Operational Testing of Linux Kernel 2.5.x 191
G3ckoG33k writes "The Open Source Development's Lab has begun operational testing of the 2.5.x Kernel: "The staff at OSDL has been involved with development and testing of 2.5 since the beginning and we've noticed that it seems to be very stable for a development tree. So good, in fact, that we think it is ready to be tested in a production environment. We have planned and begun execution of a project to test the 2.5 kernel in our data center using our production environment. The project includes lots of testing and lots of escape hatches so we don't run recklessly off the edge. We began with some of the simpler, less critical servers and, as we build confidence, are moving to the more complex servers. Today we have several servers running 2.5 and within a month we'll have most of the data center migrated to 2.5." Can anyone say Dare Devils?"
2.5 impressions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:2.5 impressions (Score:5, Informative)
This reminds me- one problem I've always had is that new stuff that gets thrown into the kernel isn't clearly explained- in the most basic ways. Ie, what the heck is it? I remember lots of versions of 2.4 had features and options with no help to explain what they did. Google searches don't always turn up anything handy- often they turn up lots of hits on patches or posts talking about the feature, but not describing what it actually is.
Anyway, For those wondering what the heck cpufreq is...From a kerneltrap interview [kerneltrap.com]:
JA: You also mentioned working on the x86 side of Russell King's cpufreq code. We spoke with Russell King in an earlier interview, but we didn't talk about cpufreq. What is it?
Dave Jones: Quite a few CPUs these days allow changing of the voltage/multiplier/bus speed through software. Russell and Erik Mouw did a bunch of work on the ARM CPUs that support this feature, and started writing a generic framework for this type of technology so that he wouldn't have to duplicate code that for eg, recalculates loops_per_sec in every speed scaling.
etc.
Good for them (and Us) (Score:4, Informative)
It would be great to hear from more people like OSDL that it's working well.
Unfortunately, unless RH9 comes with module-init-tools, it will still be a pain to try out the 2.5 kernel.
Think I'll just wait... (Score:2)
Re:Good for them (and Us) (Score:1)
This is great.. but don't forget: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is great.. but don't forget: (Score:2, Informative)
configuration? (Score:2)
2.4's xconfig isn't perfect, but it does a reasonable job of noting prerequisites.
To be fair, I tried this on an Apple iBook, which is not Linus's target box, and I got sidetracked after a few compile attempts.
Re:configuration? (Score:1)
Re:This is great.. but don't forget: (Score:1)
or in other words "crash prone". i don't see what you mean.
Re:This is great.. but don't forget: (Score:1)
Does that explain it?
Finish reading the sentence; the second half sometimes explains the first.
Re:This is great.. but don't forget: (Score:2)
The feature changes can break programs running on it. And new features may not have sufficient documentation...
I like 2.5... I just wish I could clear up the FB (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I like 2.5... I just wish I could clear up the (Score:3, Informative)
At some point I'll rebuild X aginst the current (2.5.66 for the moment) dev kernel. Its hard enough keeping up with the various kernels so I only
Re:I like 2.5... I just wish I could clear up the (Score:1)
Re:I like 2.5... I just wish I could clear up the (Score:2)
Re:I like 2.5... I just wish I could clear up the (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a convert to the fb world
Re:I like 2.5... I just wish I could clear up the (Score:2)
I'd expect a better result from using 512x384. But it is not easy getting a computer produce that resolution. I tried on a laptop running RH7.3 without any luck.
I'd much rather have a *real* 1024x768 console.
So would I. And then a nice large 12x24 pixels font so we get 85*32 chars on the screen. Just a few more chars but at a 50% better resolution than we are used to.
Re:Hm.. duplication... (Score:2)
Re:Hm.. duplication... (Score:1)
Is there a reason you are trying to get this to work? I like high res consoles too, but usually end up in X with two terms per desktop.
I'm using 2.5.66 right now... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been playing with the 2.5 series off and on mainly for the USB Storage support (devices that don't seem to work in 2.4 seem to work fine in 2.5 - at least the two or three that I've tried.) For the longest time, there was always ONE of the features that I really wanted that wouldn't compile or work, either the USB, or Video 4 Linux, or something else...
I came back and tried it again at 2.5.63. That was the first version what compiled and ran everything I used perfectly. .64 and .65 seem to have had a timing glitch that messed up my scheduled recordings (by mencoder via V4L), but that seems to be fixed again in 2.5.66, which has been working beautifully for me so far.
I honestly expect to see "2.6.0preXX" versions start appearing in the relatively near future...
Re:I'm using 2.5.66 right now... (Score:2)
Daredevils? How about idiots. (Score:5, Informative)
Please, fellow slashdotters, don't be tempted to use 2.5 for your important systems. It's good that it's tested more, but if you do use it, please don't bitch and whine about how it destroyed all your data.
Re:Daredevils? How about idiots. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Daredevils? How about idiots. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Daredevils? How about idiots. (Score:2)
I boot up the working system, try to install kvirc from the SuSE RPM, mentions need to satisfy dependency and install kvirc-something-or-other, I click yes. Never installs I never get another error.
Go into KDE control panel, click around in the styles section, kde begins locking up. I start closing stuff. kicker is starting to lock up also. I try to run a terminal from quick launch and get an error to the effect of KDE ini
Re:Daredevils? How about idiots. (Score:2)
Personally, though, I do think that sys admin is one of the major weakness of the distros (if not THE major one). Just as the distros made install easy, they should now work on making admin easy.
Re:Daredevils? How about idiots. (Score:2)
Re:Daredevils? How about idiots. (Score:2)
Re:Daredevils? How about idiots. (Score:1)
It's not for joe 6-pack yet, leave that to the vendor release of 2.6 - but for those who know what they are doing, the 2.5 kernel is getting to be pretty useful for everyday work, and provides some improvements over the current stable kernel.
I've been running 2.5.66-mm1 for 4 days now, and it's been surprisingly stable on a box that is doing 24x7 service -
Re:Daredevils? How about idiots. (Score:2)
However, your warning should be noted by anyone thinking of doing such a thing without properly assessing the risks and making the nec
Re:Daredevils? How about idiots. (Score:2)
-buf
Re:Daredevils? How about idiots. (Score:2)
2.5 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:2.5 (Score:1)
The first thing I noticed was that it MUCH faster and, oh... that there was no sound. Still isn't. Can't really get ALSA to work.
Re:2.5 (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me that media services should either become embedded in the X protocol, or standardized as a sister protocol. The problem lies in the failure to properly standardize the protocols. The actual mixing can still be done in hardware when possible, but the applications should have a very standard way of writing to the sound stream and that it shouldn't be done in kernel. I'd rather write to $DISPLAY:$SOUND_PORT than to
Re:2.5 (Score:3, Informative)
Putting media services in the X protocol [mediaappli...server.net] would probably be a good idea, but it is orthogonal to a kernel mode audio mixer. Some programs will always want to access t
Re:2.5 (Score:2)
Linux is just getting that feature???
I know I'm going to sound like a troll, but I'm rather surprised Linux on the Desktop is that far behind -- Windows has been doing it for over 4 years.
Re:2.5 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:2.5 (Score:2)
Re:2.5 (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure about most of the cards available these days, but I do know that at least the SBLive (and the linux drivers, both alsa and the old oss ones) allows for hardware mixing of multiple channels (not sure how many but its way more than just 2).
The ALSA drivers ARE of a much higher quality though. Has anyone else noticed that if you put the PCM v
Re:2.5 (Score:2)
I tried playing TuxRacer with sound through one of those daemons. But I found that the sound would be delayed. It might have been less than one second of delay, but it was obviously far too much and was actually very confusing.
Re: hardware audio mixing (Score:2)
Funnily enough, the card could be used with an Amiga style tracker [everything2.org].. except that modern trackers do the mixing in software so there's no need.
Re:2.5 (Score:2)
Keep in mind that in spite of what people want you to think, most people who use Linux don't use a soundcard anyway. I have well over a half dozen boxes with Linux on them. One has a sound card. Most people STILL use Linux commercially, in a server environment. Mixing audio hasn't been as high on the list of things to do as say, iptables, journal file system, etc.
The question is whether this should be done in the kernel (Linus), in X, or in hardware (emu10k
Re:2.5 (Score:2)
That's one more with a sound card than I have.
Re:2.5 (Score:3, Informative)
Now, let's try more channels...
Now, I've mixed Wagner, Ride of the Valkyries into that too. I'm kind of dizzy, but it all works.
Maybe this is a feature of the EMU10k1 driver, or something, but it just works for me.
Woooah my head is spinning! Stop!
Re:2.5 (Score:1)
Re:2.5 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:2.5 (Score:3, Informative)
Simple
Re:2.5 (Score:2)
I've never really decided on a Window Manager/Desktop, so I've been playing with GNOME, KDE, and other older WM's and such.. I've noticed that KDE's sound server will cause any program that tries to directly access
2.5 is pretty good but... (Score:5, Informative)
This is however still a DEVELOPMENT kernel. I put that in big letters because it's very, very true. Lots of kernel modules won't compile still. Documentation for what has changed is somewhat spotty, and it took me some time to get everything working decently. And getting a system that can boot into 2.4 or 2.5 seems quite difficult with the new modutils package (or at least I haven't gotten it working yet - have to reinstall modutils RPM if I want to boot into 2.4).
Also there's a major bug with ext3 right now in 2.5.66 - if your computer doesn't shut down cleanly, the journal recovery in 2.5 seems completely broken - I have to reboot into 2.4, let the 2.4 kernel do the journal recover, do a clean shutdown, and THEN boot back into 2.5. Pain in the ass, especially since I've had two hard crashes since I upgraded to 2.5. Also 2.5.66 doesn't compile out of the box with default config. Had to patch one file with a patch from LKML.
So in short, 2.5 may be more stable than usual devel branches, but don't delude yourself about what you are getting into. If you want the latest and greatest in performance for your desktop machine, give it a try. But I wouldn't run even a low uptime-requirement server with it yet.
Re:2.5 is pretty good but... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:2.5 is pretty good but... (Score:1, Offtopic)
It's been -438 seconds since you last successfully posted a comment
Well, there goes that really long comment that I had just made.
Re:2.5 is pretty good but... (Score:2)
Re:2.5 is pretty good but... (Score:2)
Preempt isn't such a big thing anymore compared to the massive scheduler and i/o scheduler improvements that have gone into 2.5.
Documentation for 2.5 changes is here [codemonkey.org.uk] courtesy Dave Jones.
Not really that daring (Score:5, Insightful)
All in all, my experience at running 2.5 has been positive, and my only problems have really been with features not likely to be used by folks running special purpose servers.
2.5.x (Score:4, Informative)
I've been running 2.5.x on both my station at work and at home. For the most part it's been pretty stable.
I've run 1.3, 2.1, 2.3 and now 2.5 kernels as they came out and 2.5.5x and on have been a pleasure. I had a 2.1.x kernel eat my file system, I've had nothing like that so far.
Now the caveat: don't run a 2.5.x kernel unless your willing to lose everything, backup regularly! and most important because I don't think anything bad will happen, be prepared to write bug reports correctly! READ THIS AFTER DOWNLOAD! linux-2.5.x/Documentation/BUG-HUNTING
Not for long... (Score:5, Funny)
And, in other news, Kernel developers worldwide learned that the development tree was too stable and announced sweeping changes to the VM, IDE, and Scheduler modules.
Said one developer, "it's not bleeding edge unless someone is bleeding. It pains me to think that we've actually got this thing stabilized with an odd-number dev version. We normally don't go for that until we go to the even-number release versions, usually at a x.y.5 or x.y.6 release."
Re:Not for long... (Score:2)
It's been MORE stable with all these changes than it was BEFORE.
Tread carefully on any kernel release... (Score:4, Informative)
Our most recent experience with 'stable' kernels (specifically drivers in our case) was the default kernel in RH 8. It had some very subtle issues with Intel's GigPHY/MAC chipset that caused crashes only under specific high load every three to four days. Crashes were not repeatable in specific time frames but would eventually happen. I suggest finding a characteristic set of applications/loading of disk/mem/CPU applications and then test out your favorite kernel under all those circumstances. Many programs that run huge FFTs or other number crunching applications are many times too specific to cause failures. We in this example used a program to calculate huge FFTs while doing looping network file transfers to test without issues... nothing beats the real thing!
Also don't think that even 2.4.x series kernels are above this... as I stated earlier even a heavily patched 2.4.18 kernel could be your downfall... so maybe a 2.5.x kernel is okay but beat the crap out of it before putting both feet in.
-Ho
Re:Tread carefully on any kernel release... (Score:2)
Re:Tread carefully on any kernel release... (Score:2)
it never did that under 2.2.18
Re:Tread carefully on any kernel release... (Score:2)
Really? maybe you should report that as a bug. My 4 machines haven't been rebooted since 2.4.20 came out except for 2 days ago when we had a freak lightning storm and I took everything off-line :-). I've found 2.4.20 to be completely rock-solid with no evident leaks.
Re:Tread carefully on any kernel release... (Score:2)
Question (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone says, don't run the development kernel if you don't know what you're doing, and of course any particular 2.5 kernel grabbed off of kernel.org can be majorly broken, right? So it would be really cool if one of the real kernel developers could put together something inbetween the 2.4 "stable" kernel and the 2.5 "careful!" kernel. There are just so many cool new features in 2.5, like that huge improvement in interactivity that could really make the desktop more usable, but those of us who aren't experts are really leery to just grab the source and start compiling, because who knows what might be broken in any particular development sub-version.
Does anyone make a habit of doing this "semi-stable" thing with the development kernels? Failing that, are cool things like that interactivity improvement being backported to the 2.4 kernel already?
Answer (Score:4, Insightful)
If it hoses your virtual machine, you are out nothing. If you aren't up for the kernel screwing up your*real* machine and having to reinstall everything, leave it alone.
2.4.xx is perfectly fine. You really aren't missing anything. You'll get it soon enough, without the pain. Besides, anticipation makes you appreciate it more.
Re:Answer (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Answer (Score:2)
Re:Question (Score:1)
Re:Question (Score:1, Informative)
What I did (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Question (Score:2)
Re:Question (Score:2)
Something like user-mode-linux may be better suited than running an unstable kernel on live partitions... having your old kernel binary around is no solace if your new, experimental one just hosed your disk.
Re:Question (Score:2)
I would recommend checking out the UML kernels which are released a few days after the main releases. You can run the new kernel inside a stable environment with it own root. See if it works with your workload. If its stable there you might trust it enough to boot into it.
Re:Question (Score:2)
Come to think of it... if some functionality is required to boo
Re:Question (Score:2, Informative)
Staying one kernel release back will help you too
The interactivity tweaks are against the O(1) scheduler, so won't do you much good in 2.4
If you'r
2.5 more reliable than 2.4 for me! (Score:2, Informative)
I have one problem with hostap (wireless access point drivers) and my sound card sharing an interrupt which causes a crash occasionally, but if i don't load the sounds drivers it
How about Linux native games? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Anticipatory Scheduler (Score:5, Informative)
I have a lot of expectations of the Alan/Andre team with their ide work
Re:Anticipatory Scheduler (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anticipatory Scheduler (Score:2)
Since -mm1, the rest have gotten more and more and more sluggish. Now with 2.5.66-mm1, it takes rougly 3-4 seconds for an xterm to open with a ctrl-alt-b keystroke in sawfish. With 2.5.64-mm1, it's instantaneous. 2.5.66-mm1 (or alan's patch or straight 2.5.66) also seems to "miss" my keyboard shortcuts to launch applications, lik
Not really daring (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been running the 2.5 kernels since about 2.5.30 -- on my primary workstation, no less. In other words, my livelihood is depending on a development kernel.
It works. For me, I've had almost no trouble, save for some difficulties with the radeonfb driver not liking my DFP when it's attached to the DVI. Overall, though, performance is excellent -- though I do keep studious backups in case soemthing "goes wrong."
2.5 is really a solid pice of work. Yes, it had bugs; follow the kernel mailing list, watch what people say, read the patch lists, and skip releases that seem a bit flakey.
Mixed results (Score:5, Informative)
CD drivers - They suck. Certain CDs (Evanescence's Fallen) will cause the CD drive to go into spasms. This doesn't happen under 2.4.
I/O scheduler - Gimpy. Under heavy CPU load (the aformentioned MP3 compression) starting an app that isn't in cache will take tens of seconds.
Compile performance - awesome. I use Gentoo, and I've noticed big improvements.
Power management - Mediocre. APM is alright. ACPI sucks. Causes weird beeping noises when I try to load the "processor" module. It's probably a fault of my Inspiron 8200's fsck'ed DSDT, so I won't bitch, but WinXP has no problem with it.
Stability - Surprisingly good, for development code. A far cry from 2.4, crashes maybe once a week, but much better than the 2.5.20-something releases, which once hosed my entire partition when I burned a bad CD...
Re:Mixed results (Score:2)
did you report these kernel bugs in the linux-kernel mailing list? I bet someone is interested, especially for features that worked fine in Linux 2.4.
Re:Mixed results (Score:2)
testing kernels (Score:1)
For the more conservative, just stick with the productized Linux disto's.
Don't Use Odd Numbers (Score:2, Funny)
Oh no, those were the even numbers.......
no boot :X (Score:2)
I tested on two P3 machines (Katmai and Coppermine) with funny results.
1. Coppermine: booted, but due to the fact that I forgot to install module-init-tools, I lost contact with the machine. It hasn't been seen since
After installing the tools, the machine seemed to boot, but no tty1 was spawned and seemingly resulting in messy fscks (proof is in my lastlog)
2
Re:no boot :X (Score:2)
Check your config and make sure you've enabled the console. For some bizarre reason, this isn't the out-of-the-box default.
Re:no boot :X (Score:2)
[*] VGA text console
CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y
Re:NVidia Drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
i am using 2.5.66/2.4.20 alternatively while using nvidia binaries
2.5 works prety well though small changes fool some user space programs
for example since the name extension of modules are different i had to hack my debian debconf script to work properly
also gkrellm memory monitor doesn't work (free works though)
Re:NVidia Drivers (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bugs? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:New features? (Score:2)
1. Working sound modules
2. Improved Tux-racer support
3. Duke Nukem Forever
4. A new front-end to "make menuconfig"
5. iptables4D - world's first premeditative firewall
Re:Modules/drivers (Score:1)
Follow the directions and you'll be good.
Re:Modules/drivers (Score:2, Interesting)
The new module-init-tools are under:
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/peo p le/rusty
If you're running an RPM-based distro, you can get the latest modutils.src.rpm from there and use rpm --rebuild to recompile it. Bonus: it still has the old modutils, so you can dual-boot.
If you're running Debian Sid, you ca
Re:Modules/drivers (Score:2)
Oh? In what way?
GOATSE LINK ABOVE (Score:2)
Re:Check out these benchmarks (Score:1)
Re:DARR DUBILS! DEER DABILS! DIR DEBILS! (Score:2)