Linux Kernel 2.6.7 Released

conrausch writes "German Heise News reports among others that the new Linux Kernel 2.6.7 was just released, and that it fixes the previously mentioned bug in the floating point exception handling. Whether or not you offer shell access to other people, get it now from kernel.org or one of the mirrors."

Got it

[pcmanjon]

I just compiled and installed it. It's not that bad.. or good... orr... how the hell should I know?

System doesn't seem to run much different, I haven't read the changelog

but for those of you who want to read the changelog it can be found HERE:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/Chan ge Log-2.6.7

Err

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not on ftp.uk.kernel.org or ftp.fr.kernel.org?

Re:Got it

[pcmanjon]

Sorry, bad link above

Here's a good link

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/Change Log-2.6.7 [kernel.org]

AGAIN, I APOLOGIZE!

Re:Well I'll be...

[sucker_muts]

Doesn't matter, all kernels are affected. (2.4+ anyway)

Re:NVidia?

[Anonymous Coward]

why wouldnt it ?

(but to answer your question, its working fine on my box)

English: Linux Today has human redable changelog

[VC]

Linux 2.6.7 [linuxtoday.com]

Re:what about 2.4?

[andrej73]

patch for i386 [bkbits.net]

Re:what about 2.4?

[Dogers]

x.odd versions are the development versions inbetween. while 2.6 is current, towards the end of its life, Linus or whoeever will create a development 2.7 kernel. Once thats finalised, it'll be released as 2.8.x

Think of the odd versions as release candidates, if youre from a Windows world! :)

Re:APIC Fix?

[flex941]

It should be fixed. Give it a try!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:what about 2.4?

[kfg]

What happened to 2.5?

It became 2.6 and has been supplanted by 2.7.

That's the way things work around here, odd numbered point releases always being development models for the next stable release which is always even numbered.

There are a lot of good reasons for maintaining older stable releases. Maintaining obsolete development models would be a bit silly.

KFG

Re:what about 2.4?

[egreB]

Out of curiosity, what would prevent someone from being able to switch to kernal 2.6?

The driver architecture in Linux kernel 2.6 changed somewhat from 2.4. Drivers will have to be patched or rewritten to work with 2.6. This is being worked on, but lots of unofficial patches to the kernel haven't caught up yet. My laptop, for instance, was unable to get X up at adequate resolutions with 2.6 (albeit this was around christmas - I might give it another shot with this release).

Then there's low-level userspace programs (stuff not running as a part of the kernel itself) that needs some change. Examples are the PCMCIA-suite.

Re:Problems with JFS?

[flex941]

This e-mail [theaimsgroup.com] might help you out.

Re:Obligatory luser question

[alexbartok]

Making a Kernel isn't too hard. You find the correct image, (yep you probably want 2.6.7 ;), download the .tar.bz2 version. To keep this short, we'll stick it in /usr/src: 1) su - 2) cd /usr/src 3) wget http://full.url.to.file.including.filename 4) tar xjvf linux-...tar.bz2 5) ln -s ./linux-2.6.7 ./linux 6) cd linux-2.6.7 7) make menuconfig 8) configure options - read the help for information about options, if necessary google around, usually it's pretty easy to find information about specific options 9) make bzImage 10) make modules 11) cd arch/i386/boot/ 12) cp bzImage /boot/ 13) edit /etc/grub.conf with your favorite editor, basically adding the new image, using the existing one as template. reboot and enjoy :)

This is needed if they have ftp/cgi access

[ehack]

If the lamers have ftp upload ability and can execute cgi's via apache you'better have that fix in there too. I guess every single free webhost in the world with cgi's will go down in the next few days.

Re:Obligatory luser question

[Advocadus Diaboli]

Fedora Core 2 has already a kernel update. See the announcement [redhat.com] of the 2.6.6-1.435 kernel. So all you need is getting the RPM and install it.

The question is, when will this patch show up on other distributions. People are sometimes not able to compile a vanilla kernel or a vanilla kernel can cause headache, e.g. SuSE 9.1 formats your filesystem with reiserfs and ACLs, but a vanilla kernel might not support this backported ACL feature.

Seen the kernel release from this point of view means, that the sistributions should hurry up to provide fixed kernel packages for their users.

what really chaps my ass is

[Anonymous Coward]

the fact that a kernel revision needs to get a front page placement. Why dont you guys create a section called 'Linux Kernel' as you do for BSDs and dump all this irrelevant junk there?

Linux Linux Linux......Big fucking deal.

Re:Woohoo, another kernel compile.

[Anonymous Coward]

wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/patch- 2.6.7.bz2
cp patch-2.6.7.bz2 /usr/src
cd /usr/src
mv linux-2.6.6 linux-2.6.7
bunzip2 patch-2.6.7.bz2
cd linux-2.6.7
cp .config ../config.saved
make mrproper
cat ../patch-2.6.7.bz2 | patch -p1 #(or maybe -p0)
make mrproper
cp ../config.saved ./.config
make oldconfig
make && make clean modules modules_install install
vi /boot/grub/grub.config # check it make sure it's right
reboot

Not to difficult. Could make it into a script, to bad I'm going to loose my uptime to patch the kernel, but oh well. Shit happens.

Re:Just curious

[bwindle2]

I run 2.6.6. on an SMP machine, ext3 on SCSI RAID5 that runs MySQL/Apache/MRTG/BigBrother. It has been completely stable.

bwindle@balrog:~$ uptime
09:06:48 up 36 days, 22:03, 2 users, load average: 1.00, 0.55, 0.43
bwindle@balrog:~$ uname -a
Linux balrog 2.6.6 #3 SMP Mon May 10 10:55:43 EDT 2004 i686 GNU/Linux

Re:Is it just me,

[His name cannot be s]

The first 8-10 revisions in a 2.X release tend to go quite quickly.

Some even say, that the kernel isn't stable till at least .10 :)

It sure seemed that way when it went from 2.2 to 2.4

The 2.4.0 to 2.4.10 seemed like overnight, and then it slowed down to a small humm :p

Re:Is it just me,

[tunah]

2.4 is no longer being "developed" as such, it's being "maintained". So, in theory, you only get new releases for bugfixes of one kind or another.

2.6, while "stable", is still under development. It seems a little inconsistent, but it seems to work - the kernel guys get it reasonably stable for 2.6.0, a horde of regular users gets it and so there's more feedback/bug reports, and it all develops quite fast for a while, eventually everything calms down and the Downtime Costs Me $1000 A Minute people pick it up, and the kernel guys get to work on a (much more fun, I'm sure) unstable (odd-numbered) branch. At least that's how it looks to me...

Re:Just curious

[Superfly_rh]

I've got it on two servers, had it on three but had to back down to 2.4 for one.

It's running a Qmail/Courier IMAP server w/ webmail interface. And it's running a rather busy nfs/samba server.

I had it running on a second NFS/Samba server that was using LVM2 (only difference that I can tell). With the 2.6 kernel I got kernel panics 2-3 times a week. So I went down to the 2.4 kernel and it hasn't crashed since.

Re:Is it just me,

[Sunspire]

The 2.6.xx revisions have no bearing at all on when the 3.0.0 or 2.7.0 trees will get created. The quick turn around times are due to many factors; the new versioning and source control procedures put in place for 2.6 naturally encourage a more rapid pace while elimating the "did my patch make it into Linus's tree?" problems of yesteryear, which in turn has people submitting more, perhaps smaller, patches in a very rapid fashion. The 2.6 kernel is also right now being developed by more developers than ever, until the 2.7 branch gets spun all the efforts are basically focused on this single tree, timely releases keep code divergence down and hopefully prevents 20kloc ALSA merges from happening.

What, are you afraid they're suddenly going to run out of numbers for the 2.6.xx branch? ;) Hint: after 2.6.99 comes 2.6.100. With vendor kernels you can't say where in the 2.6 branch you are anyway, when you're running 2.6.6-1.423 it's can be anywhere between 2.6.6 and 2.6.10 feature and security wise.

Yes.

[HaloZero]

From the changelog:

Ben Collins:
* ieee1394: CSR1212 Extended ROM bug fixes
* ieee1394: Fix possible NULL ptr dereference with calls to find_ctx()
* ieee1394: Handle swsusp better in kernel threads
* ohci1394: Handle invalid max-packet-size
* ieee1394: Revision sync
* ohci1394: Fix incorrect HPSB_WARNING to HPSB_ERR

Re:Just curious

[leandrod]

>

I had it running on a second NFS/Samba server that was using LVM2 (only difference that I can tell). With the 2.6 kernel I got kernel panics 2-3 times a week.

Similar experience here. Had 2.6.3, if I remember well, with LVM, software RAID5 and ext3. Didn't got kernel panics, but abort logs that forced a reboot 'cause the filesystems were remounted readonly. Eventually I lost the /, so backed down to 2.4.

Tried to follow the issues in the relevant mailing lists, there was little interest by the powers that be.

I guess Tannenbaun was right, monolithic kerni are getting just too complex. If only the Hurd got critical mass...

Re:Time for download then

[Short Circuit]

Well, a quick googling didn't turn up a howto, but here are a couple of related links for your perusal:

ATI's Radeon 9800 Pro technical issues page [ati.com]

A LinuxQuestions.org thread [linuxquestions.org] on ATI with the NForce2 on Mandrake 10.0.

This is the i386 patch for 2.4

[Lface]

Well, yes that is the patch if you are running x86_64.

The 2.4 patch for i386 is here:
http://linux.bkbits.net:8080/linux-2.4/diffs/inclu de/asm-i386/i387.h@1.5??nav=index.html|ChangeSet@- 7d|cset@1.1447 [bkbits.net]

Re:what about 2.4?

[ahaning]

In case there's any confusion, when people say "odd point releases", they mean that middle number. You've probably gathered this by now, though. 2.0.0, 2.2.0, 2.4.0, 2.6.0 were "stable" while 1.9.9, 2.1.0, 2.3.0, and 2.5.0 were development.

So, 2.4.25 wasn't a development version, even though it ends in an odd number. The last number just indicates a minor version revision and it's still considered stable.

Re:Just curious

[Shaman]

I have approximately 20 machines using 2.6 since last fall and with the exception of one (an AMD-64 box), they have all been exemplary. That machine became stable with 2.6.6 though its BIOS seems flakey (hardware problems.. ugh)

In particular, my HT machines seem to perform very well with 2.6.3 and up.

Re:Woohoo, another kernel compile.

[Taurim]

Kernel 2.6.7 is the solution for this situation. It integrates the very useful following patch from Con Kolivas :

[PATCH] sched: SMT niceness handling

From: Con Kolivas

This patch provides full per-package priority support for SMT processors (aka pentium4 hyperthreading) when combined with CONFIG_SCHED_SMT.

It maintains cpu percentage distribution within each physical cpu package by limiting the time a lower priority task can run on a sibling cpu concurrently with a higher priority task.

It introduces a new flag into the scheduler domain
unsigned int per_cpu_gain; /* CPU % gained by adding domain cpus */

This is empirically set to 15% for pentium4 at the moment and can be modified to support different values dynamically as newer processors come out with improved SMT performance. It should not matter how many siblings there are.

How it works is it compares tasks running on sibling cpus and when a lower static priority task is running it will delay it till high_priority_timeslice * (100 - per_cpu_gain) / 100
eg. a nice 19 task (Note : Seti@Home for example :-) ) timeslice is 10ms and nice 0 timeslice is 102ms On vanilla the nice 0 task runs on one logical cpu while the nice 19 task runs unabated on the other logical cpu. With smtnice the nice 0 runs on one logical cpu for 102ms and the nice 19 sleeps till the nice 0 task has 12ms remaining and then will schedule.

Re:Now everyone...

[ThisNukes4u]

OpenBSD is all about securing the system from REMOTE holes. The openbsd home page boasts: Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years! REMOTE is the key word. They could care less about anything else(well maybe not care less, but thats not their focus)

Re: Not upgrading...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those of use still running P3-500's on old mobo's don't have very many compelling reasons to upgrade from 2.6.3.

Kernel 2.6.3 had a very broken OSS ALSA emulation layer. This is why I switched down to 2.6.2. Version 2.6.5 and above have a major ALSA fix. So if you use your soundcard at all, then it is definitely worth it to upgrade.

Re:NVidia?

[CyBaer]

It works.

Re:-mm patches?

[numark]

-mm patches are patches to the kernel source by a guy named Andrew Morton. Basically, his patches are more of a "testing ground" for new features that, while useful to some, may be not up to the point of risking including them into a production kernel that is used by businesses who need stable kernels. The features are therefore put into Morton's patches so they can be tested by people who want to take the risk, and some of these patches may eventually migrate to the standard kernel after testing.

Re:Obligatory luser question

[gunpowder]

Just a few comments to your build guide:

1) su -

Not neccessary at this early step, ie. not needed for compiling the kernel. Do a 'su' when you are about to install the compiled kernel&modules.

2) cd /usr/src
5) ln -s ./linux-2.6.7 ./linux

Not needed. 5) is actually discouraged by Linus. Just unpack the linux kernel sources somewhere and cd into that directory.

9) make bzImage
10) make modules

both commands are only needed for 2.4.x kernels and if you compile a kernel for the ix86 platform. If you are using 2.6.x, you should simply do a 'make'.

11) cd arch/i386/boot
12) cp bzImage /boot/
13) edit /etc/grub.conf

are also only needed if you compile for the Linux/ix86 platform. 13) only applies if you are using GRUB as a bootloader on a RedHat system. BTW, GRUB's config file is usually in /boot/grub/menu.lst.
You are also missing a 'make modules_install' and it might be a good idea to save your System.map and .config aswell.
Instead of 11-12) you might want to do a simple 'make install' (for 2.6.x kernels). Also try out 'make help'.

Re:Obligatory luser question

[parksie]

What should be under /usr/src/linux is a version of the kernel headers that your glibc was compiled against. Thus, you may have /usr/src/linux as the 2.6.6 headers that you built glibc with, when you upgrade the kernel to 2.6.7, you just use it under /usr/src/linux-2.6.7 and leave /usr/src/linux alone.

Re:APIC Fix?

[Halthar]

Based on my reading, someone from Nvidia gave em some hints. Nvidia had fixed the bug in the BIOS and gave the information to the manufacturers, but only one manufacturer actually fixed their BIOS (Shuttle I think?). Since no one else was fixing it, someone from Nvidia explained what the problem was and how to figure out if a BIOS had been fixed or not, as well as information on a work around to stop things from crashing. I could be wrong on this, since I still haven't had my coffee yet and this is from memory.

So far as I know those fixes went in to 2.6.6. Unfortunately, as a result of not being able to move to 2.6.6 yet, I haven't been able to test this fix (My two primary machines have NForce2 chipsets), but supposedly it's fixed.

Supermount

[Bralkein]

I just thought I would post a brief message about supermount. If anyone wants to upgrade to 2.6.7 and still use supermount, I don't think vanilla kernels have it in there (yet, I'm sure it'll get in there sooner or later). I'm pretty sure the Mandrake and Gentoo kernels have support for it (gentoo-dev-sources do, anyway), but I just looked at gentoo-dev-sources and it is at version 2.6.5, dunno about Mandrake, but I'm sure it will take a few days for all the distros to catch up.

If you want to upgrade for security reasons, but you also want supermount in your kernel (as I do), this guy [optusnet.com.au] seems to have a patch for 2.6.7, which might come in handy if you don't want to wait for your distro to catch up. I am going to use this patch myself, but I cannot guarantee that it won't bone your system so to speak. The patch is not just supermount, it looks like it has some other stuff in it too, so decide for yourself!

Seeing as how I'm posting this, I may as well give a little background for those not "in the know". Supermount is a sort of filesystem, you mount your CD-ROM and floppy drives (or even USB sticks) with it, and it will automatically mount and unmount the media when you insert or remove it, kind of like on Windows. Personally, I think it is great, and it is hard to live without it now I have it.

You can learn more about it at the project website. [sourceforge.net] Jeez, if it turns out the vanilla kernel does have supermount after all, I am going to look a right idiot... *presses Submit*