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Operating Systems Software Linux

Linux Kernel 2.6.3 Has Been Released [updated] 72

Posted by timothy from the shhhh dept.
justinarthur writes "At 04:36 UTC, Linux kernel version 2.6.3 has been made available. As is typical, downloaders are advised to utilize a mirror upon file availability. There are many changes from version 2.6.2, including recent ALSA patches, XFS fixes, and updates in many other areas." Update: 02/18 14:15 GMT by T : Peter Willis points out that kernel 2.4.25 (changelog) was also released, and writes "Incidentally, a security advisory dated today states there is an exploit in kernels up to 2.4.24 and 2.6.2, but the two releases today don't seem to reflect any changes, so get ready to patch up as soon as a patch pops up. More details on the vulnerability here."
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Linux Kernel 2.6.3 Has Been Released [updated] More

Linux Kernel 2.6.3 Has Been Released [updated]

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  • SCO's code is available for perusal (Score:5, Funny)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @05:31AM (#8314114) Homepage Journal
    Wait until 2.6.4 when that code has been removed.

  • Great work! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Michael Iatrou ( 681428 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @05:33AM (#8314122) Homepage
    $ cat ChangeLog-2.6.2 | grep -xP "<.*@.*>" | wc -l
    1105
    $ cat ChangeLog-2.6.3 | grep -xP "<.*@.*>" | wc -l
    1260
    155 more bug fixes from the last release... (yeah, I know, not a really sophisticated method...)

    • TODO: (Score:5, Funny)

      by gazbo ( 517111 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @08:20AM (#8314570)
      Locate and insert link to the "unnecessary use of cat" awards page.

      And I don't mean having feline carnal knowledge.

      • Re:TODO: (Score:3, Informative)

        by tcopeland ( 32225 ) *
        > "unnecessary use of cat" awards page

        Done [netsonic.fi].

        Many's the time I've been guily of a
        [tom@hal tom]$ cat pmdexport.xml | wc -l
        42031
        [tom@hal tom]$
        when a
        [tom@hal tom]$ wc -l pmdexport.xml
        42031 pmdexport.xml
        [tom@hal tom]$
        would have done just as well...

      • Re:TODO: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Here you go. [netsonic.fi].
        This is also a useless use of wc:
        $ grep -cxP "" ChangeLog-2.6.3
        1260

      • Re:TODO: (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @12:55PM (#8316803)
        One prog to read the lines, one prog to find them,
        One prog to count the lines and to the console bind them.

    • Re:Great work! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Feztaa ( 633745 )
      gazbo mentioned the unneccessary use of cat, you actually don't need any pipes at all:
      $ grep -xP "<.*@.*>" ChangeLog-2.6.2 -c
      1105

      $ grep -xP "<.*@.*>" ChangeLog-2.6.3 -c
      1260

    • so Linux is getting buggier as more bugs get fixed??

  • Gentoo disappointment... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dmayle ( 200765 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @05:53AM (#8314186) Homepage Journal

    I must admit to being a little disappointed right now with my Gentoo installation. I saw the article here, ran an emerge sync, and 2.6.3 is still marked as unstable. I guess I'll have to wait 15 minutes before I can install it... ;)

    On a slightly related sidenote, whichever developer it was who "broke" support for the 105th key (the "Europe" key) in 2.6.1 should be drawn and quartered. It took me forever to figure out why my tilde key wasn't working. I created a text file called tilde with the character in it so that everytime I needed a tilde, I could copy and paste it... Aaarrggh

    • Re:Gentoo disappointment... (Score:5, Informative)

      by vojtech ( 565680 ) <vojtech@suse.cz> on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @06:15AM (#8314246)
      That was me, thanks for the torture offer. ;)

      Btw, the problem was that 2.6.1 actually supported the 103rd European key, and users couldn't cope with that. Now (2.6.2+) it's treated like a regular backslash key, even though they're two different keys in reality.

      • Re:Gentoo disappointment... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dmayle ( 200765 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @06:46AM (#8314341) Homepage Journal
        I don't think it was that 2.6.1 supported the 103rd key, but that X doesn't. When I had 2.6.1 installed, X couldn't distinguish the key from the PrtScrn key, so there was no way to change the map file to support the key...
      • Hey, good to see a kernel developer here on our beloved /.! Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for all the joystick driver support over the years, it's been really excellent for my home set-top-box, among other things. So thanks for filling that niche.

        And thanks for personally helping me customize one of the joystick drivers once-upon-a-time many moons ago.

      • Humm... I have a multimedia keyboard on the PS/2 port and some keys make the kernel print a message and not forwading the keypress to X. Should I send info to you?

        OnTopic: I'm hoping they've fixed BTTV support, module works just fine on 2.6.0, causes a modprobe segfault and OOPS on 2.6.2 (and will kill init when compiled in ....). Yeah, I have an old Miro PCTV card.....

  • Changes include (Score:4, Informative)

    by halfnerd ( 553515 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @06:23AM (#8314278) Homepage
    KernelTrap [kerneltrap.org] reported "large merges" to 2.6.3-rc2, including:

    network driver updates, compiler warning fixes, PPC updates, a major ALSA update and SCSI updates, NFSv4 update, XFS fixes, ARM and sparc updates

    • Re:Changes include (Score:2, Informative)

      by halfnerd ( 553515 )
      And as if that wasn't enough, -rc4 introduced these:

      out-of-the-box ppc/ppc64 support, complete with G5 support (64-bit), large radeonfb driver updates, IDE oops fixes (and cleanups), and a SELinux update

      Slashdot really should consider linking to kerneltrap for each kernel update that has to be reported...

  • Summary Redefined by Changelog (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Red Pointy Tail ( 127601 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @06:39AM (#8314318)

    Summary of changes from v2.6.2 to v2.6.3


    At a tidy 9472 lines, I think the word 'summary' needs a new definition...

  • distributions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HoneyBunchesOfGoats ( 619017 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @06:51AM (#8314356)
    Any idea when we'll start seeing 2.6 as the kernel included in the big distributions?

  • Changelogs.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by noselasd ( 594905 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @06:55AM (#8314364)
    Those that wants detailed changelogs, or just wants to follow the very very latest changes/additions to the kernel source tree can do so here [bkbits.com]
    2.4 kernel tracking can be done here [bkbits.com]

  • Damn it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rysc ( 136391 ) <sorpigal@gmail.com> on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @07:05AM (#8314393) Homepage Journal
    I still haven't upgraded to 2.6.2!

    I grabbed the patch, applied it, reconfigured, recompiled, and set up grub. I've been waiting and waiting but still have not suffered a single crash, so I have been unable to justify rebooting.

  • Is any distro already with 2.6 kernel series? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ron_lima ( 733786 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @07:17AM (#8314414) Homepage Journal
    Is there already any distro with the kernel 2.6 series? I'm still waiting for the response of the market before going for kernel 2.6 yet. My 2.4.24 is really stable and running fine, but I'm anxious to see the threads improvements in 2.6...

  • Nforce fix went in (Score:5, Interesting)

    by motown ( 178312 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @09:26AM (#8314857)
    [ACPI] nforce2 timer lockup from Maciej W. Rozycki

    Oooh, does that mean I can finally enable both APIC and ACPI support in the kernel without experiencing lockups on my Nforce2-based system? I've been waiting for quite a while for this patch to go in. :)

    But weren't there supposed to be two (complementary) patches for this problem out there?

    len.brown@intel.com

    Thanks Intel guy, for allowing this AMD fix to go in. :D

    • It still crashes :( (Score:3, Informative)

      by motown ( 178312 )
      The bug's still there. :(

      The lockup can be easily triggered by running "hdparm -t /dev/hdX" (hdX being your harddrive) from the root prompt a couple of times.

      I know, I know, it's easy (as well as unfair) for me to bitch and moan, since I'm not a kernel developer. But knowing that there are patches out there that could solve this problem, but still haven't made it into the kernel, it's frustrating.

      For what it's worth: I haven't noticed any speed advantages between an APIC-enabled and non-APIC-enabled kern

      • Yes, I've tried this too. System locked up just as you said with the 'hdparm -t /dev/hdX'.

        What was fixed by this fix from the 2.6.3 kernel changlog?

        [ACPI] nforce2 timer lockup from Maciej W. Rozycki

        Can anyone please let me know where I can find a patch that can fix this problem properly?

        Thank you

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @09:47AM (#8314987)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • 435 is a low number to you? For how long have you been working at Pixar? My Radeon Mobility M7 *occasionally* gets 70 or higher at that resolution, with that amount of video RAM. BTW, the reason it never *feels* like 435 fps is probably because you're running ATi's glxgears which somehow does *wonderfully* for testing. Tuxracer, RtCW, Unreal2003, whatever else you're using, don't have the same mysterious code that ATi's glxgears does, IIUC.
      • 435 is a low number to you? For how long have you been working at Pixar? My Radeon Mobility M7 *occasionally* gets 70 or higher at that resolution, with that amount of video RAM.

        70?? And video ram should have nothing to do with it, glxgears is just blasting out pixels like a machine gun. Unless Apple did some sort of magical OpenGL kung-fu to their X11 implementation, I'd say that something isn't right on your end. I rarely get less than 1000fps reported from glx gears in a big window (though that drops w
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • However, I'm still only getting 435fps in glxgears with a 16MB graphics card at 1024x768 with DRI definitely on.

      I've heard that glxgears is a terrible benchmark, but it piqued my curiousity enough to fire it up on my PowerBook (Radeon Mobility 9600, Mac OS X 10.3.2 w/ optional X11 installed). With the window geometry set to 1024x768 I'm getting ~1800 to ~2700 fps, it really bounces around. Given that glxgears doesn't use any texturing nor any other wizbang new features, I'm guessing that something's not r
      • Maybe it's even rendering with software?

        I got 20fps with software (MesaGL) rendering four years ago on a 400MHz K6-II. On any relatively recent computer, not even software rendering should be that slow.
    • Please stop using glxgears as benchmark. This application draws just few triangles, without textures. Try to use glxgears in software and hardware mode. Then try any serious app, and compare.
  • I'm just waiting for the I20 drivers to finally compile cleanly in 2.6. I haven't been able to compile 2.6 on a server here because it requires I20 support that is apparently broken. Bummer...

  • Debian and Slackware already patched (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mst76 ( 629405 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @01:25PM (#8317140)
    According to the changelogs, Debian and Slackware already have the patches for the bounds checking error in place. I didn't check the other distributions. (Or rather, I don't know where to check most of them quickly.)

  • Vulnerabitily fixed in 2.6.3 and 2.4.25 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shanes ( 141586 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @02:41PM (#8317980)
    At least acording to Linus [iu.edu].
    • ... and 2.4.25

      From the ChangeLog [kernel.org] of kernel-2.4.25 [kernel.org]:

      Summary of changes from v2.4.24-pre3 to v2.4.25-pre4 [...] Andrea Arcangeli: malicious users of mremap() syscall can gain priviledges

      Date of patch-2.4.25-pre4-pre5 (did not find pre3-pre4) ist Jan-15! Why did it take so long to get the crowd informed? Same thing happened with the other do_mremap() bug.

      Hacker's guide:

      • watch changelog of testkernels
      • wait for words like "malicious" or "exploit"
      • have fun ...

      /graf0z.

  • ACPI cure for 2.4.25 HOW-TO (Score:5, Informative)

    by Quietti ( 257725 ) on Thursday February 19, 2004 @11:05AM (#8326351) Journal
    Many people complained that kernels since 2.4.22 broke ACPI support on their hardware.

    The cause is a brand new ACPI implementation which has a cutoff date of January 1st 2001. If your computer's BIOS is older than that, any ACPI support that might be present will be completely ignored by the kernel. ACPI hacker Len Brown explains that while the cutoff date is indeed arbitrary, it was already being used by certain distributions who noticed a pattern in when BIOSes with broken ACPI support where manufactured, so the ACPI hackers stuck by that concensus.

    If you know for fact that ACPI worked fine on your computer until 2.4.21, you can enable it again: the cure is to put acpi=force in your bootloader configuration options.

    Len also noted that there might eventually be a whitelist of older BIOS versions whose ACPI support is spotless. If you feel that your motherboard is one of those that should be whitelisted, file a bug at Kernel.org [kernel.org]. Len makes absolutely no promise whatsoever that such a whitelist will ever be implemented, but still leaves the door open for people to manifest their interest via the above bug report form.

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