Configuring the 2.6 Linux Kernel 279
An anonymous reader writes "This article is the first in a series by William von Hagen on using the new Linux 2.6 kernel, with a special emphasis on the primary issues in migrating existing drivers, applications, and embedded Linux deployments to a Linux distribution based on the 2.6 kernel. Bill is the author of Linux Filesystems, Hacking the TiVo, SGML for Dummies, Installing Red Hat Linux 7, and is the coauthor of The Definitive Guide to GCC (with Kurt Wall) and The Mac OS X Power Users Guide (with Brian Profitt)." This looks to be a good series for anyone planning to migrate to Linux 2.6, and having done just that myself, I'll attest to wanting more documentation along the way.
Do it the easy way : Get Manadrake 10-beta2 (Score:5, Informative)
Easy to install, just download the ISOs, burn to disk, reboot and the installer will appear.
Make sure to REPORT ALL BUGS, unless you want to see the LG incident again.
slackware users out there (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Misinformation - Misinformation (Score:1, Informative)
Did you RTFA? The article basically stated some obvious changes, and talked up the new GUI configuration interface as if it was the best thing ever since sliced bread.
Nothing interesting in this article, IMHO. I hope the subsequent articles will be more informative.
Re:They need a tutorial on this stuff? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, that's what the "make oldconfig" is for. You need to overwrite the .config file first. This goes for the 2.4 series kernels - I don't know if it has changed in the 2.6 series?
zRe:They need a tutorial on this stuff? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Do it the easy way : Get Manadrake 10-beta2 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They need a tutorial on this stuff? (Score:2, Informative)
IANAKH, so feel free to correct me.
Re:Usability? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They need a tutorial on this stuff? (Score:4, Informative)
ITS AN ADVERT!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing any monkey cant work out in about five minutes (and if they cant they should not be cross compiling for embedded devices)
Since most people dont RTFA this isnt a problem, if you are one of the many... dont bother - its S**T
Re:Configure your own kernel (Score:4, Informative)
Re:2.6 breaks KVM support (Score:2, Informative)
Probably just a problem with your KVM or setup.
Re:2.6 breaks KVM support (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Default (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Configure your own kernel (Score:2, Informative)
Or alternatively you can take a kernel configuration of your favorite distribution and tweak it to your liking. Most distributions will include drivers for all common hardware as modules.
Re:Usability? (Score:4, Informative)
Kernel 2.6 is very usable and stable. I've been running mm-sources since 2.5.5x and haven't had any major problems with it. There's hardly any need for recompiling packages (there are few exceptions though, mostly packages that install some kind of kernel module, svgalib for example). One thing you must do is to replace modutils with module-init-tools.
Gentoo forums are relly your friend. There are tons of threads concerning 2.4 to 2.6 upgrade, including some howtos.
2.6, X, and stuff (Score:5, Informative)
The 2.6 kernel is noticeably faster on my dual Athlon 2100+mp, at the user interface; X is faster than I've ever seen it before; the realtime scheduling is awesome.
In short, as soon as you can reasonably do so, I recommend you migrate to the 2.6.x kernel.
Re:Do it the easy way : Get Manadrake 10-beta2 (Score:5, Informative)
XFree86 4.4 (better GUI)
KDE 3.2
NPTL
Mozilla 1.6
And most improtantly, Improved Usabillity
Kernel 2.6 is like a new engine, but the experiance is a lot nicer when you get a whole new car to go with it.
Re:2.6 breaks KVM support (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Usability? (Score:5, Informative)
In sum, yes. As with any major kernel update you have to have the matching user space parts or many devices will not work. Required documentation is included with the kernel;
README (case sensitive) and
./Documentation/Changes (as noted in README)
Keep in mind that if you don't need support for specific hardware -- say, ISDN or PC-Card/PCMCIA -- you can skip updating those packages.
Specific comment: Alsa is now the default sound system, and it needs updated supporting tools if you want to get a peep out of your audio. Point for point comments;
Normal precautions, nothing special.
Re:Do it the easy way : Get Manadrake 10-beta2 (Score:3, Informative)
I hate the way Mandrake makes KDE look disgusting whereas SUSE makes it look beautiful, and also functional as opposed to Mandrake's default usless patterns around all the windows.
I couldn't find any links to my drives on the desktop or elsewhere, and so was unable to get the CD out (not counting rebooting or command-line unmounting which are both unacceptable for a modern OS aimed at the public).
the configuration panel seemed nice but very slow and several of the options would cause a crash and the system wouldn't even restart.
so back to SUSE 8.2 for me until the next version with KDE 3.2 comes out.
Re:Configure your own kernel (Score:5, Informative)
Re:is it so much different than 2.4? (Score:5, Informative)
One major problem in migration... (Score:4, Informative)
You can use the standard ATAPI ide-cdrom driver now to burn your CDs, but the userspace programs haven't caught up to this in all distros, especially the GUI ones. cdrdao just doesn't work last I checked, and while cdrecord works alright in the newer versions, many GUI frontend burners simply use cdrdao too much to be useful.
Other problems I had were that lm_sensors changed a bit and I didn't find it important enough to upgrade to newer userspace stuff, but anyone who's relying on them for anything will likely want to know that it's changed and upgrades to userspace are necessary. The only other issue, which was fixed by a quick Googling was that the module system is changed and module-init-tools is now necessary for loading and unloading kernel modules.
-N
Re:Do it the easy way : Get Manadrake 10-beta2 (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Do it the easy way : Get Manadrake 10-beta2 (Score:5, Informative)
Did you try pressing the eject button on the CD drive?
I release that might not be obvious for a seasoned linux user, but for the rest of the planet it is.
Mandrake has had supermount for removeable media for a long time now.
Stay with ide-scsi if you want (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Do it the easy way : Get Manadrake 10-beta2 (Score:2, Informative)
X4.4 includes autoconfguration (bye bye XF86Config) and ipv6, as well as a host of bugfixes.
Re:2.6 breaks KVM support (Score:1, Informative)
Ultimately, it was upgrading to XFree86 4.3.0-rc3 that magically solved the problem for me.
Re:Do it the easy way : Get Manadrake 10-beta2 (Score:5, Informative)
kernel 2.6 and gentoo 1.4 (Score:4, Informative)
It wasn't as smooth an upgrade as I'd've liked, but, like I said, I'm fairly new to all this.
When I first upgraded, I did get a lot of errors/warnings on boot, but I have since fixed them all.
Ensuring you have the latest versions of hotplug and module-init-tools will help your migration to 2.6, as there are changes to h/w detection and module loading.
Take care when doing make oldconfig from an earlier gentoo kernel - gentoo kernels have had various performance patched in them for some time, but -- if I recall -- these settings didn't all magically migrate across, as the gentoo kernel build flags and the official kernel build flags have differing names for these features between 2.4 and 2.6. Just remember to check all your options with make menuconfig or similar. Some other build flags have changed names too, including stuff for usb devices and (IIRC) framebuffers -- this will probably only catch you out if you're migrating settings from an older kernel.
After building and installing my 2.6 kernel, I also installed the latest nvidia package from nvidia's website, and alsa-lib and alsa-utils (both 1.0.2, from portage)
Also, there are changes to how some system stats/info is handled/reported - ensure you have an up-to-date version of procps, or top might give some cranky info... some tools that monitor memory levels (gkrellm, various gdesklets) will stop working because the output of
Other than the meminfo issue, kernel 2.6 hasn't broken anything (that I've noticed) on my gentoo system, and it appears to work very well.
(Oh, kernel 2.6 did cause one of my drives to give warnings about unexpected DMAs every few mins, but that totally fixed itself once I stopped overclocking the CPU. The drive was running slower with a mis-firing DMA, but other than the warnings, no problems occured (YMMV). Something in 2.6 must be more timing sensitive or less tolerant of overcranked h/w speeds. NBD: my system is a few years old, the extra ~20% speed increase cannot is insignificant when compared to speeds of a modern CPU - it seemed a lot at the time!)
Re:2.6 breaks KVM support (Score:1, Informative)
cmd
Then...
ctrl-f for filename completion
&
ctrl-d for directories
on a per session basis.
2.6 on NForce-based motherboards (Score:5, Informative)
If you are upgrading an NForce-based machine to 2.6.x, save yourself some headaches and add "noapic nolapic" to the Kernel append string. I experienced repeatable hard lockups when doing disk intensive I/O until adding those parameters.
Also, NVIDIA's nforce package is no longer necessary. The experimental forcedeth driver in 2.6.2 works quite well in my experience, and apparently an Intel sound driver works for the NForce onboard sound.
See my latest journal entry for my account of migrating MDK 9.1 to a vanilla 2.6.1 kernel.
Re:2.6 on NForce-based motherboards (Score:3, Informative)
I recall reading somewhere that disabling ACPI while keeping APIC enabled should also solve the issue. In other words: the problem apparantly only occurs when BOTH ACPI AND APIC are enabled on systems with Nforce2 chipsets.
Wasn't there supposed to be a patch out there fixing this issue already? And if so, why hasn't it been merged in the tree by now? I know, I know, the 2.6 tree is still quite young, but then again: the patch has been around since before the official 2.6.0 kernel was released.
By the way: does anyone know if we're missing out on much by disabling APIC support? Is there any downside to having shared interrupts (performance- or otherwise)?