Kernel Traffic #271 by Zack Brown
[email protected] Wed, 11 Aug 2004 10:54:40 -0700
| Newsgroups | gmane.linux.kernel.kernel-traffic |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Kernel Traffic #271 For 11 Aug
By Zack Brown
Table Of Contents
* Standard Format
* Text Format
* XML Source
* Introduction
* Mailing List Stats For This Week
* Threads Covered
1. 8 Jul - 17 Jul (46 Linux 2.6.7-mm7 Released
posts)
2. 14 Jul - 16 Jul (7 Increasing ext3 Disk Checks In The Event Of
posts) Improper Shutdown
3. 15 Jul (3 dmraid 1.0.0-rc2 Released
posts)
4. 17 Jul - 22 Jul (4 Accessing The Kernel Sources Via CVS
posts)
5. 17 Jul - 20 Jul (18 Linux 2.6.8-rc2 Released
posts)
6. 21 Jul (1 New SCSI Target (SCST) Subsystem Framework For
post) SCSI Driver Development
7. 22 Jul (1 jfsutils Version 1.1.7 Released
post)
Introduction
If anyone knows of a company looking for a talented writer with scripting and
other abilities, check out my r?sum? (resume.html) . I've done API
documentation with accompanying developer guides, and I'm published monthly as
a Contributing Editor in Linux Journal (http://www.linuxjournal.com/) and a
Columnist in Linux Magazine (http://www.linux-mag.com/) . I do my own creative
writing on the side, and have many strange writing- and communication-related
interests such as Labanotation. I also play a mean game of chess. I'm located
in San Francisco, and would prefer to work in that area; but for the right
offer I'd consider moving to a new location. I am both a US citizen and a
French citizen, making me eligible to live and work anywhere within the
European Union, as well as in the United States.
Mailing List Stats For This Week
We looked at 1108 posts in 6356K.
There were 415 different contributors. 205 posted more than once. 144 posted
last week too.
The top posters of the week were:
* 43 posts in 186K by Geert Uytterhoeven
* 23 posts in 172K by Patrick Mochel
* 22 posts in 123K by Adrian Bunk
* 19 posts in 92K by Andrew Morton
* 17 posts in 118K by Lee Revell
* Full Stats
1. Linux 2.6.7-mm7 Released
8 Jul - 17 Jul (46 posts) Archive Link: "2.6.7-mm7"
Topics: FS: JFS, Kernel Release Announcement, User-Mode Linux
People: Andrew Morton
Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.7-mm7, saying:
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/pat ches/2.6/2.6.7/
2.6.7-mm7/ (ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/
2.6.7/2.6.7-mm7/)
+ Added three new bk trees to the -mm lineup:
bk-dma-declare-coherent-memory.patch
New DMA mapping function.
bk-jfs.patch
JFS filesystem development tree
bk-mpc52xx.patch
New ppc32 board support
+ Added a big UML update. Needs work.
+ Lots of warning fixes, mainly.
2. Increasing ext3 Disk Checks In The Event Of Improper Shutdown
14 Jul - 16 Jul (7 posts) Archive Link: "ext3: bump mount count on journal
replay"
Topics: FS: ext3
People: Theodore Ts'o, Andreas Dilger, Pavel Machek
Pavel Machek noticed that in ext3, the fsck program ran after approximately 30
clean and nonclean (i.e. flipping the power switch) shutdowns. But it seemed to
him that file corruption was more likely to happen after a nonclean shutdown
than a clean one; and that therefore it made more sense to run fsck more often
in the case of nonclean shutdown. He posted a patch to enable this, but
Theodore Ts'o replied, "At least in theory an unclean shutdown is not going to
cause any problems, unless the hardware is screwy, in which case even a single
hard shutdown is going to cause problems. I'm not sure that it really makes
sense to arbitrarily state that a hard shutdown is 5 times more likely to cause
problems. We could make it be configurable, I suppose, but I'm not sure it's
worth it to add all that extra complexity." Pavel replied that if the shutdown
was due to a power loss, Theodore could very well be right; but if, on the
other hand, the shutdown was the result of software malfunction, Pavel argued,
then the journal data on disk would not be guaranteed to help.
Andreas Dilger also had some objections to Pavel's initial patch. He felt
Pavel's code didn't have the proper logic to determine when to perform an fsck.
Andreas suggested, "only increment the mount count after a clean unmount 20% of
the time (randomly). Since most people bitch about the full fsck anyways this
is probably the better choice than increasing the frequency of checks and
forcing the users to change the check interval to get the old behaviour."
Pavel's initial patch had a bug that simply caused ext3 systems to perform a
fsck 5 times as often, regardless of clean or unclean reboots. Pavel agreed
with Andreas' suggestion and posted a new patch. Andreas felt the new logic
would have a good shot at getting into the main kernel; and the thread ended.
3. dmraid 1.0.0-rc2 Released
15 Jul (3 posts) Archive Link: "*** Announcement: dmraid 1.0.0-rc2 ***"
Topics: Disk Arrays: RAID
People: Heinz Mauelshagen
Heinz Mauelshagen said:
Following a good tradition, dmraid 1.0.0-rc2 is available at http://
people.redhat.com:/~heinzm/sw/dmraid/ in source and i386 rpm, before I
leave for a 2 weeks vacation trip followed by LWE ;)
Won't read my email before July, 30th.
dmraid (Device-Mapper Raid tool) discovers, [de]activates and displays
properties of software RAID sets (ie. ATARAID) and contained DOS partitions
using the device-mapper runtime of the 2.6 kernel.
The following ATARAID types are supported on Linux 2.6:
Highpoint HPT37X
Highpoint HPT45X
Intel Software RAID
Promise FastTrack
Silicon Image Medley
This ATARAID type can be discovered only in this version: LSI Logic
MegaRAID
Please provide insight to support those metadata formats completely.
Thanks.
See files README and CHANGELOG, which come with the source tarball for
prerequisites to run this software, further instructions on installing and
using dmraid!
CHANGELOG is contained below for your convenience as well.
Call for testers:
I need testers with the above ATARAID types, to check that the mapping
created by this tool is correct (see options "-t -ay") and access to the
ATARAID data is proper.
You can activate your ATARAID sets without danger of overwriting your
metadata, because dmraid accesses it read-only unless you use option -E
with -r in order to erase ATARAID metadata (see 'man dmraid')!
This is a release candidate version so you want to have backups of your
valuable data and you want to test accessing your data read-only first in
order to make sure that the mapping is correct before you go for read-write
access.
The author is reachable at <[email protected] (
mailto:[email protected]) >. Later, I told you ;)
For test results, mapping information, discussions, questions, patches,
enhancement requests and the like, please subscribe and mail to
<[email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) >.
CHANGELOG
Changelog from dmraid 1.0.0-rc1 to 1.0.0-rc2 2004.07.15
+ Intel Software RAID discovery and activation support
+ allow more than one format handler name with --format
+ display "raid10" sets properly rather than just "mirror"
+ enhanced activate.c to handle partial activation of sets (eg, degraded
RAID0)
+ enhanced command line option checks
+ implemented a library context for variables such as debug etc.
+ fixed memory leak in discover_partitions
+ fixed recursion in _find_set()
+ continued writing subsets in case we fail on one because of RAID1
+ format handler template update
+ fixed dietlibc build
+ fixed shared library configure
+ use default_list_set() instead of &raid_sets where possible
+ name change of list_head members to the more commonly used 'list'
+ renamed msdos partition format handler to dos
+ lots of inline comments corrected/updated
+ streamlined tools/*.[ch]
+ moved get.*level() and get_status to metadata.[ch] and changed level
name to type
4. Accessing The Kernel Sources Via CVS
17 Jul - 22 Jul (4 posts) Archive Link: "linux-kernel CVS gateway?"
Topics: Version Control
People: Martin Waitz, H. Peter Anvin
Martin Waitz wanted to snarf the CVS kernel repository (as gatewayed by
BitKeeper, but found that "the hostname cvs.kernel.org exists but nobody
listens on port 2401. Is it deactivated on purpose or just broken?" After a
couple of posts, H. Peter Anvin replied:
Just rsync the CVS repository from:
rsync://rsync.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/bkcvs/
The direct access to the repository was removed due to disuse and security
problems. The rsync is a lot nicer anyway.
5. Linux 2.6.8-rc2 Released
17 Jul - 20 Jul (18 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.6.8-rc2"
Topics: Bug Tracking, Hyperthreading, Kernel Release Announcement, Ottawa Linux
Symposium, Power Management: ACPI, SMP, USB
People: Linus Torvalds, Jurgen Kramer, Will Beers, Thomas Zehetbauer, Pozsar
Balazs, Kevin P. Fleming, David Brownell
Linus Torvalds announced Linux 2.6.8-rc2, saying, "MTD updates, i2c updates and
some USB updates, and a lot of small stuff (sparse cleanups and fixes from Al
etc)." Jurgen Kramer reported, "My EHCI controller is still failing (Asus
P4C800-E i875p) as in the 2.6.7-mm series." But Will Beers said, "This was
previously discussed as the subject "proper bios handoff in ehci-hcd (http://
groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&edition=us&selm=
2pSYC-5B4-11%40gated-at.bofh.it) ". Basically it's a broken bios, and David
Brownell has a fix for it that hasn't made it into the kernel yet. Changing the
"return 1" at line 308 in drivers/usb/host/ehci-hcd.c" to a "return 0" works
for me until the patch makes it into the tree."
Elsewhere, Ralf Hildebrandt confirmed that compilation using GCC 3.4 worked for
him; and that vesafb worked on his HP Pavilion laptop for the first time ever.
Elsewhere, Thomas Zehetbauer reported that "ACPI support is still broken for
the Intel D865PERL board. Booting hangs when compiled for SMP/HT and succeeds
only with acpi=off or acpi=ht boot parameter." Pozsar Balazs added, "It is
still broken for Intel D865GRH too, as I reported first using 2.6.7-rc3." And
Kevin P. Fleming said, "There is a new patch in the RedHat Bugzilla that fixes
this problem (it restricts one of the ACPI setup events to only run on CPU 0).
Hopefully it will get merged into the kernel tree soon, although all the
developers are at OLS this week :-("
6. New SCSI Target (SCST) Subsystem Framework For SCSI Driver Development
21 Jul (1 post) Archive Link: "[ANNOUNCE] [RFC] Generic SCSI Target Middle
Level for Linux (SCST)"
Topics: Disks: IDE, Disks: SCSI, Networking, Virtual Memory
People: Vladislav Bolkhovitin
Vladislav Bolkhovitin said:
I would like to announce that Generic SCSI Target Middle Level for Linux
(SCST) version 0.9.2 released.
SCST is a new subsystem of the Linux kernel that provides a standard
framework for SCSI target drivers development. SCST is designed to provide
unified, consistent interface between SCSI target drivers and Linux kernel
and simplify target drivers development as much as possible. A system with
a SCSI target device is able to share its local or virtual devices with
other systems on the network with SCSI protocol support, e.g. SCSI bus,
Fibre Channel, TCP/IP with iSCSI. A system with a SCSI target device is
able to share its local or virtual devices with other systems on a network
with SCSI protocol support, e.g. SCSI bus, Fibre Channel, TCP/IP with
iSCSI. This is commonly used for data storage virtualization. Full list of
SCST's features, the source code and detailed documentation could be found
on its Internet page http://scst.sourceforge.net.
The major changes from version 0.9.1 are
+ 2.6 kernels support
+ FILEIO/BLKDEV device handler that works over files on file system and
makes from them virtual remotely available SCSI disks. In addition, it
allows to work directly over a block device, e.g. local IDE or SCSI
disk or ever disk partition, where there is no file systems overhead.
Using block devices comparing to sending SCSI commands directly to SCSI
mid-level via scsi_do_req() has advantage that data are get or put via
system cache, so it can fully benefit from caching and read ahead,
performed by Linux's VM subsystem.
The Qlogic target driver is coming soon.
The next coming features are complete BLKDEV device handler, which will not
copy data from the page cache, but instead use the pages directly, and
device access control.
7. jfsutils Version 1.1.7 Released
22 Jul (1 post) Archive Link: "[ANNOUNCE] jfsutils 1.1.7"
Topics: FS: JFS
People: Dave Kleikamp
Dave Kleikamp said:
Release 1.1.7 of jfsutils was made available today.
This release include the following changes to the utilities:
+ --replay_journal_only should not clear FM_DIRTY
+ Ensure changes to disk occur in the proper order
+ Message corrections
+ Directory Index Table corrections for big-endian systems.
The last of these is the most critical. Anyone using version 1.1.6 on a
big-endian system (i.e. ppc64) should update to version 1.1.7.
For more details about JFS, please see our website: http://
oss.software.ibm.com/jfs
We Hope You Enjoy Kernel Traffic
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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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