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Linux Software

Linux Kernel 2.4.20 Released 392

Posted by timothy from the jamie-has-the-munchies dept.
punkmac writes "It's that time again to do the thing we all love to do, compile your shiny new kernel. This time its 2.4.20. The changelog can be found at the usual places, and please use a mirror for all your downloads"
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Linux Kernel 2.4.20 Released More

Linux Kernel 2.4.20 Released

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  • first compile... (Score:4, Funny)

    by jaunty ( 56283 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @11:55PM (#4778415)
    ...already downloaded, and already compiled. With 2 minutes of testing, I can garantee that this is the best one ever...
    • Because the first 19 releases of the 2.4 kernel panicked within the first minute and a half, I suppose. :)

  • Haiku (Score:4, Funny)

    by bobtheprophet ( 587843 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @11:55PM (#4778416) Journal
    As snow is falling
    A new kernel is released.
    Truly, it is good.

    A tree, bare of leaves.
    A kernel, being released.
    Note nature tie-in.

  • Be kind to kernel.org (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28, 2002 @11:57PM (#4778421)
    Don't just use a mirror, get the patch to update your 2.4.19 tree.

  • for all new users to linux... (Score:4, Funny)

    by fredopalus ( 601353 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @12:00AM (#4778431) Homepage
    This may be the latest you've been up on thanksgiving.

  • When's the duplicate show up? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Flamesplash ( 469287 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @12:11AM (#4778468) Homepage Journal
    Hmm this isn't that interesting, I think I'll just wait around for the duplicate article post, maybe it'll be more interesting. ;)

  • great! (Score:4, Funny)

    by ozzmosis ( 99513 ) <ahze@ahze.net> on Friday November 29, 2002 @12:11AM (#4778469) Homepage Journal
    I'll smoke a bowl for its release!

  • 2.4.15-greased-turkey, with that nasty [slashdot.org] sync bug? Wow, quite a bit has changed in the last year.

  • small VM updates... (Score:5, Informative)

    by kinko ( 82040 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @12:28AM (#4778530)
    From the changelog....

    <hch@lst.de>:
    o dump_stack()
    o backport yield() and conditional reschedule changes from
    o small VM updates from -aa (1/5)
    o small VM updates from -aa (2/5)
    o small VM updates from -aa (4/5)
    o small VM updates from -aa (5/5)

    Is this using a Linus definition of small, or a normal definition of small?

    • Re:small VM updates... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29, 2002 @12:31AM (#4778538)
      Is this using a Linus definition of small, or a normal definition of small?

      It's small because part (3/5) contains all the code.

    • Just a quick reminder that Linus isn't manging the 2.4 tree anymore. He's moved on to the 2.5 tree.

      Marcelo Tosatti is managing the 2.4 tree.

      • Re:small VM updates... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by kinko ( 82040 )
        Yes I do know that. But Linus was maintaining it when they made a "small" change to the VM sub-system that involved gutting the whole thing.

        But you already knew that too...
    • Is this using a Linus definition of small, or a normal definition of small?

      I mostly used Linux (Debian) in the past with a little Free and OpenBSD.

      After I read an interview with Linus where he was asked about the current Linux kernel versus new BSD and XP features, he said something to the effect of "I haven't really looked much at BSD or XP, but I don't see much of value there".

      Which pretty much sounded to me like "I have not looked, I don't see any good".

      This was during the times that the VM shamozzle was occuring and my Linux machine was becoming unstable.

      This was the point where I decided that Linus was getting a bit arrogant. I am glad though, because my OpenBSD servers are very clean and stable and Theo not only sticks to his moral grounds but also has well thought out moral grounds.

    • For 2.4 series it's not up to Linus what gets merged. Marcelo Tosatti is the maintainer of Linux kernel 2.4 and he's the dictator-for-life of the stable tree.
  • am I the only one who's noticed?
    I just patched my source tree and
    linux/version.h still reads that I've got 2.4.19.

    Did I screw up? Or am I right that they've forgotten to update it?

  • Its a dupe... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ngkabra ( 245586 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @12:39AM (#4778564) Homepage

    I don't know what the slashdot editors are on today. This has already been covered here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org].

    Wait a minute. Do those funny little numbers after the name actually mean something? Oh well, nevermind.

  • Did they fix the new ptrace vulnerability? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Friday November 29, 2002 @12:45AM (#4778581)
    I haven't tried it myself yet, but I found no reference to this ptrace vulnerability [google.com] in the changelog. I suspect this is still a problem (it was in 2.4.19).

  • I can't find it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by m00nun1t ( 588082 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @12:47AM (#4778591) Homepage
    Where can I download the windows version?

  • zlib in the kernel? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hpavc ( 129350 )
    anyone know where i can read about this zlib(compression|decompression) library support? there is some very interesting mentioning of it in ./inculde/linux/zlib.h and of course in menuconfig as well.

    • nothing in /usr/src/linux/Documentation where it ought to be.
    • its used by PPP for packet compression, as well as initial kernel decompression with the zImage target.
    • There is also zisofs -- read-only support of compressed ISO CDs. In read-only systems the compression actually makes sense, because the size does not change, and decompression is much faster than compression. To use these, you need additional tools, probably called mkzisofs.

      Unfortunately, many CDs are used to store mp3/ogg/divx and the like, which don't really compress much. So zisofs is not necessarily very useful.

  • For anyone using reiserfs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @01:08AM (#4778639) Homepage
    There is a significant patch that speeds up write operations for large files on IDE drives by up to 15%. This made it in v2.4.20-pre6.

  • I couldn't find any notes about USB. I usually have problems when I try to mount a memory stick on my Sony Clie on Linux (system freezes... nothing can be done except hard reboot, can't even ssh/telnet into the box). Anyone had any similar problems?
    • I couldn't find any notes about USB. I usually have problems when I try to mount a memory stick on my Sony Clie on Linux (system freezes... nothing can be done except hard reboot, can't even ssh/telnet into the box). Anyone had any similar problems?

      Reading and installing the patch from the pointers from here [linux-usb.org] changed everything for me. Re-compiled the kernel just 2 days ago. Also generally, if you want to get the latest out of your usb in Linux, I have noticed that linux-usb.org [linux-usb.org] has it first (or atleast soon).

    • Re:usb fixes? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Cytlid ( 95255 )
      I don't know but my Wireless USB NIC Drivers [sourceforge.net] don't seem to be working. :o/ Already posted it to the mailing list...

  • No more printers on fire? (Score:5, Funny)

    by xercist ( 161422 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @01:45AM (#4778715) Homepage
    just reading through the changelog...


    Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk):
    ...

    * replace end user confusing "on fire" joke with real info
    ...

    We've just lost the best part of our kernel!
  • With changes such as "fixed typo in whatever.c" or "It didn't compile because a semicolon was missing, so I added it", we'll soon need to create ISO images for the changelogs...
    • What I've always wondered is this -- don't they notice that their program doesn't compile, and fix it before releasing it? It's easy to forget a semicolon on the end of a line, but I can't say I've ever released a program that had fatal compile errors. Is there something behind the scenes I'm missing?

  • It works! (Score:4, Funny)

    by chrysalis ( 50680 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @02:49AM (#4778821) Homepage
    This kernel perfectly works. I just installed it and it didn't cra

  • Broken USB mouse support fixed? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Anybody know if this version fixes USB optical mouse support which seems to have been broken for some users with 2.4.19? (Yes, I've checked groups.google.com and know about enabling CONFIG_USB_HIDINPUT but this does NOT help). It seems Red Hat 7.3 users were affected, as well as Mandrake (although I know only what broke for me -- RH 7.3).
    Thank god my optical usb mouse had a usb->psmouse converter plug which I'm using as a temporary workaround.
  • There is at least one nasty VM-related bug which has been reported in Linux 2.4.19 and possibly earlier revisions. Rumors of more abound; this is the one that's personally happened to me.

    Kernel BUG at page_alloc.c:91! (kills kswapd)
    Google groups [google.com] for "page_alloc.c:91". Usually blamed on NVidia drivers but notable cases have occurred without them. It's not clear whether the kernel team has made a notable effort to debug them, but they are real and occur on a variety of systems. When this happens kswapd stops working, which causes more bugs later on, and eventually a system reboot is required.

    There are other period reports of BUGs being flagged with an otherwise normal kernel on the linux-kernel list.
  • Who is this Colonel Panic, and what's he doing on my computer?

  • Tips on testing your new kernel (Score:5, Informative)

    by goingware ( 85213 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @04:04AM (#4778932) Homepage
    You should thoroughly test your new kernel before putting it into production. Even if the kernel works well for everyone else, you could personally discover a new bug. You could save yourself a lot of pain by testing first, as well as help the kernel developers.

    A while back I wrote a couple articles on Linux kernel testing:

    The Open Source Development Lab kindly provides Japanese translations here [www.osdl.jp].

    (The articles are under the GNU Free Documentation License. I would be quite stoked if you copied or translated them. There are articles on other quality topics here [sunsite.dk].)

    • Actually, your site may be one of the most intelligent things I've read all week... I bookmarked it for later, after I get done reading slashdot
      • After reading a few too many comments like this one [slashdot.org] it is nice to hear someone say they like what I write.

        I work hard to write good articles. Some are very difficult to write, and take a lot of time. But I believe in doing well by doing good [goingware.com].

        PS. I meant to post the LinuxQuality links as MichaelCrawford, but I used a different computer that still had a cookie that logged me in as goingware. I want to be known online by my own name now.

        • No problem... writing isn't easy, most of my friends and family do it, some for a living.

          The slashdot crowd is interesting and harsh in its own way; thousands of people and thousands of viewpoints view and judge what you say. Even in this admittedly non-objective forum, it took me 6 months of effort to get my first story posted, and there were plenty of "flames" in response to it.

          So, carry on, and I wish you good luck!

          ps: my own site is embarrassingly out-of date and soon to be updated (next 72 hours) but here's a link to it: http://steigenlinux.org
          I'm especially proud of the "Documentation" page

          • Why I write (Score:3, Interesting)

            by MichaelCrawford ( 610140 )
            I've been programming for a long time. I'm good at it, and I suppose if I really put some time into coding for a Free Software project, I could do a lot of good.

            But most of my contribution to Free Software has really been in the form of writing. I have also written a lot of stuff which is not copylefted, but posted publicly on the web. here some more [byteswap.net] as well as this [goingware.com].

            I have contributed some to zoolib [sourceforge.net], but that's mostly in the form of qa, project management (for the initial open source release) and marketing.

            One reason I prefer to contribute by writing is that my normal programming work is so hard, that when I get time to take a break from it, it's difficult to work up much enthusiasm to write more code, no matter how fun the project might be. I imagine that's a common problem.

            Another reason is that I feel that any contribution I could make to Free Software, at least in the limited time I have, would be small. I could fix some bugs, add some features, do some testing. But how many people would benefit from my personal contribution? I don't think that many would, at least not until I had the time to develop a really serious package, and I just don't have the energy for that. I have lots of ideas, but no time.

            But I feel that passing on my experience by writing can benefit others far out of proportion to the effort I put in. That is because I aim my writing to enable others to do better. By writing well, I enable many other developers to code a little better, and many users to do better testing and bug reporting.

            I could lead by example by writing good code, but how many people would learn by reading it? When's the last time you studied the source for some package you weren't really actively involved with? Prose is much more accessible.

            This is all the more important because so few engineers of any sort are good writers. When my father was a civilian electrical engineer for the Navy, the shipyard sent him to a writing class so he could write better test plans! The man has a master's degree! But the Navy put lots of people through that class because so many of their engineers didn't know how to write.

            What is funny is that I find writing much more difficult than programming. With software, you know when you're wrong. It's not always so clear with writing. The main reason I write so well is because most of my effort is put into editing - and I still find lots of mistakes later.

            Even more ironic is that I used to hate writing with a passion. One major reason is that I have terrible handwriting - I can't read my own handwriting, and can't imagine how anyone else could. But the schools always used to require handwritten essays. They used to send me to remedial handwriting classes, which I really hated because they made my hand hurt. It's painful for me to write much by hand.

            What did it for me was two things - a composition class I took at the community college during the summer when I was sixteen, that was just really well taught, and being able to type. I type really fast now, and there's no pain.

            My senior year Advanced Placement English Teacher asked me to drop the class because of my poor handwriting. He was quite taken aback when I started screaming at him. I'd had enough of teachers criticizing my handwriting, I didn't need to hear it again when I was seventeen years old.

            He was concerned that I couldn't pass the exam (which could get me college credit) because the judges wouldn't be able to read my essays.

            He proposed a compromise. He suggested that I block print.

            I had no problem with that. And at the exam at the end of the year, I turned in my exam neatly block-printed in all capital letters. I just used bigger capitals for where a capital was really required.

            I was the only student in my school that year to get a 5 on the english AP exam (a perfect score).

  • How to get patches accepted? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMspamgoeshere.calum.org> on Friday November 29, 2002 @04:09AM (#4778945) Homepage

    [PATCH] : sock_writable not appropriate for TCP sockets

    hi marcelo-

    [ i sent this patch August 30 against 20-pre5, and it appears to have been dropped. this is an important performance fix that should be included in 2.4.20. i apologize for not tracking this more closely. ]

    sock_writeable determines whether there is space in a socket's output buffer. socket write_space callbacks use it to determine whether to wake up those that are waiting for more output buffer space.

    however, sock_writeable is not appropriate for TCP sockets. because the RPC client's write_space callback uses it for TCP sockets, the RPC layer hammers on sock_sendmsg with dozens of write requests that are only a few hundred bytes long when it is trying to send a large write RPC request. this patch adds logic to the RPC layer's write_space callback that properly handles TCP sockets.

    patch reviewed by Trond, Alexey, and DaveM, and already accepted in 2.5.

    I wonder if I can get the name changed from Linux to Evilix by sending a patch to Marcelo and just mentioning that Trond, Alexey and DaveM have reviewed it and it's already in 2.5... ;)

  • DMCA Violations (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 12dec0de ( 26853 )
    As some people here on slashdot (an article IIRC) hinted at patches in 2.4.20 being in possible violation with the DMCA, and hence waiting to release .20, I guess these are all either cleaned up by now or not in the patch at all.

    Can somebody give me a pointer to information on the actual problems and the resolution as well?

    • IIRC, it wasn't so much the patch itself that was in violation of the DMCA (Dilbertized Merkin Copyright Anomaly) as the description of the problem. [theregister.co.uk] So I can't describe it to you, but if you *aren't* American, you can safely click on this link, [thefreeworld.net] which will tell you. (Read & click-through the licence/disclaimer, then pick it off the drop-down menu thingy. Yeah, it sucks, but so does a copyright law that prevents people from fully documenting software bugs. Sorta like the evening news in some places--"Scientists think this common household substance could kill you! We'll tell you more on Channel 11's News at Eleven!")

  • Windows compatible now... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    o drivers/net/eepro100.c: simplify wait_for_cmd_done(), better errors

  • Athlon MP/XP prefetch bug. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MROD ( 101561 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @07:27AM (#4779325) Homepage
    Having read both the changelog and searched the kernel archives it's interesting to note that way back in 2.4.20-pre3 the Athlon MP/XP prefetch bug work around was pulled out of the kernel.

    Subsiquently, Alan Cox in the kernel mailing list archives responds to someone asking about this and says that he thinks some of the VM changes have fixed at least the AGP problems but not the mmap ones, to quote:-

    -ac has it removed. I didn't know Marcelo had it removed. Andi Kleen has a patch for doing most of the right things without trashing performance. That may be what Marcelo merged. It fixed AGP but not O_SYNC mmap I believe

    this was posted on the 17th August and there's no further mention of the problem as far as I can see.

    If this hasn't been fixed in the full 2.4.20 release then there is no way I can install this kernel on our three dual processor Athlon MP boxes we use for mathematical simulations as the machines need to be able to run for many weeks on the problems and hence have to be rock-solid stable.

    Does anyone know if the new VM fixes fully fix the Athlon MP/XP problems?

  • mirrors and P2P (Score:3, Interesting)

    by silence535 ( 101360 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:22AM (#4779435) Homepage
    ..can be found at the usual places, and please use a mirror for all your downloads"

    Apologies if this has been discussed before and I missed it. (If so, ignore and silently send me the link to the discussion please.)

    Why don't the kernel guys distribute the kernel sources over the well established P2P networks to reduce load on their servers and to speed up downloads for everyone?

    I mean, why not put it into the donkey and publish the e2k link on the official kernel.org web page and also submit it to the sharereactor?

    MD5 or other hashing can guarantee that the official release has not been tampered with.

    Am I missing something here?

    silence

  • Happily (running a 2.4.19pre) I tried our local official mirror "ftp.de.kernel.org". Nope, no 2.4.20 there. :-( So at least I fetched the .19 patch.

    This is just sad. I don't want to hit the master "ftp.kernel.org" over and over again and won't do it, but can't they wait at least with the announcement until most of the official mirrors have caught up?

    10000 people hitting "ftp.kernel.org" now - this doesn't have to happen but it is on nearly every kernel release. This leads the whole mirror concept ad absurdum on every release.

    Disclaimer: I don't need 2.4.20 "within the next days", but as many others I like to hack around with new stuff, so if it is announced, I want to fiddle with it. :-)

    See you all in #waitingforftpconnect .

  • VESA Local Bus (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zymurgy ( 540763 ) <lwm@nOSpam.geotec.net> on Friday November 29, 2002 @01:52PM (#4780708) Homepage

    Reading the changelog, I was just happy to see they updated the drivers for the Adaptec AHA-2840 VLB SCSI controller and the SMC 91C92 Ethernet chip, which is found on my VESA Local Bus Ethernet cards. Ah, I'm thrilled because I just so happen to be building a file server right now that uses both.

    Hey, you can't tell me I'm the only person in here who uses the VESA Local Bus on his servers!!!

  • VServer patch for 2.4.20 (Score:3, Informative)

    by Laven ( 102436 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @07:54PM (#4781899)
    http://www.13thfloor.at/VServer/ [13thfloor.at]

    For those of you looking for the vserver with security contexts patch for 2.4.20.

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