Kernel Traffic #277 by Zack Brown

[email protected] Sun, 17 Oct 2004 18:57:36 -0700
Newsgroups gmane.linux.kernel.kernel-traffic
Message-ID <[email protected]>
                        Kernel Traffic #277 For 17 Oct 

                                 By Zack Brown

Table Of Contents

  * Standard Format
  * Text Format
  * XML Source
  * Mailing List Stats For This Week
  * Threads Covered

    1.  26 Aug  - 8 Sep   (72      Linux 2.6.9-rc1-mm1 Released; Some Scheduler
                          posts)   Discussion
    2.  31 Aug  - 5 Sep   (10      kbuild Support For LOCALVERSION
                          posts)
    3.  2 Sep             (4       Parallel Port Mailing List Changed
                          posts)
    4.  3 Sep  - 8 Sep    (53      Linux 2.6.9-rc1-mm3 Released
                          posts)
    5.  7 Sep  - 9 Sep    (56      Linux 2.6.9-rc1-mm4 Released
                          posts)
    6.  7 Sep             (1 post) dmraid 1.0.0-rc4 Released
    7.  7 Sep  - 12 Sep   (10      Serial And TTY Layer Overhaul
                          posts)
    8.  8 Sep             (1 post) Linux Test Project Version 20040908 Released
    9.  9 Sep  - 10 Sep   (14      Digsig 1.3.1 Released
                          posts)
    10. 9 Sep  - 15 Sep   (19      Intel Microcode Update Available
                          posts)
    11. 10 Sep            (1 post) udev 031 Released
    12. 11 Sep  - 13 Sep  (7       Linux 2.4.28-pre3 Released
                          posts)
    13. 13 Sep  - 15 Sep  (96      Linux 2.6.9-rc1-mm5 Released
                          posts)
    14. 13 Sep  - 15 Sep  (14      Linux 2.6.9-rc2 Released
                          posts)
    15. 14 Sep            (1 post) Libsysfs 1.2.0 Released
    16. 14 Sep  - 15 Sep  (3       PWC Re-Added With Binary Driver
                          posts)   Reverse-Engineered
    17. 15 Sep            (1 post) LinuxPPC Developer Mailing Lists Have Moved

Mailing List Stats For This Week

We looked at 4775 posts in 27421K.

There were 756 different contributors. 442 posted more than once. 245 posted
last week too.

The top posters of the week were:

  * 192 posts in 1060K by Ingo Molnar
  * 191 posts in 756K by Alan Cox
  * 152 posts in 760K by William Lee Irwin III
  * 122 posts in 490K by Lee Revell
  * 110 posts in 588K by Andrew Morton
  * Full Stats

 

1. Linux 2.6.9-rc1-mm1 Released; Some Scheduler Discussion
26 Aug  - 8 Sep  (72 posts) Archive Link: "2.6.9-rc1-mm1"
Topics: Kernel Release Announcement, Ottawa Linux Symposium
People: Andrew Morton, Con Kolivas, Martin J. Bligh, Rick Lindsley, Rafael J.
Wysocki

Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.9-rc1-mm1, saying:

    ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.9-rc1/
    2.6.9-rc1-mm1/

      + nicksched is still here. There has been very little feedback, except
        that it seems to slow some workloads on NUMA.
      + Added a __must_check to the x86 copy_*_user functions. This means that
        with a sufficiently recent gcc, all unchecked copy_*_user() calls will
        generate a warning.

    I fixed a few things, but binfmt_elf.c is a mess.

    It's not clear how to apply the same debug check to put_user() and friends.

Regarding the low feedback on nicksched, Con Kolivas replied:

    That's because most people aren't interested in a new cpu scheduler for
    2.6. The current one works well enough in most situations and people aren't
    trying -mm to fix their interactive problems since they are few and far
    between. The only reports about adverse behaviour with 2.6 we track down to
    "It behaves differently to what I expect" or applications with no (b)
    locking between threads suck under load. Personally I think the latter is a
    good thing as it encourages better coding, and the former is something
    we'll have with any alternate design.

    The only feedback we got on staircase was that it helped NUMA somewhat and
    Nick and Ingo made some criticisms (not counting any benchmarks I had to
    offer). The only feedback on nickshed was that it hurt NUMA somewhat, SMT
    interactivity was broken (an easy enough oversight), and I did not comment
    to avoid giving biased criticism.

    If you're after subjective performance feedback you're less likely to get
    it now than ever since you've made a strong stance against subjective
    reports, due to placebo effect. LKML is scary enough for the average user
    already. We have a situation now that if one brave single user reports good
    or bad behaviour everyone runs off that one user's report. Ouch!

    There isn't going to be a 2.7 any time soon and there are people that are
    using alternate schedulers already in production; which is obviously why
    you're giving them a test run in -mm. Clearly the lack of a formal (2.7)
    development branch makes this even harder. Your attempt at preventing "good
    stuff' from rotting in alternate trees when mainline should be benefitting
    is admirable. While it's fun to rewrite the scheduler and gives us
    something to play with, the current level of feedback is hardly the
    testbase off which to replace it unless there's something strikingly better
    about a new cpu scheduler.

    It will be interesting to see if this spawns any further discussion or
    whether Peter's scheduler's performance will also be lost in a low signal
    to noise ratio when it gets a run in -mm.

Rafael J. Wysocki said he was interested in a new scheduler for 2.6, but had no
useful benchmarks. Con replied that there were no benchmarks at all for
interactivity. Martin J. Bligh then said, "Rick's schedstats stuff had some
ways to measure latency that seemed to work quite nicely. Hard to simulate
exactly mozilla, email, etc, but probably close enough to be far more use than
"ooh, it feels faster". He did a whole paper at OLS ... Rick ... pointer?" And
Rick Lindsley replied:

    http://www.finux.org/Reprints/Reprint-Lindsley-OLS2004.pdf

    There are patches available for schedstats, although I haven't pulled
    together 2.6.9-rc1 yet. Shouldn't take me but fifteen minutes, I think.

    Rafael, what baseline release are you comparing to? I should be able to
    provide some tools to measure the effect on updatedb directly for both
    2.6.9-rc1 and your baseline (so long as it's 2.6-based)

Rafael J. Wysocki replied, "2.6.8.1, for example. I'd like to compate it with
the 2.6.9-rc1-mm1, which contains the Nick's scheduler (2.6.9-rc1 has the same
scheduler as 2.6.8.1, AFAIK)." Rick replied:

    Okay. A schedstats patch for 2.6.8.1 is available at

    http://eaglet.rain.com/rick/linux/schedstat/patches/schedstat-2.6.8.1
    or
    http://oss.software.ibm.com/linux/patches/?patch_id=730

    You can also pick up the program "latency.c" at

    http://eaglet.rain.com/rick/linux/schedstat/v9/latency.c

    With these two things in hand, you should be able to measure the latency on
    2.6.8.1 of a particular process.

    A patch is not necessary for 2.6.9-rc1-mm1 (schedstats is already in there)
    but you will need to config the kernel to use it. Then retrieve a slightly
    different latency.c:

    http://eaglet.rain.com/rick/linux/schedstat/v10/latency.c

    since 2.6.9-rc1-mm1 output format is different (as you noted, it's a
    different scheduler.) Then you should be able to see if the latency of a
    particular process (updatedb, for instance) changes.

Rafael said he'd give this a try; but then reported compilation problems, that
Rick addressed in a subsequent patch. Rafael then said, "I've fiddled a bit
with both the latency.c programs. I've added some options to them etc. In
particular, now you can specify a program to run and monitor instead of a pid,
which is handy if you need to monitor processes that exit quickly. Everything
is documented in the sources (attached). I thought you might find this useful.
:-)" Rick replied, "Thank you much! yes, that will make it more useful. I'll
add it to my backlog and see if I can't get it out to the web page this week."

 

2. kbuild Support For LOCALVERSION
31 Aug  - 5 Sep  (10 posts) Archive Link: "kbuild: Support LOCALVERSION"
Topics: Kernel Build System, SMP
People: Sam Ravnborg, Ian Wienand, Jan-Benedict Glaw, Jan-Benedict

Sam Ravnborg said:

    The following patch combines the request from several people. If you place
    a file named localversion* in the root of your soruce tree or the root of
    your output tree the text included in this file will be appended to
    KERNELRELEASE.

    LOCALVERSION was originally introduced by Ian Wienand
    <[email protected]>

    This allows one to put a short string in localversion identifying this
    particular configuration "-smpacpi", or to identify applied patches to the
    source "-llat-np".

    More specifically:
    $(srctree)/localversion-lowlatency contains "-llat"
    $(srctree)/localversion-scheduler-nick constins "-np"

    $(objtree)/localversion contains "-smpacpi"

    Resulting KERNELRELEASE would be:
    2.6.8.rc1-smpacpi-llat-np

    Note that you no longer need to modify your Makefile to identify your
    kernel so no rejects when applying new patches. If you add a new
    localversion* file, or change a existing one kbuild will pick up this and
    do the proper rebuild next time you run make.

    Only issue is that KERNELRELEASE needs to be <= 64 chars - so keep the
    names short.

    kbuild errors out if you are above limit.
    $ cat localviersion-long
    very-long-version-in-localversion-file-exceeding-64-chars-for-sure
    Example:
    CHK include/linux/version.h
    "2.6.9-rc1-very-long-version-in-localversion-file-exceeding-64-chars-for-sure"
    exceeds 64 characters
    make: *** [include/linux/version.h] Error 1

Ian Wienand pointed out that the 'LOCALVERSION=aversion' command line option
didn't cause version.h to be rebuilt. He asked, "Is it going to just be a case
of "you can't specify LOCALVERSION" from the command line?" He posted a patch
to fix the behavior, which Sam accepted.

Elsewhere, Jan-Benedict Glaw said of the original patch, "I love it. Maybe it
would also be good (in the longer term) to introduce a config name into one of
the Kconfig files, which is preserved in the .config file (eg. SuSE does
something like that and even while I'm not a SuSE user, it's really dandy at
some times, esp. for things like "SMP-4GB", "VAX-KA4x" and the like). It's
basically like adding the defconfig_* name to some of the variables :-)" Sam
thought this was a good idea. Close by, Ian posted a patch, saying:

    Ok, here is my attempt. I think it does everything everyone wants

      + localversion* files are read first
      + config variable is appended last
      + LOCALVERSION from the command line overrides all of this
      + check is forced on build, since we can't really know when the config or
        environment options change.

Sam liked this patch and incorporated it into his own.

 

3. Parallel Port Mailing List Changed
2 Sep  (4 posts) Archive Link: "[patch] update parport MAINTAINERS entry"
Topics: MAINTAINERS File

Maximilian Attems updated the MAINTAINERS file to change the Parallel Port
mailing list from [email protected] to [email protected].

 

4. Linux 2.6.9-rc1-mm3 Released
3 Sep  - 8 Sep  (53 posts) Archive Link: "2.6.9-rc1-mm3"
Topics: FS: ext3, FS: sysfs, Hot-Plugging, Kernel Release Announcement, Kexec, 
Profiling
People: Andrew Morton, Stephen Tweedie

Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.9-rc1-mm3, saying:

    ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.9-rc1/
    2.6.9-rc1-mm3/

      + Added the m32r architecture. Haven't looked at it yet.
      + Status update on various large patches in -mm:

          o The packet-writing code is awaiting resolution of the
            abuse-of-elevator-fields problem.
          o perfctr is stalled. Mikael is planning on doing more work to make
            it more compatible with perfmon, but he is busy for a while.
          o If the sysfs-backing-store patches get any older they'll start to
            stink. Awaiting review input from AV.
          o ext3 reservation code is currently being optimised by Stephen
            Tweedie (replace a serious-looking linear search with an rbtree).
            I'd expect those patches to land in -mm soon.
          o ext3 online resizing still needs a bit of maintenance work done.
          o pcmcia driver model support: dunno. I guess we're waiting for rmk
            to get onto this.
          o i386 hotplug CPU support: I'm not sure that we should merge this at
            all - it's a testing-only thing.
          o key management code: mainly awaiting feedback from other fs
            developers who may need such a capability. Also we seem to be
            unsure as to which userspace interface will end up being used?
          o kexec: I guess this could be merged now, if we want kexec now. I'm
            waiting for the kexec-based-crashdump patches to turn up.
          o cpusets: ready to go, I guess. Review input from various parties
            seems positive. Post-2.6.9.
          o reiser4: blah.

      + Various random fixes and updates.

 

5. Linux 2.6.9-rc1-mm4 Released
7 Sep  - 9 Sep  (56 posts) Archive Link: "2.6.9-rc1-mm4"
Topics: FS: CacheFS, Kernel Release Announcement
People: Andrew Morton

Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.9-rc1-mm4, saying:

    ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.9-rc1/
    2.6.9-rc1-mm4/

      + Added Dave Howells' mysterious CacheFS.
      + Various new fixes, cleanups and bugs, as usual.

 

6. dmraid 1.0.0-rc4 Released
7 Sep  (1 post) Archive Link: "*** Announcement: dmraid 1.0.0-rc4 ***"
Topics: Disk Arrays: RAID
People: Heinz Mauelshagen

Heinz Mauelshagen said:

    dmraid 1.0.0-rc4 is available at http://people.redhat.com:/~heinzm/sw/
    dmraid/ in source, source rpm and i386 rpm.

    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 is only basically supported in this version (I need
    better metadata format specs; please help): 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.

    In case you have a different ATARAID solution from those listed above,
    please feel free to contact me about supporting it in dmraid.

    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]>.

    For test results, mapping information, discussions, questions, patches,
    enhancement requests and the like, please subscribe and mail to
    <[email protected]>.

 

7. Serial And TTY Layer Overhaul
7 Sep  - 12 Sep  (10 posts) Archive Link: "The Serial Layer"
People: Alan Cox, Theodore Ts'o, Arjan van de Ven

Alan Cox asked of the serial layer, "Is anyone currently looking at fixing this
before I start applying extreme violence ? In particular to start trying to do
something about the races in TIOCSTI, line discipline setting, hangup v
receive, drivers abusing the API and calling ldisc.receive_buf direct ?" Arjan
van de Ven thought Alan meant the TTY layer instead of the serial layer, but
Alan said:

    Both. A lot of hangup/receive races are in the serial drivers themselves
    doing things like

        hangup
        [close ldisc]
        send bytes to the ldisc
        [Boom!]

Theodore Ts'o said:

    The hangup handling needs to be completely redone, so that we don't force
    serial drivers to do a completely shutdown of the port in an interrupt
    context. If the drivers are careful, it can be safe, but it's too hard to
    handle hangup correctly.

    If you have time to work on the tty layer (sucker!!!), please go ahead and
    start work by all means. I was hoping to have time to clean up some of the
    more egregious problems sometime next year (after I escape back into
    development), but getting this fixed sooner rather the later would be a
    definitely Good Thing.

 

8. Linux Test Project Version 20040908 Released
8 Sep  (1 post) Archive Link: "[ANNOUNCE] Sept LTP Release now available"
Topics: FS: NFS
People: Marty Ridgeway

Marty Ridgeway announced the latest version of the Linux Test Project, saying:

    The Sept. release of LTP is now on SourceForge.net, changes include:

    LTP-20040908

      + Modified runalltests.sh to call runltp.sh. runalltests.sh is now
        deprecated and will be removed early next year.
      + Modified tst_tmpdir to ensure 777 permissions on test directory.
      + Changes to ltp-aiodio.part3 for testcase run parameters
      + Changes for 2.6.X so only delete modules is run, query and create are
        obsolete
      + Updated runtest scenario with the latest SCTP tests.
      + uncommented swapon() tests.
      + added new paging tests, mincore and madvise
      + Change to fix aio-stress problem will io errors on a short read during
        the random read portion
      + Change to only print out a pass/fail instead of # of iterations pass/
        fail
      + Added IA64 specific code for shmt09.
      + Change to not do /dev/ptmx group write on arm arch.
      + Applied patch from Ling, Xiaofeng to allow the test to use TDIRECTORY
        correctly.
      + Corrected test 1 to show EPERM error pointed out by Ling, Xiaofeng.
      + Change to close fileHandle prior to cleanup to correct testcase failure
        in NFS filesystems
      + Change sleep time from 1 second to 10 seconds to allow system to pass
      + Change to define RUSAGE_BOTH if not defined, RH removed from user space
        and other distros still support.
      + Add arm arch to the ALIGNED typedefs
      + Changes from Ihno for llseek01.c to check TEST_RETURN vs TEST_ERRNO
      + use ltp functions in f00f test for better output parsing
      + Fix Makefile to link open_files into the bin directory
      + Get rid of extra = of "must be Root user" check
      + Change the awk $4 to an $NF to support debian only returning 3 terms
      + Change to tcpdump to check IFNAME define

 

9. Digsig 1.3.1 Released
9 Sep  - 10 Sep  (14 posts) Archive Link: "[ANNOUNCE] Release Digsig 1.3.1:
kernel module for run-time authentication"
Topics: Executable File Format
People: Makan Pourzandi

Makan Pourzandi said:

    DSI development team would like to announce the release 1.3.1 of digsig.

    This kernel module helps system administrators control Executable and
    Linkable Format (ELF) binary execution and library loading based on the
    presence of a valid digital signature. The main functionality is to help
    system administrators distinguish applications he/she trusts (and therefore
    signs) from viruses, worms (and other nuisances). It is based on the Linux
    Security Module hooks.

    The code is GPL and available from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/disec/,
    download digsig-1.3.1. For more documentation, please refer to
    disec.sourcefrge.net.

    I hope that it'll be useful to you.

    All bug reports and feature requests or general feedback are welcome
    (please CC me or [email protected] in your answer or
    feedback to the mailing list).

 

10. Intel Microcode Update Available
9 Sep  - 15 Sep  (19 posts) Archive Link: "Latest microcode data from Intel."
Topics: Hot-Plugging, Hyperthreading
People: Tigran Aivazian, Chris Rankin, Nathan Bryant, Alan Cox

Tigran Aivazian said:

    I have received and tested the latest microcode data file from Intel, The
    file is dated 2nd September 2004. You can download it both as standalone
    (bzip2-ed) text file and bundled with microcode_ctl utility from the
    Download section of the website:

    http://urbanmyth.org/microcode/

    Please let me know if you find any problems with this data file or with the
    Linux microcode driver. Thank you.

Chris Rankin exulted, "Aha! And this microcode file actually contains data for
my dual P4 Xeons (HT)" [...] "The July 27th offering didn't contain anything
for these CPUs at all. In fact, the July file was suspiciously smaller than the
one from 16th March."

Elsewhere, Nathan Bryant asked, "how does microcode update interact with CPU
hotplug?" Alan Cox replied, "You run the microcode update sequence after a CPU
is plugged in. That might be an argument for having user space kick off
application use of hotplugged processors so that some housekeeping can run
first. In the ideal case your BIOS vendor ships you needed BIOS updates to
handle such things and in a sane format."

 

11. udev 031 Released
10 Sep  (1 post) Archive Link: "[ANNOUNCE] udev 031 release"
Topics: FS: devfs, FS: sysfs, Hot-Plugging, Version Control
People: Greg KH, Greg KH

Greg KH said:

    I've released the 031 version of udev. It can be found at: kernel.org/pub/
    linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-031.tar.gz (http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux
    /utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-031.tar.gz)

    udev allows users to have a dynamic /dev and provides the ability to have
    persistent device names. It uses sysfs and /sbin/hotplug and runs entirely
    in userspace. It requires a 2.6 kernel with CONFIG_HOTPLUG enabled to run.
    Please see the udev FAQ for any questions about it: kernel.org/pub/linux/
    utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-FAQ (http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel
    /hotplug/udev-FAQ)

    For any udev vs devfs questions anyone might have, please see: kernel.org/
    pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev_vs_devfs (http://www.kernel.org/pub/
    linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev_vs_devfs)

    This release fixes a lot of little bugs since the 030 release. I might have
    missed a few patches that were sent to me, and if you don't see your patch/
    fix included in here, please resend it.

    Major changes since 030:

      + lots of minor bugfixes
      + udevstart is now a symlink to udev
      + added a new %e modifier
      + lots of rule fixes and cleanups based on user reports.

    Thanks to everyone who has send me patches for this release, a full list of
    everyone, and their changes is below.

    udev development is done in a BitKeeper repository located at: bk://
    linuxusb.bkbits.net/udev

    Daily snapshots of udev from the BitKeeper tree can be found at: http://
    www.codemonkey.org.uk/projects/bitkeeper/udev/
    If anyone ever wants a tarball of the current bk tree, just email me.

 

12. Linux 2.4.28-pre3 Released
11 Sep  - 13 Sep  (7 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.4.28-pre3"
Topics: FS: XFS
People: Marcelo Tosatti

Marcelo Tosatti announced Linux 2.4.28-pre3, saying:

    Here goes the third pre of 2.4.28, containing a bunch of scattered fixes.

    The bigger modifications are XFS update, prism54 update, libata fixes, more
    gcc 3.4 cleanups, amongst others.

 

13. Linux 2.6.9-rc1-mm5 Released
13 Sep  - 15 Sep  (96 posts) Archive Link: "2.6.9-rc1-mm5"
Topics: FS: ext3, Kernel Release Announcement
People: Andrew Morton, James Bottomley

Andrew Morton announced Linux version 2.6.9-rc1-mm5, saying:

    Due to master.kernel.org being on the blink, 2.6.9-rc1-mm5 Is currently at

    http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/2.6.9-rc1-mm5/

    and will later appear at

    ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.9-rc1/
    2.6.9-rc1-mm5/

    Please check kernel.org before using zip.com.au.

      + Added the `bk-scsi-target' tree to the -mm lineup. It is managed by
        James Bottomley
      + Some enhancements to the ext3 block reservation code here. Please cc
        [email protected] on oops reports ;)
      + There's a patch here which will cause warnings if a PCI device driver
        is removed without having called pci_disable_device(). Please try to cc
        the appropriate mailing list or maintainer when reporting any
        instances.

 

14. Linux 2.6.9-rc2 Released
13 Sep  - 15 Sep  (14 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.6.9-rc2"
Topics: Kernel Release Announcement, Sound: ALSA
People: Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds announced kernel 2.6.9-rc2, saying:

    Various things all over the map, most of them not necessarily very visible
    to most people. ALSA update, and tons of small fixes pretty much
    everywhere.

    The one thing that people may actually _notice_ is that you get a lot more
    warnings for some drivers due to the stricter type-checks for PCI memory
    mapping. They are harmless (code generation should be the same), and we'll
    work on trying to fix up the drivers as we go along, but they can be a bit
    daunting if you happen to enable some of the less type-friendly drivers
    right now..

 

15. Libsysfs 1.2.0 Released
14 Sep  (1 post) Archive Link: "[ANNOUNCE] Libsysfs v1.2.0 release"
Topics: FS: sysfs
People: Ananth N. Mavinakayanahalli

Ananth N. Mavinakayanahalli said:

    Version 1.2.0 of libsysfs, shipped as part of the sysfsutils package is now
    available at

    http://linux-diag.sourceforge.net

    Libsysfs provides a simple and stable API to access the sysfs filesystem.

    Major changes since 1.1.0:

      + added dlist_sort_custom() for applications to specify their list sorter
        routine. (Thanks to Eric Bohm)
      + minor documentation updates and bugfixes

 

16. PWC Re-Added With Binary Driver Reverse-Engineered
14 Sep  - 15 Sep  (3 posts) Archive Link: "[PATCH] PWC driver without binary
interface"
Topics: Compression
People: Luc Saillard, Stelian Pop, Tim Fairchild

The PWC driver was recently removed after a bad flamewar, covered in Issue #
276, Section #4  (26 Aug : Developer Debate Over Maintainership And Binary
Driver Hooks; Specifically PWC Driver) and Issue #276, Section #6  (27 Aug :
 More On The PWC Driver)

Luc Saillard said:

    I've made a patch to (re)add pwc philips driver into the kernel. This
    driver have support for some compression mode (for chipset 2 & 3), so you
    don't need the binary module to grab an image in 640x480@10fps. Use this
    driver with caution, i've test on several webcam (type 730, 740). Mode
    bayer is not implemented, the camera only output yuv420p (planar mode).
    Future plan is to improve compatibility with other webcam, and try to
    implement decoder for version 1.

    As wish by the original author, i've remove email address for the support,
    and add a disclaimer "this is unofficial version".

    The patch is 300kbytes long, i don't include it in this mail. You can found
    a tarball or a patch against the last linux kernel at:

    http://www.saillard.org/pwc/linux-2.6.9-rc2_pwc-9.0.2-fork0.2.diff.bz2
    http://www.saillard.org/pwc/

Stelian Pop remarked, "Just in case nobody payed attention to the original
message and failed to see that almost all the binary pwcx has been succesfully
reverse-engineered..." Tim Fairchild replied, "Yes, noted the original, but was
out tonight. Congratulations and good work!!! I wish I had a phillips cam to
test it out on... I'll have to check which makes and models and see if I can
find something on ebay to test with..."

 

17. LinuxPPC Developer Mailing Lists Have Moved
15 Sep  (1 post) Archive Link: "LinuxPPC developers mailing lists have moved"
People: Stephen Rothwell

Stephen Rothwell said:

    Just to let those who don't know that the mailing lists for Linux on PPC
    developers have moved. They are now hosted on ozlabs.org. The current lists
    are:

    linuxppc-dev For all developers of Linux on PPC hardware (explictly
    including embedded hardware)
    linuxppc64-dev For all developers of Linux on 64 bit PPC hardware

    To subscribe, please point your favourite web browser at http://ozlabs.org/
    mailman/listinfo/

 

 

 

 

 

 

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