Kernel Traffic #325 by Zack Brown
[email protected] Mon, 05 Sep 2005 06:37:54 -0700
| Newsgroups | gmane.linux.kernel.kernel-traffic |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Kernel Traffic #325 For 5 Sep
By Zack Brown
Table Of Contents
* Standard Format
* Text Format
* XML Source
* Mailing List Stats For This Week
* Threads Covered
1. 11 Aug - 22 Aug (23 SATA Status Report
posts)
2. 17 Aug - 19 Aug (7 posts) Status Of Atheros And RT2x00 Drivers
3. 17 Aug - 22 Aug (8 posts) Using ConfigFS To Configure DLM; DLM
Maintainership
4. 19 Aug - 22 Aug (67 Linux 2.6.13-rc6-mm1 Released
posts)
5. 19 Aug - 22 Aug (9 posts) Some Discussion Of Linux Trademark
6. 21 Aug - 23 Aug (12 SMBFS Needs A New Maintainer
posts)
7. 22 Aug - 24 Aug (12 Linux 2.6.13-rc6-mm2 Released
posts)
Mailing List Stats For This Week
We looked at 1710 posts in 10MB.
There were 598 different contributors. 210 posted more than once. The average
length of each message was 90 lines.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| The top posters of the | The top subjects of the week were: |
| week were: | |
|------------------------+----------------------------------------------------|
|74 posts in 353KB by |65 posts in 286KB for "[rfc][patch 0/2] mm: remove |
|adrian bunk |pagereserved" |
|65 posts in 234KB by al |44 posts in 282KB for "2.6.13-rc6-mm1" |
|viro |40 posts in 169KB for "sched_yield() makes openldap |
|45 posts in 188KB by |slow" |
|andrew morton |38 posts in 205KB for "[rfc - 0/9] generic |
|33 posts in 132KB by |timekeeping subsystem (v. b5)" |
|christoph hellwig |28 posts in 163KB for "[rfc,patch] use rcu to |
|32 posts in 132KB by al |protect tasklist for unicast signals" |
|viro | |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Full Statistics generated by mboxstats version 2.8
1. SATA Status Report
11 Aug - 22 Aug (23 posts) Archive Link: "SATA status report updated"
Topics: Serial ATA
People: Jeff Garzik, Rob van Nieuwkerk, Matthew Garrett, Mogens Valentin, Jens
Axboe
Jeff Garzik said:
Things in SATA-land have been moving along recently, so I updated the
software status report:
http://linux.yyz.us/sata/software-status.html
Although I have not updated it in several weeks, folks may wish to refer to
the hardware status report as well:
http://linux.yyz.us/sata/sata-status.html
Thanks to all the hard-working SATA contributors!
Rob van Nieuwkerk threw out his own cheer for the SATA contributors, saying,
"SATA has been working perfect in my system since I started using it 10 months
ago!" And asked, "Is any progress made on SMART support ? I've been reading
"SMART support will be integrated very soon" for a very long time now .. :-)"
Jeff replied, "It's been feature-complete for a while, but the reports from
testers in the field have made me too nervous to push it into the upstream
kernel. I might push it upstream, but disable it by default, which would allow
for a wider test audience."
Elsewhere, Matthew Garrett asked Jeff, "I couldn't see any reference to
system-wide power management (ie, suspend/resume of machines with SATA
interfaces) - is any work going on in that area at the moment?" And Jeff
replied, "Jens Axboe @ SuSE posted a patch that needs some work. So, it's on
the radar screen, but I haven't seen any new work recently."
Elsewhere, Mogens Valentin asked Jeff about "support for the JMicron JMB360
sataII chip? Possible timeframe? It's starting to be used with the ULi M1695/
M1567 chipset." But Jeff said he'd never heard of it; and there was no
follow-up from anyone else.
2. Status Of Atheros And RT2x00 Drivers
17 Aug - 19 Aug (7 posts) Archive Link: "Atheros and rt2x00 driver"
People: Jon Jahren, Daniel J. Blueman, Lee Revell, Mateusz Berezecki, Jeff
Garzik
Jon Jahren asked "why neither the atheros driver http://madwifi.sourceforge.net
, or the rt2x00 driver http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
is included in the kernel?" Daniel J. Blueman replied, "There is a good chance
the rt2x00 driver will get into the kernel tree in time, since there is no
firmware to upload - Ralink Tech (www.ralink.com.tw (http://www.ralink.com.tw)
) took a design decision to incorporate the firmware into an EEPROM on-board,
allowing their driver to be GPL'd, and the rt2x00 is a Linux-specific rewrite
which is stabilising well." Lee Revell remarked, "Binary only firmware and
firmware loading is perfectly compatible with the GPL, as long as the vendor
includes a license to redistribute the firmware. The problem was that vendors
were distributing the firmware embedded in the driver code as a big hex string,
without a separate license, which made the firmware fall under the GPL, which
make the whole kernel undistributable as there's no source code for the
firmware." Mateusz Berezecki also said, "there is an ongoing project for
atheros cards. work in progress located at http://mateusz.agrest.org/atheros/"
But Jeff Garzik replied, "There is still the open question of whether this is
legal enough to include in the kernel :(. I really would have preferred a
cleanroom approach, like that taken by the forcedeth driver authors."
3. Using ConfigFS To Configure DLM; DLM Maintainership
17 Aug - 22 Aug (8 posts) Archive Link: "[PATCH 1/3] dlm: use configfs"
Topics: FS: sysfs, Ioctls, MAINTAINERS File
People: David Teigland, Andrew Morton, Joel Becker, Nish Aravamudan
David Teigland posted a patch for DLM (Distributed Lock Manager), to "Use
configfs to configure lockspace members and node addresses. This was previously
done with sysfs and ioctl." Andrew Morton replied, "Fair enough. This really
means that the configfs patch should be split out of the ocfs2 megapatch..."
And Joel Becker said, "Well, I included the patch in my last email. For the
latest spin, I've created http://oss.oracle.com/git/configfs.git. The ocfs2 git
repositories (http://oss.oracle.com/git/ocfs2-dev.git, http://oss.oracle.com/
git/ocfs2.git) are now based on the configfs one. If there's any other way you
want me to do it, let me know."
Elsewhere, Nish Aravamudan asked David, "Are you the official maintainer of the
DLM subsystem? Could you submit a patch to add a MAINTAINERS entry? I was
looking for a maintainer to send the dlm portion of my schedule_timeout() fixes
to, but there wasn't one listed." David confirmed he was the maintainer, and
submitted a patch against the MAINTAINERS file to reflect this.
4. Linux 2.6.13-rc6-mm1 Released
19 Aug - 22 Aug (67 posts) Archive Link: "2.6.13-rc6-mm1"
Topics: Kernel Release Announcement
People: Andrew Morton
Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.13-rc6-mm1, saying:
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.13-rc6/
2.6.13-rc6-mm1/
+ Lots of fixes, updates and cleanups all over the place.
+ If you have the right debugging options set, this kernel will generate
a storm of sleeping-in-atomic-code warnings at boot, from the scsi
code. It is being worked on.
5. Some Discussion Of Linux Trademark
19 Aug - 22 Aug (9 posts) Archive Link: "[OT]Linus trademarks Linux?!!"
People: Jesper Juhl, Linus Torvalds
Someone asked about recent news focusing on Linus Torvalds trademarking
"Linux". In the course of discussion, Jesper Juhl said:
Linux being a registered trademark is old news.
Linus clarified the whole "Linux is a registered trademark of Linus
Torvalds" thing back in 2000 in a lengthy email to LKML.
He explained both why Linux was registered as a trademark, why he has to
enforce/police it to keep it, and what the groundrules regarding its use
are (and don't worry, it's all quite sensible).
You can find the email here : http://boudicca.tux.org/hypermail/
linux-kernel/2000week04/0654.html
And Linus replied:
Gaah. I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the
whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with
people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any
random topic, whether they know anything about it or not.
[ And don't get me wrong - I follow slashdot too, exactly because it's fun
to see people argue. I'm not complaining ;]
And I don't tend to worry about the Inquirer and the Register, because both
of them are all about being rough and saying things in ways that might not
be acceptable in other places, and that's what makes them fun to read. So
when they then write something nasty about Linux (or me), hey, it goes with
the territory.
But I was really hoping this particular wanking session wouldn't overflow
into Linux-kernel.
Anyway, the posting Jesper points to is a fine one. Partly to show that
this trademark thing sure as hell isn't anything new, and partly because
the rules really haven't changed.
So let's repeat that link again, just as background,
http://boudicca.tux.org/hypermail/linux-kernel/2000week04/0654.html
and then people should think a bit (and maybe research) what a trademark
really means.
A trademark exists to set up some rules about using a "mark" (name, logo,
you name it) in trade. The people who pay to license (or get a unique
trademark of their own) a certain name do so because they care about that
particular name. People who don't care, don't pay. It's really that easy.
It's about getting legal protection for a particular name.
For example, this means that a _user_ would never pay a single cent over a
trademark. I don't know why/how the Inq even came to that "companies to pay
for using free software" idea. It shows a total lack of understanding about
what a trademark is in the first place.
Now, a company that has a company name usually _does_ want to protect their
name. Not always, but it's kind of embarrassing (and easily an expensive
and big bother) if somebody else trademarks that name, and then sends a
cease-and-desist order to you and forces you to switch to something else.
So you'll find that most commerical entities protect their name some way,
regardless of _what_ that name is. For example, let's say that you called
your company or distribution "Lipro", then you'd like to trademark that.
Goodie. It's pretty expensive, but most companies feel that it's more than
worth it to know that you've got exclusive rights to that name, and nobody
else can force you to change,
So the first point here is that regardless of you call your Linux
distribution "Linux Something" or something totally different, you'll want
to protect that name if you are serious about making a big commercial
distribution. Exactly because you do _not_ want to be in the situation that
somebody else hijacks your name from you.
Now, you can do that protection two different ways: you can make up a
unique name of your own ("Red Hat" or "Linspire" or "Debian" or whatever),
and trademark that. Then the trademark office keeps track of things, and
guarantees that there are no clashes (within your business area).
Or, alternatively, you can ask somebody else who already has a unique name
if they might "sublicense" their name in combination with something else.
In the case of "Linux", that name is already guaranteed unique by the
trademark office, so let's say that you felt that you wanted to have a
unique name that contained that, you'd approach LMI and say "I want to call
my magazine LinuxJournal, can you write up paperwork that makes sure that
nobody else can do so"?
And let's repeat: somebody who doesn't want to _protect_ that name would
never do this. You can call anything "MyLinux", but the downside is that
you may have somebody else who _did_ protect himself come along and send
you a cease-and-desist letter. Or, if the name ends up showing up in a
trademark search that LMI needs to do every once in a while just to protect
the trademark (another legal requirement for trademarks), LMI itself might
have to send you a cease-and-desist-or-sublicense it letter.
At which point you either rename it to something else, or you sublicense
it. See? It's all about whether _you_ need the protection or not, not about
whether LMI wants the money or not.
As to the "cease-and-desist or sublicense the mark" letters, they are sadly
directly brought on by the requirements of maintaining a trademark. If you
have a trademark, you have to police it, which means that you have to do
trademark searches to see who uses it in a commercial setting, and make
sure that they use it properly.
So to answer a particular question that came up here on Linux-kernel: "Does
the linuxjournal.com pay $5000?".
First off, I don't know where the $5000 came from - it's different for
different classes of people. Secondly, LinuxJournal was one of the
companies that raised the money to get the "Linux" trademark in the first
place! As a result, they don't pay a red cent, because they had been part
of protecting the name in the first place. And yes, they paid real lawyers
to do so. Their sublicense got "grandfathered in".
Finally, just to make it clear: not only do I not get a cent of the
trademark money, but even LMI (who actually administers the mark) has so
far historically always lost money on it. That's not a way to sustain a
trademark, so they're trying to at least become self-sufficient, but so far
I can tell that lawyers fees to _give_ that protection that commercial
companies want have been higher than the license fees. Even pro bono
lawyers chanrge for the time of their costs and paralegals etc.
Linux International has paid for it, maddog has worked on it on his own
time, and various companies have helped chip in (like the original
companies and people who got the trademark in the first place).
6. SMBFS Needs A New Maintainer
21 Aug - 23 Aug (12 posts) Archive Link: "New maintainer needed for the Linux
smb filesystem"
Topics: FS: CIFS, FS: smbfs, Samba
People: Adrian Bunk, Andrew Morton, Dave Jones, Steve French, Urban Widmark
Adrian Bunk asked, "Since Urban Widmark was not active for some time, and I
didn't have any success trying to reach him, it seems we need a new maintainer
for the smb filesystem in the Linux kernel. Is there anyone who both feels
qualified and wants to become the new maintainer?" Andrew Morton replied:
Yes, it's a poor situation. That driver seems to have quite a few problems.
I was hoping that by now we could simply deprecate smbfs and tell people to
use CIFS, but I'm not sure that CIFS is ready for that yet.
Steve, what's your take? Does CIFS offer a 100% superset of smbfs
capabilities?
Dave Jones remarked, "A while ago, we disabled it in Fedora kernels, and told
people "Use CIFS instead". There were a whole range of Windows variants that it
couldn't talk to. Maybe the situation has improved since, but at the time, it
was bad enough that we had to switch smbfs back on."
Elsewhere, Steve French said:
OK - good progress on filling the requirement for Windows ME/9x support
which seems to be the most common reason for still needing smbfs based on
various email responses on this thread (if we can get this work finished up
fast, it will avoid some double maintainence).
CIFS (in the cifs.git tree) can now handle not just mounts to Windows ME
(and probably Windows 9x), but readdir and enough of lookup. Finishing up
the remainder should go fast (OpenX instead of NTCreateX is the main piece
left).
Of course finding Windows 95, Windows 98, and OS/2 servers is a little
harder than it sounds...although scripting a subset of the functional tests
that should work should be pretty easy.
I will also put a version of the source that will compile at least as far
back as 2.6.9 up on the project page within a few days.
There were various stirrings of interest in maintaining SMBFS, but no
maintainer was actually selected.
7. Linux 2.6.13-rc6-mm2 Released
22 Aug - 24 Aug (12 posts) Archive Link: "2.6.13-rc6-mm2"
Topics: Kernel Release Announcement
People: Andrew Morton
Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.13-rc6-mm2, saying:
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.13-rc6/
2.6.13-rc6-mm2/
+ Various updates. Nothing terribly noteworthy.
+ This kernel still spits a bunch of scheduling-while-atomic warnings
from the scsi code. Please ignore.
Sharon And Joy
Kernel Traffic is grateful to be developed on a computer donated by Professor
Greg Benson and Professor Allan Cruse in the Department of Computer Science at
the University of San Francisco. This is the same department that invented
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