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Operating Systems Software Upgrades Linux

Upgrading Your Current System To Kernel 2.6 442

Posted by timothy from the share-and-enjoy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This white paper provides an overview of the process of moving an existing desktop system to the 2.6 kernel. It will highlight other software requirements imposed by the new kernel and administrative changes that you must make when migrating an existing system to the 2.6 kernel. It supplements previous whitepapers in the same series about Customizing the 2.6 kernel [Slashdot discussion here(1)] and porting drivers to the 2.6 kernel [Slashdot discussion here(2)] to the 2.6 kernel."
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Upgrading Your Current System To Kernel 2.6 More

Upgrading Your Current System To Kernel 2.6

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  • I can't find it anywhere.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MeanE ( 469971 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:20AM (#8386964) Homepage
    on Windows update?!? Where the heck is it?

  • I wish I had this two months ago (Score:5, Informative)

    by $calar ( 590356 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:20AM (#8386968) Journal
    I had all kinds of trouble upgrading to 2.6. Sound and networking didn't work, as well as some of my filesystems. Luckily, I'm smart enough to setup lilo to run multiple kernels, so going back to 2.4 was no trouble to tweak my config file and recompile and try again. I never got everything totally working right. I was going to just wait until the next series of distro releases solved these problems for me, but maybe I should give it another shot.

    • Re:I wish I had this two months ago (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bender Unit 22 ( 216955 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:29AM (#8387093) Journal
      Ditto, I guess if you only run it on the most common hardware, it might be easier.
      I played around with it also and found it to cause many problems.
      If you run Red Hat, check out this webcast 2.6 Linux Kernel in Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.3: A Technology Overview [redhat.com] about them backporting features to 2.4.
      I run a great deal of IBM servers and I can see their ties with IBM. I hope this webcast will enlighten me to how they make sure that Red Hat gets the most of the IBM servers, since we have a company decision to run Red Hat.
    • I was going to just wait until the next series of distro releases solved these problems for me, but maybe I should give it another shot.

      Since I'm still new to running *nix at home, I haven't ever had anything on my dedicated Linux box that I needed to save, so all of my installs have been on a freshly formatted drive.

      I am curious about the "upgrade" process - what changes? What is lost? What is moved/renamed? I would expect that nothing in /home is touched, but beyond that I'm not so sure. Is it ill-advi

      • [OT] Reinstall tip (Score:4, Informative)

        by rgmoore ( 133276 ) * <glandauer@charter.net> on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @01:10PM (#8388648) Homepage
        all of my installs have been on a freshly formatted drive.

        As an aside, you can save yourself a lot of trouble in doing a fresh install with some intelligent partitioning. Most systems have an expert mode (or may offer nothing but expert mode, depending on the system) that lets you specify which partition corresponds to which mount point manually and decide which partitions should and should not be reformatted. If you set up /home on a separate partition, you can wipe everything else while leaving your user data alone. That can save you the trouble of having to restore all of your personal files when you install the new system. It's not necessarily perfect- some configuration files may change between versions of your favorite desktop environment, for instance- but it's a big improvement. You should obviously back up your data before doing the install just in case, but you should be doing periodic backups of your system already anyway.

  • What I'd like to see... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ageoffri ( 723674 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:21AM (#8386976)
    I'd like to see a nice up to date list distributions that are built around the 2.6 kernel. Trying to update a Mandrake system to 2.6 didn't work for me and these days I don't have the time to track down errors.
    • Yes, that would help. Another thing that would help us Linux newbies is a matrix that would show us the difference between the 2.0, 2.4,2.6 Kernels.
      Forgive me, but I'm used to the highest numbered software to be the latest and best and when I go up to kernel.org, I see all these kernels being updated and maintained. Google'ing for the answer isn't helping.

  • What system? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ageitgey ( 216346 )
    Although it is obvious to many slashdot readers, the summary doesn't even mention the word "Linux".

    So maybe we should point out that this is a whitepaper on upgrading Linux systems to kernel 2.6. (And no, I don't think the icon is enough - not everyone has a stuffed Tux on their desk).

    • Re:What system? (Score:3, Funny)

      by pavon ( 30274 )
      What is slashdot? Although it is obvious to you, I think it would be worth pointing out in your post that it is a website covering "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."

      Or we could just use the grade school skill of reading in context.

  • Still conveniently igoring (Score:5, Informative)

    by Enry ( 630 ) <enry@@@wayga...net> on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:25AM (#8387039) Journal
    The painful process of upgrading LVM1 to LVM2. Little documentation on the process, and installing Fedora Core 2 test 1 over an existing Fedora Core 1 gives all sorts of fun. Much hand-holding of your system and other hand-waving is required.

  • This settles it. (Score:3, Funny)

    by revolvement ( 742502 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:26AM (#8387050)
    BSD^H^H^H2.4 kernel is dying.

  • sound (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spoonyfork ( 23307 ) <spoonyfork@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:28AM (#8387081) Journal
    I've been using Linux as a hobbyist since 1995. The one consistent thing over the releases that has always been a issue, at least for me, is getting sound to work. Various hardware, various distros, almost all require tweaking.

    Does anyone else have the same observation?

    • For me it's USB devices, like my printer (HP PSC 2210, I know, pos), that give me trouble. Even since I upgraded to 2.6.X, I haven't gotten my printer to work... I am using the Mandrake cooker rpms to do the upgrading (it's up to 2.6.3 now).
    • Sound is a problem for me, and currently I'm having hell getting a simple USB mouse to work (so much for desktop Linux this year...).

      However, one thing I've been impressed with is that 2.6.3 now updates my laptop's front LCD clock display. Granted, Windows always did that, but Windows also had the manufacturers supporting it with drivers.

      So at least I can see what time it is as I try to recompile hotplug. :)

      Speaking of devices, when are we supposed to switch over fully to a udev system?

    • Re:sound (Score:3, Informative)

      by HoldmyCauls ( 239328 )
      Depends on the card. My sister's computer (used to be mine) had an odd ESS1869 card, and the 1868 (or whatever) drivers didn't seem to work with it. Anything Creative, no problem. Same with my VIA. ALSA makes it fairly easy, so the 2.6 series, even in testing, has been, for me, a pretty easy experience. The emu10k1 driver (I also have a 'Live!') has been beautiful since I first ftp'd from the console to get it. depmod -a (I think make install did this automatically) and modprobe emu10k1 has always wor

    • Re:sound (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @12:12PM (#8387693) Homepage Journal
      I've never had problems, although I'd primarily used old ESS-1371 cards for my limited audio needs (anything can play an MP3 reasonably well).

      I recently bought an SB-Live and decided to switch to ALSA. Debian made this as easy as choosing my soundcard from a list, and it automagically worked. I had the same experience at the office with my PC's onboard Intel 8x0 sound - no manual configuration was necessary.

      Sound used to be a pain in the neck, but I pretty much consider it a solved problem now (except for maybe exotic boards). ALSA does an awesome job of getting it right with minimal user intervention.

    • Re:sound (Score:3, Funny)

      by iabervon ( 1971 )
      My experience is that sound never works the first time you try to set it up, but the second time you try, you find that it already works. 2.6 has been, for me, the exception; it worked the first time. Of course, I'm still using the OSS emulation in ALSA, not the ALSA API at all. But it seems to me to be better than the real OSS; it will play two sounds at the same time (the second through the second PCM) even if programs are only trying to use the first device. I'm even setting the volume levels with a prog

  • It's worth it (Score:4, Informative)

    by MC68040 ( 462186 ) <henricNO@SPAMdigital-bless.com> on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:30AM (#8387106) Homepage
    With the preemptive kernel option enabled and the kernel module autoloader in 2.6 it does all you would ever need:
    Loads any modules you need
    Lets you do tasks preemtpively
    Boots in a much shorter time (from 2.4.23's 35 sec to ~14 sec in my case)

    It's also rock solid in my experience now, a good sound kernel choice that will fit virtually all workstations =)

  • blah (Score:3, Informative)

    by oohp ( 657224 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:30AM (#8387114) Homepage
    Matroxfb ain't working. I'm not going to switch until they fix it.

  • Module loading (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Flaming_Monkey ( 344281 )
    The biggest issue I'm facing with 2.6 is getting module loading to work correctly. Seems that Debian/Knoppix isn't reading through the correct config file at bootup, even with the correct version of module-init-tools running. SpeedStep seems a bit sketchy too, but it's Centrino, so it could just be a matter of time.

    Has anyone else had this problem? I've read that it may be a symptom of running a mixed stable/testing system, but I have yet to see a solution for the problem.

  • If you've got a... (Score:5, Informative)

    by cs02rm0 ( 654673 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:33AM (#8387149)
    ...laptop touchpad don't bother going near 2.6 if you don't know exactly what you're doing. I still haven't got the mouse working. I can't even find anyone who can tell me how to confirm if the touchpad is a synaptic.

    I'm not the only one suffering this.

    Works great on my slackware desktop.

  • There's are problems upgrading? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by H0ek ( 86256 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:34AM (#8387170) Homepage Journal
    If there are, I didn't see them. All I did was:

    apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.2-1-686
    update-grub

    Two lines on the command line and a reboot and I've been happy ever since.

    Oh, wait, we're talking outside Debian. Nevermind.

  • Running smooth (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Geccoman ( 18319 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:34AM (#8387172) Homepage Journal
    I upgraded to the 2.6 kernel about a month ago, and have been nothing but impressed. I got increased speed, my sound works great (ALSA) and with 1280x1024 Framebuffer and Bootsplash (85Hz refresh no-less) even my console is nice to look at.

    My NVidia drivers worked flawlessly with the new kernel, as well as my wireless network.

    I get oooh's and ahhh's from the co-workers with 3DDesk, and my boss is impressed with my setup, even though he's got a shiny new G5 under his desk.

    That's just my experience, though... YMMV

  • Fast mouse? Check your XF86Config (Score:5, Informative)

    by Alan ( 347 ) <arcterexNO@SPAMufies.org> on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:36AM (#8387214) Homepage
    One thing that was a blocker for me to move to 2.6 was my mouse would go a lot faster while in X. I finally found that it was the new input system. Under 2.4 the default XF86Config file would have two mouse input settings, one for ps/2 and one for USB. Under 2.6 both of these were picked up regardless of the mouse being ps/2 or usb so all mouse events, clicks, etc were picked up twice. Removing one of the mouse entries made everything work as normal.

    Probably everyone but me knew this, but thought I'd throw it out in case anyone else is in the same boat.
    • Another possible reason for your mouse speeding up is the 2.6 kernel actually initializing the mouse and setting the precision, etc. You can disable this, and return to "almost 2.4"-like behaviour by adding the following kernel parameter to your boot config:

      psmouse_noext=1

  • My experiences with 2.6 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cytlid ( 95255 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:37AM (#8387221)
    Here's my experience with 2.6 kernel (been running it since 2.6.0 was released).

    DVDs look awesome. I had to tweak the hdparms for DMA, but they work great.

    Ever since NVidia came out with the latest drivers, things like the UT2k4 Demo fun fantastic.

    I was a little hung up on modules... seeing as I rarely use them, it wasn't a show-stopper. The conversion from modutils to module-init-tools was mostly painless.

    Recently, I've been playing with MTD, and trying to get a test machine to use 12 out of the 16 megs of an AGP Voodoo3 3000 card's memory as a device I can format or use as swap. I have been unsuccessful. (2.6.3). This is also on a testing machine, not my "main" machine.

    On a slightly OT note, planning on building a Mini ITX system with a Via Epia board (one of the 800 mhz ones). Should have the case this week, jury's still out on the mb.

    Other than that, no complaints, it's been fantastic. I'm running 2.6.3 on 3 different machines (with different responsibilies) and it feels like there's no going back now!
    • Oh, I should also probably note... I have a Yamaha DS-XG (YMF744) with ALSA and OSS emulation support, but sometimes if I boot up, and run the UT2k4 demo, the sound seems to be "turned down" all the way. Od d behavior. But then again, my system is a Slackware 9.0 upgraded to most of the parts of 9.1, including Gnome 2.4. I'm probably missing something ...
  • I have a live CD sitting around. I'd like to know if there is a way to backup my kernel (in some other folder or something) and if attempting to install the 2.6 kernel doesn't work I'd just copy everything back. Is there a way to do this? Where do I start?

  • Reiserfs issues (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Riskable ( 19437 ) <YouKnowWho@YouKnowWhat.com> on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:44AM (#8387325) Homepage Journal
    Anyone else had this problem when upgrading to 2.6? I previously tried upgrading my Mandrake 9.2 install to 2.6 and failed (on boot, no init found, no matter what I tried).

    So I tried Mandrake 10 RC1 (which uses 2.6.2 by default). It booted and runs wonderfully. However, yesterday I tried to upgrade the kernel to 2.6.3 from kernel.org. Using "make oldconfig" (and following the rest of the compiliation procedures) on my Mandrake-supplied .config file, the system would not boot. For some reason it can't mount the root filesystem even though I have both ext2 and reiserfs support compiled into the kernel. Anyone else experience this? My only guess at this point is that I'm missing some sort of customization that Mandrake did to their version of the kernel.

    Note: Abit IC7-G motherobard (not sure if that makes a difference).
    • Could be a bunch of things actually. You have support for your drive controller compiled in right? And support for the IDE drive? And you are passing the right "root=/dev/hda(blah)"? Mandrake uses devfs if I recall correctly. You'll probably need to have that enabled in 2.6. Maybe they're doing something else.

      I run reiser on my laptop and before going XFS, ran it with 2.6 on my Abit KD7 which isn't a far cry from your IC.
  • I was under the impression that the old syntax of "root=/dev/hda3" didn't work any more and one needed to specify integer numbers for root=...?

  • easier than 2.4 (Score:5, Informative)

    by rudog ( 98586 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:46AM (#8387356) Homepage
    I run gentoo on a dual pIII-600 with an ATI radeon7000 / SBlive / intelpro100. Kernels 2.4.18 through 2.4.22 took several hours of tweaking before I could even get the thing to boot correctly. ( 2.2 never had this problem )

    Last week I took about 30 minutes and grabbed 2.6.3 did a clean/config/make, which took about the majority of that time, and booted into the fastest Linux box I have ever had.

    2.6 booted with OpenGL without any tweaks pushing glgears to 1600fps and ALSA kicked in without errors on the emu10k1. Device drivers posed no issues for either the USB keyboard/mouse or hardrive or nework card.

    No 'migration' was necessary for either windowmaker / enlightenment / blender / JACK or any of my other 100 some odd apps.

  • Debina and 2.6 Kernel module loading at boot (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chivo ( 20329 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:47AM (#8387362)
    The one problem I can't seem to find the answer to is how Debian tells the kernel which modules to autoload at boot. I know that for 2.4 kernels, there is a list in /etc/modules. However, with my 2.6 kernel. that file is ignored and I have to manually load all the modules I need after boot. A pain in the ass since I try to keep most of my device drivers as modules, like for my NICs, video card, USB, sound card, etc. Has anyone using Debian and 2.6 kernel found a solution to this?

  • My Firewire storage devices stopped working and my posts to LKM about it (once when 2.6.0 was released and one just yesterday concerning 2.6.3) have gone unanswered :-(

    Dinivin

  • Fedora Core 1 (Score:5, Informative)

    by SimplexO ( 537908 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @11:51AM (#8387419) Homepage
    Fedora Core 1 [artoo.net] forum posting with people who have already done it. It seems pretty easy from the looks of it. I'm going to do it just as soon as I get some free time...

    And for the love of god, please read the whole thread. Don't ever install a kernel with rpm -Uvh. Leave yourself a backup (rpm -ivh).
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • How to upgrade 2.4 to 2.6 in Gentoo: (Score:4, Informative)

    by Lord Ender ( 156273 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @12:19PM (#8387831) Homepage
    emerge development-sources
    rm /usr/src/linux
    ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.6.3 /usr/src/linux
    mount /boot
    genkernel all
    vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
    reboot

    That is ALL there is to it. It is pretty much the same as upgrading to any other kernel. The only trick I saw was that the kernel needs more parameters than 2.4. It needs "root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc real_root=/dev/hda?" appended, which kernel 2.4 did not need. All the other tools (module autoloaders, etc.) are already 2.6 ready on a Gentoo system

  • My weird problem with 2.6 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sark666 ( 756464 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @12:33PM (#8388099)
    I've tried all versions of 2.6 (2.6.1,2,3) but still get this problem. Everything seems smoother/more responsive except for a problem I have with a game (enemy territory). In 2.4 this game usually loads a map in 20-30 seconds. In 2.6 it takes about the same time but every map thereafter gets longer and longer, until they start taking several minutes. I did a test by launching my own server and just kept reloading the same map. 1st try 32 seconds, 5th try over 4 minutes. If anything it should be slightly quicker as some would be in memory/swap. The only other game I have in linux similar to enemy territory is quake3. It has the same normal load times in both 2.4 and 2.6, but it's maps are much smaller than enemy territory's so it doesn't stress the system as much. This leads me to believe that it's more a swap/memory issue than a graphics driver issue. I did hdparm tests and dma is enabled and I'm getting about the same speed in 2.4 as in 2.6. My system is a p4 1.6 with 128 megs ram gf4ti 4200. Now, I realize 128 megs is low these days, and would probably help aleviate this problem but it seems when a system is stressed in this way 2.4 performs better than 2.6. In 2.4 I can play on a server for as much as I want but with 2.6 I usually get kicked within a couple of new maps due to it timing out. Reconnecting to the server doesnt help, but quiting ET and restarting helps for that initial map, but then the cycle repeats. I don't see a way on this forum of attaching my config, I compiled the kernel myself and have gone over it several times to see if some option could be the cause of this. The first thing I tried was turning off the preemptive kernel option, but didn't help. My system is debian based (morphix distro) and as I mentioned I compile the kernel myself, not a precompiled kernel. I also made sure X doesn't have a negative nice value. You might suggest to throw more ram at the problem and even though it might help, I shouldn't have to as 2.4 seems to get by.

  • Upgrading to RedHat 7.1's kernel to 2.6 (Score:3, Informative)

    by phasm42 ( 588479 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @12:47PM (#8388317)
    I upgraded the kernel on a Redhat 7.1 machine to 2.6 with SMP support recently, and ran into some trouble compiling fs/proc/array.c because of RedHat's gcc 2.96. I Googled around, and found a reference to a the problem at http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0311 .0/0886.html [iu.edu]
    This is gcc 2.96 ?? This problem has been reported multiple times. Yes, you need a different gcc version, or there are a couple of patches around that split up the code around line 398 into smaller pieces that gcc 2.96 can handle.
    Basically, there is a really large sprintf there that gcc chokes on, and splitting it up into a few smaller chunks fixes the compilation problem. I've included a diff of the files:
    346,348c346
    < res = sprintf(buffer,"%d (%s) %c %d %d %d %d %d %lu %lu \
    < %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %ld %ld %ld %ld %d %ld %llu %lu %ld %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu \
    < %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %d %d %lu %lu\n",
    ---
    > res = sprintf(buffer,"%d (%s) %c %d %d %d %d %d %lu %lu ",
    358c356,357
    < task->min_flt,
    ---
    > task->min_flt);
    > res += sprintf(buffer + res, "%lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %ld %ld %ld %ld %d %ld %llu %lu %ld %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu ",
    378c377,378
    < esp,
    ---
    > esp);
    > res += sprintf(buffer + res, "%lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %lu %d %d %lu %lu\n",
    416a417
    >
    Oh, and another problem I had was "Error: Unknown pseudo-op: `.incbin'" -- this was fixed by upgrading binutils to the latest version. Aside from these two problems, the upgrade went smoothly.

  • Crazy clock drift (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nuggz ( 69912 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @12:56PM (#8388449) Homepage
    My only problem was that my clock has gone nuts.

    With 2.4 it was stable, but now under 2.6 some days it stays the same, other days it might move by 15+ minutes in a 24 hour period (I ntp it back of course)

    And sound support for the nforce2 mobo is better.

  • Easy easy easy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spaceyhackerlady ( 462530 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @01:04PM (#8388577)

    I must live a charmed life, think pure thoughts or something, because my 2.6 experience has been nothing but positive.

    My first experience was with a Compaq laptop, Slackware 9.0 and 2.6.0-test4. I found that I broke the 2.4 modutils when I upgraded to module-init-tools, but since 2.6 worked so well, I really didn't care. Oh, and I've never had any trouble with that crazy mouse touchpad thingy.

    Slackware 9.1 says it's 2.6-ready, and it is. I've installed it on a number of systems and upgraded the kernel easily.

    My current challenge is my Sun Ultra 5, which currently runs Debian (woody) with the 2.4.18 kernel it came with. I ended up building 64 bit SPARC gcc and friends as cross compilers on an x86 box. But hello world still doesn't link... :-(

    ...laura

  • My experience (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doug Neal ( 195160 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @01:16PM (#8388728)
    My setup - Debian on a Dell Inspiron 8100.

    First of all the menuconfig menus are a lot more well organised and there are a lot more options, too. Configured it up and it booted OK... I've upgraded to every version so far. The good things:
    * Much less work required with "external" device drivers. With 2.4 I had to separately compile ACPI, ALSA, the nVidia driver, PCMCIA and Lucent modem drivers. Now it's just the Lucent and nVidia drivers as the other three are now included already.
    * ACPI support is better. Won't bore you with the details, but it is ;)
    * Everything's faster, although I was using the new scheduler stuff as a patch to 2.4 so it didn't make too much difference.
    * probably lots of little things I can't think of right now

    The bad things - there seem to have been a few nasty bugs, but that's to be expected with such a big upgrade and most of them have been sorted. Currently ACPI battery support is doing funny things and occasionally reporting that the battery's empty, when it's not. Give it a couple of releases though and it should be all good :) With the addition of KDE 3.2 getting released this has been a really good upgrade and I would definitely recommend anyone else to do the same...

  • Good author (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mark19960 ( 539856 ) <{moc.gnillibyrtnuocwol} {ta} {kraM}> on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @01:30PM (#8388919) Journal
    this author has written several papers about various portions of linux, configuring and setup.
    I actually read his stuff, because it tends to make a lot of sense, and he has really good ideas.
    I look forward to more articls from this author.

  • For ATAPI cd burners (Score:5, Informative)

    by einer ( 459199 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @01:45PM (#8389119) Journal
    cdrecord works with atapi burners now. (I make this blanket statement based only on the fact that I was able to burn a cd this morning).

    The trick is:

    cdrecord -scanbus dev=ATAPI
    cdrecord dev=ATAPI:1,0,0 isname.iso

    no boot time kernel options need to be passed (no more hdb=ide-scsi nonsense).

    Good luck.

  • So far, a pain in the ass (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SnapperHead ( 178050 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @01:45PM (#8389124) Homepage Journal
    I am running Debian stable, and let me tell ya, its been nothing but trouble trying to upgrade the kernel.

    First problem, was getting the new module utilitys installed, I had to setup pinning. Not too hard, but was a pain to find some clear docs on this.

    After that, I had many issues with getting iptables working. I can't find the damn thing in menuconfig, maybe I am blind, but I ended up just editing the .config file.

    iptables still isn't fully working, I can't even connect to the internet using the machine it self. Why ? Becuase, bind9 is bitching about the kernel version. dhcpd isn't working either, due to kernel version.

    When I migrated from 2.2 -> 2.4, there wasn't this many issues. I understand that the changes are needed, and things will clean up over time. I just wish there was better docs explaining WHAT has to be done.

    Another intresting note, is that insmod doesn't work correctly, however modprobe does. Which, is very odd in it self.

    I am too frustered after tooling around with it today, spent 2 hours on it. I will try it again next week.

    I really want to upgrade to 2.6, since it better supports the opteron chips and better support (From what I have heard) on SATA / raid cards. (I have a 3ware SATA raid controller)

  • crossing my fingers for kexec() in 2.6 (Score:3, Informative)

    by tjw ( 27390 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @02:19PM (#8389535) Homepage
    I've been using 2.6 since .0 with absolutely no problems (execpt for monkeying with nvidia binary driver patches for a while there).

    The only complaint I can come up with (which isn't actually a complaint at all) is that 2.6 is still lacking kexec() [lwn.net] support. Randy Dunlap has been doing some work on it including patches [osdl.org] for 2.6.1 (works with .2 and .3 too), but it doesn't really seem to have much momentum for getting included.

    I've only rebooted my workstation 3 times since 2.6.2 came out, and 2 of those was a 'kexec -e' reboot. So I haven't had to wait on my annoying Video BIOS, Motherboard BIOS, or Adaptec BIOS in almost a month, which is nice.

    Still, I can see why it is not included because it does break non-standard consoles (e.g. fbcon) on kexec reboot. Sure this is offtopic, but everyone else seems to be bitching about their beefs with 2.6 so I thought I would too :)

  • One of the more interesting problems... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Aldurn ( 187315 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @02:30PM (#8389679)
    I upgraded to 2.6 a while ago, just because I wanted all of the neat goodies it brings with it (QoS, Bluetooth, etc.). My server has no compiler, and I have no "backup" system, so I compile things on various other Linux systems I run.

    It basically runs Gentoo, in that I copied the boot CD, stripped out anything I didn't need, and manually installed things like ssh, apache, etc. The upside is that it's small. The downside is that it's a pain in the butt to upgrade.

    The 2.6 install worked without too many initial problems, except the whole devfsd being required, and me not getting around to removing the requirement. That is, until I tried to reboot:

    server root # shutdown -r now

    Broadcast message from root (pts/0) (Wed Feb 25 11:24:11 2004):

    The system is going down for reboot NOW! /dev/null
    RK_Init: idt=0xc05dc000, FUCK: Can't find sys_call_table[]
    server root #
    At this point, I'm blaiming the redhat compiler for stripping out something it shouldn't have. Though, anyone else have any suggestions?

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