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Linux 2.2.18 Released 177

Posted by CowboyNeal from the just-in-time-for-xmas dept.
If you haven't heard yet, another version of the Linux kernel has hit the mirrors. This is the first release to the 2.2 tree in quite some time, so it's probably worth updating on those machines which can afford a reboot. There's a whole bunch of changes, most notably the backport of USB code from the 2.4 tree, so all those neat-o USB devices you get over the holiday season won't be gathering dust.
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Linux 2.2.18 Released More

Linux 2.2.18 Released

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  • Re:A rant, I know, but I can't help it. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I yearn for her, her warm supple body pressed up against my fierce British soul.

    She dances barefoot through my hair, breathing the spirit of life into the once proud trenchant bones that support my austere form.

    I call out to her, oh Haddasah, make me a man once more, Thorne King once again. Away from it all, resenting nothing, feeling wonder, pealing brilliance.

    Complete me, ester of pearl, ester of rosin. One with all and none without you. Resplendent and replete, I await.

  • Request... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    With the USB backport and all, this sounds excellent to those of us trying out Linux on their I-Macs. I was wondering if anyone with experience buiding these things would be so kind as to either submit instructions on the configure portion, or a config file for this kernel to imaclinus.net, or as a comment below, for those of us who have been relying on prebuilt kernels to power our Linux systems. I've wanted to tinker with it for a while, but I know much less about this platform than I do the intel, and don't want to include lots of cruft, or leave out anything important. A distillation of the procedure would evenbe nice.

    TIA- AC

  • Re:A rant, I know, but I can't help it. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wow, you're really slipping.

    10 minutes and no biters.

    I guess even masterful trolls have bad days.

  • Re:A rant, I know, but I can't help it. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Seriously, that's about as good as you can get on a kernel release article.

  • Re:A rant, I know, but I can't help it. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Agreed.

    KtB has been very off-form today.

    What's the matter KtB? Dreaming of your Slashdot lover Perdida?

  • Solaris has had logging since Sol 7, you can use it on all filesystems, and all you need is "logging" in options in the vfstab or "mount -o logging /filesystem /mountpoint"

    Reiserfs is faster though, file creation and deletion several orders of magnitude so. As benchmarked with bonnie on identical hardware, in my test lab.

  • Agreed, I have my servers chugging on the compile now..... Thank you for a canadian mirror [kernel.org] :)

  • Hey, that's better than ftp.cs.helsinki.fi!
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • The USB-scanner driver in the kernel may recognize its device-class ID, but the Umax USB and parallel scanners use a totally different protocol than their SCSI scanners - so AFAIK, you still can't use their USB scanners with SANE, because no one's been able to reverse-engineer the protocol.
    _____
  • Bitch, bitch, bitch. Is that ALL you can do, bitch and whine because YOU aren't getting what YOU want fast enough? I don't see you paying for Linus', Alan's, Don Becker's, H. Peter Anvin's, or any of the other major kernel contributors' time spent developing the Linux kernel. So, until you start paying them to do what they do, they don't owe you jack.

    Be happy for what you do get - it's a gift, not an entitlement...
    _____
  • I'm pretty sure that Linus doesn't touch the 2.2.x kernel anymore. In fact, I believe that as soon as 2.2.0 was released, he handed it over to Alan Cox and then Linux moved on exclusively to 2.3.
  • er.. Of course I mean "Linus moved on to 2.3" It's hard to type "Linus" my fingers just seem to jump to the "x" automatically
  • Even better, try this:

    cd /usr/src
    tar Ixfv /usr/src/linux-2.2.14.tar.bz2
    ./linux/scripts/patch-kernel

    That patch-kernel script is pretty handy, being able to add patches automatically without you even needing to decompress them. That one command will unpack and install all incremental patches it finds in the /usr/src directory (that are of a newer version than your current linux tree).

    Try it, you might like it!

  • The cover of the June or July 1997 Byte magazine is for NT5. I have a copy of it around here somewhere...

    I installed Slackware on my system in 1995, Microsoft surely knew about the OS by then... and honestly the most damage Linux could do to MS is level the VAR playing field. If the market determined that Linux were superior to NT and Win9x/ME, Microsoft would jump all over it.

    With their existing customer base, if they were to start selling Linux servers and the like, they would probably be the strongest Linux VAR out there.

    Don't underestimate the shrewdness of that company... they're in it for the money. If Open source became more profitable than closed source, they would become a huge contributor... there would probably be some great photo ops of Torvalds, Cox and Gates shaking hands as they make announcements that hardware developers everywhere would be targeting the platform.

    For the moment, they have competitive products.

    Just feeding the trolls...

  • Is there any optimization for the K7 core?
    I know the PIII is better for Seti@Home, but
    I can get an Athlon for less. :-)
  • It depends on a backport of 2.4 code that will likely not happen.
  • Yes, it completely messed up the the dos partition and I couldn't fsck it. I put ext2 instead.
  • Did you try transferring large amount of data, say copying a bunch of mp3s to your zip drive? I can reproduce the problem instantly by doing an rsync of a bunch of mp3s.
  • The answer is no. I tested it out, the machine simply locks up hard and I have to power cycle it. 2.4 test12 works like a charm though. Till 2.4 test11 large transfers used to lock up the drive (though the machine was fine), the zip drive light would keep glowing and any processes accessing the device will hang (even kill -9 won't help). But test12, wow, no problems at all :-).
  • It seems to me that RedHat has included this patch (which I use as well) into the kernel they send out (with 7.0 as well). I continue to use the pptp patch without issues. Just download the patch and patch it. I know that it will patch onto the 2.2.18 patch.

    Catch ya later!

  • well, shit.

    root!spindle:~# uname -r
    2.2.16
    root!spindle:~# uptime
    9:16am up 186 days, 7 min, 1 user, load average: 0.09, 0.10, 0.09
    root!spindle:~# grep free_page /var/log/kern.log*
    /var/log/kern.log.0:Dec 5 10:28:40 spindle kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kupdate...

    such a pity to waste an uptime like that.
    --
  • Don't respond to trolls, it just makes them troll more.

    -
  • well, I'm stuck in the fenced in pseudo-prison ghetto of Hinton James which sure as hell feels like it's about ten miles from campus, but just to let you know Metalab isn't located in Phillips but in Manning. Phillips is where the comp sci dept really got started here, but according to http://www.ibiblio.org/wdg/ "
    Our base of operations is out of wonderful, window-ful 213 Manning Hall, on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus."

    Erik
  • And something else that will keep RH and Debian people happy (well, mostly RH because of the 7.0 GCC problem):

    2.2.18pre12
    o Automatically select older compilers for kernel builds on Debian and RH - (Arjan van de Ven)

    --
  • Via these links (assuming you have mojonation [mojonation.net] installed w/ the mojo proxy):

    linux kernel source 2.2.18 (tar.bz2) [mojonation.net] [mojo id 68AieSMlQkDNSi3vaFUpwB9sbIk]

  • One of the many 2.4 backports that 2.2.18 contains (since somewhere in the -pre series...around 11, I think) is the DRM (direct rendering manager, the part of the kernel that controls access to the hardware through DRI, the direct rendering infratstructure). Anyway, unfortunately, it's not very useful because it only supports DRI v2, and the current XFree86 code uses v1. Until the XFree86 code is upgraded, 3d acceleration under XFree86 4 still won't work. Ah well. At least the codebase is there.
  • > Linux is better than M$ because it is released when the code is mature, not when it is marketable. The best part about Linux is that if you don't think development is moving fast enough, all you have to do is stop trolling on /., pop up an Xterm, cd to /usr/src/linux, and speed up the development process yourself.

    Or, if you perfer of MS's "ready or not, here it comes" strategy, you can stop trolling on /., FTP over to kernel.org, download a not-quite-ready 2.4 kernel, install it, use it, and pretend the truly ready 2.4 release is a service pack to be applied whenever it comes out.

    --
  • Or just use this:
    Place the Linux-patches in /usr/src
    # cd /usr/src
    # linux/scripts/patch-kernel

    And the patching up to the latest release (that you have in /usr/src that is) goes automagically!
  • Mandrake comes with a seriously non standard, patched kernel. (They are actually more than likely using fairly recent emu10k1 drivers, which were probably from opensource.creative.com), they also more than likely patched for usb support and other such little things.

    You need to get the stock kernel to run it right. 2.2.18 will make a good update for many because: it's a stock kernel, and all of these back ported features will elieviate the need for umpteen gillion patches.

  • Try Debian. Its the distro that finally got me off the monthly distro cycle. apt-get does that for me.
  • It sounds to me like you don't want a stable 2.4, you just want a 2.4. If you wanted a stable 2.4 you would be willing to wait.
  • Na, you _should_ use the reiserfs, because if nobody uses it, it will never be properly debugged. And that you shouldnt use reiserfs in a production environment is just a rule of thumb: in a production environment you should _always_ do proper testing an you should also know what you are doing.

    I`ve been using reiserfs in production for a long time without trouble, but you have to keep in mind that my servers are usually not running under heavy load. No problem. You also have to know that you shouldnt use software-raid5 at the moment and that you prolly should avoid using tar for backups.

    Make shure you know what you`re doing. Read the docs and the mailing list and then go for it. Reiserfs is cool. Its somewhat fast, and its very reliable. And dont ever stick to rules of thumb too closely. Proper testing helps a lot, too!
  • Works for me: External ZIP100 USB. Don't know about corruption problems since I haven't tested it extensively.
  • Obscure commands won't be known by John Doe researcher who grabbed the Debian box by accident at the bookstore.

    Everything cannot be Debian, either for physical (vendor shipped RedHat Linux varient), emotional ("I Love my HP Pascal machine"), or mental reasons ("golly, this essential protein folding software only runs on Digital Unix 4.0A"). Not to mention political reasons, historical reasons, Debian machines that can't be upgraded due to some weird crappy complex thing someone wrote eons ago and has been running in a closet and everyone is scared to touch the macine because it basically works god knows how...

    There are often delays between a vulnerability becoming known and the new package coming out, which leaves open univerity networks ripe for scanning, assuming everyone has automated updates installed and running properly. Believe me, I see a lot of linear port scans looking for ftp/rpc/SGI/whatever hacks go by daily...

    And a fancy update system won't help you if, after installing Apache-latest with PHP-latest that some goober goes off and writes an insecure database interface to, say, your medical records (damn, damn, damn...). That's where prgrammer education comes in, from kernel assembly hackers to people playing with cute little Java Beans in a cliky IDE.
  • There are many problems with applying updates in a timely fashion, some of which include:

    1) Sparsity of trained system administers who know how to properly secure a system and are paid to spend time tending to such problems. John Doe researcher who grabs RedHat Linux off the shelf in the University Book Store and installs it won't know / won't have the time to do this.

    2) General insecurity of most unix distributions out of the box (hey look-- a car with keys in the ignition!), which leads to huge patch lists (e.g. Solaris, RedHat Linux) which need to be installed. Who installs the patches? See 1, above.

    3) Custom hardware/software that requires a particular configuration or setup that makes upgrades hard or even impossible. A firewall in front of the problem machine might help, unless the particular design is on a webpage, in which case someone has to sort through reams of ancient code for security problems, hoping they don't screw up the current bailing-wire and duct-tape mess.

    Solutions to the problem include more secure Operating System design, e.g. shipping with fewer open ports, keeping daemons up-to-date, auditing the code (e.g. OpenBSD), and programmer education to be aware of security issues and write code accordingly.

    Also, automated update systems would be nice, but these generally don't come installed, or do and don't fit into the custom configurations the department might be doing with their unix machine.
  • Just so y'all know, I haven't had any problems with the above patch; just rebooted the mailserver with 2.2.18 and reiserfs is working fine.

    - A.P.

    --
    * CmdrTaco is an idiot.

  • I wasn't really talking about splitting off the source tree, just providing different source files. linux-2.2.18-i386.tar.bz2 is worth just as much to an Intel compiler as the entire tar ball. The source tree remains one, but for the purposes of smaller downloads, you only need to download the source of the architecture you're on.

    And I'd love to delete some savegames et al from my machine because it would mean that the machine that I run Linux on could play games. The system is pretty stripped down bare-bones.
  • Pardon my naivete about things kernel-based, but I've noticed that the tar.bz2 file for the entire kernel is now a whopping 15+MB. That's a big file to download if you don't keep sources around with which to patch or are downloading a new kernel for the first time.

    Would it be appropriate or even possible to break out all the architecture-dependent files into separate packages so that you could, say, download the source that would compile on Intel's chips only? Or is the the source so closely linked as to prevent this (I for one always delete all the architecture-dependent stuff after I'm done compiling, except for that of whatever machine I'm on).
  • Is USB storage supported now? The USB patches for 2.2.17 explicitly mention that usb-storage is not supported for 2.2 kernels. I have a USB zip disk, accessing it under 2.2.8pre21 and doing a large transfer would reboot the machine :-(.
  • ...is when are they going to put PPTP support back in? It was in earlier versions, but was taken out for some reason, and I have to use a patch to get the VPN to work...

    Anyone know?

  • > I use it exclusively. VA has had no trouble with using it on Sourceforge. I have never lost any data.

    Really really really freakin good for you. Most owners of firestone tires are still in one piece too. On the other hand, unless you just recently upgraded to the most bleeding edge version of ReiserFS, don't hit suspend on that laptop -- causes unrecoverable filesystem corruption. But hey, my fault right? I should have used the latest version even when that was the latest version, the fact that a bug may get caught in the future is no excuse to not use it now, right?

    I may come back to ReiserFS in a couple years. I've been burned too badly with it now.

    --
  • Here's how simple it is on my box:

    cvsup all.sup


    --
  • This was with the stock kernel and stock ReiserFS that came with SuSE. You're saying I get what I deserve for using Linux? Couldn't agree more. tah-tah.



    --
  • > Are you sure that ReiserFS did it and not a buggy laptop BIOS? That sort of thing is pretty common due to crappy APM implementations.

    Sony VAIO PCG-F480 laptop ... you tell me. Linux never properly updated the clock on resume (FreeBSD did fine). ReiserFS being journalled is not happy when the clock goes wacky, but corruption isn't an acceptable failure condition. I believe this is a documented problem and fix in ReiserFS.

    Ok, I could deal with corruption, but it was *irreparable* corruption, and the repair tool (which made much noise about being "alpha quality" -- also unacceptable, to have recovery as an afterthought) hosed the entire *partition* when it failed. It wasn't backed up because I hadn't yet put valuable data on it, but I'm not sure what to expect even with backups now...

    Moot point now, Linux is no longer on my laptop, though I still plan to run it on a server if its nfs3 support is solid.

    --

  • It may not be apparent from the changelog, but there are also some important fixes to NFS version 2 (along with the v3 updates mentioned elsewhere) in the 2.2.18 kernel.

    If you are using NFS at all with a 2.2.x kernel, then you really should upgrade. Yes, even if you're using NFSv2 over UDP.

    Props out to trond, dhiggen, hjl, ac and all the guys on the NFS list.

    P.S. Oh yeah, upgrade your NFS-utils too.

  • This is the first release to the 2.2 tree in quite some time, so it's probably worth updating on those machines which can afford a reboot.

    I know, the slashback article talked about the ability to avoid rebooting, but it dosen't support SMP. Wouldn't the mission critical machines be the ones not needing a reboot, and usually having multiple processors? Maybe I missed something here.
  • Canon wasn't releasing programming info last time I checked. Just got an Epson 1200U photo. Excellent picture quality and speed. Works well under linux
  • You should not be running ReiserFS in a production environment - it just isn't 100% stable enough to be trusted, and can lead to data-loss in some circumstances.


    I use it exclusively. VA has had no trouble with using it on Sourceforge. I have never lost any data.

    Actually, I've lost a *lot* of data with ext2. I've lost a lot of time, too. I had to fly to Boston one time because of ext2. Someone just turned off a system and the drive got corrupted.

    Just because it isn't in the kernel does not mean that it's not stable. Just because something is *in* the kernel does not mean that it *is* stable.
  • Are you sure that ReiserFS did it and not a buggy laptop BIOS? That sort of thing is pretty common due to crappy APM implementations.

    Myself, and the rest of my department have run stock ReiserFS (SuSE 6.4, 7.0) on our various Toshiba laptops without a hitch. I actually suspended mine a few times today.

    When I first installed it, I went around hitting the reset button all the time, completely amazed at the stability.

    I've been burned many times by ext2, and I probably won't ever be going back to it. It was great when I had no other choice (unless I wanted to use UMSDOS, shudder) and it was fast, too, but it doesn't quite satisfy me with larger hard drives and more data.

  • I love being a half-block from Philips Hall, where (I believe, anyhow) >a href="http://www.ibiblio.org">ibiblio (aka metalab, aka sunsite) and their kernel mirror resides. Avg. speed of download: 1.5 MB/s ...

    >=)

  • Yea, but there's no difference between using a Live! and a cheap soundcard with clean-sounding circitry. Linux doesn't use any of the acceleration features on the sound card, and for the money, there are a lot of cards that have cleaner sound, sans 3D hardware.
  • Oh please.
    When was work started on nt5?
    >>>>>
    Around 1996/7. Knowing MS, NT5 and NT4 were in parallel development for the last months of NT4's release. I remember ZDNet having Beta copies around '98 or so.

    It was just released early this year.
    >>>>>
    Believe it or not, NT5 took longer to release than kernel 2.2!

    OTOH, I first started running linux in mid 1997.
    >>>>>>>
    So? You don't count. I'm talking about the general public. NT5 was in development LONG before MS even knew about Linux, much less considered it a threat. Hell, OS/2 was probably stronger on their radar at the time (tounge in cheek ;)

    I can't believe it's been over 2 years and noone's worked on a linux port of Halflife!
    >>>>>>>>>
    Strangely, QuakeII is ported, so a half-life port should be a chinch? And since it is such an easy game for today's hardware to run, Linux should have no problem with it!

    Yeah, you, might have heard of nt5 before you heard of linux.. but then a friend of mine just got into computers 2 months ago, he runs winME and heard of linux only a few weeks ago.
    Don't generalize for the rest of us.
    >>>>>>>>>.
    Stranglely, I did. But that was because I heard about NT5 when Linux still hadn't gotten halfway through 2.0.

    ah, in case you haven't heard linux started in 1992, I first *heard* of linux back in '94 when I was getting a catalog selling slackware cd's. I finally got to install a copy (albeit "monkey" or "mini"-linux) in 1997
    Since then I've used RH 5.0, RH 5.2, RH 6, mandrake 6, mandrake 6.2, and suse (I dunno.. 5?)
    >>>>>>>>>
    Slack 3.5, RH 5.0, 5.1, 6.1, 6.2 Slackware 7.0, 7.1, Mandrake 7.0, 7.1, Suse 6.4 (for 5 minutes before I got scared off), Stampede .90-beta(still undercooked), (btw, I switched distros several times in a month when I left RedHat)

  • Actually, I'm underwhelmed by Win2K. It takes more memory, it runs slower, and it is less stable (for me) than NT4. NT4 only crashed on me twice, but Win2K has crashed at least a dozen times, usually running OpenGL code (RivaTNT, det3)
  • Unless there is something wrong with them to begin with, they shouldn't improve your XMMS performance. Decoding an MP3 is entirely CPU, and the only thing the soundcard does is send a stream to the speakers. I don't even know what the point of running such a great soundcard under Linux is. Its not like there is any API that takes advantage of it outside Windows-land.
  • You mean 29M, don't you? The kernel hasn't been 2.9M for a LONG time.

    PS> Did you know that the Mozilla source is 300MB? Sinful! Its like emacs, except with crappy fonts.
  • Halflife is NOT based on Quake I. Don't even get me started on the reasons why HalfLife could not be Quake I. (Ex. No chrome mapping, limited lighting effects, less 3D accelerator integration, etc). Secondly, Quake I has already been ported. The main hangups would be that HalfLife uses a very customized version of Quake II. What in god's name ARE you talking about?
  • I was just talking about MP3 playback, which would be fine on any OS. I mean you can go and get a sound card with some high quality circutry (hint, Ensoniqe AudioPCI ain't it) and it would be no different from an SBLive on Linux. Second, BeOS supports up to 24 seperate audio channels, so if you ever find a card with 24 line outs...
  • Most likely a driver issue. The 24 channel support is (for the present) limited to Pro-level cards that actually support that many *seperate* (not mixed) streams. Of course, the game_audio kit is being released (as in they have sample source on their website), which should allow these new "prosumer" cards to use their multi-channel capabilities. Check out game audio and 24 channel support here. [be.com]
  • >>I can't believe it's been over 2 years and >>noone's worked on a linux port of Halflife! >Strangely, QuakeII is ported, so a half-life port >should be a chinch? And since it is such an easy >game for today's hardware to run, Linux >should have no problem with it! Half life is based on Quake 1 not Quake 2. Porting the engine over while not overly difficult for peope experienced in porting 3d games(say... Loki) it would still be a large project. And probably not worth the expense for Sierra/Valve to order. Keep in mind that Half Life is a very old game, and although it's still popular, it's probably not generating a lot of new revenue from it's sales.
    treke
  • I wouldn't chastise them too much either. The developers the wrote the drivers have left creative, but probably just to get a higher paying job. Their contracts with creative probably prevent them from working on the drivers now. If they are continuing to build on the emu10k chip then it is completly possible that they are adding things that are covered by licenses that would prevent them from releasing this, much like Nvidia's situaton. I think we should thank them for what they have given us, and consider the future as it appears. A few details on why specs aren't available would be nice though.
    treke
  • Linus and Cox supply you with a completely free operating system. Linux is better than M$ because it is released when the code is mature, not when it is marketable. The best part about Linux is that if you don't think development is moving fast enough, all you have to do is stop trolling on /., pop up an Xterm, cd to /usr/src/linux, and speed up the development process yourself.
  • By the way, I want to say I wouldn't dream of just coming out of left field and trying to impose some kind of formal QA process on the kernel developers. I think the process under which the kernel is developed is just fine.

    I've never been part of the kernel development effort except to do some testing and to report bugs, so it would be completely inappropriate for me to try to do something like that.

    What I do want to do is make it easier for more users to participate in the testing process, in part so that a wider variety of configurations gets tested quicker, and so that novice users can be guided along in the steps needed to provide a meaningful bug report.

    I've seen lots of reports saying "it doesn't work" or "this driver doesn't work" without really providing enough background info, and hopefully this would make it easier to capture and archive that.

    Really all you'd need to know to participate in the use of this is to build your own kernel - all! - or hopefully to apply test patches. Then you'd fill out a web form.

    Kernel developers who didn't want to participate wouldn't have to, or maybe we could post summary information in some helpful way to the linux-kernel list.


    Michael D. Crawford
    GoingWare Inc

  • This is a really notable advance. It takes linux nfs from junky v2 userspace to fast state-of-the-art v3 kernel support.
  • Are the creative ones better than the kernel ones?

    The kernel has a stripped down version of the driver from opensource.creative.com. Last I checked, the kernel(2.4.0-test1x) had version 0.6 of the emu10k1 driver, which is probably a snapshot from last July or August.

    Since then the mixer has changed to use the ac97 module, and work has begun on a multipurpose mixer/effect-loader to take advantage of the more advanced features. There's also an assembler for writting dsp effects, and a few other miscellaneous utils.

    If you do not need any of this stuff, then the kernel driver should be just fine.

    BTW, creative's employees did write the original driver, but it is now maintained by the opensource community. Creative has completely forgotten that Linux even exists

    I would not praise creative too much. Yes, it was a big step for them to opensource their drivers, but alot has changed since Nov '99.

    They never released any official document on the card (only the source-which was missing many features), all the employees responsible for getting it opensourced have left creative, and creative now refuses to release any new info on the card. Questions the developers have asked are usually is replied with "oh, you're going to need to sign a NDA" (that's when there actually is a reply)

    To make matters worst, creative is milking the emu10k1 for all it's worth and are continuing to release new cards based on it. They add new features without telling the linux guys how to support it. (which in some cases renders the card semi-useless)

    I somehow doubt that future generations (based on the emu10k2, or whatever) will be support under Linux. Creative is a Very Windows-centric company. To them, any other OS is simply not worth supporting.

    --
    dB

  • Don't blame me for the /. effect - I just finished make bzdisk. As near as I can tell, there's just a few new features that I need since my last kernel compile (before I went to rh7): I like the SBLive/EMU10K1 support, but there's no non-experimental NTFS write support yet. I still need NT5/W2k for things like Half-Life, so I don't want to corrupt that partition.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • Are the creative ones better than the kernel ones? I never figured out if it was like W2k drivers, when the new OEM drivers are better than the new M$ drivers in terms of speed while remaining stable, or like W9x drivers, when the stinkin' nVidia Detonator 3s made my TNT2 dish out corrupted video in tfc and made me wish I was on the M$ drivers.

    If they are better, though, I'll be sure to get them to improve my xmms performance.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • As Linux seems to have the most ground as a server OS, shouldn't Linus be shooting for stability with the new cutting edge version, instead of pushing it out to please everyone? Sure, he could please a lot of people that way, but do you think he released 2.2.18 to hold out us kernel junkies until 2.4.0 is stable and bug-free? Yes, I like shiny new software as much as the next person, but sometimes the old stuff is better for other reasons. Linux 2.4 takes time to collect bug reports and get cleaned up so it can have year-long uptimes, with its multitude of new features. Backporting a now-stable part of 2.4 (yes, USB was the first thing in 2.4 to get stable, AFAIK) to 2.2 is a heck of a lot easier than cleaning up all of 2.4 for a release.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • I put up a mirror on hypermart (yes, they'll probably terminate my account for /. traffic, good thing I never use it anymore) at http://lpisystems.hypermart.net/linux-2.2.18.tar.g z [hypermart.net] so a couple of you can grab it there.

    Also, if you have a win32 box nearby, you can try downloading it with FlashGet [flashget.com] and opening up 10 sessions getting different sections of the file. I'm not saying that's good for all the mirrors if everybody opens up 10 connections, I'm just saying that you can get an unfair advantage over the single-connection people once the server starts restricting bandwidth to individual connections. I used it to get Red Hat 7 and CounterStrike 1.0, and it works damn well.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • Did you completely fail to catch my sarcasm in that last line? There needs to be a &ltsarcasm&gt&lt/sarcasm&gt markup tag.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • Linux updates are for different reasons than IE. If you think of your software as a ship, IE updates repair holes where the builders forgot to put huge metal panels to keep the h4x0r-infested water out, encrypted morse-code transmitters, and things essential to the safety of the ship's contents. Linux updates add useful things like cannons, extra rudder support, and other things that make sailing more enjoyable. The updates (at least ones ending with even numbers and not beta versions) don't really fix many security problems because those all get taken care of before release.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • I belive it was taken out as it was buggy for too many people to be part of the kernel tree.
  • Yeah it has USB support, but what about support for all the USB devices out there? That's one thing that peeves me about the linux USB supprt, so many devices aren't supported. I went to go get a scanner and all the ones I wanted weren't supported (namely canon). I can live with that though, and the USB is great to have. No complaints with that.

    Anyone else have problems with finding linux compliant USB devices?

    Even the samurai
    have teddy bears,
    and even the teddy bears

  • Get the optimizing compiler here [goof.com]. Then tweak arch/i386/Makefile for the required compiler flag. At least that's what I'm doing on my K6, running 2.2.18 OK.

    --
  • I see that the IDE patches are not included.

    I currently run 2.2.17 with the IDE patch set - this allows my VIA MVP3 to work in UDMA mode.

    I'll have to wait for the IDE patch for 2.2.18 before upgrading. Pity as I want to try out USB at some point, and 2.4.0-test wasn't too stable on my hardware last time I tried it.

    Maybe the IDE patches will make 2.2.19, but as there are IDE chipsets out there that can't implement DMA safely, I doubt wether this will happen.

  • You should not be running ReiserFS in a production environment - it just isn't 100% stable enough to be trusted, and can lead to data-loss in some circumstances.

    I'm holding fire until it appears in a stable kernel release, before it goes onto live systems.

  • Can't say I've had those problems at all. I even fucked around inside the box swapping drives and memory along with the video card, and the system detected all the changes beautifully.

    P.S. Service Pack 1 installed without a hitch. Didn't really need it though.

  • By the way, can we say FUD?
  • slightly more stable

    You're joking right? I haven't had to reboot my box since I installed it (barring a video card upgrade once).

  • Bad. (Score:2)

    by Gendou ( 234091 )
    You shouldn't try to post a kernel patch. You link to it, but do not post. That's what the lameness filter is for. Imagine if everyone did this...

    Hey look! 2.2.18 is out! Here's the full kernel source! Copy and paste it from your web browser! Oh yeah, and I got first post.

    That's lameness.

  • I rebooted so many times, now look at MY version number!

    E:\>uname -a
    'uname' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
    operable program or batch file.

    E:\>ver

    Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
  • Want to hear my story about stability?

    I install Windows 2000 on WHQL hardware.
    I went to change the default wallpaper, and Win2k locked hard, having to hit the reset button.
    I hit "use current" in Internet Options to set the homepage, it froze solid, with the sound making the same stupid windows "ding" stuttering in an infinite loop. Hard reboot.

    Oh, I installed SP1, and now black and white pages being printed out on my out-of-the-box supported printer take over a minute PER LINE.

    There is no way for me to fix this, I haven't got a fucking clue what Microsoft did to cause this. When I try to "uninstall" SP1, it says "Setup will uninstall the Service Pack 1 but will not uninstall the Service Pack 1" and I hit OK and it exits. I did choose to backup files so that I may uninstall it later. Now for me to print, I need to reinstall Windows 2000 (takes over an hour) and not install SP1.

    And they charge money for this.

  • Re:backporting driver frameworks? (Score:3)

    by GrenDel Fuego ( 2558 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:37PM (#566434)
    The difference is, USB was not backported by Linus or Alan. It was backported by someone who wanted to get their USB devices working properly without waiting for 2.4 to come out.

    Who says they would have worked on other components of 2.4 if they hadn't been working on this? They were scratching their paritcular itch.

  • Re:Request... (Score:3)

    by GrenDel Fuego ( 2558 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:39PM (#566435)
    I've never used linux on a mac before, but here's something to look for:

    I believe Linux PPC is based on Redhat. Redhat likes leaving default config files in /usr/src/linux/configs. If that directory exists on your machine, copy one of the configs there into /usr/src/linux, and run a make oldconfig to just update the config options that have changed.

    If that dosen't work, maybe someone else has an idea.

  • And the tie-in (Score:3)

    by jaa ( 22623 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @05:00PM (#566436)
    to an early /. story -- 2.2.18 fixes the CPUID "bug" that causes problems for Linux on the Pentium IV.

  • Cute link. (Score:3)

    by Covener ( 32114 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @04:50PM (#566437)
    'mirrors' points right to www.kernel.org!

  • But backporting is not easy! The time would be better spent getting 2.4 into better shape, making those who MUST live on the cutting edge be able to do so.

    Alan Cox has pointed out that backporting is a wonderful tool for finding bugs and reviewing code. Makes a lot of sense, and if it means a more stable 2.4 in the long run, it's definitely a worthwhile investment.

    Many of us would be happy if 2.4 was still another year away if it's better architected as a result.

  • Re:Linux Security (Score:3)

    by Peter H.S. ( 38077 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:57PM (#566439) Homepage
    Well, first of all, this isn't a security kernel release.So no need to upgrade for that reason.

    But speaking of security updates; there really isn't any difference between running Linux and MS-windows servers, regarding security updates. In both cases, the sysadmin has to subscribe to his vendors security lists, read them, and apply the patches.

    It is very easy, to apply new patches to eg. a Red Hat Linux box: get the files as described in the security mail. Instructions are provided in the mail, but in most cases, one just do a 'rpm -Fvh [filename]' This will update the system, if the program is installed.
    There is even a program, that automatically fetch and update all the needed rpms for you.(this may require some setting up).
    And if you want really easy upgrades, then pay a minor amount, and get priority access,web instructions and a nice graphical userinterface, for automatic security upgrades (Red Hat Network). As an ordinary web-surfer, this would basically mean, that you can forget about following security lists.

    Regarding the hacking as described in:
    http://www.securityfocus.com/news/122
    "It's a story of great incompetence," said the hacker, a 25-year-old Dutch man who calls himself "Kane." "All the data taken from these computers was taken over the Internet. All the machines were exposed without any firewalls of any kind."

    This has less to do, with security upgrades, than sheer incompetent network designing, and administration. Really basic stuff, like NAT/Masquerading, firewalls etc, would likely have prevented that hack.

  • Eerie.... (Score:3)

    by Symbiosis ( 39537 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @05:01PM (#566440) Homepage
    just after the slashback with Two Kernel Monte [scyld.com] comes the announcement for a new kernel threatening to obliterate uptimes around the world. :-)

  • 2.2.18 procfs API (Score:3)

    by 1010011010 ( 53039 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:20PM (#566441) Homepage
    is different than both 2.2.17 and 2.4.0. I tried to post a patch [flyingbuttmonkeys.com] to fix it here, but amusingly, slashdot's lamness filter rejected it [flyingbuttmonkeys.com].

    The two big things I like about 2.2.18 (I've been running the -pre kernels) is that they include a working, and version 3, NFS client, and the VM seems more stable. I used to get "VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for" .. whatver/everything, especially kswapd, in 2.2.16 and 2.2.17. It seems to have gone away with 2.2.18.

    ________________________________________

  • Differences in the EMU10K1 drivers (Score:3)

    by bconway ( 63464 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:33PM (#566442) Homepage
    Yes, the Creative open-source drivers for the SB Live!/512 are very different than the current ones included in the kernel sources, and use an extra ac97_codec module, in addition to the emu10k1 module. I've extensively tested both, and I'd say that both performance and quality _sound_ better. I've also found the ones included in the 2.2.18 kernel to be a bit buggy, in addition to being outdated. Starting and stopping a .wav file with the 2.2.18 drivers often causes a small burst of static, which is simply unacceptable.

  • A proposed project to help QA the linux kernel (Score:3)

    by goingware ( 85213 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:29PM (#566443) Homepage
    Check out my proposal for making an easy to use Linux QA database at http://www.goingware.com/linuxquality/ [goingware.com].

    Want to help? Write crawford@goingware.com [mailto] I know how to code in a variety of languages, but I don't know squat about designing a database schema.

    I thought something like this would be helpful after I subscribed to the linux-kernel mailing list for a while to report a bug in 2.4.0 and work with the kernel developers to get it fixed. The bug got fixed, but I sure got a lot of mail and it was a little hard getting the fix nailed down.


    Michael D. Crawford
    GoingWare Inc

  • Linux Security (Score:3)

    by Cofactor ( 178739 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @05:01PM (#566444)
    This is good news..

    I was wondering about the disadvantages of open source systems.
    The problem is in security bugs (as in Red Hat) with people who are not IT professionals. One incident is the one at University of Washington Medical Center where a hacker gained access to thousands of medical records and confidential patient data. The start was with a Linux server in the Pathology Department:
    http://www.securityfocus.com/news/122

    The frequent updates are great, but I am thinking that some updates are starting to resemble those of Internet Explorer; in the IE case, less than 5% of users have the time or awareness to update their browsers and operating system. In Linux, a minority will face this problem, but it seems that it is the same issue.

    I know that this is a bit different than the above topic, but I think that this problem will be more apparent with time.

  • For ReiserFS users... (Score:4)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:24PM (#566445) Homepage Journal
    There's a patch which (purportedly) works against 2.2.18 here [fl.priv.at]. You'll also need the latest full ReiserFS patch. Patch as usual, ignore the failures, and then patch again with this patch.

    - A.P.

    --
    * CmdrTaco is an idiot.

  • Re:Linux Security (Score:4)

    by Malor ( 3658 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:35PM (#566446) Journal
    Security through obscurity is really only a temporary stopgap. It slows down an attacker but it doesn't prevent him/her/it from eventually finding and attacking holes. Worse, most of the proprietary vendors have been quite slow about releasing patches.

    I don't have any way of knowing how long it will take, but you are seeing the bugs getting shaken out of the operating systems we depend on. They're very complex creations and there are probably whole classes yet of undiscovered security exploits.

    Open source allows people to more effectively find and attack holes. This means that they are both found and fixed faster. It is my belief that eventually, the open source operating systems will come pretty close to being free of security holes. It's unlikely to ever be 100%, but the number of remaining, unfound security flaws should slowly approach 0 without ever quite touching it.

    The closed-source operating systems, Microsoft's in particular, are a long way further up that curve. I'm guessing that you're going to be seeing nasty system holes in those operating systems for years and years after they have slowed to a mere trickle on the Unices. You just can't assemble forty million lines of code and put it into production without there being problems. Linux has 1/10th the code size, and because of that probably 1/1000th of the potential security-breaking unforeseen interactions.

    The so-far-unstated assumption I have is that systems will eventually get extremely secure. This could be wrong. If new bugs get added as fast as, or faster than, old ones get taken away, then the high number of found bugs in Open Source software will prove to be only a detriment.

    I'm *assuming* that we are paying now to have security later. But if we aren't, then the security through obscurity model is probably RIGHT -- because if there will ALWAYS be new security holes, any method of slowing down detection of those holes makes sysadmins' lives a little easier.

    We will probably know which of these two models is right within the next 3 or 4 years. In the interim, fight very hard any suggestion to suppress information about hacks/exploits or cracking tools. The ultimate goal is secure systems, and it will take some time for us to find out which way is more secure in actual practice. If one method is hamstrung by legal action, then we may never know the right approach and may forever suffer with buggier software than we needed to.

    By the 2004-2005 timeframe, the overall progression in the number of bugs reported on Open Source versus proprietary systems should be much clearer, and we will likely make much more intelligent decisions.

  • NFS v3 support is quite notable (Score:4)

    by DenialS ( 21305 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @05:26PM (#566447) Homepage Journal
    Let me just say that the NFS (network file system) support in 2.2.18 is vastly improved over the previous kernels. Alan rolled in the patches that most distros had been adding to the 2.2 kernel, fixed their bugs, and made me a very happy man. NFS v3 support is there for the taking, folks... enjoy.

  • Re:Linux Security (Score:4)

    by Platinum Dragon ( 34829 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @09:42PM (#566448) Journal
    I was wondering about the disadvantages of open source systems.
    The problem is in security bugs (as in Red Hat) with people who are not IT professionals.

    News flash: this is a general issue with most (all?) operating systems, not just open source ones. It's not a disadvantage of open source alone, but a general difficulty all admins and end users deal with on a daily basis. The difference is, the sysadmin is expected to keep the doors closed and locked. That's part of his/her job description. An end user just wants to check e-mail, browse the web, maybe play a game or write a letter, in which event, they won't religiously follow security mailing lists.

    Helix Code, Red Hat, and MS are probably doing end users a favour with automatic update systems, although I'm sure everyone here can rattle off three potential attacks and security holes involving these autoupdaters without thinking (man-in-the-middle attacks, spoofed routing entries, spoofed DNS entries, leading to trojaned packages being downloaded and installed without the user's input).

    In the end, it's just an eternal conflict between the developers of new software and the developers of ways to poke holes in new software. That's life.

  • Re:Arch-based Downloads (Score:4)

    by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @08:24PM (#566449) Homepage
    Don't download everything, only download the bzip2 patch. Most 2.2.x relase patches are about a meg, and I've never had a problem getting one even after a big announcement.`

    Here's a mangled section from a kernel maker script to give you an idea how simple using patches can be;

    cd /usr/src
    tar Ixfv /usr/src/usr/src/linux-2.2.14.tar.bz2
    cd /usr/src/linux
    patch -p1 < /usr/src/kernel/patch-2.2.15
    patch -p1 < /usr/src/kernel/patch-2.2.16
    patch -p1 < /usr/src/kernel/patch-2.2.17
    patch -p1 < /usr/src/kernel/patch-2.2.18

    If you want to make this a little fancier, you can put in a loop that only decompresses the patches just before being applied and does not need hard coding like the above. Symlinks and other parts are also missing from the example above...and are not needed to get the job done.

    For that matter, you can tar the whole patched release up once in a while when you get annoyed with all those extra patch files hanging around.

  • Re:backporting driver frameworks? (Score:4)

    by bonzoesc ( 155812 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @05:19PM (#566450) Homepage
    The reason the 2.4 usb support is being backported is because users want it *now*. Our silly win9x-bound relatives send us USB stuff to use, and we can't because it doesn't work in Linux. So, USB support is a high-demand backport. Backporting stuff that isn't high-demand is silly, because nobody will appreciate it. The Linux kernel folks (Linux included) have to obey politics, too, even if it is among a group of presumably understanding Linux hackers. (Hackers meaning intelligent users, not h4x0rz.)

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • Re:A rant, I know, but I can't help it. (Score:4)

    by Frymaster ( 171343 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @05:27PM (#566451) Homepage Journal
    I wish Linus would pull his socks up

    The man wrote (most of) an operating system. If his socks were any higher, he'd be wearing pantyhose.

    Who do Linus and Cox answer to?

    Themselves. I think you're forgetting that this is a free operating system. In the "Real World" we answer to whoever's writing the paycheque. It's mildly nauseating to see people download their free iso and then complain about release dates.

    I'd like to see some sort of body set up that has soveriegnty over Linus and Cox,

    Okay, these people, who are working for free, aren't meeting you're timeline. You're solution is not to write a cheque or organize some other funding effort to encourage the development process or to pitch in yourself, but rather to demand some sort of "linux police force".

    If you want to complain about customer service, I suggest you call your Sun sales representative

  • ReiserFS/ EMU10K1 patches (Score:5)

    by bconway ( 63464 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @05:21PM (#566452) Homepage
    Keep in mind before upgrading that if you're running ReiserFS (as you should be =) ), the latest 2.2.17 won't patch correctly, be it 2.2.18 + patch or 2.2.17 + patch + 2.2.18 patch. These should be out imminently, however, so keep an eye on their web site [devlinux.com]. Also, be sure to check out opensource.creative.com [creative.com] for the latest EMU10K1, as the drivers are far more recent than the ones included in 2.2.18, and a great bit better, I've found. This is definitely worth the upgrade, for no other reason than the USB backporting, as well as the AGPgart and DRI drivers.

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