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Linux 2.2.5 Released 151

Posted by justin++ from the amp-in-15-minutes dept.
Insomniacs of the world unite: Linus has bestowed kernel 2.2.5 upon us. Looks as though some sparc64 fixes were applied, some IPv4 and IPv6 updates were included. This should prevent lock-ups on sparc64 machines, hopefully. Don't know about ega fbcon, though. Can't wait for 2.2.5ac1, though...PLEASE USE A MIRROR. Sorry to shout, but it's very important that the files can be mirrored, and that the hardcore kernel hackers can get their patches.
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Linux 2.2.5 Released More

Linux 2.2.5 Released

Comments Filter:

  • Yikes. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    from 10.6 megs (bz2 2.2.2) to 10.9 megs (bz2 2.2.5). Soon I'll need a faster connection to upgrade. Guess its about time to try patching.

  • Aaargh! Bug in the submit code? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Let me try. Here are lots and lots of less than and greater than signs:

    1 less than : "
    1 greater than : > ">"
    4 greater thans: >>>> ">>>>"
    Mixed: >>>>>>>>>>>>

    And finally a constipated look:
    > .0.
    Preview...submit...yikes! Bugs!!!!
    Get me the insecticide!

    Spaces, begin: :end are ignored as well.

    Rob - are you reading this?

  • USB (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When is USB support planned to be integrated into
    the standard source tree of the kernel?

    I know that there is a patch, but it is only a
    patch, in an early development stage, with support
    for only a few of the hundreds USB devices.

    These days, with all the excitement around USB, it
    is a big ashame that there is no support for USB
    in Linux. Does anybody work on this seriously?

  • Linux kernel mirror (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We're mirroring linux kernel and have got both
    2.2.5 and the patches.

    ftp://ftp.cs.unm.edu/mirrors/linux-kernel/v2.2

    We've got slots for 100 friends.

    Chris Faehl
    cfaehl@cs.unm.edu
  • You see, "AC" is actually short for "Anonymous Coward". Each "AC" patch is actually a patch from one of the anonymous cowards who posts to SlashDot (like me, for example. I fixed the TCP/IP denial of service bug, your welcome). We prefer anonymity because we're just a bunch of egoless programmers, who don't want any credit or money for our hard work.

    I hope this has helped you.
  • Don't upgrade then. You may not need the bugfixes and/or enhancements the new kernels provide, but somebody out there does. I generally skip 2 or 3 kernel versions unless there is something I need immediately.
  • This question came up on the kernel devel list last week. The answer is that the mirror sites can choose how they want to update. Most use rsync now, but some choose to ftp mirror.
  • 10923084 bytes received in 18 secs (5.9e+02 Kbytes/sec)

    Talk about instant gratification.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • Linus was projecting some time during this fall to start 2.3, but you never know.

    SegFault
  • I know that there is a mailing list for Linux kernel development on Sparcs. That would probably be a place to ask.

    See http://www.linux.org/help/lists.html [linux.org] and look for "sparclinux" and "ultralinux" lists.

    The top of the page has instructions on how to subscribe.

  • uh... (Score:2)

    by SegFault ( 547 )
    Subscribe to linux-kernel-patch and have them emailed to you :)

    See http://www.linux.org/help/lists.html [linux.org] for details.

    SegFault
  • At this point, waiting is the right choice. 2.2 is settling out faster than 2.0 did (remember, 2.0 had EIGHTEEN kernels in three months!), but there will probably be a few more before it's really stable.

    2.0 took 29 revisions to be really solid. Then it took another 5 revisions to be fixed again after 2.0.30 screwed everything up (groan).
  • Posted by stickymn:

    I have Red Hat 5.0(not installed yet), and want to know the best way to upgrade to 5.2 with the latest kernel. Not to sound cheap, but I goofed and paid for 5.0 at a used bookstore, under the impression that it would not be difficult to upgrade. I a newbie to Linux. please email me at morrist@biperf.com
  • Posted by !ErrorBookmarkNotDefined:

    Besides that TCP vulnerability, that is.

    -----------------------------
    Computers are useless. They can only give answers.

  • Idiot (Score:1)

    by gavinhall ( 33 )
    Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    Don't delete the old downloads! INSTALL them. And patch up to the next version if you need to.

    You're wasting bandwidth.
  • Posted by Myrdraal:

    Hi, for those of you who don't know, you can snag the changelist at http://edge.linuxhq.com [linuxhq.com].
    -Myrdraal

  • es1370 (Score:1)

    by Simon ( 815 )
    Can anyone explain in English what effect the change to the es1370 an es1371 sound drivers was.

    --Some-guy-who-would-like-to-have-CD-audio.
  • I guess this is a bit late and nobody reads this.
    However it's not necessary to apply all those patches by hand. For example I have a download directory where I download all the patches then I simply write:

    $ pwd
    /home/amlaukka/stuff/kernel
    $ /usr/src/linux/scripts/patch-kernel

    and whoopla it patches the kernel up to the current version. Works with both .gz and .bz2 patches and automatically from say 2.2.0 to 2.2.5.
  • Nobody knew the bug was there. It's a rare case, and one that requires a malicious exploit to cause any harm (when was the last time you saw a naturally-occuring zero-length fragment?) The bug was discovered and fixed before word about it hit the net. I was running 2.2.4 (the relase that fixed the hole) when I read the first advisory. The bug was, therefore, fixed as soon as possible after it became general knowledge. That's not foot-dragging, that's speedy coding, and it's to be congratulated.

  • With the appropriate binaries, you can cross-compile from your PII to your Sparc20 and cut down a whole pile of problems.

    Heck, a lot of kernel work is done via cross-compiling for older architectures.

  • Get the patches (preferably in bzip2 format) -- they're smaller, and therefore save bandwidth on wherever you're downloading it from. Even if you don't care, saving bandwidth where possible is acknowledged to be A Good Thing. Once you've applied the patch you will have the same code as if you'd downloaded the full tarball, so compilations will be exactly as fast (or slow) as they normally are.


    --
    W.A.S.T.E.

  • same here, my machine is running 2.2.1 without any trouble, and i'm really starting to like my uptime now that it's into its second month (check out my stats page [cowofdoom.com]).

    rifling through the changelogs didn't reveal anything that makes me wanna do the kernel dance, but these rumored TCP DoS attacks worry me slightly. any specifics on this?

  • http://www.geek-girl.com/bugtraq/1999_1/1079.html [geek-girl.com]

    i found it, tee-hee. details of the bug and its exploit.

  • That's not true for everyone. I always just dowload the whole kernel. It's much easier than patching. I usually get about 120 KB/s to most
    mirrors, so 10 MB is only 2 minutes. It's not worth dealing with the patches.

    Not everyone uses a modem, remember.

  • Upgrade? (Score:1)

    by Gav ( 1861 )
    Yes, 2.2.4 at least as 2.2.4 had a tcp bug which could be exploited.
    otherwise nothing that great :)

    Gav
  • It was always a good idea to check out LinuxHQ [linuxhq.com] and read the latest Changes to see if you need to upgrade. 2.2.4 had a TCP explot fixed.
  • I'm still running 2.2.1 on my machines, and I'm wondering if there's any compelling reasons to upgrade to 2.2.5.

    I'm not having problems with 2.2.1, so I'm not going to upgrade unless I need to for some reason.
  • I can't believe that - that's so lame! How are
    those of us with 7 arms supposed to use all our
    mice simultanously!

    Linux is falling so far behind...

    _grin_
  • actually, the dependencies are handled very well, as near as I can tell. I mean if a file changes, it is smart enough to figure out what depends on that. if something major changes, it will probably need to be rebuilt, but there is no need to rebuild stuff that didn't change any code.
  • I think I have seen some that were a couple of hundred K...
  • Ah, the infamous finger memory bug :-) Who knows how many times I have typed Linux instead of Linus.
  • Up at 152.2.167.46 in /pub/linux.

    posted on behalf of Jeff Brubaker @ UNC Chapel Hill by -c-
  • I2O is what?
  • actualy there is documentation on the CD, and if you no want to do that, you can get it in html form on RH website.
  • ... and there were licensing fees involved. Is this wrong? I thought that was the reason USB support on linux was so slow in coming.
  • Replace < with &lt;

    While previewing this one, I found another problem, though. (It's probably the same one.) The "Preview" function replaces the actual code with the HTML equivalent.


    PKG
    ------------------------------
    Common sense is not so common.

  • They'll will never stop, it's too much fun!
    I trust you read the stuff on patching (look under Yikes!) I hope you didn't mean it literally when you said you deleted the old kernel and got the new one.
    Good luck!
  • I'm sure I put a "less than" symbol between the space after -p1 and the two dots.

    i.e. "../patch-2.2.x"

    Hmmm... I thought using "Plain Old Text" as my posting option would mean that when I type a greater than or less than symbol, then they wouldn't be interpreted as HTML????
  • Every time I type a "greater than" or "less than" using "Plain Old Text", they show up OK in the preview, but disappear in the actual submission!
  • Hmmmm.... OK.

    Using "Plain 'Ol Text [tm]"...

    Greater than - >

    Less than -

    Preview....OK so far...

    Hmmm.... Preview that again... nyargh! Bugs!

    This is the last I'll say on this.

    rgds.

    Kev.
  • I was just going to post something to that effect.

    I'll second that anyway.
  • You mean to say you _download_ 10+ megs of source every time there's a new release? Woops! There goes the world's bandwith :)

    1) D/l patch-2.2.x.tar.{gz or bz2}
    2) gunzip or bunzip2 patch-2.2.blah..
    3) cd /usr/src/linux
    4) patch -p1 ../patch-2.2.x
    5) compile/bake for 20 mins (cooking times may vary according your computer speed).

    rgds.

    Kev.
  • There was one little bug that kept it from compiling if you had enables BSD process accounting. Affected quite a lot of people, but a patch was out within minutes of the 2.2.4 release. Other than that, I assume that Linus released this to get a bunch of little things fixed before he left town for a couple weeks.
  • The AC Patches are a collection of patches that Alan throws together for testing purposes. I consider them to be "almost production" quality. He often fixes important bugs in the release kernel, so they're usually not a bad idea. There's always a ton of new features in them. Right now, it's the closest thing to a development branch of the kernel. You can get them ftp.kernel.org (or any of the mirrors).
  • Actually, the exploit went way farther back than 2.2.1, back to the middle 2.1.X days (around 2.1.80 or so). Unlike Microsoft, the exploit was patched in a timely manner. -Dave
  • Just put all the patch files (still zipped if you like) in /usr/src (or where ever linux/.. is), and run that script. No muss, no fuss, no 10 meg download.
  • That's not true for everyone. I always just dowload the whole kernel. It's much easier than patching. I usually get about 120 KB/s to most mirrors, so 10 MB is only 2 minutes. It's not worth dealing with the patches.

    Yeah, now multiply yourself by a thousand and think how those poor servers feel. This isn't about whether it's a pain for you in particular to download the kernel, it's about not taking up a huge chunk of bandwidth so that other people can get in. ftp.kernel.org goes down hard every time a new kernel comes out, and I've met more than one sluggish mirror.

    At least try the patch first. If it doesn't work, then you can snarf down the whole thing, but at least give it a shot.
  • Hit freshmeat.net [freshmeat.net] and do a search for bzip. It'll come up.
  • Hrmmm...with luck like that....QUICK! Invest in Microsoft!
  • That's not unsettling, that's service. :)

    Usually, I like to see a bit more delay between non-development releases. For instance, my fiancee can't be talked into more than about one kernel compile a month.

    I kinda liked the long delays between 2.2.1 and 2.2.2. I'm sure people running production servers also appreciate the stability. Things seem to be accelerating again, but I'm hoping that's just due to the relative timing of vacations....

    --Joe

    --

  • Was there some sort of brown-paper-bag issue in 2.2.4? I know Linus was about to go on a two-week vacation, so did he release this to fix some real showstoppers?

    When I checked LinuxHQ, I didn't even see 2.2.5 mentioned yet, and the changelog at Cutting Edge Linux didn't hint at any real showstoppers. Even Alan Cox's diary didn't mention that 2.2.5 was iminent. A search of the Linux Kernel mailing list archives was similarly unenlightening. (I was looking at http://www.tux.org/hypermail/linux-kernel/latest/ [tux.org] ... is there a better place?)

    So what's the rush? This almost feels like a development kernel patch cycle....

    --Joe

    --
  • I just went through all 14 of the ftpX.us.kernel.org, it seems like half of them still havent got kernel 2.2.5. The ones who got the kernel seem only to have the fat tar ball (10 meg download).

    My suggestion to kernel ftp mainterns would be to download the patch before downloading the tar ball. Since most ppl visit your fpt servers to get the patches and not the full load. It might be a wise suggestion to hold the full tar ball 24 hours before releasing (since it would be bound to cause a lot of bandwidth problems).

    Thank you.
    --
  • In /usr/src

    1. with files ending in .gz

    gzip -cd patch-2.2-whatever.gz | patch -p0

    2. with files ending in .bz2

    bzip2 -cd patch-2.2-whatever.bz2 | patch -p0


    If your patching the kernel inside /usr/src/linux
    Then instead of patch -p0 above, use patch -p1

    That's all. (Remember all offical kernel patch releases are incremenatal patches - so you have to patch one after the other).

    EG: if you have kernel 2.2.1 and wish to go up to 2.2.5. You have to patch your current kernel, to 2.2.2, 2.2.3, 2.2.4, 2.2.5 in that order.

    Good luck.

    --
  • My sparc64 has 60 days 23:27 on 2.2.0.
    I'd say "stable".

    2.2.5 is working great on my HP Kayak (which
    has some pretty bizarre peripherals), so let's
    see how it does on the Sparc. Wish me luck!

  • USB (Score:2)

    by mindedc ( 7819 )
    Yes, as a matter of fact, there is steady constant work being done on the USB subsystem, it's being done mainly by one advernturesome soul who is in school right now. You can check his progress at the web site [fis.ucm.es]. You can always find information about inportant projects at the Linux Documentation Project. [unc.edu] I know they have keyboards, hubs, mice and several interfacec cards working right now. They are doing some weird crap too... the guy that's doing it noticed that his code puked when he added the seventh mouse...
  • Even so, I think it is a good idea to always run make clean after patching, so as to force everything to be recompiled.
  • I haven't had a chance to keep up with sparc64 dev at all. How is stable is the kernel in that hw environment now?

    More specifically, does anyone have any production experience on that hw?
  • Sorry to have to yell, but....
    USE PATCHES!!!!!
    Thank you.
  • Huhu!!

    That's real nice... Don't even need unzipping...

    Thank you!

  • uh... (Score:1)

    by tommy ( 12973 )
    thanks...did not know about that
  • Just because RedHat doesn't ship with it doesn't mean it's not the stable branch. Redhat has nothing to do with whether or not a given kernel is stable. If Linus calls the minor version number even, I call the kernel STABLE.

  • Wow those guys are moving fast.. Does anyone know when 2.3.x will be started?
    Doviende
  • I think there's a denial of service attack possibility with everything up to 2.2.3
    2.2.4 fixed it.

    Doviende

  • I also meant to say that LinuxHQ [linuxhq.com] usually has nice summaries of each version's updates.

    Doviende

  • One of my machines runs Slackware 3.5 (which comes with 2.0.35 i think), and it required absolutely no fiddling to get 2.1.130 working, or 2.2.1 or 2.2.4. They all worked perfectly the first time i compiled them.

    Also, my other machine is Slackware 3.6, and the scenario was the same....make xconfig, make dep, make zImage, reboot, and that's all the configuration it required.

    Why the heck are all of these RedHat people having so much trouble? They can't run anything that isn't a binary in an rpm? maybe that's a little harsh, but I can't figure it out.

    Doviende

  • How long did it take last time for the devel branch to start? I thought it was something like a month or two.
  • Hrm...it seemed shorter. Oh well, I can't wait for 2.3.xx. I personally dislike this whole stable thing. Where is the fun if you don't get to test out new drivers that are probally going to crash your system?
  • The lesson here is quite simple:

    Any new software release may contain major bugs that the developers missed. If you really need a stable system, don't upgrade to the latest release until it has had time for the bugs to settle out. Sure, the developers try to make every release bug free, but they're only demi-gods (i.e., only mostly perfect).

    Fortunately, for Linux, this means wait a few days, possibly a week.

    Of course, many of us don't need absolute perfectly stable systems. Hence, we're free to upgrade the moment the latest compiler, kernel, or whatever hits the mirrors, and we just might be the ones to find the brown-paper-bag issue that the developers need to know about. In other words, running a brand new software release and looking for problems is one thing that non-programmers can do to help the free software community.
  • i've never had any trouble with scsi in the kernels, but i've always compiled it in, rather than using modules. (the only drives i've got are scsi, so i have to.)

    i've got one machine with an onboard aic78somethingorother. the only problems i've had with it are with the 2.2-pre5 up to 2.2.1 kernels not reading my disk geometry correctly. (scsi compiled in.)

    is there anything else in your system that might cause problems? a device that's not sharing irq's cleanly maybe?
  • Personally, if you are that far behind in kernels, I would download the complete source. But then again, maybe 4 short downloads are better than one long one. Good luck!
  • Greetings,

    Sometimes it feels like it...

    Cyberfox!
  • I fixed that BSD process accounting bug in the source myself. Will the 2.2.5 patch die if I've already done some of its work?
  • Geeze I just compiled 2.2.4 yesterday!!
    you people love to keep me busy :P
  • Are the mirrors of ftp.xx.kernel.org mirroring via ftp? The news seems to indicate that they are. I would suggest using something like rsync to keep the mirrors up to date instead.
  • jesus, i still have 2.0.36
  • 2.0.0 was out on june 9th, 2.1.0 was out on sep 30th (all 1996), that makes almost 4 months.
    In those 4 months came 22 releases in the 2.0 series, in the 2.2 series we haven't seen more than 6 releases, so 2.2 seems to stabilize faster, and so we might see 2.3.0 soon.
  • My home box has a 67 days uptime now with the 2.2.1 kernel, dont you think its stable?

    - nr

  • Linux Mandrake [linux-mandrake.com] has a set of kernel-2.2.3 RPMs available. My only hard-drive is through my aic7xxx SCSI adapter. All you need to do is install the RPMS (that's install.. NOT upgrade) for the new kernel, run mkinitrd (Apparently scsi_mod is compiled into the mandrake kernel, so you don't need to use with-scsi-modules). edit /etc/lilo.conf to allow you to boot linux and oldlinux (or whatever), run lilo and reboot. I'll probably put a kernel 2.2.5 RPM up soon if Mandrake hasn't already done it, check my website.
  • Something wouldn't compile in BSD process accounting. Somebody posted a four line patch to the kernel list like ten minutes after Linus announced 2.2.4 a coupla' days ago.



    --
    .:.
    : tedd

  • If you bothered to look at the contents of the patch file, you will notice that the majority of this patch falls into 3 distinct changes.

    i. New device drivers for support of additional serial cards. One of these drivers is huge with many comments. New drivers are always being added - it is called progress

    ii. Minor source code changes that do not remove functionality (replacing obsoleted calls and removing include files no longer needed).

    iii. Modifications to the Sparc and Sparc64 architecure trees - most users won't need this either.

    How many slashdotters actually bother to check the contents of a patch to see what has changed - having worked as a support engineer for 9 years I wager that the answer is 'Not Many'.
  • Awww... we don't want this guy wasting his money on top of it, do we? :)

  • ac1 (Score:1)

    by jamesm ( 31089 )
    Couldn't wait, huh? I think Alan must have heard you. :-)
  • To those of us running on the SPARC and PPC architectures, this is our only stable version. Then again, I've been running Ultra-Peguin (64-bit/Sun) off the 2.1.X series kernel it came with, for over a month, and it has yet to crash. The only problems have been with the X server. Considering Sun was dragged kicking and screaming to X, the Slowlaris version sure works better.
  • I upgraded everything from 5.0 last week. I couldn't get Glibc to compile up, so I RPM'd it; apart from that , even Red Hat give specific simple instructions on how to upgrade. How simple does it have to be?

    Maybe gnu/linux becoming mainstream is a *bad* thing......?
  • 2.2.1 is by far the least stable kernel I've ever used. In the year I've run linux, it's crashed once -- and that was while using 2.2.1. Of course, that was probably because it was the first kernel I ever bothered to compile, and I'm pretty sure I managed to screw some option up somewhere.

    I'm wondering if I should upgrade this time though. I usually have a nice t1 to download things on, but I only have a modem right now. I feel so technologically inferior. *sigh*

  • okay so i downloaded 2.2, and saved it to my hard disk and i was going to install it over the weekend, then 2.2.3 came out! So i deleted 2.2 and got 2.2.3, and i don't remember 2.2.4 comming out, but i guess now i'll have to delete 2.2.3 and get 2.2.5, only for tomorrow, they will have 2.2.6. When are they going to stop?
  • make clean (make-kpkg clean) really *should* be run to make sure your kernel compiles correctly, new features etc
  • It's just like seeing your child grow and have birthdays.

  • If new Linux kernel (with new patches) would come out once in year we would still be running what 1.x.x ? Linux evolves and noone forses you to download it.
  • isn't it funny how this 2.2.x series is labeled 'stable'?
  • what was that major tcp exploit thats in 2.2.1 through 2.2.3, even some 2.1.x kernels?
    sounds like microsoft's 'stable'
  • maybe if you would work on trying to remembe what you just read, you would be able to see that i mentioned the 2.1.x crap. and you call that 'fast'?
    lol.

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