[STATUS 2.5] May 15, 2002

[STATUS 2.5] May 15, 2002

[Guillaume Boissiere]

This week's update is available at http://kernelnewbies.org/status/

As usual, if your favorite feature is not in there, or if you spot
an error, let me know.  I have been quite busy this week and 
therefore more likely to have missed something.

Enjoy!

-- Guillaume

---------------------------------------
Kernel 2.5 status  -  May 15th, 2002
(Latest kernel release is 2.5.15)


Features:

Merged
o in 2.5.1+   Rewrite of the block IO (bio) layer             (Jens Axboe)
o in 2.5.2    Initial support for USB 2.0                     (David Brownell, Greg Kroah-
Hartman, etc.)
o in 2.5.2    Per-process namespaces, late-boot cleanups      (Al Viro, Manfred Spraul)
o in 2.5.2+   New scheduler for improved scalability          (Ingo Molnar)
o in 2.5.2+   New kernel device structure (kdev_t)            (Linus Torvalds, etc.)
o in 2.5.3    IDE layer update                                (Andre Hedrick)
o in 2.5.3    Support reiserfs external journal               (Reiserfs team)
o in 2.5.3    Generic ACL (Access Control List) support       (Nathan Scott)
o in 2.5.3    PnP BIOS driver                                 (Alan Cox, Thomas Hood, Dave 
Jones, etc.)
o in 2.5.3+   New driver model & unified device tree          (Patrick Mochel)
o in 2.5.4    Add preempt kernel option                       (Robert Love, MontaVista team)
o in 2.5.4    Support for Next Generation POSIX Threading     (NGPT team)
o in 2.5.4+   Porting all input devices over to input API     (Vojtech Pavlik, James Simmons)
o in 2.5.5    Add ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)    (ALSA team)
o in 2.5.5    Pagetables in highmem support                   (Ingo Molnar, Arjan van de Ven)
o in 2.5.5    New architecture: AMD 64-bit (x86-64)           (Andi Kleen, x86-64 Linux team)
o in 2.5.5    New architecture: PowerPC 64-bit (ppc64)        (Anton Blanchard, ppc64 team)
o in 2.5.5+   IDE subsystem major cleanup                     (Martin Dalecki, Vojtech Pavlik)
o in 2.5.6    Add JFS (Journaling FileSystem from IBM)        (JFS team)
o in 2.5.6    per_cpu infrastructure                          (Rusty Russell)
o in 2.5.6    HDLC (High-level Data Link Control) update      (Krzysztof Halasa)
o in 2.5.6    smbfs Unicode and large file support            (Urban Widmark) 
o in 2.5.7    New driver API for Wireless Extensions          (Jean Tourrilhes)
o in 2.5.7    Video for Linux (V4L) redesign                  (Gerd Knorr)
o in 2.5.7    Futexes (Fast Lightweight Userspace Semaphores) (Rusty Russell, etc.)
o in 2.5.7+   NAPI network interrupt mitigation               (Jamal Hadi Salim, Robert Olsson, 
Alexey Kuznetsov)
o in 2.5.7+   ACPI (Advanced Configuration & Power Interface) (Andy Grover, ACPI team)
o in 2.5.8    Syscall interface for CPU task affinity         (Robert Love)
o in 2.5.8    Radix-tree pagecache                            (Momchil Velikov, Christoph 
Hellwig)
o in 2.5.8+   Delayed disk block allocation                   (Andrew Morton)
o in 2.5.9    Smarter IRQ balancing                           (Ingo Molnar)
o in 2.5.11   Replace old NTFS driver with NTFS TNG driver    (Anton Altaparmakov)
o in 2.5.11   Fast walk dcache                                (Hanna Linder)
o in 2.5.11+  Rewrite of the framebuffer layer                (James Simmons)
o in 2.5.12+  Rewrite of the buffer layer                     (Andrew Morton)
o in 2.5.14   Support for IDE TCQ (Tagged Command Queueing)   (Jens Axboe)
o in 2.5.14   Bluetooth support (no longer experimental!)     (Maxim Krasnyansky, Bluetooth team)

o in -dj      Rewrite of the console layer                    (James Simmons)
o in -dj      New MTRR (Memory Type Range Register) driver    (Patrick Mochel)
o in -ac      Strict address space accounting                 (Alan Cox)
o in -ac      PCMCIA Zoom video support                       (Alan Cox)
o in -ac      More complete IEEE 802.2 stack                  (Arnaldo, Jay Schullist, from 
Procom donated code)
o in -ac      Add support for CPU clock/voltage scaling       (Erik Mouw, Dave Jones, Russell 
King, Arjan van de Ven)

o Ready       Better event logging for enterprise systems     (Larry Kessler, evlog team)
o Ready       New quota system supporting plugins             (Jan Kara)
o Ready       Linux booting ELF images                        (Eric Biederman)
o Ready       First pass at LinuxBIOS support                 (Eric Biederman)
o Ready       Build option for Linux Trace Toolkit (LTT)      (Karim Yaghmour)
o Ready       New kernel build system (kbuild 2.5)            (Keith Owens)

o Beta        Serial driver restructure                       (Russell King)
o Beta        New IO scheduler                                (Jens Axboe)
o Beta        Add XFS (A journaling filesystem from SGI)      (XFS team)
o Beta        New VM with reverse mappings                    (Rik van Riel)
o Beta        Fix long-held locks for low scheduling latency  (Andrew Morton, Robert Love, etc.)
o Beta        Add Linux Security Module (LSM)                 (LSM team)
o Beta        Hotplug CPU support                             (Rusty Russell)
o Beta        Per-mountpoint read-only, union-mounts, unionfs (Al Viro)
o Beta        EVMS (Enterprise Volume Management System)      (EVMS team)
o Beta        LVM (Logical Volume Manager) v2.0               (LVM team)
o Beta        Dynamic Probes                                  (Suparna Bhattacharya, dprobes 
team)
o Beta        Scalable CPU bitmasks                           (Russ Weight)
o Beta        Page table sharing                              (Daniel Phillips)
o Beta        ext2/ext3 online resize support                 (Andreas Dilger)
o Beta        Add User-Mode Linux (UML)                       (Jeff Dike)
o Beta        UDF Write support for CD-R/RW (packet writing)  (Jens Axboe, Peter Osterlund)
o Beta        Add hardware sensors drivers                    (lm_sensors team)
o Beta        New kernel config system: CML2                  (Eric Raymond)
o Beta        Read-Copy Update Mutual Exclusion               (Dipankar Sarma, Rusty Russell, 
Andrea Arcangeli, LSE Team)
o Beta        USB device (not host) support                   (Stuart Lynne, Greg Kroah-Hartman)

o Alpha       Better support of high-end NUMA machines        (NUMA team)
o Alpha       Add Asynchronous IO (aio) support               (Ben LaHaise)
o Alpha       Overhaul PCMCIA support                         (David Woodhouse, David Hinds)
o Alpha       Full compliance with IPv6                       (Alexey Kuznetzov, Jun Murai, 
Yoshifuji Hideaki, USAGI team)
o Alpha       UMSDOS (Unix under MS-DOS) Rewrite              (Al Viro)
o Alpha       Scalable Statistics Counter                     (Ravikiran Thirumalai)
o Alpha       Linux Kernel Crash Dumps                        (Matt Robinson, LKCD team)
o Alpha       Add support for NFS v4                          (NFS v4 team)
o Alpha       ext2/ext3 large directory support: HTree index  (Daniel Phillips, Christopher Li, 
Ted Ts'o)
o Alpha       Improved i2o (Intelligent Input/Ouput) layer    (Alan Cox)
o Alpha       Remove use of the BKL (Big Kernel Lock)         (Alan Cox, Robert Love, Neil 
Brown, Dave Hansen, etc.)
o Alpha       Zerocopy NFS                                    (Hirokazu Takahashi)

o Started     More complete NetBEUI stack                     (Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo, from 
Procom donated code)
o Started     Change all drivers to new driver model          (All maintainers)
o Started     Reiserfs v4                                     (Reiserfs team)
o Started     Move ISDN4Linux to CAPI based interface         (ISDN4Linux team)
o Started     Direct pagecache <-> BIO disk I/O               (Andrew Morton)

o Draft #2    New lightweight library (klibc)                 (Greg Kroah-Hartman)
o Draft #3    Replace initrd by initramfs                     (H. Peter Anvin, Al Viro)
o Planning    Add thrashing control                           (Rik van Riel)
o Planning    Remove all hardwired drivers from kernel        (Alan Cox, etc.)
o Planning    Generic parameter/command line interface        (Keith Owens)
o Planning    New mount API                                   (Al Viro)
o Planning    Implement new device naming convention          (Device naming team)


Cleanups:

Merged
o in 2.5.3    Break Configure.help into multiple files        (Linus Torvalds)
o in 2.5.3    Untangle include file dependancies              (Dave Jones, Roman Zippel)
o in 2.5.4    Per network protocol slabcache & sock.h         (Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo)
o in 2.5.4    Per filesystem slabcache & fs.h                 (Daniel Phillips, Jeff Garzik, Al 
Viro)
o in 2.5.6    Killing kdev_t for block devices                (Al Viro)

o in -dj      Split up x86 setup.c into managable pieces      (Patrick Mochel)

o Ready       Switch to ->get_super() for file_system_type    (Al Viro)
o Ready       ->getattr() ->setattr() ->permission() changes  (Al Viro)

o Beta        file.h and INIT_TASK                            (Benjamin LaHaise)
o Beta        Proper UFS fixes, ext2 and locking cleanups     (Al Viro)
o Beta        Lifting limitations on mount(2)                 (Al Viro)
o Beta        Remove dcache_lock                              (Maneesh Soni, IBM team)

o Started     Reorder x86 initialization                      (Dave Jones, Randy Dunlap)

Have some free time and want to help?  Check out the Kernel Janitor 
TO DO list for a list of source code cleanups you can work on.  
A great place to start learning more about kernel internals!