, yes?
Re:34.4MBits/s? (Score:1)
34MBits is 3/4 of a full fiber DS-3.
Re:Don't upgrade if you don't have to (Score:3)
-pre5:
- Mike Phillips: olympic driver update
- Alan Cox: continued resyncing (lots of small stuff, big NTFS merge from Anton)
- Martin Dalecki: cleanup (remove unused and unnecessary get_hardblocksize)
- Chris Mason: fix potential reiserfs journal overflow
- Jeff Garzik: network driver updates
- David Miller: sparc fixes, some network cleanups
Is the amount of bugs constant in time? (Score:2)
I am a software engineer, and I certainly prefere adding a new cool feature to my code, than fixing old bugs, expecially if these bugs are not critical. Makes me feel kinda good knowing that even much better programmers have the same mentality.
RE: Memtest86 (Score:2)
Re:34.4MBits/s? (Score:2)
Neither is bad grammar.
Re:Questions and Observations about 2.4.4 (Score:2)
Next? Alan Cox on a Chip, of course. (Score:2)
Re:Karma Whore Alert (Score:1)
And no, I'm no karma whore, and I'm not trying to find a consulting gig by posting articles such as this.
Instead, I'm trying to help out the kernel developers who need people testing their software, and to improve the overall quality of Free Software.
The kernel I feel is of very high quality, but it is challenging for the kernel developers to keep it so, because it can be configured with so many variations and has to satisfy so many needs. That's why it needs an especially large amount of testing.
There are many free and open source software products that I feel do not live up to even modest quality standards, and I'm trying to improve the situation by posting educational articles such as the ones on the Linux Quality Database.
Have a look at freshmeat and see how many programs have yet to reach 1.0 status - many of those programs are in every day use on Linux distributions and in fact cause me and other users significant problems. I'm trying to help remedy the situation by providing advice, guidance and pointers to good tools.
Mike [goingware.com]
Article on kernel testing suites (Score:4)
-
Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel [sunsite.dk]
There are also some tests such as Memtest86 [sgi.com] that you can use for checking the basic health of your hardware (some of which, like VA Linux' Cerberus, can be quite extreme). Memtest86 found a bad PC133 memory module in one of my machines that consistently passes the BIOS startup memory test.Suggestions for other test suites, strategies for testing the Linux kernel or other things I can write about on the general topic of quality assurance and better software practice are appreciated.
One test that's not mentioned in the article yet is memtester [qcc.sk.ca]. It is a user-space program that will run on Linux or other Unix-like OS and will test as much of the memory as it can mlock; I found that I could test about half of my installed memory on a debian PPC macintosh.
Memtest86 is advantageous in that it will test all of the installed memory, but memtester will run on non-PC clone and non-x86 hardware.
Mike [goingware.com]
Re:I've already installed it and am running it. (Score:2)
VIA fixes, apparently in this one - and I have a 686B. Downloading the patch right now. This should be good...
Re:2.4.4 breaks vmware 2.03 (Score:1)
Don't upgrade if you don't have to (Score:1)
Re:Marvelous News (Score:2)
Re:zero copy networking! (Score:2)
Re:Don't upgrade if you don't have to (Score:2)
Look for a BIOS update from your vendor - most mothersboards seem to have gotten one, except the ones from ASUS (unfortunately - I have one myself).. Also, if there is a choice in your BIOS, turn performance down from "Optimal" to "Normal". Using PIO instead of DMA would be beneficial - turn it off in the BIOS.
As for recompilation, remember to run "make mrproper" first - the tree we ship isn't clean (so people can compile modules without having to compile a kernel first).
What kernel to use varies... right now, 2.4.4 should be OK. 2.4.3 wasn't (we made fixes after 2.4.3 was released... but as we were working hard on stabilizing it, upgrading didn't make sense as it didn't solve the disk corruption problems we were seing on all hardware (and which we fixed)). The ac kernels are usually a little bit closer to what we ship (well, they have some patches we have and some we don't) - and you can also find newer kernels in rawhide [redhat.com].
Re:TmpFS (Score:3)
Using the "-pipe" option for gcc gives you the same benefits for compilation:
Re:Don't upgrade if you don't have to (Score:5)
Of course, it all depends on what you're previously running - if you're running a previous 2.4 kernel from Linus.
Many file system corruption bugs were found by us during development of Red Hat Linux 7.1. The 2.4.2-2 kernel in Red Hat Linux 7.1 should be safe, any kernel released prior to that (our release, not 2.4.2 in general - our kernels has lots of fixes, some made after the official release of 2.4.3)
Re:Packet Dropping (Score:1)
DSL: 15-30ms to first hop.
Cable: 60-150 to first hop.
Linux Service Pack Installer (Score:5)
# Note: this is untested code written ad-hoc
# in a slashdot comment box. You decide
# how much you want to trust it.
#
# Usage: lspinstaller <version-of-kernel> <previous-version-of-kernel>
# Must run as root.
ARCH=i386
cd
wget ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux-
# make sure we only have a linux-oldversion dir
rm linux || mv linux linux-$1
tar xvfz linux-$0.tar.gz
mv linux linux-$0
ln -s linux-$0 linux
# recover our kernel configuration
cp linux-$1/.config linux-$0/.config
cd linux-$0
# answering "no" to new kernel features is not necessarily what you want, but it's a good place to start
yes n | make oldconfig
mv Makefile Makefile.configged
# I find it's always a good idea to tag kernels with your hostname so you can tell what they're meant for
sed s/EXTRAVERSION =/EXTRAVERSION = `hostname`/ Makefile
make dep clean bzImage modules modules_install
# if you use lilo, this automatically runs it.
# if you use grub, do it manually I guess.
installkernel $0-`hostname` arch/$ARCH/boot/bzImage System.map
echo Windo^H^H^H^H^HLinux has finished installing your new software. Press any key to reboot, but ctrl-alt-delete will probably be more effective.
--
Responsible as always... (Score:5)
Can't you guys wait a while and download it from the mirrors?
Re:I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt anyone. (Score:5)
As usage tends towards 100%, speed tends towards zero and packet retransmission increases.
Damn (Score:1)
Re:zero copy networking! (Score:1)
Re:Is it worth my time uplaoding? (Score:1)
I'm quite happy at 2.4. Is there any compelling reason why I would need 2.4.4?
YES! Upgrade now! 2.4.2 ate my ext2 filesystem. And I'm far from a unique case, there are weird filesystem bugs (both ext2 and reiserfs) in early 2.4 kernels. Lots of information about this on Kernel Traffic: (1) [zork.net] (2) [zork.net] (3) [zork.net] (4) [zork.net] (5) [zork.net] (6) [zork.net] (7) [zork.net] (8) [zork.net] (9) [zork.net].
Given all these problems, I'd say: don't run 2.4.x on a server yet. Run it on your desktop if you are daring (I do, even after it ate my filesystem.) but make backups of anything really important. Keep up-to-date on them; don't let a fixed bug eat your filesystem.
Re:Responsible as always... (Score:2)
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Download Location (Score:4)
Is it worth my time uplaoding? (Score:4)
I must say 2.4 been pretty good. It was the first one I could use acceptibly on my notebook (Inspiron 5000) and I really dont want to go through that all over again if something screws up.
And one final thing.... If I want a Service pack for W2K, it's pretty dead easy to install. Is there anything being done to make upgrades seamless?
Re:34.4MBits/s? (Score:1)
Re:Linux Service Pack Installer (Score:2)
/home/youruser/kernel or something similar (I
use "/home/spencer/tmp/kernel" on my systems).
The files under
of the C library distrobution, and should
only change when the library changes. They should
never be affected by the kernel version.
Take a look at line 59 of the README file
in the kernel source distrobution.
Re:Article on kernel testing suites (Score:5)
One misconception that most people have is that the BIOS POST routines actually test RAM. They don't.
The only thing BIOS routines do is check for the existance of RAM, and as a side benifit some failures are detected.
Other failures can't be found with the quick xor tests done in the BIOS because;
They are masked by a cache that is not defective.
Are heat/cold sensitive -- and at boot the system might be OK.
The failure of one bit only occurs after other bits are flipped.
Even a good memory test program like Memtest86 can't find all defects, and definately not on the first pass. As a reasonable sanity check, Memtest86 is highly recommended.
Re:Mandrake me please (Score:2)
More offtopic OS theory /etc (Score:2)
If anyone wants to read my childish, oversimplified overview of OS theory (since this post got so many responses, someone might be interested), it's at:
ursine.dyndns.org/~mnoelharris/brainlinux.html [dyndns.org]
Re:34.4MBits/s? (Score:3)
Losing karma is not the worst thing that can happen on Slashdot, looking foolish is (yes, I've done it myself enough).
Re:2.4.4 breaks vmware 2.03 (Score:5)
from openprojects irc 'apt'
Comments by the coders... (Score:5)
"don't fuck up. This is why we have... James M... say fuck enough... all the algo is pure shit and should be replaced (From tcp in IPv4 - makes you feel good, eh?)." The whole IP NAT for FTP thing is "eloquent like `fuck'." The irnet_irda module is made to "Give a kick in the ass of ppp_generic so that he sends us some data".
The people who put together te setup code for the i386 arch were curious to know "What lunatic came up with this shit?" The IA64 arch includes some "weird ass code needed for error injection". MIPS/cobalt setup is referred to as "Oh shit, this is so crappy ..."
SysIRIX has "2,191 lines of complete and utter shit coming up..." There's more of that for MIPS, though - "Big shit, we now may have two dirty primary cache lines for the same..." I don't even want to hear the end of that! In fact the MIPS/Irix people seem as if they just "Don't Care, a rats ass we couldn't give". That same file includes 10 iterations of "XXX AFS shit".
HyperSPARC has is "Verified, my ass..." The developer for a SPARC checksum code wants to merely "give up. I'm serious, I am going to kick the living shit..." The SPARC kernel process claims that somebody should "fuck me plenty". I agree :) At least they think SPARC64 is "One bad ass cpu". Then again "are two fold. Firstly, they cannot pair with jack shit,".
Everyone should "Remember: "Different name, same old buggy as shit hardware." Speaking of which, one of the SCSI drivers contains to lines of "shit". "... We don't want to fuck directly..." So we'll do it second-hand!
ASM has so much "More PROM shit. Probably has to do with VME RMW cycles???" They've been having to "having to fuck around with the syscall interface themselfes." Ultimately, everyone agrees that "If you don't see why, please stay the fuck away from my code."
/.ers only have a karma of 49...
REAL
Re:2.4.4 breaks vmware 2.03 (Score:3)
2.4.4 breaks vmware 2.03 (Score:4)
Re:Are you an idiot? (Score:2)
Re:Marvelous News (Score:5)
How do you compile a kernel on Mandrake anyways? (Score:2)
a) the 2.4.x kernel barfs if there's no initrd to go with it and the ramdisk image
b) if the kernel DOES work, it is extremely unstable, booting me back to the login prompt or just locking up altogether with a kernel panic. What's the advantage of modularlizing vs. putting it in the kernel? Which is faster?
c) If I get rid of all of the ridiculous shit that Mandrake decides to include (1000Mbit Ethernet card suppor built-in? Why?) and compile it, it still barfs.
d) ReiserFS support is non-existent in make menuconfig, unless I do some magic ritual of checking certain checkboxes
e) I keep getting write_intr errors at around sector 3500 of my hard drive. Is it a bad hard drive, or is it just Linux?
Re: Mirrors not up-to-date (Score:2)
and if the master mirror is
mirrors can't mirror
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Re:Marvelous News (Score:2)
However, my experience is that my Athlon running Kernel 2.4 handles them faster...
Actually, I noticed a major performance boost going to 2.4 with the Athlon. I will have to try this new version.
Has anyone else had printing problems migrating 2.2.x to 2.4.x?
Re:Linux Service Pack Installer (Score:2)
And what if your distribution hasn't got /usr/src/linux by default? I'm talking Debian here, in which /usr/src was unpopulated when I installed it first.
Of course at the moment I just make a symlink /usr/src/linux -> /usr/local/src/linux-<current-running-version> . It works fine, it's just that I generally have to recompile third-party modules (nVidia, yech!) when I install a new kernel.
Any more people out there with this kind of situation, i.e. no /usr/src/linux by default? And how do you fix it?
MartRe:Damn (Score:2)
Ok, the way I understood it is this:
Now zero copy networking basically skips step 2. This doesn't sound spectacular, but if you're doing something bandwidth intensive, say downloading a kernel, this repeated memory copy operation starts cutting into your efficiency.
Any actual kernel hackers feel free to flame me into oblivion for getting it wrong :)
MartFrom the Changelog.... (Score:5)
- Alan Cox: more resyncs (ARM down, but more to go) - Alan Cox: more merging (S/390 down, ARM to go).
Oh my GOD!!! Alan Cox is being merged into the Kernel!!! They have his ARM merged in now, what next, WHAT NEXT?????
--Volrath50
Re:Article on kernel testing suites (Score:5)
The latest kernel still can't pass the Purity Test. You can see by running:
egrep -r -e "(\bfuck\b|\bass\b|\bshit\b)" /usr/src/linux
In fact, I found an increase in degree of profanity in the new release:
egrep -r -e "(\bfuck\b|\bass\b|\bshit\b)" /usr/src/linux-2.2.18 | wc -l ---> 48
egrep -r -e "(\bfuck\b|\bass\b|\bshit\b)" /usr/src/linux | wc -l ---> 52
That's too bad, my boss wouldn't like it.
Hooray! I can use USB again! (Score:5)
Question is - did AMD drop their NDA silliness for sharing the bug workaround or did the kernel developers just hack it (by reading NDP twice)
I expect the latter but I'm psyched anyway!
As always - thank you kernel developers!
--
Re:34.4MBits/s? (Score:2)
Re:How do you compile a kernel on Mandrake anyways (Score:3)
To run pptpd, you have to patch the kernel. A howto at here [swbell.net] describes how to patch and recompile the 2.4 kernel. If you aren't interested in pptpd for linux, just ignore the patches but follow the rest of the directions.
It works on Mandrake. There is even a sample configuration file for the kernel with Reiserfs support. Be sure and check the CPU type though.
Questions and Observations about 2.4.4 (Score:3)
#$%@%!. Censored. (Score:4)
fuck 11 times, or 9% of the time
shit 31 times, or 26% of the time
bitch 12 times, or 10% of the time
ass 10 times, or about 8.5% of the time
bastard two times, or about 1.7% of the time
dick one time, or about 0.8% of the time
hell 50 times, or 42.7% of the time
Total swear words used: 117
A few examples:
"/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/sunhme.c:
"/usr/src/linux/net/core/netfilter.c:
"/usr/src/linux/arch/sparc/kernel/process.c:
Pretty neat results
--
Re:Don't upgrade if you don't have to (Score:3)
but, it is kernel series 2 verion 4 pactch level 4 i.e. 2.4.4 this is much more secure and stable than 2.4-2.4.3 so there is no reason not to update your kernel.
Marvelous News (Score:4)
Maybe now my productivity will be restored.
KTS:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Utensil.
yet another mirror (Score:2)
What are the new features? (Score:2)
-----------
Rootnode.org [rootnode.org]
KMALLOC_MAXSIZE (Score:2)