Kernel Traffic #240 by Zack Brown

[email protected] Mon, 10 Nov 2003 06:20:34 -0800
Newsgroups gmane.linux.kernel.kernel-traffic
Message-ID <E1AJCuA-0003NP-00@renegade>
                        Kernel Traffic #240 For 10 Nov                         
                                                                               
                                 By Zack Brown                                 
                                                                               
Table Of Contents

  * Standard Format
  * Text Format
  * XML Source
  * Mailing List Stats For This Week
  * Threads Covered
   
    1.  20 Oct  - 29 Oct  (7      Status Of kgdb For 2.6                       
                          posts)                                               
    2.  22 Oct  - 30 Oct  (27     Linux 2.4.23-pre8 Released                   
                          posts)                                               
    3.  23 Oct  - 29 Oct  (12     Status Of Software Suspend                   
                          posts)                                               
    4.  25 Oct  - 30 Oct  (53     Linux 2.6.0-test9; Rapidly Approaching 2.6.0 
                          posts)  And Handoff To Andrew                        
    5.  26 Oct  - 30 Oct  (5      Linux 2.6 Features List Updated By Joe       
                          posts)  Pranevich                                    
    6.  27 Oct  - 31 Oct  (15     Status Of ipchains In 2.6                    
                          posts)                                               
    7.  28 Oct  - 29 Oct  (4      IRQ Routing With Sis ISA Bridges             
                          posts)                                               
    8.  30 Oct  - 1 Nov   (4      Linux 2.6.0-test9-mm1 Released               
                          posts)                                               
    9.  30 Oct  - 3 Nov   (6      Linux 2.4.23-pre9 Released                   
                          posts)                                               
    10. 30 Oct            (1      Modutils 2.4.26 Released                     
                          post)                                                
    11. 30 Oct            (1      JFS 1.1.4 Released                           
                          post)                                                
    12. 31 Oct            (1      Making Filsystem Operations const            
                          post)                                                
    13. 4 Nov             (1      GCC 3.3.2/3.4 ColdFire Toolchain For uClinux 
                          post)                                                
    14. 4 Nov  - 5 Nov    (6      Linux 2.6.0-test9-mm2 Released               
                          posts)                                               
    15. 5 Nov  - 6 Nov    (24     Attempt To Insert Root Exploit Into Kernel   
                          posts)  Sources                                      
    16. 6 Nov             (1      libsysfs 0.3.0 Released                      
                          post)                                                
    17. 6 Nov             (1      Linux Test Project November Release          
                          post)                                                
   
Mailing List Stats For This Week

We looked at 1500 posts in 7550K.

There were 558 different contributors. 263 posted more than once. 168 posted
last week too.

The top posters of the week were:

  * 33 posts in 106K by Linus Torvalds
  * 27 posts in 137K by Andrew Morton
  * 27 posts in 73K by "David S. Miller"
  * 24 posts in 119K by Hans Reiser
  * 22 posts in 79K by Nick Piggin
  * Full Stats

 

1. Status Of kgdb For 2.6
20 Oct  - 29 Oct  (7 posts) Subject: "Is there a kgdb for Opteron for
linux-2.6?"
Topics: Assembly
People: Andi Kleen, George Anzinger, Jim Houston

Jim Houston wondered if the kgdb kernel debugger was available for the 2.6-test
kernels, and Andi Kleen replied:

    There is no 2.6 version of kgdb currently. The 2.4 version also has some
    problems that makes it better to not use it at all.
   
    My plan was to do a fresh port from the code in -mm* and get rid of many of
    the ugly hacks in 2.4. Doing this properly requires adding dwarf2
    annotation to entry.S and other assembly files. This would allow to get rid
    of the "interrupt threads" hack in 2.4 because gdb could directly backtrace
    through exception/interrupts.
   
George Anzinger remarked, "I see that Andrew has not picked up my latest kgdb.
In the latest version I have the dwarf2 stuff working in entry.S." He and Andi
went back and forth on the technical details for awhile, and the thread petered
out.

 

2. Linux 2.4.23-pre8 Released
22 Oct  - 30 Oct  (27 posts) Subject: "Linux 2.4.23-pre8"
Topics: Disks: IDE, FS: NFS, Power Management: ACPI, Virtual Memory
People: Marcelo Tosatti, Alexander Viro, Matt Zimmerman

Marcelo Tosatti announced:

    Here goes -pre8... It contains a quite big amount of ACPI fixes, networking
    changes, network driver changes, few IDE fixes, SPARC merge, SH merge,
    tmpfs fixes, NFS fixes, important VM typo fix, amongst others.
   
    People seeing boot IDE related crashes on Alpha with previous kernels
    please try this.
   
Alexander Viro suggested, "BTW, another thing that might be worth rechecking is
the pile of bugs related to ownership of ksymoops files. In particular,
bugs.debian.org/171947 might have been caused by the bug fixed in 2.4.23-pre8
(UID/GID leaking into modprobe). Matt, do you still see that crap appearing in
/var/log/ksymoops with that kernel?" And Matt Zimmerman replied, 
"Unfortunately, I don't have a means to test right now. A few other folks were
seeing that bug as well, though, so I'm copying them and the Debian bug so that
someone else can verify."

 

3. Status Of Software Suspend
23 Oct  - 29 Oct  (12 posts) Subject: "2.6.0-test8 - APM suspend not working"
Topics: Power Management: ACPI, Software Suspend
People: David Brownell, Ruben Puettmann, Ian Soboroff

Ian Soboroff reported that software suspend worked in 2.6.0-test7, but was
broken in 2.6.0-test8 on his Fujitsu P-2120 laptop. Oliver Bohlen confirmed the
same problem on his Gericom laptop, although he did notice that software
suspend would work if The X windowing system was not running. Ruben Puettmann
confirmed the same behavior on his Thinkpad R40.

Elsewhere, Ian reported again the same problem under test9. He was also able to
confirm that the problem went away when X was not running. David Brownell said:

    Those are the same symptoms I saw in test7, fixed by:
   
    http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=106606272103414&w=2
   
    Patrick, were you going to submit your patch to resolve this? I'm thinking
    this kind of problem would meet Linus's test10 integration criteria.
   
    (That's not an APM problem, it's a generic PM problem that'd show up with
    swsusp too. And likely even some ACPI systems.)
   
Ian at first thought the patch worked, but when letting his laptop sleep for
several hours, he found it had locked up solid. He reiterated that the last
kernel to really support software suspend for him was 2.6.0-test7.

 

4. Linux 2.6.0-test9; Rapidly Approaching 2.6.0 And Handoff To Andrew
25 Oct  - 30 Oct  (53 posts) Subject: "Linux 2.6.0-test9"
Topics: FS: XFS, Serial ATA
People: Linus Torvalds, Marcelo Tosatti, Andrew Morton

Linus Torvalds announced:

    Ok, 2.6.0-test9 is out there in all the normal places..
   
    First off, I have to say that this week has been a lot better than last
    week. I've been cursing at some developers a _lot_ less: while a lot of
    people wanted to sync up with me after the -test7 "stability freeze"
    announcements with stuff that wasn't really about stability, that dropped
    off a lot this week, and I didn't have to be rude to people very much at
    all.
   
    There's some XFS and cifs updates here, but even they were pretty benign
    and largely just bugfixes. Oh, and the SATA driver got included, which you
    either disable or which allows people to use modern hardware.
   
    Anyway, while I've been happy with the progress from -test7, I want to see
    this total stability freeze work even better. The test9 patch is about
    120kB compressed - which is small for a week of work, but is still more
    than I want to see before a stable release.
   
    So guys, let's work on this even more for test10. I'm going to _totally_
    ignore patches that aren't for major bugs. Don't send me anything that
    _others_ wouldn't consider horribly critical.
   
    In other words, even if you think that something is the most important
    piece of software in the world, if you can't make aunt Tilly up the street
    say "oh, but that would be a show-stopper", then don't bother sending it to
    me.
   
    If it corrupts data, is a security issue, or causes lockups or just basic
    nonworkingness: and this happens on hardware that _normal_ people are
    expected to have, then it's critical. Otherwise, it's noise and should
    wait.
   
    If this works out, then I'll submit -test10 to Andrew Morton, and if he
    takes it we'll probably have a real 2.6.0 after a final shakedown. So try
    to help, please. We'll all be happier.
   
Marcelo Tosatti asked, "So you mean Andrew will take care of the tree as soon
as -test10 is out ? When you plan to start the next development version ?" But
there was no reply.

Elsewhere, Linus remarked:

    There are things that I bet Andrew will be willing to apply to -STABLE:
    things like architecture updates etc that clearly fix stuff. But right now
    I want to avoid even that kind of noise: if it doesn't clearly help
    _testing_ of stability, I'm just not interested at this point.
   
    So for example, in the last week I just dropped some S390 updates without
    even looking at them. It was too late - and even if they fix bugs, I don't
    see that applying those patches simply would matter for 2.6.0 any more.
   
    So for example: I am pretty happy with how the size of the -test8 and
    -test9 patches have been shrinking, but even -test9 was big enough that I
    couldn't say that we're clearly "asymptotically approaching a stable
    kernel". At some point "noise patches" are bad if only because they make it
    less clear what the general status of the tree is.
   
    In particular, if the 2.6.0-test10 patch is just 30kB compressed, and I can
    just page through it with "less" and see that every single small part of
    the patch was pretty clear and not something really scary, I'll be a _lot_
    happier about passing the thing off to Andrew. In contrast, if the patch is
    full of stuff that isn't really obvious, I'm going to be less happy, and
    worry more about what the side effects are.
   
 

5. Linux 2.6 Features List Updated By Joe Pranevich
26 Oct  - 30 Oct  (5 posts) Subject: "Linux 2.6 features list update"
People: Joe Pranevich

Joe Pranevich announced:

    I've just completed a second revision of my "Wonderful World of Linux 2.6"
    document that I mailed around back in July. This document is my reasonably
    complete list of the new features in Linux 2.6, with explanations. This one
    covers up to the -test9 kernel released yesterday and takes into
    consideration a lot of feedback from members of the list and elsewhere. The
    also has large portions rewritten for flow, etc.
   
    If you read the previous one, there actually haven't been that many big
    changes since -test1. If you just want to see (some of) the changes, I made
    a rough list at http://kniggit.net/wwol26-changes.html.
   
    If you haven't read the previous one (or even if you have), I have posted
    the update at http://kniggit.net/wwol26.html. (Text version: http://
    kniggit.net/wwol26.txt)
   
    Please let me know what you think. I am hopeful that this will be a good
    resource for people to use for learning about Linux 2.6. Unless there's
    some severe inaccuracies, I probably won't be updating this again until the
    official 2.6 release is out.
   
 

6. Status Of ipchains In 2.6
27 Oct  - 31 Oct  (15 posts) Subject: "status of ipchains in 2.6?"
People: David S. Miller, Miquel van Smoorenburg, David Mosberger, Wichert
Akkerman, Bill Davidsen, Rusty Russell

David Mosberger noticed that ipchains were not working so well one 64-bit
platforms under 2.6-test, and asked what the status of that was. Holger Schurig
suggested dropping ipchains support entirely, but several folks voiced
objections to this plan. Bill Davidsen in particular, pointed out that earlier
versions had worked correctly, so it seemed to him that the thing to do was
just to fix ipchains so it worked again. David S. Miller said that the correct
mailing list for this sort of problem was the netfilter or netdev lists. He
said, "most networking developers do not read linux-kernel. They do read
[email protected] so please post things there." Miquel van Smoorenburg
complained:

    [email protected] doesn't have an official webpage anywhere to tell you
    that it even exists. No info on how to subscribe or what the rules of the
    list are.
   
    On http://oss.sgi.com/ the netdev list is not mentioned at all.
   
    I can't find a mailinglist archive of netdev.
   
    I'd like to read netdev but I'm not sure to subscribe since as I said info
    on it is basically non-existing.
   
    Perhaps SGI could create a "netdev" page somewhere on oss.sgi.com, link to
    it from "projects lists" or "newsgroups and mailinglists", and resurrect
    the archive ? Please ?
   
Wichert Akkerman replied that google would lead right to the netdev archives (
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/netdev/archive/) .

David Mosberger suggested updating the MAINTAINERS file to reflect the true
maintainer of ipchains, and the fact that the netdev mailing list is the proper
list for ipchains bugs. David S. Miller replied that ipchains was a part of
netfilter, which did have info in the MAINTAINERS file; and David Mosberger
replied, "I took ipchains not being mentioned in MAINTAINERS as a sign that
nobody wanted to hear bug reports about it, hence my choice of lkml."

Elsewhere, Martin Josefsson posted a patch by several folks including Rusty
Russell and Andy Polyakov, to fix ipchains, that was accepted into Linus
Torvald's tree. Eric Brunet said it fixed his ipchains troubles, and the thread
ended.

 

7. IRQ Routing With Sis ISA Bridges
28 Oct  - 29 Oct  (4 posts) Subject: "SiS ISA bridge IRQ routing on 2.6 ..."
Topics: USB
People: Davide Libenzi, Nick Piggin, Alan Cox, Linus Torvalds

Davide Libenzi asked Linus Torvalds, "Linus, I saw that Marcelo merged Alan
bits to fix the IRQ routing with the newest SiS ISA bridges. To make it really
short the ISA bridge inside the SiS 85C503/5513 issue IRQ routing requests on
0x60, 0x61, 0x62 and 0x63 for the USB hosts and the current code does not
handle them correctly. 2.6-test9 does not have those bits and the USB subsystem
won't work w/out that. Did Alan ever posted the patch for 2.6? If yes, did you
simply miss it or you have a particular reason to not merge it? I really would
like to remove the SiS IRQ patch from my to-apply-2.6 folder :)" Nick Piggin
replied, "Alan thought I should put SiS IRQ routing on the must-fix list.
Doesn't mean it has to go in before 2.6.0, but if its common hardware and its
in 2.4 without problems its probably a good idea." And Davide said, "Alan did
not like my approach, so I'll let him post to Linus his work. If he doesn't
I'll post mine. The solution is trivial though and it works for me as long as
for many users that google'd about SiS+USB and asked me the patch." Alan Cox
replied to this:

    I generalised it to remove a ton of nasty 440GX hacks and also make the
    code smaller by swapping a big table for little __init functions. I sent
    akpm comments on it but I never did a 2.6 version directly. Its the same
    code in both cases however.
   
    Right now I have exams, which is why I'm reading email not revising ;)
   
 

8. Linux 2.6.0-test9-mm1 Released
30 Oct  - 1 Nov  (4 posts) Subject: "2.6.0-test9-mm1"
Topics: Virtual Memory
People: Andrew Morton

Andrew Morton announced:

    ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.0-test9/
    2.6.0-test9-mm1
   
      + kernel.org is being slow - the diff is also at
       
        http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/2.6.0-test9-mm1.gz
       
      + A couple of fixes for VM memory reclaim.
      + The ia32 EFI code seems to be complete now.
      + The recent IO scheduler regressions should be fixed.
      + Dropped the runtime-selectable-IO-scheduler patches.
      + A number of fixes to the pagecache readahead code should help seeky
        workloads such as non-direct-io databases.
      + Various fixes, mostly minor.
   
 

9. Linux 2.4.23-pre9 Released
30 Oct  - 3 Nov  (6 posts) Subject: "Linux 2.4.23-pre9"
Topics: Disks: IDE, FS: JFS, Power Management: ACPI, USB
People: Marcelo Tosatti, Alan Cox, Erik Andersen, Krzysztof Halasa

Marcelo Tosatti announced:

    Here goes -pre9. Only bugfixes will be accepted till 2.4.24-pre now.
   
    -pre9 backouts out a few ACPI problematic changes. It also includes a USB
    update, JFS update, sis900/starfire/tg3 bugfixes, etc.
   
Krzysztof Halasa asked if Marcelo would accept patches to fix compiling IDE
support as a module, adn Marcelo replied, "Yes I'll accept patches for
2.4.24-pre. You probably should talk to Alan about the IDE one." Erik Andersen
pointed out that Alan Cox was on leave for a year, and asked if this would
cause a problem. Marcelo replied, "He is not as active as he used to but he is
still around."

 

10. Modutils 2.4.26 Released
30 Oct  (1 post) Subject: "Announce: modutils 2.4.26 is available"
People: Keith Owens, Arnd Bergmann, Andreas Haumer, Maciej W. Rozycki

Keith Owens announced:

    ftp://ftp.<country>.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/modutils/v2.4 (ftp://
    ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/modutils/v2.4)
   
    modutils-2.4.26.tar.gz          Source tarball, includes RPM spec file
    modutils-2.4.26-1.src.rpm       As above, in SRPM format
    modutils-2.4.26-1.i386.rpm      Compiled with gcc 2.96 20000731, glibc 2.2.2.
    modutils-2.4.26-1.ia64.rpm      Compiled with gcc 2.96-ia64-20000731, glibc-2.2.3.
    patch-modutils-2.4.26.gz        Patch from modutils 2.4.25 to 2.4.26.
    
    Changelog extract
   
      + Ignore SHT_MIPS_DWARF sections. Alvaro Martinez Echevarria.
      + Add -malign-double to cflags for 64 bit builds.
      + Fix zlib linking problems. Maciej W. Rozycki.
      + Remove hard coded limits on length of modules.conf lines.
      + Alias updates. Red Hat.
      + Makefile fix for parallel build using bison. Andreas Haumer.
      + Document difference between patterns and modules in modprobe. Frank
        Murphy.
      + Suppress module not found message on modprobe -q. Frank Murphy.
      + Add module name to some messages. Red Hat.
      + Add amd64 support. i386 now defaults to combined 32/64 bit. Arnd
        Bergmann.
      + Older glibc versions had a wrong name for R_390_GOTOFF32. Arnd
        Bergmann.
      + Run known directories in the correct historical order. Red Hat.
      + Upgrade config.sub, config.guess to glibc 2.3.2.
      + Add sh64 support. Benedict Gaster.
      + Only build sys_oim.o when COMPAT_2_0 is set, it breaks with ia64 and
        recent glibc.
   
 

11. JFS 1.1.4 Released
30 Oct  (1 post) Subject: "[ANNOUNCE] JFS 1.1.4"
Topics: FS: JFS
People: Dave Kleikamp

Dave Kleikamp announced:

    Release 1.1.4 of JFS was made available today.
   
    Drop 67 on October 30, 2003 includes fixes to the file system and
    utilities.
   
    Utilities changes
   
      + Work around gcc 2.95 bug
      + Handle log full without crashing
      + Message format fix
   
    File System changes
   
      + Make sure journal buffer gets flushed to disk
      + Improved error handling
      + Remove racy, redundant call to block_flushpage
      + Fix race between link() and unlink()
   
    Note: The 2.4.23 and 2.6 kernel.org development kernels are kept up to date
    with the latest JFS code. The file system updates available on the web site
    are only needed for maintaining earlier 2.4 kernels.
   
    For more details about JFS, please see our website: http://
    oss.software.ibm.com/jfs
   
 

12. Making Filsystem Operations const
31 Oct  (1 post) Subject: "[ANNOUNCE] Make fs operations const"
Topics: FS: InterMezzo, FS: ext2
People: Matthew Wilcox

Matthew Wilcox said:

    The 54k patch at http://ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/willy/patches/
    fs-const.diff makes many file_operations, dentry_operations,
    address_space_operations, inode_operations, super_operations and
    dquot_operations const.
   
    This was inspired by intermezzo doing something naughty which the compiler
    didn't know to warn about. By making these pointers point to const structs,
    the compiler knows we shouldn't be doing that and will issue a warning.
   
    As a bonus for the embedded people, this enables us to move more of the
    kernel into ROMmable sections. I've only done this for ext2 and a few
    well-known *_operations in this patch, but it could be done to many more
    filesystems. It only saves a few hundred bytes per filesystem, but it all
    adds up.
   
 

13. GCC 3.3.2/3.4 ColdFire Toolchain For uClinux
4 Nov  (1 post) Subject: "[ANNOUNCE] GCC 3.3.2/3.4 ColdFire toolchain for
uClinux (20031103)"
People: Bernardo Innocenti

Bernardo Innocenti said:

    I've released a new snapshot of the uClinux/ColdFire toolchain based on GCC
    3.3.2 and GCC 3.4-prerelease:
   
    http://www.uclinux.org/pub/uClinux/uclinux-elf-tools/gcc-3/
   
    This release incorporares quite a lot of updates and fixes since the last
    official announcement.
   
 

14. Linux 2.6.0-test9-mm2 Released
4 Nov  - 5 Nov  (6 posts) Subject: "2.6.0-test9-mm2"
Topics: Networking
People: Andrew Morton

Andrew Morton announced:

    ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.0-test9/
    2.6.0-test9-mm2/
   
      + Various random fixes. Maybe about half of these are 2.6.0-worthy.
      + Some improvements to the anticipatory IO scheduler and more readahead
        tweaks should help some of those database benchmarks.
       
        The anticipatory scheduler is still a bit behind the deadline scheduler
        in these random seeky loads - it most likely always will be.
       
      + "A new driver for the ethernet interface of the NVIDIA nForce chipset,
        licensed under GPL."
       
        Testing of this would be appreciated. Send any reports to linux-kernel
        or [email protected] and Manfred will scoop them up, thanks.
       
      + I shall be offline for a couple of days.
   
 

15. Attempt To Insert Root Exploit Into Kernel Sources
5 Nov  - 6 Nov  (24 posts) Subject: "BK2CVS problem"
Topics: Version Control
People: Larry McVoy, Linus Torvalds, Theodore Y. Ts'o, Bert Hubert, Matthew
Dharm, Larry McVoy

Larry McVoy reported:

    Somebody has modified the CVS tree on kernel.bkbits.net directly. Dave
    looked at the machine and it looked like someone may have been trying to
    break in and do it.
   
    We've fixed the file in question, the conversion is done back here at
    BitMover and after we transfer the files we check them and make sure they
    are OK and this file got flagged.
   
    The CVS tree is fine, you might want to remove and update exit.c to make
    sure you have the current version in your tree however.
   
    The problem file is kernel/exit.c which has a few extra entries like so:
   
        revision 1.121
        date: 2003/11/04 16:44:19;  author: davem;  state: Exp;  lines: +58 -0
        Oops, I worked on the  the wrong file, fixed again.
        ----------------------------
        revision 1.120
        date: 2003/11/04 16:42:00;  author: davem;  state: Exp;  lines: +0 -58
        *** empty log message ***
        ----------------------------
        revision 1.119
        date: 2003/11/04 16:22:47;  author: davem;  state: Exp;  lines: +2 -0
        *** empty log message ***
        ----------------------------
        revision 1.118
        date: 2003/10/27 19:50:03;  author: torvalds;  state: Exp;  lines: +11 -5
        Fix ZOMBIE race with self-reaping threads.
    
        exit_notify() used to leave a window open when a thread
        died that made the thread visible as a ZOMBIE even though
        the thread reaped itself. This closes that window by marking
        the thread DEAD within the tasklist_lock.
    
        (Logical change 1.14141)
        ----------------------------
    
    Notice how the top 3 do not have the (Logical change X.YZ) at the end? That
    is a pointer so you can figure out the changeset boundaries and it is added
    back here during the conversion process. The file here is fine which leads
    me to believe that someone modified the file either on kernel.bkbits.net or
    managed to get in through the pserver. Dave swears up and down that it
    wasn't him so if anyone can step forward and claim responsibility that
    would be nice.
   
    It's not a big deal, we catch stuff like this, but it's annoying to the CVS
    users.
   
Matthew Dharm asked what lines in the CVS tree had been changed, and Larry
posted a short patch describing the change. The modification appeared to create
a root exploit in the kernel sources. At one point in the discussion, Bert
Hubert asked if there was any chance the exploit could have made it into an
official kernel release, and Linus Torvalds replied:

    No. There are two ways to get into a kernel release: patches to me by email
    (which depending on the person get more or less detailed scrutiny, but core
    files would definitely get a read-through and need an explanation), and
    through BK merges.
   
    And the people who merge with BK wouldn't have used the CVS tree.
   
Close by, Theodore Y. Ts'o said:

    BK really needs to add per-changeset digital signatures, and I've been
    bugging Larry about this for years. :-) And there's a similar risk
    involving a subtle patch that claims to fix a bug, but really opens up a
    security hole. Someone clever enough to send a "patch" to Linus, who can
    forge sufficient mail headers that he doesn't notice --- and perhaps even
    forge a cc to the LKML, even though it never got sent there, might be able
    to sneak such a minor change into the master sources. This is especially
    true if the trojan horse gets burried in a number of other plausible
    changes, and had an SMTP from field that appeared to come from a trusted
    kernel developer.
   
    An argument might be made that all patches sent to Linus should be at a
    minimum be GPG signed, but that assumes that Linus would be willing to use
    GPG, or is willing to have his mail reader set upt to do automatic GPG
    verification. One of the reasons why I think integration with BK would be a
    Good Thing is that (a) it becomes automatic, and (b) instead of it being
    verified only by Linus when he receives the patch, I or anyone else can
    verify the digital signature on each changeset whenever we want. This
    distributed verfication is very powerful, and hopefully this points out why
    we badly need such a capability.
   
 

16. libsysfs 0.3.0 Released
6 Nov  (1 post) Subject: "[ANNOUNCE] libsysfs v0.3.0"
Topics: FS: sysfs
People: Ananth N Mavinakayanahalli

Ananth N Mavinakayanahalli of IBM said:

    We have released libsysfs v0.3.0 as part of the sysfsutils package.
   
    The package can be downloaded from http://linux-diag.sourceforge.net/
   
    Changes include:
   
      + Support for the "block" subsystem. Block now is considered as a sysfs
        "class".
      + Facility to build both shared and static libraries
      + Fixed "write" attribute support.
      + Added few "test" routines to demonstrate API usage.
      + Headers now get installed to /usr/include/sysfs
      + PCI name decode support.
   
    Comments, suggestions and contributions welcome. The mailing list for
    discussing libsysfs and other diagnostic utilities is
   
    http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-diag-devel
   
 

17. Linux Test Project November Release
6 Nov  (1 post) Subject: "[ANNOUNCE] Linux Test Project November Release
Announcement"
Topics: Bug Tracking, FS: NFS, Version Control
People: Robert Williamson

Robert Williamson said:

    The Linux Test Project test suite <http://www.linuxtestproject.org> has
    been released. The latest version of the testsuite contains 2000+ tests for
    the Linux OS. Our web site also contains other information such as: test
    results, a Linux test tools matrix, an area for keeping up with fixes for
    known blocking problems in the 2.5/2.6 kernel releases, technical papers
    and HowTos on Linux testing, and a code coverage analysis tool.
   
    Highlights:
   
      + Updated the LTP stress script to record 'iostat' statistics if needed.
      + Updated the SCTP tests to support the current SCTP 2.6 kernel code.
      + Added new NFS test, nfs04, to help test data integrity during copies
        across mounts.
      + Applied more bug fixes, patches, and code cleanups.
   
    We encourage the community to post results, patches or new tests on our
    mailing list <[email protected]> and use the CVS bug tracking facility
    to report problems that you might encounter with the test suite.
   
 

 

 

 

 

 

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