Kernel 2.6.1 Released

jnf writes "And so he said it is released, and then jumped on a plane to Australia. Linus announced the release of 2.6.1 a few minutes ago, fixes include AGPGART, a fork() bugfix, and misc changes to XFS, and those are just the patches applied since v2.6.1-rc3. Full changelog is avialable, kernel at the usual places, i held off posting this until kernel.org was updated." 2.6.0 is now in Debian unstable...

Besides Debian, What distros have 2.6.x ?

[flyingace]

Besides Debian, What distros have 2.6.x ?

do_mremap local exploit

[zeroclip]

Does this release fix the do_mremap() exploit? I coulden't find it in the changelog. I got the impression from security sites that 2.6.0 had this bug.

Re:do_mremap local exploit

[PowerBert]

Yes, it was fixed in 2.6.1-rc1....
and then again in 2.6.1-rc2.
Real men don't test patches... aparently ;-)

ALSA?

[FyRE666]

Let's hope they've fixed ALSA in this release then. I was surprised when I tried using it with 2.6.0 and it seems full of broken drivers. Of course, downloading ALSA and building it the same way I would with 2.4.x works fine! I'm thinking they should either try to include the latest ALSA driver code in the kernel, or just leave it out so that it can be built separately...

Help: re-introducing myself to the intracacies..

[tommck]

This is a bit off-topic, but:

I was an early user of Linux (1.2.8 and earlier w/ Slackware). ("Back in my day, we had to compile our own kernels!").

Anyway, I've been screwing around again lately. I've got two machines running Mandrake 8.2 and one w/ Mandrake 9.2 (VMWare actually). Also planning on messing w/ Redhat 9 and Suse. Knoppix rules, etc.

What I want to know is: What are the complications/problems with upgrading your kernel? I remember there being all sorts of problems with shared libraries versions since they don't have any internalized versioning system to run things side by side.

Is it still true that I might break half the apps running on my system if I try to update my kernel?

Please help to re-educate a guy who has lost his way.

Thanks.

Tom

2.4 -vs- 2.6

[MobyDisk]

In looking at the changelog, I see lots of 2.4 fixes are being added into 2.6.1. I understand the kernel versions are completely parallel development paths. So does this mean there are lots of 2.4 bug fixes that are still not in 2.6? If so, I would think that might be something worth waiting for before upgrading.

Re:My Patch

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Well I've been poking around in the kernel for years now. Mostly just trying things other people have told me to do to fix what ever problem I was having. Then I'd say, "yeah, that fixed it", and the author of said code would submit the patch.

This time, I attempted to do the same. But the author didn't tell me much of what to do at all. So I just started looking at the one function he pointed me to. I ended up surprising myself. I found I could easily follow what was going on, and quickly found my problem. I tried a fix, and it worked. I reported back to the author, that I fixed my problem and how, and he asked me to submit a patch to Linus.

I've used to think of the kernel as some beast, full of black magic. Some of the parts dealing with broken hardware, are a little arcane. But the more I look at it, the more I see that most of it is just C. Now that Linus is subscribed to the linux-kernel mailing list, I see more developers interacting with him. He really does have good taste in code.

Zip Drive Support

[Ween]

Recently Linus has shown his dislike for the scsi emulator for ide devices. He went on to say that there werent any common devices that needed the scsi layer. One such device are zip drives. I use a Zip 750 in my server to backup a small but important set of data. The only way this drive will work is with the scsi emulated layer. Has this been fixed in the 2.6 kernel series (it wasnt fixed in 2.6 pre4), or does someone have another way to use this device without scsi?

Re:Considering trying out Linux

[SnapperHead]

I have 2 Broadcom NICs in my new server. They work just fine, haven't had a problem with them.

From what I remeber, there are 2 drivers. The ones from Broadcome, which are a bitch to install and have poor performance, and the other thats in the kernel it self. Its listed as tg3. I am still running 2.4 kernel on that server, so I imagine 2.6 should work fine.

Stock Debian kernels don't appear to have this NIC compiled in, I can't figure out for the life of me why not.

*shrug*

are PS2 mice still an issue?

[horvathcom]

I have been using test9, and have been having a hell of a time with my PS2 mouse. On my system, with 2.6 kernels, whenever there is any load, the mouse becomes very erratic bouncing about the screen and clicking on things at random. I've tried as many of the "fixes" as I can find, but none have done the trick. I assume it is limited to sometihng unique about my system (KT600 mobo), otherwise people would raising a big stink. Have I missed the fix somewhere>

Re:Finally, the patch party is over (for now).

[phlawed]

....not. This is what I add to 2.6.1:

• [bytesex.org]
  bttv/v4l patch
  [holtmann.org]
  bluez kernel patch (bluetooth)
  [vc.cvut.cz]
  matrox frame buffer patch
  [alsa-project.org]
  alsa 1.0.1 kernel patch
  [epitest.fi]
  hostap (accesspoint sw for prism hardware)
  [sourceforge.net]
  qc-usb (quickcam express driver)

Re:My Patch

[LiquidCoooled]

You sir are what Linux is all about :)

Thank you for fixing our code and making it a little more stable for us all. Hopefully your comments will spur others to have a peek under the hood and see what they can discover.

Re:UML?

[drinkypoo]

linux will run in bochs. bochs can supposedly be accelerated with plex86, though I've never actually seen an implementation of this anywhere. And in theory, it should be possible (though perhaps much harder) to get all this working on windows as a linux host. I've run linux in bochs, but it was emulating the cpu, rather than virtualizing. Still, virtualization is probably the best way to go there. As for user mode linux running under windows, windows would need to have support for it.

If Knoppix isn't permitted, and you don't have admin access, you're not going to get much mileage out of any method of running some Unix on your system.

Cygwin is still the answer; It of course has some distance yet to go, but as far as I can tell it's the best POSIX-on-NT system around. (NT's internal POSIX.1 compliance does not help.) Primarily I'm impressed by the WAY things are done, no one is trying to make NT into things it isn't, they're just implementing additional functions and mapping them to those of NT whereever possible. This is certainly the Right Way(tm) to go about it.

Re:Hmmmm....

[buttahead]

now that's funny... I've never used lube during development.

Re:so...

[ScottGant]

...when do you actually do stuff on your machine?
apart from upgrading and watching tentacle-porn I mean.

Don't know what "tentecle-porn" is...but sounds interesting.

I work all the time on my machine. To upgrade a kernel takes all of 5 minutes...including boot time. And I've only upgraded from test9 like 3 times in the last 2 months...so 15 minutes to upgrade per 2 months. Wow, yes, I can see where you would think I would not have any time left to do anything.

Of course, you also could just be an anonymous coward troll...nah.