Upgrading Your Current System To Kernel 2.6 442
An anonymous reader writes "This white paper provides an overview of the process of moving an existing desktop system to the 2.6 kernel. It will highlight other software requirements imposed by the new kernel and administrative changes that you must make when migrating an existing system to the 2.6 kernel. It supplements previous whitepapers in the same series about Customizing the 2.6 kernel [Slashdot discussion here(1)] and porting drivers to the 2.6 kernel [Slashdot discussion here(2)] to the 2.6 kernel."
I wish I had this two months ago (Score:5, Informative)
Still conveniently igoring (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I wish I had this two months ago (Score:4, Informative)
I played around with it also and found it to cause many problems.
If you run Red Hat, check out this webcast 2.6 Linux Kernel in Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.3: A Technology Overview [redhat.com] about them backporting features to 2.4.
I run a great deal of IBM servers and I can see their ties with IBM. I hope this webcast will enlighten me to how they make sure that Red Hat gets the most of the IBM servers, since we have a company decision to run Red Hat.
It's worth it (Score:4, Informative)
Loads any modules you need
Lets you do tasks preemtpively
Boots in a much shorter time (from 2.4.23's 35 sec to ~14 sec in my case)
It's also rock solid in my experience now, a good sound kernel choice that will fit virtually all workstations =)
blah (Score:3, Informative)
If you've got a... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not the only one suffering this.
Works great on my slackware desktop.
Fast mouse? Check your XF86Config (Score:5, Informative)
Probably everyone but me knew this, but thought I'd throw it out in case anyone else is in the same boat.
My experiences with 2.6 (Score:5, Informative)
DVDs look awesome. I had to tweak the hdparms for DMA, but they work great.
Ever since NVidia came out with the latest drivers, things like the UT2k4 Demo fun fantastic.
I was a little hung up on modules... seeing as I rarely use them, it wasn't a show-stopper. The conversion from modutils to module-init-tools was mostly painless.
Recently, I've been playing with MTD, and trying to get a test machine to use 12 out of the 16 megs of an AGP Voodoo3 3000 card's memory as a device I can format or use as swap. I have been unsuccessful. (2.6.3). This is also on a testing machine, not my "main" machine.
On a slightly OT note, planning on building a Mini ITX system with a Via Epia board (one of the 800 mhz ones). Should have the case this week, jury's still out on the mb.
Other than that, no complaints, it's been fantastic. I'm running 2.6.3 on 3 different machines (with different responsibilies) and it feels like there's no going back now!
Re:I wish I had this two months ago (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I wish I had this two months ago (Score:5, Informative)
If you need a newer kernel, install a newer distribution.
Really? apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.3-1-686, followed by a reboot didn't seem too overly difficult for my little brother (very much a non-techie).
easier than 2.4 (Score:5, Informative)
Last week I took about 30 minutes and grabbed 2.6.3 did a clean/config/make, which took about the majority of that time, and booted into the fastest Linux box I have ever had.
2.6 booted with OpenGL without any tweaks pushing glgears to 1600fps and ALSA kicked in without errors on the emu10k1. Device drivers posed no issues for either the USB keyboard/mouse or hardrive or nework card.
No 'migration' was necessary for either windowmaker / enlightenment / blender / JACK or any of my other 100 some odd apps.
Re:If you've got a... (Score:4, Informative)
Fedora Core 1 (Score:5, Informative)
And for the love of god, please read the whole thread. Don't ever install a kernel with rpm -Uvh. Leave yourself a backup (rpm -ivh).
Re:Debina and 2.6 Kernel module loading at boot (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fast mouse? Check your XF86Config (Score:3, Informative)
psmouse_noext=1
Re:If you've got a... (Score:5, Informative)
Have you been bitten by the /dev/psaux change? (Excuse me if you know about this and you have a different problem).
Unless your kernel is compiled to specifically support the old /dev/psaux device, you'll need to change all references to it your X11 config file (stored in/etc/X11/) to its replacement: /dev/input/mice
Hope this helps.Re:sound (Score:3, Informative)
Like I said, though, it depends on the card, but then Mandrake 8.0 found that same ESS card just fine, so it depends on how well the OS is configured, too.
Woops, I lied... (Score:2, Informative)
apt-get update
apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.3-1-686
update-grub
Reboot. Works.
The thing that amazes me is I've had this laptop running over two weeks since the last reboot! OK, so I close the silly thing and let it hibernate, but then I pop it open and I have a three-second startup time! The system uptime on "top" showed 15 days, 20 hours. I've never had this luxury with my laptop when using the 2.4 kernel, ever!
Re:It's worth it (Score:2, Informative)
CONFIG_PREEMPT:
This option reduces the latency of the kernel when reacting to
real-time or interactive events by allowing a low priority process to
be preempted even if it is in kernel mode executing a system call.
This allows applications to run more reliably even when the system is
under load.
Say Y here if you are building a kernel for a desktop, embedded
or real-time system.
Re:I can't find it anywhere.... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I know what they're talking about, yeah, there's the penguin and the topic, but still.
Speaking of, can anyone help me upgrade from "Operating System 2000" to "Operating System XP?"
How to upgrade 2.4 to 2.6 in Gentoo: (Score:4, Informative)
rm
ln -s
mount
genkernel all
vi
reboot
That is ALL there is to it. It is pretty much the same as upgrading to any other kernel. The only trick I saw was that the kernel needs more parameters than 2.4. It needs "root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc real_root=/dev/hda?" appended, which kernel 2.4 did not need. All the other tools (module autoloaders, etc.) are already 2.6 ready on a Gentoo system
Re:AMEN!! (Score:3, Informative)
Install device-mapper patch into 2.4 kernel. Devmapper isn't part of the 2.4, but is part of 2.6. Not sure if any distros include the patch in their 2.4 releases (Red Hat doesn't)
Install LVM2 into existing system (LVM1 and LVM2 commands can co-exist)
Boot 2.4 kernel w/device mapper and LVM2
*hand waving*
http://linux.msede.com/lvm_mlist/archive/2003/1
(AKA http://tinyurl.com/2jj3h [tinyurl.com])
Install 2.6 kernel w/device mapper and LVM2
In this case, you're only running LVM2 commands and device mapper. You still have to convert the LVM1 metadata on disk to LVM2 *hand waving*
LVM2 uses an 'lvm' command that has the operation you want to perform as an argument. This 'lvm vgcreate' instead of 'vgcreate'. AFAIK, the remainder of the arguments are the same as before.
My weird problem with 2.6 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If you've got a... (Score:4, Informative)
Unstable good? Yes. (Score:2, Informative)
If you find something doesn't work, update your package cache and download an updated version of that program. If it works, good. At that point, call it "debian stable" and stop upgrading it.
Wash, rinse and repeat.
Re:Still conveniently igoring (Score:1, Informative)
MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:2, Informative)
> Loads any modules you need
It doesnt quite work like that- in its default config it basically loads all modules, and doesnt let you unload them- so when you plug something in it has a higher chance of "just working".
This isnt anything special, and GEEWHIZBANG! it actually ends up functioning like a good old monolithic kernel.
> Lets you do tasks preemtpively
Hahah as the AC said - "you can complete tasks before you even knew you wanted to do them"
> Boots in a much shorter time (from 2.4.23's 35 sec to ~14 sec in my case
I don't know about you, but most of my systems booting time is in the init scripts- I saw little difference in actual kernel boot time...
Re:OT: Debian (Score:2, Informative)
Most people trying out Debian as a desktop distro should use unstable so that they get the latest packages. It is actually very stable.
If you use stable or testing you will probably be disappointed by the age of the packages.
Upgrading to RedHat 7.1's kernel to 2.6 (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, and another problem I had was "Error: Unknown pseudo-op: `.incbin'" -- this was fixed by upgrading binutils to the latest version. Aside from these two problems, the upgrade went smoothly.
[OT] Reinstall tip (Score:4, Informative)
As an aside, you can save yourself a lot of trouble in doing a fresh install with some intelligent partitioning. Most systems have an expert mode (or may offer nothing but expert mode, depending on the system) that lets you specify which partition corresponds to which mount point manually and decide which partitions should and should not be reformatted. If you set up /home on a separate partition, you can wipe everything else while leaving your user data alone. That can save you the trouble of having to restore all of your personal files when you install the new system. It's not necessarily perfect- some configuration files may change between versions of your favorite desktop environment, for instance- but it's a big improvement. You should obviously back up your data before doing the install just in case, but you should be doing periodic backups of your system already anyway.
Re:Fedora Core 1 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Module loading (Score:2, Informative)
Hope this helps. It took me a good few hours to track down why my ethernet card driver wasn't loading on boot.
For ATAPI cd burners (Score:5, Informative)
The trick is:
cdrecord -scanbus dev=ATAPI
cdrecord dev=ATAPI:1,0,0 isname.iso
no boot time kernel options need to be passed (no more hdb=ide-scsi nonsense).
Good luck.
Re:OT: Debian (Score:5, Informative)
crossing my fingers for kexec() in 2.6 (Score:3, Informative)
The only complaint I can come up with (which isn't actually a complaint at all) is that 2.6 is still lacking kexec() [lwn.net] support. Randy Dunlap has been doing some work on it including patches [osdl.org] for 2.6.1 (works with
I've only rebooted my workstation 3 times since 2.6.2 came out, and 2 of those was a 'kexec -e' reboot. So I haven't had to wait on my annoying Video BIOS, Motherboard BIOS, or Adaptec BIOS in almost a month, which is nice.
Still, I can see why it is not included because it does break non-standard consoles (e.g. fbcon) on kexec reboot. Sure this is offtopic, but everyone else seems to be bitching about their beefs with 2.6 so I thought I would too
Re:OT: Debian (Score:4, Informative)
Been there. Debian does install automatically on a FEW machines, particularly older machines that were popular and used "standard" components. I'm using a Dell GX1 that I got for $99.
Here s what I have done in the past when I got stuck without X-windows working...
Install Debian and go through the X-windows set-up process. Do the best you can at guessing your card information, refresh rates and whether or not to use framebuffers.
Locate the XF86Config(-4) file in
Now boot a copy of Knoppix (the bootable CD version of Linux), and, assuming it did a better job of setting up X-windows than you did, check the same settings for it (same location). Differences are likely to be in the horizontal and vertical refresh rates, the use of framebuffers, or the driver being used, also the list of module options such as "glx", "dri".
Surprisingly, X will fail to load properly even if your MOUSE settings are wrong. So you might have done everything right for video and gotten a trivial mouse parameter wrong and still have problems. (The systems DOES tell you this and tells you what log file to go read when this happens, but I remember being a bit intimidated by this process the first couple of times).
There are also some command line utilities you can run to straighten out your X setup, but I'm lazy and would rather just SEE that the system can work (using Knoppix, and then just copy what works.
Above process also works for diagnosing some network card and sound card problems.
Future versions of Debian will probably have better automatic device detection and configuration. In the mean time Knoppix (which is based on Debian) is a handy thing to have around.
RH9, drop ide-scsi, OSS may be best, AGP has split (Score:2, Informative)
Was it worth it. If you're keen, probably - boot times are reduced and the system seems more responsive when under load. But for the most part - if you already have fast hardware - you might not notice the difference. A safe approach might be to wait for distro's to catch up - I have no idea how easy it's going to be to upgrade my RH 9 system to RH-Fedora now that I've changed all these things.
Here's the major things I had to do after the upgrade...
I had to stop using ide-scsi for my burner - 2.6.3 can lock up totally if I use ide-scsi. According to the ide-cd maintainer ide-scsi is on the way out. The cdrecord (v2) in RH 9 is capable of using ATAPI devices - see the man page. If you're using k3b, just point it a
I have es1371 on board sound. I found ALSA sound was worse than OSS - annoying clicks at the ends of sounds when transitioning to silence - might be able to fixed with tweaking pci priorities. I found it easy to stick with OSS - if fact, originally after first upgrading, OSS kept working without me doing anything (just make sure enable the OSS kernel build options as well as the ALSA ones).
Rpm has some kind of issue - threading? Using the LD_ASSUME_KERNEL environment variable fixes it. I use the following script to run it: For example: It's also been reported that upgrading to the latest rpm will fix it. You can also use my script to run anything that doesn't like the new threading model - for example, older versions of xine.
Getting 3D under X11 to work was a pain. In an effort to get it to work I downloaded and built the latest X11 driver. But I'm not sure this is necessary because I later found my major hurdle was that the AGP module had been split and I now need to load four modules to get it to work: Obviously which agp related modules to load now varies depending on your hardware. In my case this is a AMD processor, VIA mainboard, and an ATI 9200 graphics card. Here is my modprobe.conf entry: I suspect this is all I really needed to do to get 3D running.
I had to upgrade to lm_sensors-2.8.4 to get temperature and RPM monitoring to function - and I had to reconfigure the settings to get good fan RPM readings. Ksensors needed a rebuild.
Re:Outside of Debian (Score:3, Informative)
You also have to manually upgrade all the packages to 2.6-supporting versions (by reading the README to find out what they are), and download and install the kernel source. Even if you wish to configure and compile the kernel yourself, Debian's package system will do this for you.
But the real issues involved in upgrading a kernel have nothing to do with how to install it. That is easy. LVM has been deprecated by a new version, devfs has been deprecated, ide-scsi has been deprecated, etc.: there are real issues to resolve that require changes -outside- the kernel and knowledge of the underlying issues.