Kernel Traffic #305 by Zack Brown

[email protected] Mon, 04 Apr 2005 00:24:29 -0700
Newsgroups gmane.linux.kernel.kernel-traffic
Message-ID <[email protected]>
                        Kernel Traffic #305 For 4 Apr 

                                 By Zack Brown

Table Of Contents

  * Standard Format
  * Text Format
  * XML Source
  * Mailing List Stats For This Week
  * Threads Covered

    1. 12 Mar  - 24 Mar  (58      Linux 2.6.11-mm3 Released; Some Mouse
                         posts)   Anomalies
    2. 18 Mar  - 24 Mar  (5       Linux 2.4.30-rc1 Released
                         posts)
    3. 21 Mar  - 24 Mar  (72      Linux 2.6.12-rc1-mm1 Released
                         posts)
    4. 22 Mar  - 27 Mar  (25      SquashFS Support For ./ And ../
                         posts)
    5. 24 Mar  - 28 Mar  (44      Linux 2.6.12-rc1-mm2 Released; Status Of -mm
                         posts)   Development
    6. 25 Mar  - 27 Mar  (13      Linux 2.4.30-rc2 Released
                         posts)
    7. 25 Mar  - 27 Mar  (10      Linux 2.6.11.6 Released
                         posts)
    8. 26 Mar  - 30 Mar  (9       Linux 2.4.30-rc3 Released
                         posts)
    9. 30 Mar            (1 post) Linux 2.4.30-rc4 Released

Mailing List Stats For This Week

We looked at 1781 posts in 11MB.

There were 600 different contributers. 227 posted more than once. The average
length of each message was 105 lines.

The top posters of the            The top subjects of the week were:
      week were:
84 posts in 419KB by
Adrian Bunk             43 posts in 198KB for "How's the nforce4 support in
78 posts in 605KB by    Linux?"
Andrew Morton           35 posts in 187KB for "[patch] Real-Time Preemption,
52 posts in 394KB by    -RT-2.6.11-rc3-V0.7.38-01"
Jesper Juhl             27 posts in 125KB for "[patch 0/3] j_state_lock,
42 posts in 219KB by    j_list_lock, remove-bitlocks"
Jeff Garzik             26 posts in 100KB for "Mac mini sound woes"
40 posts in 143KB by    25 posts in 93KB for "Squashfs without ./.."
Lee Revell

Full Statistics generated by mboxstats version 2.2

 

1. Linux 2.6.11-mm3 Released; Some Mouse Anomalies
12 Mar  - 24 Mar  (58 posts) Archive Link: "2.6.11-mm3"
Topics: FS: devfs, FS: sysfs, Hot-Plugging, Kernel Release Announcement, Power
Management: ACPI
People: Andrew Morton, Helge Hafting, Dmitry Torokhov, Vojtech Pavlik

Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.11-mm3, saying:

    ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.11/
    2.6.11-mm3/

      + A new version of the "acpi poweroff fix". People who were having
        trouble with ACPI poweroff, please test and report.
      + A very large update to the CFQ I/O scheduler. Treat with caution, run
        benchmarks. Remember that the I/O scheduler can be selected on a
        per-disk basis with

            echo as > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
            echo deadline > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
            echo cfq > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler

      + video-for-linux update

Helge Hafting reported:

    2.6.11-mm1 and earlier: mouse appear as /dev/input/mouse0
    2.6.11-mm3: mouse appear as /dev/input/mouse1

    No big problem, one change to xorg.conf and I got the mouse back. I guess
    it wasn't supposed to change like that though?

    This is a mouse connected to the ps2 port, also appearing as /dev/psaux

Dmitry Torokhov recommended, "I'd recommend using /dev/input/mice unless you
want to _exclude_ some of your input devices. It will get data from all you
mice at once and is always available." He explained, "Vojtech activated scroll
handling in keyboard code by default so now your keyboard is mapped to the
mouse0 and the mouse moved to mouse1." Andrew replied, "We cannot ship a kernel
with this change, surely? Our users would come hunting for us with pitchforks."
But Vojtech Pavlik replied:

    Mouse device numbers are defined to be unstable because of hotplug.

    Most users use /dev/input/mice, where this won't have impact.

    The officially correct solution is to use udev to get stable device names.

    The change is easily reverted - just change the 'atkbd.scroll' default
    value.

 

2. Linux 2.4.30-rc1 Released
18 Mar  - 24 Mar  (5 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.4.30-rc1"
Topics: Networking, Security
People: Marcelo Tosatti

Marcelo Tosatti announced Linux 2.4.30-rc1, saying, "Here goes the first
release candidate for v2.4.30. It contains a small number of fixes, including a
fix for recently discovered ppp DoS (CAN-2005-0384)."

 

3. Linux 2.6.12-rc1-mm1 Released
21 Mar  - 24 Mar  (72 posts) Subject: "2.6.12-rc1-mm1"
Topics: Kernel Release Announcement, Power Management: ACPI, Sound: ALSA, USB
People: Andrew Morton, Russell King

Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.12-rc1-mm1, saying:

    ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.12-rc1/
    2.6.12-rc1-mm1/

      + We might have a fix here for the recent AGP/DRM problems. If you were
        having problems with that, please test and report.
      + An update to the hfs and hfsplus filesystems.
      + Lots more pcmcia changes.
      + Linus is away this week. Not a lot more should be going into 2.6.12 now
        and I have a list of ~140 bugs, many of which are post-2.6.10
        regressions. We should fix these.

Russell King's ears pricked up at the mention of a bug list; he asked, "Is this
your own personal bug list, or is it accessible anywhere?" Andrew replied,
"It's just an email folder at present." ... "USB, ALSA, Input, ACPI and suspend
are the usual culprits."

 

4. SquashFS Support For ./ And ../
22 Mar  - 27 Mar  (25 posts) Archive Link: "Squashfs without ./.."
Topics: FS: SquashFS, FS: ramfs
People: Jan Engelhardt, Jesper Juhl, Andreas Schwab, Phil Lougher, H. Peter
Anvin

Jan Engelhardt reported, "I have observed that squashfs, when mounted, does not
return any "." or ".." pseudo-directories upon readdir. Could this be added?
Would there be any objections?" Jesper Juhl replied, "I can't say if there will
be any objections or not, but if that's something that people want, then I'd
like to take a stab at implementing it - could be fun and I'd love to learn a
little more about that area of the kernel, so I'll have a go at it if noone
screams." He dove into the code, and Pietro Zuco agreed that this functionality
would be useful.

The discussion spiraled around from here; at one point Andreas Schwab remarked,
""." and ".." are handled in the VFS. No filesystem code ever sees them during
lookup." Elsewhere, Phil Lougher mentioned:

    Cramfs also doesn't store '.' and '..', which is where I got the idea from
    in the first place when originally implementing Squashfs.

    Filesystems don't need to store '.' or ''..' in the filesystem, as they're
    never looked up by the VFS - as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the VFS
    handles '.' and '..' internally.

    Not storing the redundant '.' and '..' entries within the filesystem
    achieves a small but nonetheless useful space saving.

He added, "The lack of '.' and '..' entries hasn't caused any problems despite
cramfs/squashfs being used for a large number of years. I'm inclined to believe
any application that _relies_ on seeing '.' and '..' returned by readdir is
broken. This situation is easily fixed within the application rather than
forcing the filesystem to unnecessarily fake '.' and '..' entries which are
never used."

There was very little support for Phil's position however. H. Peter Anvin said
rhetorically at one point, "Are you seriously suggesting changing our behaviour
of all the conventional filesystems to a non-Unix behaviour, to match cramfs
and squashfs?"

 

5. Linux 2.6.12-rc1-mm2 Released; Status Of -mm Development
24 Mar  - 28 Mar  (44 posts) Archive Link: "2.6.12-rc1-mm2"
Topics: Digital Video Broadcasting, Kernel Release Announcement, Sound: ALSA, 
USB, Version Control
People: Andrew Morton, Lee Revell

Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.12-rc1-mm2, saying:

    ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.12-rc1/
    2.6.12-rc1-mm2/

      + Added David Miller's networking tree to the -mm lineup as bk-net.patch.
      + Added Herbert Xu's crypto development tree to the -mm lineup as
        bk-cryptodev.patch.

        -mm kernels now aggregate Linus's tree and 34 subsystem trees. Usually
        they are pulled 3-4 hours before the release of the -mm kernel.

        Usually it is possible to determine the latest cset from each tree by
        looking at the first couple of lines of the relevant patch in the
        broken-out/ directory. Although sometimes it isn't there if I had to
        massage the diff.

      + There may be an x86_64 problem here, although it works for me. If it
        fails early in boot, try reverting
        x86_64-separate-amd-cmp-detection-from-hyper-threading.patch
      + There's some work here on the recent USB PM resume bugs. If you had
        problems there, please test and be sure to cc
        [email protected] in any reports.
      + Some fixes for the recent DRM problems.
      + Big DVB update
      + md updates
      + nfs4 server updates
      + Lots more fixes
      + Lots more bugs.

Regarding the aggregation of the various subsystem trees and Linus's tree into
the -mm series, Lee Revell asked:

    Do you notify the subsystem maintainers ahead of time so that critical
    fixes can be pushed to BK?

    I am thinking of the recent ALSA example, where the emu10k1 driver was
    b0rked in 2.6.12-mm1, but the fix had been in ALSA CVS for a week.

Andrew replied, "Occasionally I'll go out and ping people, but almost always
the subsystem guys know what the development cycle is, and they appropriately
decide which code should go in, and when." He added, regarding ALSA, "We've
been discussing how to get ALSA CVS into ALSA bk more promptly."

 

6. Linux 2.4.30-rc2 Released
25 Mar  - 27 Mar  (13 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.4.30-rc2"
Topics: FS: ext2, Security
People: Marcelo Tosatti

Marcelo Tosatti announced Linux 2.4.30-rc2, saying:

    Here goes the second release candidate for v2.4.30.

    It contains a bunch of security updates (ext2 mkdir leak, af_bluetooth
    range checking, isofs corrupt media, load_elf_library DoS), an ia64 update,
    another round of networking fixes, amongst others.

    If nothing terrible shows up, this will become v2.4.30.

 

7. Linux 2.6.11.6 Released
25 Mar  - 27 Mar  (10 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.6.11.6"
People: Chris Wright

Chris Wright announced Linux 2.6.11.6, saying, "With some pending security
fixes it's time to for a -stable update. So, here's 2.6.11.6, in the normal
kernel.org places. This includes some security fixes, esp. one which closes a
local root exploit in bluetooth."

 

8. Linux 2.4.30-rc3 Released
26 Mar  - 30 Mar  (9 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.4.30-rc3"
Topics: Security
People: Marcelo Tosatti

Marcelo Tosatti announced Linux 2.4.30-rc3, saying, "A nasty typo happened
while merging v2.6 load_elf_library() DoS fix, which could leap to oopses."

 

9. Linux 2.4.30-rc4 Released
30 Mar  (1 post) Archive Link: "Linux 2.4.30-rc4"
Topics: FS: ext3
People: Marcelo Tosatti

Marcelo Tosatti announced Linux 2.4.30-rc4, saying:

    Here goes -rc4 to fix a couple of regressions have been confirmed:

      + ext3 IO EH changes need more work
      + Netfilter bogus mc_list deletion

    Hopefully this will become final in a day or two.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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