Kernel Traffic #238 by Zack Brown
[email protected] Tue, 28 Oct 2003 23:27:28 -0800
| Newsgroups | gmane.linux.kernel.kernel-traffic |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <E1AEkjo-0001i7-00@renegade> |
Kernel Traffic #238 For 27 Oct
By Zack Brown
Table Of Contents
* Standard Format
* Text Format
* XML Source
* Mailing List Stats For This Week
* Threads Covered
1. 8 Oct - 20 Oct (33 Linux 2.6.9-test7 Released; Stability Freeze
posts)
2. 10 Oct - 17 Oct (14 Some Altix Cleanup Code Rejected Because Of
posts) The Freeze
3. 11 Oct - 19 Oct (4 Makefile .deb Target
posts)
4. 15 Oct - 17 Oct (8 Status Of LVM With Journaled Filesystems In
posts) 2.4
5. 16 Oct - 21 Oct (17 udev 003 And 004 Released
posts)
6. 17 Oct - 18 Oct (4 Linux 2.6.0-test8 Released
posts)
7. 17 Oct - 20 Oct (18 bzip2 Compression For The Kernel Binary
posts)
8. 18 Oct - 20 Oct (23 Status Of HighPoint 374
posts)
9. 20 Oct - 21 Oct (2 Fix For The BK->SVN Gateway
posts)
10. 21 Oct (8 Status Of Software Suspend Fork
posts)
11. 21 Oct (3 exec-shield Patch Updated For 2.4 And 2.6
posts)
12. 21 Oct (4 New Kernel Book By Robert Love
posts)
Mailing List Stats For This Week
We looked at 1254 posts in 5943K.
There were 437 different contributors. 206 posted more than once. 171 posted
last week too.
The top posters of the week were:
* 37 posts in 116K by Andrew Morton
* 23 posts in 111K by John Bradford
* 22 posts in 73K by William Lee Irwin III
* 21 posts in 67K by Pavel Machek
* 19 posts in 79K by "Svetoslav Slavtchev"
* Full Stats
1. Linux 2.6.9-test7 Released; Stability Freeze
8 Oct - 20 Oct (33 posts) Subject: "Linux 2.6.0-test7 - stability freeze"
Topics: FS: NFS, Power Management: ACPI
People: 2.6.0-test7, Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds announced 2.6.0-test7, saying:
The -test7 kernel is out there now - I'm not reaching bkbits.net, but it's
on the other BK sites, and the tar-ball and patches are uploading to
kernel.org right now.
The biggest part of the test7 patches are:
+ s390 update
+ DVB update
+ NFS (v4 in particular) update
+ cpufreq updates
+ ACPI update
A lot of the rest are basically a lot of small onelines, along with fairly
minor updates (networking fixes for shared skb's for remaining cases,
janitorials, cleanups etc).
The more interesting thing is that I and Andrew are trying to calm down
development, and I do _not_ want to see patches that don't fix a real and
clear bug. In other words, the "cleanup and janitorial" stuff is on hold,
and -test8 and then -test9 should be for _stability_ fixes only.
In other words, this should calm things down so that by the end of October
we can look at the state of 2.6.0 without having a lot of noise from "not
strictly necessary" stuff.
2. Some Altix Cleanup Code Rejected Because Of The Freeze
10 Oct - 17 Oct (14 posts) Subject: "[PATCH] Altix I/O code cleanup"
Topics: Bug Tracking
People: David Mosberger, Christoph Hellwig, Andrew Morton
Patrick Gefre posted some Altix I/O cleanups, but David Mosberger refused to
apply the patches, saying, "Unfortunately, the 2.6 tree is closed for cleanups.
I would _like_ to see the patch applied, though. Perhaps you could talk to
Andrew and see if you can get an exception?" Christoph Hellwig said, "Sounds
strange to apply this rule for a particular architecture that just managed to
compile again on 2.6 and has a huge backlog of cleanups and restructuring
now..." Andrew Morton replied:
Well there are two reasons for discouraging cleanups. The first is of
course that they can destabilise things. But the other is that we want as
many developers as possible (Hi, Jesse) concentrating on stabilisation.
I hereby introduce the "bugzilla tax". The cost of each cleanup is two
fixes for open bugzilla entries.
But if David really wants this change, and ongoing stabilisation work will
be based on top of it then yes, it probably should go in after good
testing.
3. Makefile .deb Target
11 Oct - 19 Oct (4 posts) Subject: "[RFC][PATCH] deb target"
Topics: Kernel Build System
People: Wichert Akkerman, Sam Ravnborg, Michael Elizabeth Chastain
Wichert Akkerman said:
I sent this to the listed contact for kbuild first, but Michael Elizabeth
Chastain tells me he is no longer active in kernel development and the
kbuild-devel list seems both inactive and defunct (my post never made it to
any of the list archives), so I'm reposting this here.
For a while now I've been missing a deb target in kbuild, especially since
there is a simple rpm target. While Debian does have a tool to create
kernel packages (make-kpkg from the kernel-package package) I felt there
was a need for a simpler method build into kbuild.
The patch is imperfect and could use some changes from someone who is more
familiar with kbuild, but It Works For Me(tm). I would appreciate any
feedback people have on it.
Sam Ravnborg said the patch could not be applied because of Linus' and Andrew's
freeze, but that he (Sam) would save the patch for when it could be applied.
Later, Wichert posted a new version of the patch, saying:
Here is a new versino of my make deb patch. There are a few changes since
the previous version:
+ no longer use make install, since that will call installkernel which
should not happen on package creation. Instead manually install the
kernel image, config and system.map using a trick taken from scripts/
mkspec to guess the filename of the kernel image.
+ no longer use Linus' name and email address but generate a name and
email address based on the currently logged in user. This to prevent
possible unwanted email to Linus.
+ use /etc/kernel/ for install/removal handling scripts. This will also
be supported by the next version of Debian's kernel-package.
+ obligatory typo fixes.
He also posted another revision:
A third version of this patch. A few important changes:
+ make boot does not exist, use make all (oops)
+ do not try to install modules if they are not enabled
+ update the comments in the scripts/builddeb script to reflect the new
naming for pre- and postinstall scripts.
+ do not abort when running make debclean when there is nothing to clean
4. Status Of LVM With Journaled Filesystems In 2.4
15 Oct - 17 Oct (8 posts) Subject: "LVM Snapshots"
Topics: Disk Arrays: LVM, FS: JFS, FS: ReiserFS, FS: XFS, FS: ext3, Virtual
Memory
People: Marcelo Tosatti, Philippe Troin, Marc-Christian Petersen
Christoph Pleger discovered that he was unable to use LVM with the XFS
filesystem under kernel 2.4.22; in fact, ext3 and ReiserFS wouldn't work with
LVM either. Only JFS filesystem snapshots could be mounted with LVM. After
doing some research, he learned that an additional kernel patch was needed to
get LVM working with these other filesystems; but he couldn't locate that
patch. He asked if anyone had any pointers. Marc-Christian Petersen posted it
to the list, but added that Marcelo Tosatti had decided not to include it in
the 2.4 kernel sources. Philippe Troin searched the archives for that
discussion, but with no luck, and asked why Marcelo had made that decision.
Marc-Christian said it took place in private email; and posted the relevant
bit. In that email, from September 2003, Marcelo had said he wanted to add some
VM patches first, and that "LVM has already been updated on 2.4.23-pre. Lets do
more changes later on." Philippe thanked Marc-Christian, and summarized,
"Nothing technical then, Marcelo is just being slow for stability's sake and
easier testing. I guess that will go in somewhere in a later 23-pre or in 24."
Meanwhile, Marcelo also replied to the list, explaining that the LVM patch had
not been accepted "Because the patch touches generic fs code. Dont use LVM with
XFS for now." Christoph Pleger said he'd used LVM and XFS together without a
problem, and asked why Marcelo had issued that caution. Marcelo replied:
Because the filesystem code lacks locking somewhere (thats what the patches
adds).
It seems its not safe to create snapshots of journalled fs'es without this
patch.
5. udev 003 And 004 Released
16 Oct - 21 Oct (17 posts) Subject: "[ANNOUNCE] udev 003 release"
Topics: FS: devfs, FS: sysfs, Hot-Plugging, Version Control
People: Greg KH, Martin Schlemmer, Jesse Barnes, Robert Love
Greg KH announced:
I've released the 003 version of udev. It can be found at:
kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-003.tar.gz (http://
kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-003.tar.gz)
udev is a implementation of devfs in userspace using sysfs and /sbin/
hotplug. It requires a 2.6 kernel to run properly.
There have been a number of major changes since the last release:
+ works properly with the current 2.6 kernel (older versions of udev will
not work with the current 2.6 kernel.)
+ persistent database support has been added, but not fully integrated
(tdb is database code, very nice stuff.)
+ lots of documentation has been added.
+ spec file has been added for building rpms.
+ install and uninstall support added to Makefile to make it easier to
install and test with.
+ hard coded config file paths have been fixed.
+ callout support has been added (allows other programs to be run to
determine what to name a device.)
+ cross compile bugs fixed.
+ TODO list expanded for those who wish to help out.
+ lots of other stuff fixed.
The full ChangeLog is below.
The new udev FAQ is included in this release, and can also be found at:
kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/hotplug/udev-FAQ (http://
kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/hotplug/udev-FAQ)
Development of udev is done in a BitKeeper tree available at:
bk://kernel.bkbits.net/gregkh/udev/
If anyone ever wants a snapshot of the current tree, due to not using
BitKeeper, or other reasons, is always available at any time by asking.
Martin Schlemmer was happy to see this, but asked, "Is it possible to maintain
naming of tarball/version ? Meaning, say we forget about the 003 version, could
the next be 0.4, or even 0.3.1 or whatever ? Just changing makes trying to keep
packages sane a hassle. Thanks :)" Greg replied, "The naming will be consistant
from now on. Next release will be 004, followed by 005, and so on. Remember,
version numbers mean nothing :). As there is no installed base before 003, I
don't think this will really be a problem, do you?" Martin said, "Well, if you
had an 0.2 already, 003 sorda comes and screw the pooch (if trying to work with
a package manager - although it seems we are OK with ours seeing 003 as the
later) :)" . And Greg replied, "Exactly, switching this early is fine by all of
the package managers I've looked at."
Elsewhere, under the Subject: "[ANNOUNCE] udev 004 release", Greg announced:
I've released the 004 version of udev. It can be found at:
kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-004.tar.gz (http://
kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-004.tar.gz)
Thanks to Robert Love, there are now rpms available at:
kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-004-1.i386.rpm (http://
kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-004-1.i386.rpm)
with the source rpm at:
kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-004-1.src.rpm (http://
kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-004-1.src.rpm)
udev is a implementation of devfs in userspace using sysfs and /sbin/
hotplug. It requires a 2.6 kernel to run properly.
The major changes since the 003 release are:
+ MAJOR speedups over the previous version. No more "sleep(1)" always, we
now wait for the "dev" file to show up, and not blindly guess.
+ partitions now work again.
+ removal of devices that were named differently from the kernel name
work properly.
+ proper spec file.
+ a man page with real content.
+ sync up with current version of libsysfs.
Many thanks to Dan Stekloff, Kay Sievers, and Robert Love for their help
with patches for this release. I really appreciate it.
The full ChangeLog can be found below.
The udev FAQ can be found at:
kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-FAQ (http://kernel.org/pub/
linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-FAQ)
Development of udev is done in a BitKeeper tree available at:
bk://kernel.bkbits.net/gregkh/udev/
If anyone ever wants a snapshot of the current tree, due to not using
BitKeeper, or other reasons, is always available at any time by asking.
Jesse Barnes reported, "Thanks for the new release, Greg. I just tried it out
on a system with some disks, but a bunch of udev processes ended up hanging."
He posted a patch, which Greg accepted.
6. Linux 2.6.0-test8 Released
17 Oct - 18 Oct (4 posts) Subject: "Linux 2.6.0-test8"
Topics: FS: NFS
People: Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds announced 2.6.0-test8, saying:
More changes than I would have liked, but most of them are fairly small.
The most noticeable changes:
+ fix the /proc/PID/stat oops that multiple people reported
+ workaround for Athlon prefetch bug (occasional spurious page faults)
+ fix serverworks PIO autotuning
+ fix some cpufrequency calculations
+ make NFS O_DIRECT work
The rest are some architecture and driver updates, mostly stuff that people
had queued up and convinced me I wanted to merge before freezing down
totally.
I've flamed a number of people who flaunted the freeze (I cursed a lot more
than I usually do ;), and they won't have any excuse to do so for test9. So
expect the patches to shrink considerably in the coming weeks.
7. bzip2 Compression For The Kernel Binary
17 Oct - 20 Oct (18 posts) Subject: "Where's the bzip2 compressed
linux-kernel patch?"
Topics: Version Control
People: Rob Landley, Nick Piggin, Daniel Egger, Erik Andersen
Rob Landley said:
I just rewrote bunzip2 for busybox in about 500 lines of C (and a good
chunk of that's comments), which comiles to a bit under 7k, and I was
thinking of redoing the bunzip-the-kernel patch with my new bunzip code,
but I can't find the patch. Anybody got a URL to it?
The most recent one I could find was kerneltrap's 404-error link to http://
chrissicool.piranho.com/patch-2.4.x-bzip2-i386
If you're curious about the micro-bunzip code, it's in busybox CVS: http://
www.busybox.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb/busybox/archival/libunarchive/
decompress_bunzip2.c
Erik Andersen gave an updated link to the kerneltrap page (http://
shepard.kicks-ass.net/~cc/) . Elsewhere, Nick Piggin said that this topic had
been discussed, and "the conclusion was that runtime memory usage and speed,
and not so significant compression improvement over gzip." Daniel Egger pointed
out:
A quick test with a PowerPC kernel and the normal vmlinux image reveals
that this is nonsense.
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2766490 2003-09-27 22:29 vmlinux
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1149410 2003-09-27 22:29 vmlinux.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1062999 2003-09-27 22:29 vmlinux.bz2
This is a 86411 bytes or 8.1% reduction, seems significant to me...
Granted, it takes 9 times as long to decompress the kernel and ca. 900kb
more memory but considering an embedded DSL router I'm working with which
has 16MB RAM but only 4MB Flash this is certainly worth it. At least when
the target is an embedded device.
Nick said he hadn't meant that the improvement was completely unmeasurable, and
agreed that there might be a use for such a feature in certain cases. Michael
Buesch suggested making it a configuration option; and Rob replied, "That's
what the patch against 2.4 did. I'm banging on a 2.6 version, but Manuel's
continuing to optimize bunzip over in busybox cvs (I'm good at cleaning up and
simplifying, but he's way better at optimizing), and I'm waiting ot see the
results (and starting a micro-version of the compression side code in the
meantime, which is irrelevant here...)"
8. Status Of HighPoint 374
18 Oct - 20 Oct (23 posts) Subject: "HighPoint 374"
Topics: Disks: IDE
People: Mans Rullgard, Tomi Orava, Joel Smith
Carlos Fernandez Sanz asked about the status of HPT 374 support. He knew that
HP provided binaries, but he needed something that would work for other kernel
builds. Mans Rullgard replied, "Works fine with 2.4.21 and 2.6.0-testX, at
least. I guess 2.4.22 should work too, but I haven't tried it." Tomi Orava,
however, reported, "in my experience the included kernel driver doesn't work
reliable at all with my hardware either. I have tried all possible kernel
versions up to and including 2.4.23-pre5 without success." He did confirm that
the binary-only drivers seemed to work fine.
Elsewhere, Joel Smith confirmed that "In 2.4.21 and 2.4.22 it's working great
for me. I'm using the "experimental" IDE Raid with two disks on a HPT 374
controller with the drivers that come with the kernel." Later he added that he
built his kernel with all modules compiled directly into the binary. Tomi and
others went back and forth trying to figure out why the feature worked fine for
some folks, and not at all for others.
9. Fix For The BK->SVN Gateway
20 Oct - 21 Oct (2 posts) Subject: "bkcvs2svn rebuilt"
Topics: Version Control
People: Ben Collins
Ben Collins reported, "After a few people pointed out an inconsistency in the
bksvn gateway, I rebuilt the 2.4 and 2.5/2.6 repo's. Anyone with those trees
checked out will need to kill them and do a fresh checkout. If you have changes
local in your repo, you can still do a diff to bring them over to the new
checkout, since diff uses local copies, and doesn't contact the remote repo."
Ramon Rey Vicente was very happy to hear of the fix, and thanked Ben.
10. Status Of Software Suspend Fork
21 Oct (8 posts) Subject: "[2.6.0-test8] Difference between Software Suspend
and Suspend-to-disk?"
Topics: Software Suspend
People: Tomas Szepe, Mans Rullgard, Stefan Smietanowski, Felipe Alfaro Solana
Jan De Luyck noticed two kernel options, "Software Suspend", and
"Suspend-to-Disk". He asked what the difference was between them, and Tomas
Szepe said bluntly, "They're competing implementations of the same mechanism."
Mans Rullgard replied, "And neither one works reliably, I might add. They both
appear to save the current state to disk, but no matter what I try, I can't
make it resume properly." Felipe Alfaro Solana confirmed that he couldn't
resume the system once it was suspended, and Stefan Smietanowski joked, "That's
why it's called Software Suspend and Suspend-to-Disk. The matching components
Software Resume and Resume-from-Disk don't work yet :)"
11. exec-shield Patch Updated For 2.4 And 2.6
21 Oct (3 posts) Subject: "[patch] updated exec-shield patch, 2.4/2.6 -G4"
Topics: Executable File Format, Virtual Memory
People: Ingo Molnar, Arjan van de Ven, Jakub Jelinek, Valdis Kletnieks
Ingo Molnar announced:
Here's the latest, -G4 update of the exec-shield patches, against various
kernels:
redhat.com/~mingo/exec-shield/exec-shield-2.6.0-test8-G4
redhat.com/~mingo/exec-shield/exec-shield-2.6.0-test8-mm1-G4
redhat.com/~mingo/exec-shield/exec-shield-2.4.22-G4
redhat.com/~mingo/exec-shield/exec-shield-2.4.22-ac1-nptl-G4
Changes in -G4:
+ bugfix in the 2.6 patches, certain applications segfaulted when the
stack limit was set to unlimited. (Roland McGrath)
+ PIE bugfix: for certain ELF layouts the kernel loader ended up
overmapping ld.so resulting in broken applications. (Jakub Jelinek, me)
+ port to 2.6.0-test8-mm1. (Valdis Kletnieks, me)
Gianni Tedesco was very happy to see this, and Arjan van de Ven also added,
"2.6 rpms for RHL with this patch are available at http://people.redhat.com
/arjanv/2.5"
12. New Kernel Book By Robert Love
21 Oct (4 posts) Subject: "new Linux Kernel Development book"
People: Michael Buesch, Robert Love
Someone noticed that in September, a new kernel book called "Linux Kernel
Development" had come out, written by Robert Love. He or she asked if anyone on
the list had read it, and what they thought of it. Michael Buesch asked Robert,
"Is there some "snapshot" or preview of the content somewhere on the internet?
Google didn't spit out something for my request." Robert said the thread was a
little off-topic, but that "you can get a TOC and some other information from
http://tech9.net/rml/kernel_book/" . And Remi Colinet gave a link to http://
www.linuxshelf.com/servlet/books?category=kernel.
For those interested, I (Zack) also played a small role in the creation of
Robert's book, as technical editor, and I had a great time doing it. It's a lot
of fun to see the development of ideas in a work like that. I also think the
final result is really useful and interesting. Robert really knows his stuff,
and it shows. As a participant, I know I'm not supposed to recommend it, but I
do. It's a very good book.
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