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Linux Kernel 2.2.23 Released 129

Posted by CowboyNeal from the brand-new-old-stock dept.
sekra writes "Alan Cox has released a new version of the 2.2 kernel. 2.2.23-rc2 was renamed to 2.2.23 without any changes. You can find the ChangeLog in his announcement and download the patch from your local mirror." There seems to be a flurry of releases this weekend.
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Linux Kernel 2.2.23 Released More

Linux Kernel 2.2.23 Released

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  • Another line added to the kernel... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Oh no! Wait! Not even another line!

    Thanks for the announcement.

  • Duplicate? (Score:5, Funny)

    by suwain_2 ( 260792 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @10:10AM (#4783566) Journal
    People complain about duplicate stores... Imagine what I thought when I read about a 2.2 kernel being newly released! :)

    • Re:Duplicate? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 30, 2002 @10:37AM (#4783651)
      Look at the numbers.

      Spooky, isn't it ?

      2.2.22 gets replaced.

      What's wrong with all twos ? I think we should be told.....

      And 2.4.20 and 2.5.50 just came out.

      (20 / 4) / 2) = 2.5. Coincidence ?

      5 / 2 = 2.5. Coincidence ?

      50 / 20 = 2.5. Coincidence ?

      An alien intelligence is at work here. Mark my words......

      • Re:Duplicate? (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Alan Cox being alien should not come as a surprise on anyone, but what's that part about 'intelligence' ??

  • Slow news day eh? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by TeknoHog ( 164938 )
    While the 2.4 releases are (barely) newsworthy, why this? Are some people still using the _latest_ 2.2 kernels? Is there a reason to update to 2.2.x if you can't go 2.4 for some reason?

    • Re:Slow news day eh? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It is newsworthy to know that the 2.2 line of kernels is still being maintained.
    • Well, I'm not sure but I think that most people who would be interested in this are admins who still run or must run 2.2 in order to not break binary compatibility with any drivers they need or software they've written.

      Just a guess.

      • Re:Slow news day eh? (Score:3, Informative)

        by kasperd ( 592156 )
        binary compatibility with any drivers

        There is no garantee about binary compatibility for kernel code between any versions. Not even same source compiled with different options are garanteed to be binary compatible. You can however expect most driver sources to be compatible between the 2.2.x kernels.

    • lcall DoS (Score:5, Informative)

      by KjetilK ( 186133 ) <kjetil AT kjernsmo DOT net> on Saturday November 30, 2002 @10:35AM (#4783643) Homepage Journal
      Well, as it was recently shouted on debian-security [mail-archive.com], the 2.2-series had the same security flaw that allowed any local user to crash a computer. So, if you have untrusted local users, you should upgrade.

      My router uses a floppy-based distro [coyotelinux.com] and that has the 2.2 kernel, and I really see no reason why I would want 2.4 on that old box. It isn't broken, so it doesn't need an upgrade to 2.4. You could say that it isn't very vulnerable to the mentioned problem either, because if someone got access to it, I would have a far bigger problem than them crashing my router. Others may have other uses for 2.2, so a fix of the mentioned problem is definately a Good Thing[tm] and nice news.

      • Well, for routers I'd say Netfilter could be a good thing. Although I guess it depends on your needs.
        • Well, for routers I'd say Netfilter could be a good thing. Although I guess it depends on your needs.

          As another coyote user, I'd have to agree. The problem is sticking everything you need for 2.4 kernel plus ipfilter userland on a single floppy. I've managed it (using uClibc) but only by throwing away SSH (don't get me started on how complex the SSH daemons are).

          Oh well, another project for the spare time.

    • Re:Slow news day eh? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mindstrm ( 20013 )
      I have servers running 2.2... they do what they do well, they are real servers.. so at the moment there is absolutely no reason to risk the uncertainty that comes with doing a major upgrade.

      • The 2.2 is outdated and everyone knows it. Thats not even hardly relevent here. When you use the 2.2 kernel its most likely on a box that needs stability. The new features of 2.2.23 probably wont bring anything new to your router. This update is pretty pointless unless you need one of the new feature which you probably dont. I heard about there being a security issue which you might care about but even then its probably not worth it.

    • Still using 2.0.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by robbo ( 4388 ) <slashdot&simra,net> on Saturday November 30, 2002 @11:07AM (#4783740)
      I work in a robotics lab and several of our robots are running 2.0. Why? The company that built them wrote drivers that run in 2.0 and they've since gone out of business. As long as the kernel is stable, which it is, it's not worth the development effort for us to write new 2.2 or 2.4 drivers. Given that the robot cost about $60K, we're also not eager to run out and buy a new one.
      • Which robots do you have? We managed to upgrade almost all our robots to 2.4. Funny enough, it's the main server that is still on 2.2 because it needs propreitry raid drivers..
        • The main problem is our Nomad 200, by Nomadics. It has a driver called robotd which intefaces with the robot controller. We also have some Super Scouts, which can be upgraded in theory but it's a pain because they don't have floppy disks.
      • So, what you're saying is you bought $60K robots from a company that wrote closed source drivers that only run on one growing-old version of Linux. And the company doesn't even exist anymore.

        You must be in government, or in a government funded lab, because if there were people at the top worrying about making money they'd be kicking your butt.
        • We have the source for the driver-- we just don't want to commit the resources to porting it. We have more important things to do than make sure we've got the latest kernel. As long as it's stable, and our code runs on it, we're happy. We've had the robot since '95. I'd say seven years is pretty good for a robot, especially from a company [robots.com] that sold itself to 3com for its wireless products. We're running 2.0.29.
          And you're close- we're a university lab, so there's no concern about making money. ;-)

    • Re:Slow news day eh? (Score:4, Informative)

      by fudgefactor7 ( 581449 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @11:27AM (#4783798)
      Yes, actually. We found that there are some VPNing tools that don't work correctly (or at all) under the 2.4.x kernel, but work just fune under 2.2.x.

    • Re:Slow news day eh? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Gruturo ( 141223 )
      While the 2.4 releases are (barely) newsworthy, why this? Are some people still using the _latest_ 2.2 kernels? Is there a reason to update to 2.2.x if you can't go 2.4 for some reason?

      There is!
      I just setup a permanent IPSEC tunnel with freeswan and, for one of the boxes, which has an AMI MegaRAID controller, 2.4 simply _wont_ see the partition table (it sees the scsi ID, but that's it).
      After fighting with it for 6 hours, I just grabbed a 2.2.22, patched it with FreeS/WAN and here it is, humming quietly as it does its job.

      (And of course the next day 2.2.23 comes out. Argh.)

    • Actually, the Playstation 2 - probably one of the biggest growth sources for Linux users, is running 2.2. Of course, in the Dreamcast [linuxdc.org] world, we are already on to 2.5.
    • I still use 2.2.x kernels because Openwall [www.openwall] hasn't released a stable patch for the 2.4.x kernels yet. Don't even mention the GRSecurity patches. I've heard it's been getting better, but when it first came out the patch itself was ugly.

  • Nice job (Score:5, Insightful)

    by koh ( 124962 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @10:14AM (#4783579) Journal
    I can't stress enough the need to support older versions of the linux kernel if only for those people who simply can't switch for some reason.

    It may seem like a waste of time, but it's not. It's good to have older versions of the linux kernel still being maintained. Let's not be Autodesk or Microsoft, we're doing support the right way :)

  • Excellent. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 30, 2002 @10:24AM (#4783613)
    I picked up a SparcServer1000E recently for nothing. 2.2.x series kernels are the only choice for me since sun4d architecture isn't supported under the 2.4.x kernels...

    Such a pity since I'd like to use LVM etc...

    Still.. I'm too dumb to fix it myself...

    • You should really think about just installing solaris 7 or 8 on that. We have a few IPC/IPx's and Classics/LX's at work, (4c / 4m arch), and Linux runs like a turtle on uphill glass. It's aweful. Yet, it's either solaris 5.5.7 or solaris 7 runs smooth as can be, on everything from the IPC 12 mhz 4c's to our quad-proc 4X300 Ultra II.

      I don't particularly like solaris (or any SVR4), but for sun hardware, you'll be pleased with the performance gain.

      Of course, this is all contingent on it being used as a server. I hate openwindows. For a desktop, I'd rather run .. well anything but openwindows.

      • What makes you think you have to run OpenWindows on Solaris?

        I am running FVWM2 and liking it a lot. Clean, fast, easy to maintain, and there's a binary distribution right on the Sunfreeware server. Sun just started distributing a release candidate GNOME binary distribution, if you like eye candy and don't mind the glacial speed.

        I get the benefit of dual headed 24 bit accelerated color on my SS10BSX box. None of the freenixes come close at all to supporting the cgfourteen framebuffers properly.

    • As another poster suggested: install Solaris. That way you'll also be able to install Solstice DiskSuite. I am sure you won't miss LVM.

      Sure, it can't do RAID 5 in software, but it's a helluva flexible, and it does RAID 1 + 0 by default (unlike Veritas, which really seems to discourage RAID 1 + 0 in favor of 0 + 1). With the latest patches it also supports soft partitions,so you got much more than just 7 slices. Add the concept of disksets to the lot, and you see how SDS is rather nice.

  • safer computing: don't fix it if it ain't broken (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nniillss ( 577580 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @10:48AM (#4783692)
    Older kernels are maintained for the same reason that RedHat applies fixes to all recently shipped kernels: if a user needs a security update in a production system, he/she does only want to have the bug removed. Updating to the latest and greatest (kernel) with hundreds of new features might even be more risky than keeping the old (bugged/insecure) kernel version.

    On the other hand, if you have new hardware like e.g. a nforce2-board: use and test the newest kernel versions. I for my part am anxiously waiting for the new X86 version which will support the new Intel 845G chipsets.

    • I had no problem with kernel 2.4.19 and Intel's 845G chipset.

      (snip from dmesg...)
      Linux version 2.4.19 (root@tux) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #5 Fri Nov 29 19:45:26 PST 2002
      Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=slack8-1 ro
      Initializing CPU#0
      Detected 2524.974 MHz processor.
      Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
      Calibrating delay loop... 5033.16 BogoMIPS
      Memory: 256852k/261588k available
      Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.53GHz stepping 07
      Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
      agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 203M
      agpgart: Detected Intel i845G chipset
      agpgart: AGP aperture is 128M @ 0xe8000000

      As far as your nForce2 board goes, you can
      download the linux drivers from nvidia.
      Linux nForce driver [nvidia.com].

  • Is it possible to downgrade your kernel? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dthoma ( 593797 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @11:11AM (#4783755) Journal
    Forgive the stupid question, but would it be possible to replace my current kernel (2.4.18) with this older one (2.2.23) if I wanted to run Linux on an older machine (P200)? From what I can see here, 2.2 is less resource-intensive than 2.4.

    • Re:Is it possible to downgrade your kernel? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Saturday November 30, 2002 @02:41PM (#4784442) Homepage
      I don't think that the 2.4 kernel is noticeably more resource-intensive than 2.2. In fact, it is quite a bit faster for typical users.

      Now a typical Linux distribution using the 2.4 kernel may be slower than one based on 2.2, but that is due to other factors like the C library, perhaps a newer version of KDE or whatever.
    • it's still possible to buy or download older distros if you're starting from scratch. This makes sure that everything is coordinated on the software/library front.

      If you have no need for the latest Windows workalike GUI or certain hardware support it may even well be the "correct" way to go.

      Red Hat 5.2 is a real workhorse of a distro.

      On my old 486 VGA laptop I run mulinux which I belive still runs a 2.0x kernel. Boots from a single floppy and uses UMSDOS so it doesn't interfere with my Windows 3.11 install at all. If all you run is vi and some network tools this is really all you need.

      There's lots of work still to be gotten out of older kernels.

      KFG

  • What can I still use with 2.2? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eggstasy ( 458692 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @11:24AM (#4783787) Journal
    I would like to see if I can set up a lighter system on my 486, so my mom can use the web and email. A GUI, compatibility with modern webpages and ease of use are a requirement.
    Presently I have windows 3.11 + Calmira (a very lightweight program that gives you a win95 interface under 3.x). I can run the 16-bit version of IE5 there just fine, though it takes a few seconds to boot.
    Can I do this with an older Linux kernel? I remember that 2 year ago your average distro ran very slowly on my recently deceased MMX pentium so I definitely cant use anything standar like that on my 486.
    I was thinking that given its infinite customizability an LFS setup could breathe new life into the ole bugger. Is it worth it to move to an older kernel and lose compatibility with modern apps?
    Wouldnt the apps be more resource-intensive than the kernel? I shudder at the thought of how slow mozilla would be on that box. Does opera require a 2.4 kernel? Does IceWM? Is there anything lighter than IceWM with a win95 look? Any general advice?

    • Re:What can I still use with 2.2? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jensend ( 71114 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @12:11PM (#4783919)
      Very few programs actually require 2.4. IceWM will do just fine on 2.2, and I think Opera will as well (but don't quote me on Opera). A while back, I installed Slackware 8's 'zipslack' (based on a 2.2.2x kernel) on a EXT2 partition on my 486 laptop and added X and IceWM, and it ran moderately well. However, I would really recommend getting at least 32 mb of RAM if you want to run things on X.

    • Re:What can I still use with 2.2? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I would slap as much RAM into the thing as possible and build gentoo on it from stage 1. Building will take several days but gentoo is a 'ground-up' rather than a 'kitchen sink' philosophy. make sure to pick your optimization flags well, this will be very important. afterwards 'emerge' (install from source) Xfree86, WindowMaker, and Phoenix (a leaner mozilla derivative). I don't know if that will be decent, but it seems to work on my 200MHz machine alright. Another option would be to build it with Xfree and then run the windowmanager + applications on a faster machine and have the output go to the slow machine (that's what I do from my old machines). Only make it an X terminal if you have decent network and graphics cards, as those will be key to snappy performance.
    • You do know that if you have a better computer somewhere else in the house that you could just link them, then export the display?

      I currently have 3 old machines running kde3, mozilla, etc by actually running them on the main server, and exporting the display.

      See ltsp.org
    • As fo web browsers, you could always use Dillo [cipsga.org.br]. It may be lacking in feutures(such as frames) but it is very lightweight. Only other option I would think that you have is useing Lynx. Or you could always pick up a Pentium 2 for $50 =)

    • I had setup an old WinBook FX (P166MMX, 48mb) using Red Hat 6.2, Blackbox, Opera, xmms, AbiWord, and Gaim, and it ran very well. I imagine IceWM would work just as well.

      Just about anything out there will work with 2.2.x kernels, although some X based utilities seem to want you to use XFree 4.x, while most older distros come with 3.3.x and older, and many older cards lack compatibility with the 4.x series. But all the major stuff seems to work fine.

  • For those who ask why. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wray ( 59341 ) on Saturday November 30, 2002 @01:36PM (#4784173)
    I am so sick of seeing the standard, "Why did we post this stupid story?" questions. Hey people read the FAQ [slashdot.org] The pertinent answer is copied below. Secondly, if you think it is just blah news, or unimportant, just skip the headlines -- surely you don't read everything in the newspaper, you read what YOU are interested in. The newspaper reports what it decides to.

    Why did you post story X?
    Slashdot is many things to many people. Some people think it's a Linux site. To others, it's a geek hangout. I've always worked very hard to make sure that Slashdot matches up with my interests and the interests of my authors. We think we're pretty typical Slashdot readers... but that does mean that occasionally one of us might post something that you think is inappropriate. You might be interested in my Omelette rant.

    Personally, I have a pet peeve when people post comments saying things like "That's not News For Nerds!" and "That's not Stuff that Matters!" Slashdot has been running for almost 5 years, and over that time, I have always been the final decision maker on what ends up on the homepage. It turns out that a lot of people agree with me: Linux, Legos, Penguins, Sci (both real and fiction). If you've been reading Slashdot, you know what the subjects commonly are, but we might deviate occasionally. It's just more fun that way. Variety Is The Spice Of Life and all that, right? We've been running Slashdot for a long time, and if we occasionally want to post something that someone doesn't think is right for Slashdot, well, we're the ones who get to make the call. It's the mix of stories that makes Slashdot the fun place that it is.

    Answered by: CmdrTaco
    Last Modified: 6/26/00
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