Kernel Traffic #223 by Zack Brown
[email protected] Sun, 20 Jul 2003 23:17:12 -0700
| Newsgroups | gmane.linux.kernel.kernel-traffic |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <E19eTyy-000441-00@renegade> |
Kernel Traffic #223 For 20 Jul
By Zack Brown
Table Of Contents
* Standard Format
* Text Format
* XML Source
* Introduction
* Mailing List Stats For This Week
* Threads Covered
1. 22 Jun - 4 Jul (26 posts) Linux 2.5.73 Released
2. 30 Jun - 4 Jul (79 posts) Virtual Memory Documentation For 2.6
3. 2 Jul - 8 Jul (38 posts) Encryption Over Loopback; API Changes In
2.5
4. 2 Jul - 3 Jul (13 posts) Linux 2.5.74 Released
5. 3 Jul - 8 Jul (13 posts) SELinux Module Patch For 2.5
6. 3 Jul - 9 Jul (10 posts) Framebuffer Updates; RadeonFB Long-Term
Bugs
7. 4 Jul - 8 Jul (10 posts) FAT Filesystem Maintainership
8. 5 Jul (4 posts) BitKeeper Snapshots For The 2.4 Tree
9. 5 Jul - 7 Jul (6 posts) Status Of Anticipatory I/O Scheduler
10. 7 Jul (3 posts) New libsysfs Library To Access SysFS Data
Introduction
Today is my birthday. It's also the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon-landing
in 1969, and the Viking 1 Mars-landing in 1976. Some would say this is fitting.
Mailing List Stats For This Week
We looked at 1421 posts in 7214K.
There were 424 different contributors. 211 posted more than once. 167 posted
last week too.
The top posters of the week were:
* 51 posts in 219K by Alan Cox
* 36 posts in 110K by Jeff Garzik
* 35 posts in 213K by Andrea Arcangeli
* 35 posts in 128K by Greg KH
* 33 posts in 133K by Andrew Morton
* Full Stats
1. Linux 2.5.73 Released
22 Jun - 4 Jul (26 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.5.73"
Topics: FS: ext3
People: Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds announced 2.5.73 (http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.5/
ChangeLog-2.5.73) , and said, "Various updates all over the map here. Lots of
ia64 updates, and Andrew merged the ext3 locking cleanups/fixes that have been
in the -mm tree for a while."
2. Virtual Memory Documentation For 2.6
30 Jun - 4 Jul (79 posts) Archive Link: "What to expect with the 2.6 VM"
Topics: Virtual Memory
People: Mel Gorman, Daniel Phillips
Mel Gorman posted a small document (http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux
/kernel/0306.3/1647.html) and explained, "I'm writing a small paper on the 2.6
VM for a conference. It is based on 2.5.73 and is basically an introduction to
some of the new features that are up and coming. As it's only an introduction,
it's a little light on heavy detail. Below is the parts of the paper which I
thought would be of general interest (I left out stuff like the abstract,
introduction, conclusion and bibliography)." Daniel Phillips replied, "Nice
stuff, and very timely." And Mel said, "I was hoping someone else would write
it so I could read it but thats what I said about the 2.4 VM :-) . Yep, once
again, my contributions are mainly documenting related, believe it or not, I
actually do code a bit from time to time." He went on, "I was going to update
the whole document based on this thread and repost it but it's looking like
it'll take me a few days for a week before I work through it all (so I'm slow,
sue me). This is especially true as there is a lot of old email threads I need
to read before I understand 100% of the current discussion (which is also why
I'm not replying to most posts in this thread). Instead, I'm going to post up
the bits that are changed and hopefully get everything together." Elsewhere, a
lot of folks discussed the technical issues Mel had referred to; and Mel worked
on collecting it all together.
3. Encryption Over Loopback; API Changes In 2.5
2 Jul - 8 Jul (38 posts) Archive Link: "[PATCH] cryptoloop"
People: Andries Brouwer, Christoph Hellwig, Andrew Morton
Andries Brouwer posted a patch which "adds a module cryptoloop, with source
file drivers/block/cryptoloop.c and config option BLK_DEV_CRYPTOLOOP. It is the
missing link between the kernel crypto subdirectory and the loop device." He
went on, "This means that one no longer needs kernel patches to use encryption
via the loop device. This goes together with mount and losetup from util-linux
2.12 which will be released as soon as this goes in."
Andrew Morton pointed out some complication in the code, that he felt was
unnecessary. He suggested a solution, but Andries replied that Andrew's
suggestion would change the APIs, and require source modifications of all
modules currently using the loop device. He said he'd be willing to do it if no
one objected, and Christoph Hellwig said, "I don't think that matters. This is
2.5 and APIs tend to change in unstable series :)"
Jari Ruusu protested that this would be a big inconvenience for him personally,
as he would have to clean up the loop-AES code to compensate for the API
change. The discussion began to revolve around Jari's patch submission
practices. Christoph and Andrew said he should send small, self-contained
patches that might get into the official tree, instead of the big one he'd sent
earlier. Christoph in particular said that if Jari didn't want to take the
necessary steps to get his code into the tree where it could be better
protected from these kinds of API changes, then he would have to deal with them
himself.
The thread petered out around there, with the API change looking more likely
than the status quo.
4. Linux 2.5.74 Released
2 Jul - 3 Jul (13 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.5.74"
Topics: USB
People: Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds announced Linux 2.5.74 (http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/
v2.5/ChangeLog-2.5.74) and said:
Updates all over, the patch itself is big largely because of a MIPS/MIPS64
merge (and SH, for that matter).
Network driver updates, USB updates, PnP, SCTP, s390, you name it. See the
changelog for more details.
5. SELinux Module Patch For 2.5
3 Jul - 8 Jul (13 posts) Archive Link: "[PATCH] Add SELinux module to
2.5.74-bk1"
People: Stephen Smalley
Stephen Smalley announced, "The patch against 2.5.74-bk1 available from http://
www.nsa.gov/selinux/lk/2.5.74-bk1-selinux.patch.gz adds the SELinux module to
the tree and modifies the security/Makefile and security/KConfig files for
SELinux. The last dependency for SELinux, the vm_enough_memory security hook,
was included in -bk1." Comments were generally favorable, though several folks
had suggestions for implementation details.
6. Framebuffer Updates; RadeonFB Long-Term Bugs
3 Jul - 9 Jul (10 posts) Archive Link: "New fbdev updates."
Topics: Framebuffer, Sound: i810
People: James Simmons
James Simmons said:
I have updates to the framebuffer layer. Alot of bug fixes accumlated. A
couple of driver updates as well. I have more code to go in but haven't had
time to add them in. Please test. This is not the final code going in just
yet. More needs to be done. The patches are at the usual
http://phoenix.infradead.org/~jsimmons/fbdev.diff.gz
or BK
bk://fbdev.bkbits.net/fbdev-2.5
Note:
The NVIDIA driver hasn't been updated to the new cursor fixes. I haven't
had time to fix it yet. So it doesn't compile. Also the i810 driver might
have issues with the cursor changes.
Skeleton i2c support is added. It hasn't been tested or even compiles in
yet.
Joshua Kwan asked if James worked on RadeonFB issues in 2.5, since that driver
had been flaking out for a long time. But James replied, "Nope. I don't have
this hardware. Once I get my hands on that kind of hardware I will give it a
shot." Elsewhere, Scott Robert Ladd also asked about the RadeonFB, and James
said he'd accept patches if anyone else wanted to send them to him. Scott said
he'd take a look and see if he could tackle it.
7. FAT Filesystem Maintainership
4 Jul - 8 Jul (10 posts) Archive Link: "FAT statfs loop abort on read-error"
Topics: FS: FAT
People: Randy Dunlap, OGAWA Hirofumi, Jeff Garzik, Christoph Hellwig
Sancho Dauskardt had a question about the FAT filesystem, but could not get any
reply from the maintainer, Gordon Chaffee. He posted to the list, remarking on
Gordon's disappearance, and Randy Dunlap replied, "Try asking OGAWA Hirofumi
(cc-ed). He's the de facto FAT maintainter. (I asked him to add a patch to
MAINTAINTERS...)" OGAWA Hirofumi replied thanking Randy for the vote of
confidence, but adding, "honestly, I may not have skill enough." Jeff Garzik
said with a smile, "The people who apply your patches think you do." Christoph
Hellwig also said, "Given that you have done a nice job ob fatfs in 2.5 and
there's no one coming near that many useful contributions in that timeframe I
think it would be a good idea to declare you maintainer. According to
MAINTAINERS it currently doesn't have any formal maintainer anyway." Ogawa said
OK, he'd give it a try; and posted a patch listing himself as maintainer.
8. BitKeeper Snapshots For The 2.4 Tree
5 Jul (4 posts) Archive Link: "[ANN] 2.4.x snapshots started"
Topics: Version Control
People: Jeff Garzik, Willy Tarreau
Jeff Garzik announced:
Just like 2.5.x, nightly snapshots of Marcelo's latest 2.4.x BK repository
are being posted on kernel.org:
ftp://ftp.??.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/snapshots/ (ftp://
ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/snapshots/)
I created the first snapshot midday as a test, and the standard cron job
created a second one, so the current release is 2.4.21-bk2.
Note that snapshots are NOT based off -pre and -rc releases. 2.4.21-bkN
will continue, for ascending values of N, until 2.4.22 is released.
Just like 2.5.x, when a new version is released, the old snapshots are
moved into ftp://ftp.??.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/snapshots/old/ (
ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/snapshots/old/)
Just like 2.5.x, when a new snapshot appears, another automated job
generates the incremental diff between this and the last snapshot: ftp://
ftp.??.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/snapshots/incr/ (ftp://
ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/snapshots/incr/)
Willy Tarreau was very happy to hear about this, and pointed out a bug, which
Jeff fixed.
9. Status Of Anticipatory I/O Scheduler
5 Jul - 7 Jul (6 posts) Archive Link: "anticipatory scheduler merged"
People: Andrew Morton
Andrew Morton announced:
Linus has merged the anticipator scheduler. A few things to note on this:
+ For some workloads it is around 10% slower than deadline. Most notably
database workloads which seek all over the disk performing reads and
synchronous writes.
Sorry, we just weren't able to get the last little bit back.
But for other workloads (reading lots of filesystem objects when
there's a lot of writeout around, when there's a streaming read, etc)
it is up to 1000% faster. I believe it is a better all-round IO
scheduler.
Unless Nick pulls a big rabbit out of his hat, database people will
need to boot their kernels with `elevator=deadline' to get the last bit
of performance back.
+ These changes have been well tested, but it is five months work and
over 100 patches. There's probably a bug or two. If you suspect that
something has gone wrong at the block layer (lots of tasks stuck in D
state) then please retest with `elevator=deadline'.
10. New libsysfs Library To Access SysFS Data
7 Jul (3 posts) Archive Link: "[ANNOUNCE] libsysfs v0.1.0"
Topics: FS: devfs, FS: sysfs
People: Daniel Stekloff, Greg KH
Daniel Stekloff said:
I'd like to announce libsysfs - a small library built over sysfs, the
virtual filesystem that exports system devices in the Linux 2.5+ kernels.
You can find the initial version of the library in a small package called
sysutils at:
kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/sysutils-0.1.0.tar.gz (http://
ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/sysutils-0.1.0.tar.gz)
The library grew from the requirements of several applications all needing
access to system device information in sysfs. We felt it was better to
provide a library of common code rather than having each application create
their own access. Greg KH's udev application, a User Space replacement for
devfs, is one of the applications needing sysfs access. You can see Greg's
original announcement here:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=105003185331553&w=2
The library doesn't implement any device or bus specifics but simply
provides generic bus, class, and device access as represented in sysfs.
Included with the library in the sysutils package are two small commands
that hopefully make viewing sysfs and system device information easier.
systool is a command that can list devices by bus, by class, or by device
root - as represented through sysfs.
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