Kernel Traffic #305 For 4 Apr 2005 By Zack Brown Table Of Contents * Standard Format * Text Format * XML Source * Mailing List Stats For This Week * Threads Covered 1. 12 Mar 2005 - 24 Mar 2005 (58 Linux 2.6.11-mm3 Released; Some Mouse posts) Anomalies 2. 18 Mar 2005 - 24 Mar 2005 (5 Linux 2.4.30-rc1 Released posts) 3. 21 Mar 2005 - 24 Mar 2005 (72 Linux 2.6.12-rc1-mm1 Released posts) 4. 22 Mar 2005 - 27 Mar 2005 (25 SquashFS Support For ./ And ../ posts) 5. 24 Mar 2005 - 28 Mar 2005 (44 Linux 2.6.12-rc1-mm2 Released; Status posts) Of -mm Development 6. 25 Mar 2005 - 27 Mar 2005 (13 Linux 2.4.30-rc2 Released posts) 7. 25 Mar 2005 - 27 Mar 2005 (10 Linux 2.6.11.6 Released posts) 8. 26 Mar 2005 - 30 Mar 2005 (9 Linux 2.4.30-rc3 Released posts) 9. 30 Mar 2005 (1 Linux 2.4.30-rc4 Released post) Mailing List Stats For This Week We looked at 1781 posts in 11MB. See the Full Statistics. There were 600 different contributors. 227 posted more than once. The average length of each message was 105 lines. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |The top posters of the | The top subjects of the week were: | | week were: | | |-----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------| |84 posts in 419KB by | | |Adrian Bunk |43 posts in 198KB for "How's the nforce4 support in | |78 posts in 605KB by |Linux?" | |Andrew Morton |35 posts in 187KB for "[patch] Real-Time Preemption, | |52 posts in 394KB by |-RT-2.6.11-rc3-V0.7.38-01" | |Jesper Juhl |27 posts in 125KB for "[patch 0/3] j_state_lock, | |42 posts in 219KB by |j_list_lock, remove-bitlocks" | |Jeff Garzik |26 posts in 100KB for "Mac mini sound woes" | |40 posts in 143KB by |25 posts in 93KB for "Squashfs without ./.." | |Lee Revell | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ These stats generated by mboxstats version 2.2 1. Linux 2.6.11-mm3 Released; Some Mouse Anomalies 12 Mar 2005 - 24 Mar 2005 (58 posts) Archive Link: "2.6.11-mm3" Topics: FS: devfs, FS: sysfs, Hot-Plugging, Kernel Release Announcement, Power Management: ACPI People: Andrew Morton, Helge Hafting, Dmitry Torokhov, Vojtech Pavlik Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.11-mm3, saying: ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.11/2.6.11-mm3 / * A new version of the "acpi poweroff fix". People who were having trouble with ACPI poweroff, please test and report. * A very large update to the CFQ I/O scheduler. Treat with caution, run benchmarks. Remember that the I/O scheduler can be selected on a per-disk basis with echo as > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler echo deadline > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler echo cfq > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler * video-for-linux update Helge Hafting reported: 2.6.11-mm1 and earlier: mouse appear as /dev/input/mouse0 2.6.11-mm3: mouse appear as /dev/input/mouse1 No big problem, one change to xorg.conf and I got the mouse back. I guess it wasn't supposed to change like that though? This is a mouse connected to the ps2 port, also appearing as /dev/psaux Dmitry Torokhov recommended, "I'd recommend using /dev/input/mice unless you want to _exclude_ some of your input devices. It will get data from all you mice at once and is always available." He explained, "Vojtech activated scroll handling in keyboard code by default so now your keyboard is mapped to the mouse0 and the mouse moved to mouse1." Andrew replied, "We cannot ship a kernel with this change, surely? Our users would come hunting for us with pitchforks." But Vojtech Pavlik replied: Mouse device numbers are defined to be unstable because of hotplug. Most users use /dev/input/mice, where this won't have impact. The officially correct solution is to use udev to get stable device names. The change is easily reverted - just change the 'atkbd.scroll' default value. 2. Linux 2.4.30-rc1 Released 18 Mar 2005 - 24 Mar 2005 (5 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.4.30-rc1" Topics: Networking, Security People: Marcelo Tosatti Marcelo Tosatti announced Linux 2.4.30-rc1, saying, "Here goes the first release candidate for v2.4.30. It contains a small number of fixes, including a fix for recently discovered ppp DoS (CAN-2005-0384)." 3. Linux 2.6.12-rc1-mm1 Released 21 Mar 2005 - 24 Mar 2005 (72 posts) Subject: "2.6.12-rc1-mm1" Topics: Kernel Release Announcement, Power Management: ACPI, Sound: ALSA, USB People: Andrew Morton, Russell King Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.12-rc1-mm1, saying: ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.12-rc1/ 2.6.12-rc1-mm1/ * We might have a fix here for the recent AGP/DRM problems. If you were having problems with that, please test and report. * An update to the hfs and hfsplus filesystems. * Lots more pcmcia changes. * Linus is away this week. Not a lot more should be going into 2.6.12 now and I have a list of ~140 bugs, many of which are post-2.6.10 regressions. We should fix these. Russell King's ears pricked up at the mention of a bug list; he asked, "Is this your own personal bug list, or is it accessible anywhere?" Andrew replied, "It's just an email folder at present." ... "USB, ALSA, Input, ACPI and suspend are the usual culprits." 4. SquashFS Support For ./ And ../ 22 Mar 2005 - 27 Mar 2005 (25 posts) Archive Link: "Squashfs without ./.." Topics: FS: SquashFS, FS: ramfs People: Jan Engelhardt, Jesper Juhl, Andreas Schwab, Phil Lougher, H. Peter Anvin Jan Engelhardt reported, "I have observed that squashfs, when mounted, does not return any "." or ".." pseudo-directories upon readdir. Could this be added? Would there be any objections?" Jesper Juhl replied, "I can't say if there will be any objections or not, but if that's something that people want, then I'd like to take a stab at implementing it - could be fun and I'd love to learn a little more about that area of the kernel, so I'll have a go at it if noone screams." He dove into the code, and Pietro Zuco agreed that this functionality would be useful. The discussion spiraled around from here; at one point Andreas Schwab remarked, ""." and ".." are handled in the VFS. No filesystem code ever sees them during lookup." Elsewhere, Phil Lougher mentioned: Cramfs also doesn't store '.' and '..', which is where I got the idea from in the first place when originally implementing Squashfs. Filesystems don't need to store '.' or ''..' in the filesystem, as they're never looked up by the VFS - as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the VFS handles '.' and '..' internally. Not storing the redundant '.' and '..' entries within the filesystem achieves a small but nonetheless useful space saving. He added, "The lack of '.' and '..' entries hasn't caused any problems despite cramfs/squashfs being used for a large number of years. I'm inclined to believe any application that _relies_ on seeing '.' and '..' returned by readdir is broken. This situation is easily fixed within the application rather than forcing the filesystem to unnecessarily fake '.' and '..' entries which are never used." There was very little support for Phil's position however. H. Peter Anvin said rhetorically at one point, "Are you seriously suggesting changing our behaviour of all the conventional filesystems to a non-Unix behaviour, to match cramfs and squashfs?" 5. Linux 2.6.12-rc1-mm2 Released; Status Of -mm Development 24 Mar 2005 - 28 Mar 2005 (44 posts) Archive Link: "2.6.12-rc1-mm2" Topics: Digital Video Broadcasting, Kernel Release Announcement, Sound: ALSA, USB, Version Control People: Andrew Morton, Lee Revell Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.12-rc1-mm2, saying: ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.12-rc1/ 2.6.12-rc1-mm2/ * Added David Miller's networking tree to the -mm lineup as bk-net.patch. * Added Herbert Xu's crypto development tree to the -mm lineup as bk-cryptodev.patch. -mm kernels now aggregate Linus's tree and 34 subsystem trees. Usually they are pulled 3-4 hours before the release of the -mm kernel. Usually it is possible to determine the latest cset from each tree by looking at the first couple of lines of the relevant patch in the broken-out/ directory. Although sometimes it isn't there if I had to massage the diff. * There may be an x86_64 problem here, although it works for me. If it fails early in boot, try reverting x86_64-separate-amd-cmp-detection-from-hyper-threading.patch * There's some work here on the recent USB PM resume bugs. If you had problems there, please test and be sure to cc linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net in any reports. * Some fixes for the recent DRM problems. * Big DVB update * md updates * nfs4 server updates * Lots more fixes * Lots more bugs. Regarding the aggregation of the various subsystem trees and Linus's tree into the -mm series, Lee Revell asked: Do you notify the subsystem maintainers ahead of time so that critical fixes can be pushed to BK? I am thinking of the recent ALSA example, where the emu10k1 driver was b0rked in 2.6.12-mm1, but the fix had been in ALSA CVS for a week. Andrew replied, "Occasionally I'll go out and ping people, but almost always the subsystem guys know what the development cycle is, and they appropriately decide which code should go in, and when." He added, regarding ALSA, "We've been discussing how to get ALSA CVS into ALSA bk more promptly." 6. Linux 2.4.30-rc2 Released 25 Mar 2005 - 27 Mar 2005 (13 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.4.30-rc2" Topics: FS: ext2, Security People: Marcelo Tosatti Marcelo Tosatti announced Linux 2.4.30-rc2, saying: Here goes the second release candidate for v2.4.30. It contains a bunch of security updates (ext2 mkdir leak, af_bluetooth range checking, isofs corrupt media, load_elf_library DoS), an ia64 update, another round of networking fixes, amongst others. If nothing terrible shows up, this will become v2.4.30. 7. Linux 2.6.11.6 Released 25 Mar 2005 - 27 Mar 2005 (10 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.6.11.6" People: Chris Wright Chris Wright announced Linux 2.6.11.6, saying, "With some pending security fixes it's time to for a -stable update. So, here's 2.6.11.6, in the normal kernel.org places. This includes some security fixes, esp. one which closes a local root exploit in bluetooth." 8. Linux 2.4.30-rc3 Released 26 Mar 2005 - 30 Mar 2005 (9 posts) Archive Link: "Linux 2.4.30-rc3" Topics: Security People: Marcelo Tosatti Marcelo Tosatti announced Linux 2.4.30-rc3, saying, "A nasty typo happened while merging v2.6 load_elf_library() DoS fix, which could leap to oopses." 9. Linux 2.4.30-rc4 Released 30 Mar 2005 (1 post) Archive Link: "Linux 2.4.30-rc4" Topics: FS: ext3 People: Marcelo Tosatti Marcelo Tosatti announced Linux 2.4.30-rc4, saying: Here goes -rc4 to fix a couple of regressions have been confirmed: * ext3 IO EH changes need more work * Netfilter bogus mc_list deletion Hopefully this will become final in a day or two. Sharon And Joy Kernel Traffic is grateful to be developed on a computer donated by Professor 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 FlashMob Computing. Kernel Traffic is hosted by the generous folks at kernel.org. All pages on this site are copyright their original authors, and distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2.0.