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Linux Software

Kernel 2.4.2 Released 200

Posted by michael from the warp-9 dept.
Three weeks after 2.4.1 hit the streets, 2.4.2 is now available. Here's the Changelog, and here's the download link that I know you're looking for.
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Kernel 2.4.2 Released More

Kernel 2.4.2 Released

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  • Re:192 days? My MS Whistler has you beat (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > My MS Whistler has been up 342 days loser.

    Cool. So you didn't apply any security patches. Can I have the IP of this machine, please ?

    Cheers,

    --fred

  • Re:This kernel numbering is confusing (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Am I the only one who spots the hipocracy here?

    Am I the only one who spots the spelling error here?

  • hmmmm. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    all your this is slashdot not freshmeat are belong to us.

  • Ahem! (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22, 2001 @07:40AM (#410815)
    This just in... [bbspot.com]

  • 2.2.2 (Score:1)

    by Micah ( 278 )
    Anyone remember how 2.2.2 was released on 2/2 (99)? That was insanely cool. Too bad they couldn't have waited until 4/2...

  • Re:2.2.2 (Score:1)

    by Micah ( 278 )
    ...now I'm wondering if I was mistaken and it was released on 2/22 -- I think that might be the case. It was one of those two. Anyone remember?

    If so, that would be even cooler, with 2.2.2 on 2/22 and 2.4.2 on 2/22. :-)
  • Just buy a bigger hard drive, it won't kill you.

    --
    * CmdrTaco is an idiot.

  • Oddly enough, I agree. I'm from the UK and I use UK spelling, but I've worked on a project where I had to correct my "honour" to "honor" because the standard was US spelling. This was a company founded in the UK with offices in the US, and I thought they made the right decision to standardise on US spelling. Er, I mean standardize.
    --
  • I was just thinking of how great a compressed filesystem would be, even given the CPU performance hit, but then a bit of nastiness hit me... how do you handle the case where someone goes in and changes a middle byte in a 200 MB file and the recompressed block won't fit back into its place? Do you just end up rewriting the whole file? Or are blocks in a list and you have a fragmented file (but then what's the point of compressing files if you'll just end up wasting space anyways)? I don't think a patch is going to do it, a whole new filesystem would be needed. I wonder how current implementations do it (say in Windows 2000)?
  • Torvalds and Tannenbaum hashed out this argument long ago.

    Tannenbaum lost . . .

    hawk

  • yes, but (Score:2)

    by hawk ( 1151 )
    This form of governmnet can only last until the hippo decides to sit on the horses . . .

  • Hippocracy (Score:3)

    by hawk ( 1151 ) <hawk@eyry.org> on Thursday February 22, 2001 @10:47AM (#410823) Journal

    hippocracy, n. The use of one hippo-like status (i.e., fat, bloated, and heavy) in the market to squish competitors. see also "Microsoft"

    :)

    hawk, who knows better than to flame spilling, but this was just to juicy :)
  • *giggles*

    *cackles outrageously*

    Somehow, I just don't see stability and me mixing. :)

  • How 2.4.2 or 2.4.2-ac1 compares with 2.4.1-ac20, in terms of bug-fixes used?

    It's good for Linus to want to keep the 2.4.x kernels stable, but at the same time, I don't want to "downgrade" to a later kernel. :)

  • 2.5.2 (development kernel) is most likely going to lead to the 3.0 stable kernel. Skipping the ones you mention there.
  • 2.4.2-ac1 should include any patches that didn't make it from 2.4.1-ac20 into 2.4.2.

    So if you like the experimental stuff, go with 2.4.2-ac1. If you prefer stability, go with 2.4.2.
  • I emailed him about that hours after he released the patch. No reply yet. :)

    Jason.
  • Our (6-way) router has been experiencing stability problems for some time now. I upgraded to 2.4.2-pre4 after one of the ChangeLog entries caught my eye, and the stability problem went away. (I believe the problem was in the 3com drivers.) Finally I've found a stable kernel for our router. No more down time! :)

    Jason.
  • Well maybe you have some exceptional books then because I have found that many books are in fact rubbish and not worth the purtchess price.

    Try O'Reilly.

    ---

  • First, for crying out loud - you can get 30 gig hard drives for $99. :-)

    But have you tried cramfs? It works pretty well for systems that are relatively static - I don't think you can use it on /home, for example. It's funky in that you create the filesystem _with_ the data all at once. This is what I'm using on my iopener... to avoid having to resize partitions whenever I want to add new stuff to the cramfs filesystem, I'm just taking the cramfs filesystem image and mounting it on loopback...

    ...well, as soon as the loopback bug gets fixed. :)

    ---

  • It's in the kernel sources.

    http://www.google.com/search?q=cramfs

    ---

  • Yah, but turning off javascript means that a large number of sites will not work (Internet banking, webmail, auto-cursor focusing) All kinds of creature-features that I'm not willing to do without. I run Javascript under Win98, WinNT4, and Win2K with no problems. Now, if I could just get javascript to work reliably with Netscape 6 or Konqueror under Linux, talk about flaky. I hope changing to Mozilla .8 will help... I am sick of dual-booting and would like to just go for the Linux uptime record instead of rebooting every time I need to do something that I cannot do with Linux browsers... :(
  • The text login screen displays the kernel version. If you have your machine set to auto-start X, then hit CTRL-ALT-F1 to switch to text mode, look at the screen, then hit CTRL-ALT-F7 to switch back to X.
  • > In Windoze it's easy, you click on my computer/properties/version and it tells you.

    Exactly how long did it take you to figure that out? I'm sure it wasn't so intuitive that you just knew. First you have to know to right-click, rather than left-click, to get the properties menu. That alone is nothing I would call more intuitive than looking at the login screen (You don't even have to log in...) and about equal with the uname -r as far as intuitiveness.

    Open you mind a bit, remember that there was a day that you were just as lost with Windows as you seem to be currently with Linux. You'll learn, it'll get easier.

    They may not be able to make it fool-proof, but they can already use it to show proof of fools.

  • Re:Sid? (Score:1)

    by Argon ( 6783 )
    Sid is Debian's forever "unstable" release. The "testing" distribution is the one which will get a new name once "woody" is done. Ganesan
  • Actually, Internet Exploiter can handle gzip, as long as the web server specifies the MIME type correctly. This is how mod_gzip [remotecommunications.com] works. (Yes, they are slightly different things on the server side, but the same stuff happens on the client side.
  • What do you mean by feeding it locally? If you just opened the file with it, there was noone there to give it a MIME type.
  • I've compiled both 2.4.1 and 2.4.2 just fine with Debian unstable. I am completely up to date though - are you?
  • Ugh! It just hit me and I was up to date but not with debian.org but a mirror.
  • Troll, But I'm hungry.

    The major problem people have with service packs is that they are huge.
    A service pack is likely to introduce half the number of bugs it fixes, if you are unlucky one of the new bugs will affect you.

    In the linux world we have kernel releases more often. You can upgrade if you want to, if you are satisfied with the older kernel but need a bug fixed you can usually patch just that bug.

    You usually won't get much help from Microsoft unless you are running the latest service pack. If you don't they will tell you to install it.

    There is another rather huge difference also, this is a kernel release. A Windows Service Pack can affect anything on the system while a kernel upgrade usually only affects the kernel.
  • Hi.

    I'm not too sure what's going on, some can someone help me: I downloaded 2.4.2 and was hapily compiling it until at the end of "make bzImage" I got an error about ld not being able to find "binary." The line in the makefile was something along the lines of:

    ld -elf [..] -s -oformat binary bootsect.s bootsect.o

    (forgive me if I'm a little off, I'm away from the machine at the moment..)

    I quickly flipped through the ld manpage and saw that -oformat is a valid option. I then tried recompiling 2.4.1 which I had installed cleanly when it came out and got the same problem. I looked at the Makefile in 2.2.18 and there is no -oformat for the ld call there.. at last I can still compile it..

    Does anyone have any ideas about what my problem is? I don't know too much about the Gnu linker, but it looks like maybe the version in sid doesn't jove with the Linux kernel..

    Help?

    Ben
  • My girlfriend has informed me that Sid was the bad kid in the first movie. I haven't seen it though, so don't quote me on it..

    Ben
  • Maybe, but it is beginning to appear not..... We have multiple SparcStations and PC's in our house, and until this week, on couple of PCs, We had Win2K/WinME and Linux Installed on separate carriage Hard Disks. Because when it came to certain things, still it was hard to beat Win2k. As a matter of fact , just for that reason, I had been a professional subscriber to MSDN. (Last update was just this January.) However after installing 2.4.1 and then 2.4.1 with KDE 2.1.x beta and loading the ALSA drivers ( now up to version 0.9), I am totally impressed. Now I can do things with my RME Hammerfall (full) , MidiMan DIO2448 , SBLive platinum and Ensoniq 1371 cards that I could not even dream of before. We started salvaging the HDs that win2k/Win98/WinME were taking and changing them into nfs shared disks. This is a diffusion equation with exponentially growing distributed sources. Any one with some physics/math background already knows that the outcome is inevitable. With the LiVid's latest DVD players, and Matrox's support for G400 dual head(one machine) and G450 dual head (in the other) and with my Sony PCG-XG18 and my wife's Fujitsu Lifebook, we are in heaven. However I will keep all the 600 or so MSDN CDs and 50 or so MSDN DVDs for future reference. As it stands now they are relegated to the upper shelf ( and yes I did see a whistler beta there, but frankly I don't care anymore. Not with ASP/.NET concept and the secure path .... I even stopped downloading Win2k updates after they screwed up my multi region DVD player hw/sw...) I basically do not trust any closed source s/w anymore. The last s/w I am ordering is Mathematica 4.1 , but I am also coming up on Maxima (open source Macsyma). I already use {Star,Open}Office. Word 2000 came with my Sony PCG-XG18, but I never installed it. StarOffice/Cygwin/Forte/Netbeans catered to every need I had on Win2k, and they do just fine on Linux. Oh BTW, Konqueror is great. Now I no longer need Netscape or IE either....

    YMMV

    sinan
  • The 2.4.1ac series included a couple of fixes for the Matrox G450 card. The changelog for 2.4.2 says "sync up more with Alan", but it doesn't say what changes were sunc. How can I find out if the Matrox fixes went in or not?

    Thanks,
    Stuart.

  • Furthermore, you can't run NFS of a ReiserFS partition yet

    I could swear that I was sharing a couple of ReiserFS volumes over NFS last summer... Yeah, I must've, because the whole lab ran exclusively Reiser (installed with SuSE). NFS doesn't care what file system is below it, it's a user-space thing (except when it's a kernel-space thing, in which case it still shouldn't even know what FS is underneath it).

  • Doh. I seem to have forgotten about "</I>"

    BTW, what's up with this:

    Slow down cowboy!

    Slashdot requires you to wait 1 minute between each submission of /comments.pl in order to allow everyone to have a fair chance to post.

    It's been 1 minute since your last submission!
  • It all depends on what you want to spend your money on, or what you happen to have a surplus of. Processing power or disk space.

    If your webserver is so busy that a compressed filesystem adversely affects your performance, then obviously a compressed filesystem would be a poor choice. On the other hand, if you have a very lightly used web server with a large volume of data, then it might be a good idea.

    Nice to have the option
  • Don't forget web pages! Those are generally stored uncompressed, and a large web site can literally have gigs of HTML files.
  • C coding is not taught in any standard form in current university settings. I have learned Pascal, C++, bash, ksh, and csh but I never touched C because it wasn't formally taught.

    If you know C++, then C's easy. It's just C++ without all the good parts.

  • No problem here. I compile my kernels using gcc 2.95.2 (from Debian potato).

    I don't think you can compile it with the 'new' compiler that came with Redhat 7.0, but I'm not sure.
  • ReiserFS is generally stable and works for most persons without any trouble. I've been using it for months now on my desktop and I'm really impressed with it. Pressing reset almost becomes fun ;-)

    However, last time I checked, ReiserFS didn't support quota (this may have changed, I'm sure patches exist). It also doesn't support a bad-block map, so be carefull with partially damaged harddisks.

    Furthermore, you can't run NFS of a ReiserFS partition yet.

    ReiserFS is very fast. You can really notice difference to ext2, mainly in large directories.
  • Watch Alan as he releases 2.4.2acN and check wether your desired patch is still in the ac kernels. If it's not, it's in the main kernel.

    Yes, hardly scientific, but it works.
  • First, try 2.4.1. Knowing if 2.4.1 works for you is fital in finding the bug.

    Then, when you know what version broke the driver, you may or may not investigate further on your own. You might want to try some 2.4.2-preX kernel to futher pin down the breakage.

    Eventually, just file a bug report to the Linux kernel mailing list [tux.org]. Be sure to be as accurate as possible: describe your hardware and the symptoms as exact as possible.
  • I actually have a few systems set aside for the following at home:
    Open BSD 2.7, FreeBSD, and perhaps NetBSD if I have the time (Then again, I might make it a Solaris box).

    I am unfamiliar with BSD, hence why I wish to try it, what are softdeps? The term reminds me of "symlink" for some reason (as in the way a symlink appears on the inode table).
  • Ummm SUSE already has a 2.4 distro out.

  • What hypocrisy?

    Windows service packs affect more code than just the kernel. They don't allow me to selectively fix what I want, either. And they tend to break more than they fix.

    With the linux kernel updates I can update just the kernel, rather than the kernel, the webserver and the kitchen sink. If I want to upgrade the webserver I'll do that separately, thank you. Also, I honestly see fewer changes in between 2.4.1 and 2.4.2 (or 2.4.0 and 2.4.2, really) than the average service pack fixes.

    It isn't about how often updates are required, it's about whether those updates are out when I need them (esspecially security fixes) and how much control I have over running them. And not breaking more stuff.

  • i think you should be looking at the mode rather than the average file size to determine savings to be had from shrinking blocksize. consider the situation in which you have 1e7's of 10-byte long files and a couple 1e9-byte files.

    --Phil
  • Boy, you've got a slow system if it takes you two months to compile three releases. Maybe if you invest in some more RAM or faster hard disks, you won't have this problem.

    The other alternative is to stick with 2.2.19 or 2.0.39.

  • Small drives. (Score:4)

    by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @07:50AM (#410860)
    It's not the size, it's how you use it.

    --
  • Bullshit.

    You can't buy Whistler at Fry's or anywhere else. You'll never be able to buy Whister... only Windows XP. Unless you're using some weird pre-alpha, Whistler builds haven't even been around for 342 days.
  • Okay, I'll bite.

    The benefits of linux release methodology over the Microsoft release methodology:

    - I can quickly get a sense of what is being improved with each kernel release by looking at the changes notice that is included with each kernel.
    - I can find in depth discussion of some changes by following the kernel development list or the major discussion by reading the kernel traffic summaries that are published weekly at http://kt.zork.net/kernel-traffic/latest.html [zork.net]
    - I can go read the code in the kernel to try to discern what is going on
    - I can try to contact a kernel developer directly to seek information on a particular improvement
    - I can offer my own improvements to the code
    - I can tell what the benefits or a particular improvement are and who will benefit from this improvement

    - I do not have to blindly go forth into the mire of a service pack and hope that it fixes a problem in a correct and well thought out manner and hope that it truly offers a benefit and does not only serve the interests of one entity

    Does this mean that some bad ideas don't get brought into kernel releases? No. Does this mean that I have to expend less effort in deciding upon and then executing a update of my system? No. But I do have more tools available and better information to help me to decide if this is the right decision.

  • Yes, lets take a look at that. Here's the first article I looked at under that link... http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q 253/6/07.ASP
    Includes
    SYMPTOMS

    When you add a second NNTP virtual server, master/slave feeds and control messages may not work when Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is also installed.

    CAUSE

    A property is incorrectly set in the metabase on the control and slave groups as to which driver to use. By default, Windows 2000 assumes the Exchange store rather than NTFS store. This breaks both control messages and master/slave feeds.

    RESOLUTION

    To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows 2000. For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Q260910 How to Obtain the Latest Windows 2000 Service Pack

    And this really doesn't give me much to chomp on with regard to if this is a good idea for my system. And considering that I may not be running exchange, may not be serving NNTP, and may not be running two virtual NNTP servers on my box, is this something that I need anyways? And how do I judge this on it's merits? There is little diagnostic information available and basically they ask for blind trust in a situation which time and time again they have shown that they are not deserving of it.

  • > So, if you're not running Exchange and don't have two virtual NNTP servers, then the bug does not affect you.

    Then why should the solution?

    > You can understand kernel source code, but can't read English. Are you a bot?

    Yes, ofcourse I'm a bot. In fact, I'm the first bot to be able to understand kernel source code and evaluate it's effectiveness for use. You should fear for your job!
  • One of the reasons 2.4.0 was released when it was was to get a larger base of testers. Distros aren't goint it use 2.4 for a while yet, RedHat started using 2.2.0 (and 2.2.1/2.2.1 were released pretty quickly after 2.2.0..)
  • Uhhh...it *IS* out of experimental. It was included in 2.4.1 production. I migrated my home machine and my webserver over to it. No fsck is a good thing especially when your home machine locks up from a buggy nvidia x driver ;) hehehe

  • Some of the HURD's more advanced features includes:


  • I've heard the Debian's next release is codenamed Sid, but which Toy Story character was Sid? I've never seen the movies.

  • Re:SLOW DOWN (Score:3)

    by KFury ( 19522 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @07:47AM (#410870) Homepage
    If you'd prefer that they slow down the release cycle and include more changes in each release, then just install every other kernel.

    Staying on the bleeding edge does sting, that's why they call it that...

    Kevin Fox
    --
  • > o Fix 48 misspellings of interrupt (André Dahlqvist)...

    Maybe they need to add a make spellcheck step to kernel compilation.

    --
  • I speak for people with small drives everywhere when I say:

    When will the kernel support default compression of filesystems.
  • "Well bitch, don't be so fucking lazy and code it up yourself. Isn't that the beauty of Open Source? "

    Well bitch here's the rundown.

    1. learning all the ins and outs of the kernel is a full time job in itself. I don't have the time to spend 6 months learning exactly what goes where.

    2. C coding is not taught in any standard form in current university settings. I have learned Pascal, C++, bash, ksh, and csh but I never touched C because it wasn't formally taught.

    3. Writing kernel code is approximately 200% harder and more precise than writing an application program.

    4. I don't have expertise levels of OS design.

    Those things being stated I feel that at least on the surface once those things have been removed it wouldn't take say Linux or Alan Cox much more than 5 minutes of their time to get it working once and for all. Basically you just have something sitting above the call to storing or writing data and have your favorite compression algorithm there to act as an intermediary.

    I hope this is more lucid than your reply.
  • Maybe you should read the the announcements that come with every kernel release before proclaiming that:

    Don't just go out and grab 2.4.2...

    From Linus's announcement:


    The IDE driver bug that Russell found has, to my knowledge, never been shown to happen on anything but his ARM machine, but for all we know it could be quite bad even on x86. Similarly, the elevator bug could cause corruption, but probably has not actually bit people in practice. But both are definitely deadly...

    I don't know about you, but I think this may be significant and worth the upgrade if you use IDE in your systems.
  • Now we just need someone to fix the 200 misspellings of "color" as "colour".

    <duck>

  • Although it's only just gone into the kernel in 2.4, reiserfs has been stable and working for a while, and is already included in a number of distros.

    I use Mandrake 7.1 (current is 7.2) which has reiserfs - I use it for all my non-root filesystems to avoid the fsck checks.

  • Re:The new kernel (Score:4)

    by snowbike ( 35353 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @08:01AM (#410883)
    The current Linux codebase is good, but for it to be great, the developers must stop patting eachother on the back...


    Glad to hear that you are going to do the rewrite. The source is all there. Are you setting up your efforts on sourceforge or will you just announce it view usenet ala Linus?

  • Think about it, I'm sure that most of the real "disk hogs" are things like mp3s, mpgs, tar.gz's and .zips.

    You might be surprised. When I was playing with a local news spool I had to reformat the partition because I ran out of inodes. At the same time I dropped the blocksize from the default 4k to 2k, and recovered nearly 1 GB out of a 4 GB partition.

    Further research showed that the average file size was around 5k, so it required 8k of disk space (3k unused). A 2k blocksize required 6k of disk space (1k unused). A 1k blocksize freed up even more space.

    If you have a lot of small files you can eat up a surprising amount of disk space in the tail of your files.

  • I spent almost a week downloading Red Hat's 2.4.0 beta and getting it installed (all I really wanted was iptable support). And, after getting it installed and customizing it so it would actually work (Hey! It's a beta distro...) I was amazed at the overall speed and performance. But, iptables would not work (xinetd required a backpedel to an earlier version) and I was forced to use IPChains. As it is, the box is still sitting behind my firewall rather that on the front line.

    Downloaded 2.4.1 and tried to compile it. It broke things in the RD distro. Downloaded the most current iptables and recompile the 2.4.0-99..whatever RH kernel. iptables still would not work.

    Today, out of a whim, I downloaded and recompiled 2.4.2. Not only did it compile without any issues, but iptables works as well (imagine that).

    Can't wait to see tomorrow if, when I reboot, that it tells me nfsstatd didn't start like 2.4.0 and 2.4.1 did when I recompiled. Well, I gotta see, recompiled the kernel from home and it just sounds too good to be true.

    RD
  • The reason, which you and the people who replied to you seem to have missed, is because Microsoft said themselves that Windows 2000 would never required fixes. They lied to the corporate managers and other people who choose what to run on the servers in order to get more money.

    That is what people don't like about MS Win2k. Linus never claimed that 2.4.0 would be bugfree (or if he did, he did it tongue-in-cheek). If MS had more truth in their advertising, I know I'd be happier.

    --
  • Give us a break. The whole point of linux is "do what works" not "do what's propper." Not to mention, why don't you quit gabbing about it and do it yourself. That's the beauty here. If you think Linus is doing an ass job, he actively encourages you to try and do better. You don't have to overrule him to make some changes, you just do it.
  • There are already file sysyems being developed for embedded work (like cramfs), I was assuming he was talking about something similar to the compressed disk option in windows... basically my point was implementing this for a desktop system is a complete waste of time (or even for a laptop... my Vaio C1VN is about as small as they come and it's got a 12 gig drive in it...)

    .technomancer

  • Permanent compressed filesystem? WHY?!?!?!?! (Score:3)

    by technomancerX ( 86975 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @08:03AM (#410911) Homepage
    Geeze, with 20 gig drives less than $100 what's the point? Even when I was in college working 15 hours a week I could scrounge that much with a little effort... and unless you're a major MP3 fiend, doing video editing, or mirroring large ftp/web sites, 20 gigs is enough space for a Linux box (hell, I've got a network gateway box doing email, http, ftp, and dns on a 1 gig drive and it's fine)

    .technomancer

  • Obviously you never read the flame war between Tannenbaum and Linus that took place in 1991. Theoritical design is one thing, but writing something that works and works well is another.

    But, if you don't like how things are going with the linux kernel, nobody is stopping you from starting your own fork of the linux kernel. Import the whole source tree into your own CVS repository, get some developers and get some work done.

  • Re:Permanent compressed filesystem support (Score:3)

    by psocccer ( 105399 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @07:40AM (#410923) Homepage
    I don't think it'll help much though. Think about it, I'm sure that most of the real "disk hogs" are things like mp3s, mpgs, tar.gz's and .zips. I included the tgz and zips because most people uncompress, compile, install, delete. Some keep them around, but most do not keep around the uncompressed tgz for most things.

    All those things don't well, if at all, so a compressed filesystem would just be redundant. The exegz thing might help some, but stripping your binaries is probably just about as good without the runtime performance hit. And I'd think that even if you compressed your whole root partition with a scheme like this, the savings would be negligible but everything you did would require packing/unpacking stuff so the whole system would be generally slower.

    With the ever expanding size of hard drives, I think this is a pretty small issue.

    Yes, I realize that maybe single floppy distros and embedded devices may find this kind of thing useful, but I'm talking about the other 95% of the linux community here.

  • Don't just go out and grab 2.4.2. Odds are you don't even need it. It's merely another stable release that spreads what Linux can run on.

    You haven't read the fscking Changelog have you?! 2.4.2 fixes a serious IDE multimode write bug. If anyone has even somewhat-modern IDE hard drives in their system, it is certainly worth their while to get it.

    I think SCSI-only boxen can wait, though -- but Linux was (and still is, to a degree) all about Unix on low-cost x86 hardware, so methinks there be plenty of IDE-based Linux systems around...

    --
  • From the changelog:

    -pre2:
    - Russell King: fix serious IDE multimode write bug!

    If you have IDE hard drives, I recommend you pop 2.4.2 into place purdy quick. Write bug == bad.


    --

  • Re:This kernel numbering is confusing (Score:4)

    by slamb ( 119285 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @07:58AM (#410930) Homepage

    Buy windows 2000 and you have to download 1 service pack and thats means its a terrible OS that needs constant patching. Download linux 2.4.0 then 2.4.1 and then 2.4.2 in less than half that timespan and rather than meaning that 2.4.0 was a terrible OS that needs constant patching it is an innovative OS with a rapid turnaround. Am I the only one who spots the hipocracy here?

    I see no hypocrisy.

    First, when I make a judgement like that about a Microsoft product, it's not because of the number of service packs. I realize that all software of that complexity has bugs. It's instead that their software doesn't work well for me, even after applying all the service packs. Their service packs just don't seem to fix all the important problems for me, no matter how many I apply. For example, I've patched my Windows 98 system to the latest Windows Update stuff, but I'm still having some weird problems with Internet Explorer.

    Second, Linux x.y.z releases are not just bugfix releases. In this case, it probably is...x.y.[1-5] typically are. But there are many new features introduced in point releases. 2.2.18 (or was it 2.2.19?), for example, backported USB support to the 2.2 series. I see a lot of important new features introduced in new Linux point releases, which I don't see in Windows service packs. Having a specific x.y just means the basic architecture is constant, not that the feature set is.

    Third, as someone else mentioned, you don't need to upgrade to a new kernel revision to fix a bug. You have the source code, and you have the full patches. If you just want to fix one bug, you can do that. You don't have that option with Microsoft code, since it's not open-source.

  • People will complain about anything these days (Score:3)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @07:44AM (#410935)
    Looking at some of these other posts you'd think it were a bad thing to have bug fixes and updates in a timely fashion.

  • Last Palindromic Release (Score:3)

    by SpanishInquisition ( 127269 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @07:32AM (#410937) Homepage Journal
    until 2.5.2 (or 3.0.3)

  • Re:...And A Patch Close Behind It. (Score:5)

    by Lizard_King ( 149713 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @08:17AM (#410943) Journal
    From the Alan's email to LWN:
    • o Fix 48 misspellings of interrupt (André Dahlqvist)
    • o Fix 20 misspellings of successful (André Dahlqvist)
    • o Fix 11 misspellings of suppress (André Dahlqvist)
    • o Fix 46 misspellings of address (André Dahlqvist)
    • o Fix 26 misspellings of receive (André Dahlqvist)
    • o Fix 7 misspellings of acquire (André Dahlqvist)
    • o Fix 4 misspellings of unneccessary (André Dahlqvist)
    • o Fix 13 misspellings of until (André Dahlqvist)


    André Dahlqvist is fusing the line between English major and CS major.

  • Re:This kernel numbering is confusing (Score:3)

    by proxima ( 165692 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @08:02AM (#410949)
    If you are truly being serious, the reason is because a kernel number makes it MUCH easier to understand the sort of kernel you are using.

    The first number is a major code change, fundamental in nature. After about 7 years we are now up to 2.x.x. The second number also shows major revisions, but of a less fundamental variety than the first number. An odd second number denotes a development series, not intended to be used for production computers. This is why most users went from 2.0.x to 2.2.x to 2.4.x, because 2.1.x and 2.3.x were development versions. When the development version is deemed stable enough to be used in some production platforms, it moves to an even second number, like the recent 2.4.0. However, the 2.2.x kernel series is still being maintained for use as an ultra-stable kernel, while the 2.4.x is more cutting-edge for the latest hardware support and performance.

    The third number indicates a small change, usually bugfixes but some small amounts of new features supported. When going to purchase new hardware it is easy to tell if you have a "2.2.0 or later kernel".

    Finally, a service pack generally implies a large set of bugfixes, as Microsoft had somewhere around 7 (maybe 8) for NT 4. The Linux Kernel version system allows for a few small changes to be made at every release, decreasing the waiting time for users to wait for a desired bugfix or feature (instead of months for a new service pack).

    If my overgeneralization of the Linux kernel was incorrect, my apologies, but I think an overall understading of how the Linux Kernel numbering system works is important for those who don't know yet.

  • Does this resolve the problems with VIA chipsets?

  • Re:Interesting that you should say that. (Score:3)

    by RedWizzard ( 192002 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @01:06PM (#410961)
    all of the improvements and changes that I would make are things that HURD project pretty much has covered
    This is exactly why your focus on architecture is wrong and Linus' focus on practicality is right. The HURD sounds fantastic in theory, but it's taken something like 12 years of development and they're up to 0.3 (or something). Linus OTOH was able to get Linux to the point where it was usable in a fairly short time.
  • Don't just go out and grab 2.4.2. Odds are you don't even need it. It's merely another stable release that spreads what Linux can run on.

    If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Currently, 2.4.1 is the latest "something for everyone" kernel, and only because of a change in memory handling. Read the changelogs before downloading the kernels and see if there is anything you'll actually USE!

    The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...

  • You have a new version of binutils installed that handles the -o flag differently. You need to edit /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/Makefile and change all -oformat to --oformat.

    Aparently this has been known about for a couple weeks and a patch has been made but for some reason didn't make it in 2.4.2

    --
    Garett

  • Unfortunately the Linux kernel still does not comply with the principles of good kernel design highlighted in Tannenbaum's "Operating Systems Design And Implentation": the clean (and I do emphasize that that is important) implementation of a scheduler, memory managment aspects, IPC, device drivers etc. I'm not bashing the kernel though, and I do use GNU/Linux extensively.... The only solution to the Linux kernel problem is a complete rewrite of the codebase. This will ensure that no messy code is left behind and that the kernel can effectively take on modern kernel implementations, such as BeOS and QNX, and Plan 9's kernel. The current Linux codebase is good, but for it to be great, the developers must stop patting eachother on the back and start seriously thinking about proper change control - perhaps a CVS system instead of randomly throwing out tarballs....and a proper built-in kernel debugger. (Linus himself apparently dissaproves of things like this). Sure Linus has been invaluable to the success of the Linux kernel, but in matters such as this perhaps it's time he was overruled, in order to take the kernel onto the next level.

  • Re:This kernel numbering is confusing (Score:5)

    by Decado ( 207907 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @07:40AM (#410968)

    Because the linux advocates constantly criticise microsofts service packs means of upgrading. Buy windows 2000 and you have to download 1 service pack and thats means its a terrible OS that needs constant patching. Download linux 2.4.0 then 2.4.1 and then 2.4.2 in less than half that timespan and rather than meaning that 2.4.0 was a terrible OS that needs constant patching it is an innovative OS with a rapid turnaround.

    Am I the only one who spots the hipocracy here?

  • Re:Interesting that you should say that. (Score:3)

    by TOTKChief ( 210168 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @10:31AM (#410969) Homepage
    Ahhhh, but when the HURD is heard from, will the herd keep HURD from being heard? Word.
    --
  • In the linux world we have kernel releases more often. You can upgrade if you want to, if you are satisfied with the older kernel but need a bug fixed you can usually patch just that bug.

    I don't know if that makes much difference. Let's say SP 1 == kernel x.y.1 through 5. How many people will be running x.y.5 without the changes introduced in the 2->3 transition? Yes, I know you can do it and yes, I know how to do it. But realistically there's almost no one doing that. For most users, using kernel x.y.z means using all the patches introduced between 0 and z.

  • Huh?

    How does the fact that an NT box somewhere has a 3 day uptime means the guy you're responding to doesn't have a 342 day uptime?

    And why are you assuming that whatever web server Netcraft is tracking is part of the Datacenter Server setup that's supposed to be providing the 99.999% uptime?

    Come on, my Linux box at home isn't even on now - does that mean Linux doesn't run at all?

  • ...And A Patch Close Behind It. (Score:3)

    by Dr. Dew ( 219113 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @07:32AM (#410977) Homepage

    Alan Cox is doing that voodoo he do do: LWN report on 2.4.2ac1 [lwn.net]. Also, the ftp link [kernel.org].

    More on 2.4.2 from the LWN is here [lwn.net].

  • Re:Permanent compressed filesystem? WHY?!?!?!?! (Score:3)

    by drift factor ( 220568 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @08:33AM (#410978)
    Geeze, with 20 gig drives less than $100 what's the point?

    Two words: embedded linux.
  • It's technically called 'clustering', but think of it like this: take the raw bits of your hard drive and divide them into 8k blocks, or whatever. Now compress those blocks and store them on another filesystem. The filesystem-under-the-compressed-filesystem takes care of where to put these physically compressed blocks. In the worst case scenario, it says 'out of space' and the write of the new bytes fail.
  • Interestingly, disk caches store data uncompressed. Therefore, the pages that are actually read will most likely be available from memory or swap uncompressed.
  • Not when you have an extremely large website. Consider the fact that a site that has lots of stuff compressed gets /. all the sudden. How about that?

    You're missing the point. Any file that gets read more than once is likely to be in the cache. Just depends on how much RAM you have. As for /.ing, decompression only happens on the first page hit, and the following 10000 hits are served direct from RAM. Unless the /.'ed content is larger than you have RAM for, there's no issue.

  • Re:Permanent compressed filesystem support (Score:3)

    by kyz ( 225372 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @07:34AM (#410985) Homepage
    I speak for people with small drives everywhere when I say: When will the kernel support default compression of filesystems.

    Use gzexe - which needs no special kernal magic, or apply the ext2compr patch to the kernel, which isn't that great.
  • "...the kernel can effectively take on modern kernel implementations, such as BeOS and QNX, and Plan 9's kernel."

    Maybe they are too busy taking on operating systems that people actually use to worry about conforming to an academic's idea of how software should be architected..

    That sounds like I'm advocating market share over correctness, but I'm not. I'm saying that "correctness" is in the eye of the beholder. And the beholders who agree with you and Tannenbaum haven't made much headway in the Real World whereas Linus has.
    --
    http://www.geekizoid.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/03/1 346238&mode=thread
  • On http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/guide/server/ solutions/overview/reliable/default.asp Microsoft explains how Windows 2000 is "Five nines 99.999% uptime", and on the right is a link to a Starbucks Windows 2000 study.

    It goes on to say how much better the coffee is and how much happier customers are because of Windows 2000.

    http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.star bucks.com [netcraft.com] indeed says "The site www.starbucks.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000." not a big surprise.

    However, this is one of the sites that netcraft tracks for uptime.

    Note: Uptime - the time since last reboot is explained in the FAQ
    Plotted Value : Windows 2000
    No. samples : 250
    Max : 215.28
    Latest : 3.18


    3 days uptime is not something to brag about, Microsoft. Do some research before you stick your foot in your mouth, but only after shooting it.

  • This kernel numbering is confusing (Score:5)

    by typical geek ( 261980 ) on Thursday February 22, 2001 @07:30AM (#410999) Homepage
    Why can't Linux just name it, like Linux 4, Service Pack 2?
  • I think M$ already patented that form of naming an update. It is now illegal to say 'Service Pack' without agreeing to their EULA. Just kidding. :)

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