2.6.19 Linux Kernel Released

diegocgteleline.es writes, "After two months, Linux 2.6.19 has been released. It includes the clustering GFS2 filesystem, Ecryptfs, the first developer-oriented version of EXT4, support for the Atmel AVR32 architecture, sleepable RCU, improvements for NUMA-based systems, an "-o flush" mount option aimed at FAT-based hotpluggable media devices (mp3), physical CPU hotplug and memory hot-add in x86-64, support for compiling x86 kernels with the GCC stack protection, and many other things. You can check the full list of changes in LinuxChanges."

This release has been pronounced perfect

[smittyoneeach]

This release has been pronounced perfect

It's one of those rare "perfect" kernels. So if it doesn't happen to compile with your config (or it does compile, but then does unspeakable acts of perversion with your pet dachshund), you can rest easy knowing that it's all your own d*mn fault, and you should just fix your evil ways.

Note the marketing prowess on display.
Sex sells, even if it's just an allusion to the "lookin' for love in all the ronngg places" variety.
Stand by for the premiere of 2.6.20 on YouTu

Atmel AVR32

[mattnuzum]

I've never heard of it... a quick peek on their website shows [atmel.com]:

For example, the AVR32 can execute quarter-VGA MPEG4 decoding at 30 frames per second (fps) running at just 100 MHz while comparable architectures require 260 MHz and more to decode the same movie stream.

Sounds sweet... how do I get one? Free samples?

Re:

[porkThreeWays]

The Atmel AVR butterfly is an insanely cheap development platform (20 dollars). It comes with more things than you can shake your fist at. They are also extremely popular and sell out quick so good luck finding one! Speaking of... what do they mean by "AVR support"? They are true microcontrollers with very low clock speeds and very low amounts of storage and memory. Do they mean linux can now run natively on an ATMEGA in the same manner it runs on say a gumstix?! SWEET!!!!

Re:

[porkThreeWays]

Nevermind... it supports the 32bit arch not the 8bit one. BIG difference.

Re:

[mattnuzum]

They are true microcontrollers with very low clock speeds and very low amounts of storage and memory. Do they mean linux can now run natively on an ATMEGA

No, it looks like this is a new platform. Something different, to compete with ARM - you can tell because they talk about core licensing and IP in the description (ARM's biggest weakness, in some peoples opinion). The benefit here appears to be more horsepower per clock cycle, which should lower power consumptions (more MHz == more power usually).

I can't wait to see!

Re:Atmel AVR32

[plcurechax]

Most people are familiar with the 8-bit Atmel AVR [atmel.com] microcontrollers, similar to the Microchip 8-bit PIC [microchip.com] microcontollers. The AVR32 [atmel.com] is a 32-bit microcontoller. I believe it was developed by Atmel to be a easy to mirgrate to target to compete with Freescale's 32-bit [freescale.com] offerings, and various manufacturers' low cost 32-bit ARM [arm.com] processors.

Atmel AVR32 not AVR butterfly

[FuzzyDaddy]

The AVR butterfly is from the 8 bit line of microcontrollers. The AVR32 is a much more power beast - the dev kit [atmel.com] sells for $499 ($544 at Digikey [digikey.com]).

Don't get me wrong, I love the AVR microcontrollers - but we're talking a few K of RAM, 8 to 128K of Flash for the program, a smattering of EEPROM and a top speed of 16MHz. I would be impressed if you could run the Linux kernel on that.

Re:Atmel AVR32

[drinkypoo]

You can get the starter kit from Digi-Key here [digikey.com]. I only knew about this because I bought the AVR starter kit (not AVR32) which was dramatically cheaper - $100 rather than $550. Not sure if this even comes with an AVR32 chip, probably not, but they have that too (133MHz for $37.63 [digikey.com].) Not sure how hard these are to program, but the normal AVR has support for serial in-system programming and if you know your way around an AVR you might be able to use an AVR to make an ISP chip for an AVR32. :)

Re:

[IthnkImParanoid]

The AVR starter kit for $79 comes with an 8 bit processor, so I'm not sure you can take the AVR32 (a 32 bit processor) and expect it to work with the older board. I'm not a big micro-controller hobbiest/programmer, though. Would be nice if you could. :)

Re:

[drinkypoo]

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm quite sure you're right that you can't use the AVR starter kit with the AVR32. However, the AVR can be programmed with a fairly simple in-system programmer, using a serial interface between the programmer and the AVR. All you need is power, and I think you tie some line on the chip high to perform a write enable. What I'm saying is that if the AVR32 has the same in-system programming (ISP) functionality, it might be possible to make an ISP using a normal AVR in order to p

GFS2

[C_Kode]

Anyone know if any reviews of GFS2 in actual use compared to other clustered filesystems?

Hotplugging CPU and Memory?!?!?

[StarWreck]

All I can say is :-O

Re:

[bcmm]

AFAIK, CPU hotplugging is for special hardware, and always involves more than one CPU.

Re:

[Abcd1234]

Meh, enterprise platforms like Solaris has been doing this for years. If you want to do real HA, it's a very important feature to have.

Re:

[fimbulvetr]

Except that real HA doesn't come with SPARC hardware because they can't even put ECC on the cpu's cache. This generally causes a reboot which introduces the potential for dataloss. Sometimes it will just be an error though, which only occasionally causes dataloss.

HA? Sparc procs? Not bloodly likely.

Re:

[dasunt]

This is somewhat off-topic, but I killed an older Sparc running Solaris 10 within a few minutes of installing.

Someone I know needed to test out a program on Solaris 10/Sparc. Since we had a smaller sparc (I believe it was the E4000) not being used, I installed Solaris 10 on it, doing the default install.

Then I copied the code over, and uncompressed it in /tmp.

The machine died.

Ah ha, you are going to say -- you ran out of disk space in /tmp, and the machine couldn't make the temporary files it

Re:

[diegocgteleline.es]

notice that this is *physical* hotplug, you already were able to enable/disable CPUs at runtime with /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online (if you enable CPU hotplugging)

Sounds like fun

[i_should_be_working]

From TF post:
It's one of those rare "perfect" kernels. So if it doesn't happen to compile with your config (or it does compile, but then does unspeakable acts of perversion with your pet dachshund), you can rest easy knowing that it's all your own d*mn fault, and you should just fix your evil ways.

You could send me and the kernel mailing list a note about it anyway, of course. (And perhaps pictures, if your dachshund is involved. Not that we'd be interested, of course. No. Just so that we'd know to avoid it next time).

So.. Who has a dachshund and a camera? And what does a kernel doing unspeakable acts of perversion with a dog look like anyway?

Re:Sounds like fun

[Anonymous Coward]

And what does a kernel doing unspeakable acts of perversion with a dog look like anyway?

i'd describe it but, it's unspeakable.

this linux thingy must be taking off...

[advocate_one]

there's a torrent of it on torrentspy...

Do you have no shame?

[Kadin2048]

Dude, pirating Linux off of bittorrent ... how low can you get?

It's people like you that make "Linux Genuine Advantage" necessary.

Re:

[howlingmadhowie]

anyone want to have a go at justifying the thought that just occurred to me, that the release of a new linux kernel is probably more important than the release of vista?

oh btw, totally of topic but i've just realised that if you search for something in firefox 2.0 it doesn't give you the choice of moving to the next result in the text like in firefox 1.5. i imagine this is a simple setting in about:config. anybody know which?

Re:

[nonsequitor]

I'd say the release of Vista is less relevant than the release of Duke Nukem Forever, but more relevant than another point release of the Linux Kernel.

A better faster linux kernel is a dog bites man story.

Microsoft finally getting another OS out the door 5 years after Windows XP after countless delays and feature killfests is more in the realm of man bites dog.

firefox 2.0 find vs quick find

[ville]

Howdy,

If you hit ctrl-f you get find with the [x]/next/previous/highlight all/match case widgets. If you hit / you activate quick find functionality which doesn't have those. No idea if there's a config setting to force quick find to have those widgets as well. // ville

Re:

[SiChemist]

After you type the text you want to find, hit F3 to advance to the next instance of it.

TPM encryption

[Pausanias]

Very interesting how ecryptfs [lwn.net] uses the TPM module for encryption. While there is plenty to worry about regarding treacherous computing [wikipedia.org], it is nice to see that the TPM can be put to uses that actually bolster privacy. This still does not prevent a possible future dystopia [gnu.org], but it still goes to show that devices such as TPM are not necessarily "pure evil."

Re:

[swillden]

Storing the key in a TPM is not making it safe... where did you get that idea? Store it on a USB key, and make sure you take it out when you aren't using it.

That is incorrect. The TPM provides secure storage that a USB key cannot.

The thing that makes a TPM secure is the way that the secrets it stores can be bound to a particular system configuration. The basic idea is that each piece of software in the boot process feeds the next piece to the TPM before loading it. For example, the BIOS feeds the MB

Re:

[arose]

Don't know about you, but I want my data to be recoverable in the event of hardware failure.

Re:

[swillden]

Don't know about you, but I want my data to be recoverable in the event of hardware failure.

Security engineering, like all engineering, is all about tradeoffs.

That said, you can arrange for the data to be recoverable. The best way is to securely back up the key that is bound to the TPM. There are a variety of mechanisms for doing that. Keep in mind that TPMs do not do bulk encryption well, so the actual data encryption keys are available to the operating system for performing operations using the main CPU. This means that the software that uses the keys can be written to export them in any

Re:

[swillden]

Secure storage that a USB key that is not kept with the PC cannot.

But that USB key must be kept somewhere, and unless you have a safe to keep it in, it's never going to be very secure.

TPMs, in your scenario, do nothing beyond lock data to a machine... not something that is valuable to 99.99999% of the population

Nonsense. It's extremely useful to lots of the population. Not really home users, but businesses have *lots* of uses for it. I design and build high-security applications for a living, primarily around smart cards and PCI-based crypto coprocessors, and TPMs provide a solution to dozens of otherwise insoluble (actually, too-expensive-to-solve) problems.

And yes... you do need to be running locked down signed software in order to ensure that TPM stored keys are safe. You were just flat out lying about that.

I really shouldn't even respond

Re:TPM encryption

[Marillion]

TPM is neither good nor bad

How operating systems and applications use TPM can be good or evil

In all that I've read about TPM, I've concluded that TPM is not much more than a glorified hardware based public/private key management system. The reference implementations I seen attach to the same slow hardware buses that PS/2 keyboard and mice sit. There is not enough bandwidth on that bus to encrypt/decrypt whole disks in real time.

Re:

[gillbates]

Except that TPM could easily hide weaknesses, backdoors, or worse from the user. Furthermore, the nature of TPM would prevent the user from ever discovering said "features".

No, not pure evil. But still not trustworthy, either. This is the kind of thing the NSA would love to have in every computer.

Re:

[fimbulvetr]

We're still waiting for your kernel. Just release it when it's perfect, that's fine with us.

Re:

[Jesus_666]

They certainly didn't make that mistake with Hurd.

Slashdot anti-Linux bias

[commodoresloat]

Once again, slashdot reveals its pro-Microsoft, anti-Linux bias. Two stories, one about a new Linux kernel release, and one about Dvorak commenting on a not-quite-as-new Windows release. Which one gets a full story on the front page? I'm getting tired of all the Linux-bashing on this site.

Re:

[BiggyP]

Has anyone read that changes document yet?
First item under USB is Add Playstation 2 Trance Vibrator driver [kernelnewbies.org]

Is this the first sex toy to be officially supported by the Linux kernel?! Surely that's enough for front page news.

Re:

[dylan_-]

Is this the first sex toy to be officially supported by the Linux kernel?! Surely that's enough for front page news.

Did you submit this as a story? You've even got the traditional slashdot question to end on!

Re:

[n3tcat]

I believe you missed the point of the Vista article. They make Dvorak's articles all big and obvious for two reasons. First, people who enjoy his articles haven't yet figured out that those miniature headlines are actually links to full articles. Second, they want to make sure that everyone gets a regulated selection of a couple of sentences from his garbage articles to prevent accidental ingestion of an entire screen's worth before realizing who the author is.

Re:

[dargaud]

Your comment was probably intended as funny, but if not, display depends on your settings. On mine, the front page wsa Vista, while the kernel news was hidden on the Linux page.

[FWIW] cryptfs

[Black Parrot]

FWIW, I just started using the dm-crypt based cryptfs on my Gentoo system over the past week. (I'm actually running it on top of LVM, which in turn runs on top of the kernel's RAID1.)

Pretty easy to set up, and no trouble so far, but annoying that it asks for the passphrase for each encrypted volume twice during boot, and and doesn't fail gracefully if you mistype anything.

*sniff*

[HomelessInLaJolla]

and I don't even have a system available that I can try it out on.

This homeless thing can be real inconvenient.

Vista?

[Marton]

Way to steal Microsoft's thunder!