Linux 2.4.18 Released

Kourino writes: "Marcelo announced the release of 2.4.18 a couple hours ago after 4 release candidates, but the tree marked 2.4.18 on kernel.org is missing the -rc4 patch that finally made the kernel releasable. Basically, what's marked as 2.4.18 is really -rc3, and what's marked as -rc4 is what should have become 2.4.18. According to Marcelo on #kernelnewbies, most users won't be affected, but people on SPARC systems should definitely grab 2.4.18-rc4. Your best bet is probably just to get 2.4.17 and patch to 2.4.18-rc4. Seems 2.4 is destined to be an "interesting" release branch ^_^; For the new release, head over to your favorite kernel.org mirror. (Marcelo will set things straight in 2.4.19-pre1.)"

Re:this is an enterprise ready os?

[Archie Steel]

Come on, it's been enterprise-ready for a while, now. Businesses don't need the "latest kernel available", they want the most stable. There are a couple of extremely stable kernels out there...

Sience this patch seems mostly for the Sparc.

[jellomizer]

It seems that Sun is now 20 years old. Happy Birthday Sun. So on its birtday it get a nice new Linux patch for its platform. Ok everyone Dig out your old Sparc 2's and install you Linux kernel.

Allow me

[YourMissionForToday]

"Why is this news? This isn't freshmeat! Why don't you post every time Windows has a tiny update?"

Thanks, now that I've done that, I expect everyone else to show a little restraint and not clutter the board with your same old whiny bullshit. If you must post to get self-validation, try making up a story or something.

Version numbers.

[saintlupus]

Basically, what's marked as 2.4.18 is really -rc3, and what's marked as -rc4 is what should have become 2.4.18. According to Marcelo on #kernelnewbies, most users won't be affected, but people on SPARC systems should definitely grab 2.4.18-rc4.

Wow. Now that's professionalism, eh? Good thing that this whole Open Source badge makes it all okay.

Would the fifteen second delay to rename a couple files before release really have killed anyone?

--saint

I can't trust this release...

[Anonymous Coward]

the tree marked 2.4.18 on kernel.org is missing the -rc4 patch that finally made the kernel releasable. Basically, what's marked as 2.4.18 is really -rc3, and what's marked as -rc4 is what should have become 2.4.18. According to Marcelo on #kernelnewbies, most users won't be affected, but people on SPARC systems should definitely grab 2.4.18-rc4. Your best bet is probably just to get 2.4.17 and patch to 2.4.18-rc4. Seems 2.4 is destined to be an "interesting" release branch ^_^;

I've had enough kernel problems in the past. The degree of uncertainty presented around this latest Kernel doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence.

Think I'll hold off for a while, thanks.

Re:this is an enterprise ready os?

[reaper20]

Redhat and Suse provide some damn good kernels. I've had no problems whatsoever. They really stress test those things.

Boy, everyone sure loves to jump on the "2.4.x sucks" bandwagon. Sure, there were some issues in the past, but I would like to know how many people reading slashdot right now are really seeing all of these problems.

90% of you who got burned and will "go back to 2.2.x" were probably being stupid and tried it on a production server and got properly burned.

Test your shit before you deploy, if you're not doing that then you're an idiot.

How about a new Slashdot feature.

[jellomizer]

On the top right of the page a little box giving the current kernel version and the date/time of the change when you click on it you can get to its message board. That way you guys can get your Kernel Fix and read about your problems and us people who dont update the kernel in the main messages. I like getting news about Linux and Also Major Kernel versions. But all these little ones gets annoying. It seems like if anyone really want to post a story with there name on it they keep two browsers open and one refreshes kernel.org untill a version apears and then they post a message stating that. Say I can make a script to do that. (But I wont)

Re:Version numbers.

[markj02]

Wow. Now that's professionalism, eh? Good thing that this whole Open Source badge makes it all okay.

No. What makes it OK is that the fix is out within 24 hours, that even 2.4.18-rc3 is very usable, and that people who run anything on Linux shouldn't be upgrading to a kernel that has just been released, even in the "stable" series.

Microsoft, just to pick one commercial example, releases a new version of Windows once every few years, and major service packs fairly infrequently. They also invest hundreds of millions of dollars in each release. And, you pay hundreds of dollars for Microsoft's software. That's what makes it not OK when Microsoft breaks a kernel release and users end up being stuck with it for months. And Microsoft releases packages with major flaws constantly, much bigger flaws than a forgotten rc4 patch.

Release frequency, release engineering thoughts.

[seantrue]

There is a natural rhythm to the frequency of a successfully released software system, which is an indescribably complex function of the size of the system, the size of the releasing team, the maturity of the software, the sophistication of the end user, and the cost of making mistakes.

What is an ideal release frequency for one point in this space, is not at another.

At one point I worked at a DOS extender company (Rational Systems, not related to Rational of California), and we released the software every week. The system was small, the team was small, the customers were very sophisticated, and the value of adding new features was very high. We were praised for being responsive. Three years later, the software was much bigger, the release cycle was down to 2 times a year, and the value of not adding new bugs to the old features was very high. We still got good marks for technical support.

Unlike most commercial software, it's hard to point at revenue streams for Linux that justify the midlife software development expenses like full-time, paid-for, this-isn't-fun-but-it-has-to-get-done release engineering. Although there is a large virtual software team for this OS, I strongly suspect that there is less infrastructural support than you get with old fashioned, iron vendor supported systems like Solaris, HP-UX, et al. TANSTAAFL, folks.

Don't get me wrong, I use Linux daily, my servers run on it, and I depend on a variety of other open source software (particularly Python!). I even buy RedHat/KRUD releases just so that some value flows back into the release process from a happy recipient. But I sometimes feel like holding my breath while installing that next kernel release!

TANSTAAFL -- There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Thanks, RAH, wherever you are!

Why can't they fix it now?

[irq]

Why can't they just rename the files?
I mean, these people make operating systems, right?

Re:2.4.18 IS OK?

[Anonymous Coward]

nope, it needs this:

--- linux-2.4.18/fs/binfmt_elf.c.orig Mon Feb 25 14:56:59 2002
+++ linux-2.4.18/fs/binfmt_elf.c Mon Feb 25 14:57:17 2002
@@ -564,6 +564,9 @@
// printk(KERN_WARNING "ELF: Ambiguous type, using ELF\n");
interpreter_type = INTERPRETER_ELF;
}
+ } else {
+ /* Executables without an interpreter also need a personality */
+ SET_PERSONALITY(elf_ex, ibcs2_interpreter);
}

/* OK, we are done with that, now set up the arg stuff,

VIA and Cyrix III must have rc-4

[Dark Coder]

If you have a Cyrix III 1Ghz and a VIA southbridge controller, you must have the -rc4 .

Re:Linux Kernel 2.4.18 Changelog

[jjccss]

How long does it take for a site to run out of bandwidth after the news has been posted to /.?

IT'S CALLED KNOWLEDGE. It's nice to be able to read a quick reply that tells me w/o going to an archive whether or not I am going to use the kernel on the servers. Especially when the following link is omitted from the article.

Kernel 2.4.18 Changlog [kernel.org]

Re:What a silly thing to do

[Anonymous Coward]

right, and then brace for the zillion emails coming from all over the world of people complaining about how the md5sum suddenly changed on a kernel image they already downloaded AND verified...

Re:2.4.19-pre1 is out now.

[germanbirdman]

Don't forget it is a -pre. Marcelo was keeping a lot of patches out of the late 18-pres because he wanted to get the damn thing stable.

We should also note the time that has gone past between 2.4.17 and 2.4.18 - more than two whole months. This is Marcelo's first real own kernel in my opinion. 2.4.16 was a bug fix for 2.4.15 - 2.4.17 came out only a few weeks afterwards, but this baby really had time to mature.

This is also why I don't mind reading this (commenting on all the "This is not freshmeat" discussions) on slashdot. This is a stable kernel, the first for a long time. It is not like in the times when a new "stable" kernel came out like every other day and people got annoyed.

I have 2.4.18-rc4 running for almost 9 hours now (basically since it came out) with setiathome, dnetc, tftpd, nfs, smbd, cups, pppoe, bind9, dhcpd3, tftpd (for remote booting clients) using huge reiserfs partitions and I like what I see. It is just my busybox DSL router, firewall and file server, so not really a production system, but it is in a server case, running a dual pentium II so hardware that while not fully up to date resembles that of production servers in medium sized companies. I don't normally pull a new kernel everytime one comes out, but I suddenly needed NFS support which I didn't have compiled in before, so I decided to upgrade to either .18 or the most current release candidate. Before that it was running for at least a month on .17.

Re:2.4.19-pre1 is out now.

[Eil]

Or you could simply use the current stable kernel that's running on your machine right now.

My production machines are all still on 2.4.5, perhaps the most stable of the 2.4 series. (In my experience.)

Re:amd cache coherency

[strredwolf]

I belive this was fixed with 2.4.18-pre1, which was the first patch in.

But I'm still scared over 2.4.18 missing the -rc4 patch, and both 2.4.18 and 2.4.19-pre1 are fresh. I'm not going to compile it even on my own system until 2.4.19 is released.

Oh Alan, where are you...

Support for announcing new kernels

[herk]

Yeah that's right, I said it. I LIKE having Slashdot announce new kernels. This is where I always hear about new releases. I don't want to check a kernel site every day of the year, I'd rather see it on a site I'm reading anyhow.

Too many people bitching about such pointless dribble; 2.4 sucks, BSD owns Linux, stop posting these kernel releases.(Despite the fact that it's clearly geek news, and being posted on a geek news site) And then we add capability to exclude topics from your slashdot homepage, and people still bitch.

This is a tech news site, Linux kernels are a perfectly viable news item. 2.4 does not suck. If you think it does, move on to something else. Ignore the topics. Stop ripping up people doing a perfectly good job.

Re:Why can't they fix it now?

[Bronster]

Honestly, what they _should_ have done is put out 2.4.19, with nothing but that _one_ patch, marked 2.4.18 DONTUSE, and started with 2.4.20-pre1. Who cares about an extra number?

Re:Version numbers.

[Arandir]

That's not professionalism, it's a complete lack of any plan. Sometimes I suspect Linux doesn't even have a release manager. What? They don't? I knew it!

Open Source means that such bonehead blunders get fixed quickly and efficiently. In the meantime, this is the stable branch of the poster boy for Open Source. This raw egg everywhere certainly demonstrates the openness, but it doesn't do jack to demonstrate any professionalism.

Of course, nothing in life is perfect. But the whole 2.4 branch has been plagued by crap like this from day one. Frankly, Linux is starting to get a reputation, and it's not a pretty one.

Re:Just give me a kernel that turns off my compute

[jhanson]

Halt isn't supposed to power down your machine. Try calling 'poweroff' of using halt -p.