And oh, btw..

And oh, btw..

[Linus Torvalds]

In a move unanimously hailed by the trade press and industry analysts as
being a sure sign of incipient braindamage, Linus Torvalds (also known as
the "father of Linux" or, more commonly, as "mush-for-brains") decided
that enough is enough, and that things don't get better from having the
same people test it over and over again. In short, 2.4.0 is out there.

Anxiously awaited for the last too many months, 2.4.0 brings to the table
many improvements, none of which come to mind to the exhausted release
manager right now. "It's better", was the only printable quote. Pressed
for details, Linus bared his teeth and hissed at reporters, most of which
suddenly remembered that they'd rather cover "Home and Gardening" than the
IT industry anyway.

Anyway, have fun. And don't bother reporting any bugs for the next few
days. I won't care anyway.

		Linus

-----
Changes since the prerelease:

David Mosberger:
 - ia64 update

NIIBE Yutaka:
 - SuperH update

Karsten Keil:
 - re-do ISDN certification checksums

Tim Waugh:
 - VIA DMA=255 bug fix
 - IEEE 1284 config message
 - IEEE 1284 probe fix
 - missing printk argument
 - ppa driver reconnect timeout tweak

Matthew Dharm:
 - USB hotplug fix - specify exactly which fields to match on

Rik Faith:
 - drm driver synch with XFree86-4.0.2
 - oops: we synched a bit too far. Backsync to the _real_ 4.0.2 level.

Geert Uytterhoeven:
 - m68k updates
  - Amiga resource management updates
  - m68k loops_per_jiffy updates
  - m68k keyboard delay/repeat
  - m68k SCSI updates
  - m68k exported symbols update
  - m68k Lance updates
  - fbdev config fixes
  - Amiga Ethernet updates
  - Amiga builtin serial updates
  - m68k config updates
  - m68k __ashldi3
  - Amiga Y2K fixes (a bit late, wouldn't you say?)
  - Misc m68k updates
  - fbdev init order fix
  - Mac/m68k IDE updates
  - m68k asm constraint fixes


Marc ZYNGIER:
 - SMP lockup with IrDA

David Huggins-Daines:
 - remove extra "remove_wait_queue()" in drivers/sound/cs46xx.c.  It
   would lock up badly on nonblocking reads.

Matti Aarnio:
 - teach tulip driver about media types 5 and 6
 - fix ATM LANE driver linkage issues
 - fix DECNET driver unload time cleanup
 - fix pointer comparison type warning
 - get rid of excessive '##' token pasting that newer gcc's warn about

Keith Owens:
 - fix drm Makefile to not use the same objects built-in and in a module
 - update modutils version numbers to match 2.4.x kernel

Russell Kroll:
 - fix radio card drivers that got the request_region sense inverted

Rich Baum:
 - Remove compile warnings with newer gcc versions for lables with no
   expression at the end of a compound block

Andreas Franck:
 - Make the x86 semaphore implementation compile properly with current
   gcc snapshots.  Newer gcc's will release the memory allocated for a
   data structure too early if only the pointer to that memory is passed
   to an asm.

Alan Cox:
 - pcxx.c: make it compile ("mseconds" -> "msec")
 - Documentation: fix typos/glitches
 - CCISS bugfix
 - riscom setup bugfix
 - toshoboe and wavelan overlarge udelay
 - clean/bugfixes amateur radio
 - yam/mkiss build fix
 - old tulip chips driver update
 - sg driver unchecked scsi_allocate_request
 - i810 audio fix
 - RTC CMOS locking fixes

David Miller:
 - update sparc to "loops_per_jiffy"
 - sparc32 uses ix86-like semaphores now
 - missing flush_dcache_page in kiovec support layer
 - netfilter: use "long" for values operated on using bitops
 - more empty statement warning fixes
 - LVM 32-bit compat ioctl checks
 - Include param.h into Sparc64's delay.h to get HZ define
 - Fix Zilog serial port speed setting checks

Neil Brown:
 - raid5 missing unlock on degraded array
 - knfsd inode semaphore: get it early

Johannes Erdfelt:
 - USB oops on unplug fix for dc2xx and ov511 driver

Mitch Davis:
 - prettier printout of IDE registers if < 0x100

Richard Henderson:
 - alpha "loops_per_jiffy" update

Oliver Neukum:
 - fix for SMP race in v4l open()

Andreas Bombe:
 - Makefile fix for ieee1394
 - IEEE 1394 up-to-date

Kai Germaschewski:
 - fix ISDN diversion services name-clash (and crash)

Andre Hedrick:
 - IDE chipset update, DVD-RAM update

Rik van Riel:
 - don't deactivate partially written pages in generic_file_write

Michael Lang:
 - ibmmca upgrade: docs and small bugs

Marko Kreen:
 - big udelay's in fb drivers. Fix.

Me:
 - drivers/net/rcpci45.c: make it compile ("rcpci_pci_table" ->
   "rcpci45_pci_table")
 - mark_buffer_dirty() only does a "balance_dirty()" if the
   buffer was previously clean.
 - mm sanity: never decrement page count past zero
 - no synchronous bdflush wait
 - mm VM scanning and exit race cleanup: mmlist_lock

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Re: And oh, btw..

[Marcelo Tosatti]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> 
> In a move unanimously hailed by the trade press and industry analysts as
> being a sure sign of incipient braindamage, Linus Torvalds (also known as
> the "father of Linux" or, more commonly, as "mush-for-brains") decided
> that enough is enough, and that things don't get better from having the
> same people test it over and over again. In short, 2.4.0 is out there.

I have 1 patch which has not been answered and I still dont know if you
want it only for 2.5.

I dunno if you've read the swap write clustering patch I sent sometime
ago. Basically it changes swap_writepage to search for physically
contiguous dirty swap cache pages and if it finds them, it writes all of
them in a cluster. The nice thing is that we save disk seek time which are
well known to be nasty.

I've received one report of 13% improvement with dbench and reiserfs, and
on my own benchmarks I've seen improvements of 15% successful write merges
on the swap device (using SAR patch to measure).

I'm not sure if its a intrusive change now with 2.4.0 released. What do
you think?

----

Another problem which we have now is swap-in readahead. Currently swapin
readahead is done on a physical device basis.

The problem is that physical swap pages are not necessarily virtually
contiguous. So what can happen (and is happening) is that we readahead
pages which are not going to be used soon.

What we probably want to do is only readahead swap pages if they really
are virtually contiguous too, to avoid wasting memory and IO processing
with "guesses" about the swap device.

I have a patch which does that (I'm still searching for an SMP deadlock
but I'm looking at it). It walks the virtually contiguous pte's starting
from the one which was faulted, and then it only cluster them if they are
virtually contiguous too.

I'll send the patch as soon as I figured out the deadlock and stress it a
more.

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Re: And oh, btw..

[Linus Torvalds]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
>
> I have 1 patch which has not been answered and I still dont know if you
> want it only for 2.5.

The swap clustering looks ok, but it also looked like something I could
safely delay until a bit later in the 2.4.x series. Basically, the
PageDirty handling is new enough that I didn't want to add any other
wrinkles on top of it, even if they looked clean..

Life does not end at 2.4.0. Think o fit more as a "no more excuses"
release.

		Linus

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Can I submit a bug report on this mailing list?

[Evan Thompson]

Alright.

I hear about the 2.4.0 release.  I have, in my mailbox, many messages
titled "Re: And oh, btw...", BUT NO ORIGINAL MESSAGE!  What happened?
Is my stupid mailserver selective or something?

Anyways.  My bug report is: "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org does not send
me important mails that are important and that should be sent due to
their high importancy."
-- 
+----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Evan Thompson                    |            POWERED BY:            |
| evaner@bigfoot.com               | Linux cd168990-a 2.4.0-prerelease |
| Freelance Computer Nerd          |  #1 Wed Jan 3 16:30:45 CST 2001   |
| http://evaner.penguinpowered.com |   i686 unknown (2001/01/02 19:35) |
+----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
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Re: Can I submit a bug report on this mailing list?

[Rik van Riel]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Evan Thompson wrote:

> I hear about the 2.4.0 release.  I have, in my mailbox, many
> messages titled "Re: And oh, btw...", BUT NO ORIGINAL MESSAGE!  
> What happened? Is my stupid mailserver selective or something?
> 
> Anyways.  My bug report is: "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org does
> not send me important mails that are important and that should
> be sent due to their high importancy."

Says the guy who reads his linux-kernel email on bigfoot.com  ;)

Rik
--
Virtual memory is like a game you can't win;
However, without VM there's truly nothing to loose...

		http://www.surriel.com/
http://www.conectiva.com/	http://distro.conectiva.com.br/

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Re: And oh, btw..

[Jordan Mendelson]

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> In a move unanimously hailed by the trade press and industry analysts as
> being a sure sign of incipient braindamage, Linus Torvalds (also known as
> the "father of Linux" or, more commonly, as "mush-for-brains") decided
> that enough is enough, and that things don't get better from having the
> same people test it over and over again. In short, 2.4.0 is out there.

Everyone who has ever been the press spotlight knows that most of it is
inaccurate, rushed and written to bring in readers rather than to report
well thought out stories.

Go home, get out the epson salts, fill up the tub with hot water and
just relax.


Jordan
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Re: And oh, btw..

[dep]

On Thursday 04 January 2001 07:36 pm, Jordan Mendelson wrote:

| Go home, get out the epson salts, fill up the tub with hot water
| and just relax.

right after getting the source posted on kernel.org!<g>
-- 
dep
--
bipartisanship: an illogical construct not unlike the idea that
if half the people like red and half the people like blue, the 
country's favorite color is purple.
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Re: And oh, btw..

[Jordan Mendelson]

dep wrote:
> 
> On Thursday 04 January 2001 07:36 pm, Jordan Mendelson wrote:
> 
> | Go home, get out the epson salts, fill up the tub with hot water
> | and just relax.
> 
> right after getting the source posted on kernel.org!<g>


Sigh, try:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/testing/prerelease-diff


Please don't flood kernel.org though... use a mirror.


Jordan
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Re: And oh, btw..

[Alan Cox]

> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/testing/prerelease-diff
> Please don't flood kernel.org though... use a mirror.

You'll find the proper 2.4.0 on

	ftp://ftp.linux.org/pub/linux/linux-2.4/linux-2.4.0.tar.gz


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Re: And oh, btw..

[J . A . Magallon]

On 2001.01.05 Alan Cox wrote:
> > http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/testing/prerelease-diff
> > Please don't flood kernel.org though... use a mirror.
> 
> You'll find the proper 2.4.0 on
> 
> 	ftp://ftp.linux.org/pub/linux/linux-2.4/linux-2.4.0.tar.gz
> 

Also ftp://ftp.uk.linux.org/pub/linux/linux-2.4/linux-2.4.0.tar.gz,
seems less saturated. 15 Kb/s from Spain over cable-modem.

-- 
J.A. Magallon                                         $> cd pub
mailto:jamagallon@able.es                             $> more beer

Linux werewolf 2.2.19-pre6 #1 SMP Wed Jan 3 21:28:10 CET 2001 i686

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Re: And oh, btw..

[Alan Cox]

> > http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/testing/prerelease-diff
> > Please don't flood kernel.org though... use a mirror.
> 
> You'll find the proper 2.4.0 on
> 
> 	ftp://ftp.linux.org/pub/linux/linux-2.4/linux-2.4.0.tar.gz

Oops slight detail error

	ftp.linux.org.uk


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Re: And oh, btw..

[Matthias Andree]

On Thu, 04 Jan 2001, Jordan Mendelson wrote:

> Everyone who has ever been the press spotlight knows that most of it is
> inaccurate, rushed and written to bring in readers rather than to report
> well thought out stories.

Money rules the world, not truth.

-- 
Matthias Andree
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Re: And oh, btw..

[Miles Lane]

Is there a patch against test12 somewhere?  I don't see it.

Have some happy downtime,

	Miles



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Re: And oh, btw..

[Linus Torvalds]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Miles Lane wrote:
>
> Is there a patch against test12 somewhere?  I don't see it.

In v2.4/test-kernels:
 patch-2.4.0-prerelease.gz - patch from test12 to the prerelease
 prerelease-to-final.gz - patch from prerelease to final.

And it will apparently take some time for the ftp servers to sync up: when
I moved the test-kernels away from the main v2.4 directory I didn't think
of the fact that the mirror scripts will spend quite a bit of time just
synchronizing everything (the fact that _I_ did it with a simple "mv" on
the master copies doesn't mean that the mirror services will be able to do
it ;)

Right now the sync from the master copy has gotten to the patches in the
test directory, which means that it shouldn't take more than maybe 15
minutes until everything has been synched - but I suspect that if people
pound on ftp.kernel.org it will only slow stuff down further, so try to
see if you can find other mirrors that got in early and don't synchronize
the test-kernels...

		Linus

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Re: And oh, btw..

[Matthias Andree]

On Thu, 04 Jan 2001, Linus Torvalds wrote:

>   - Amiga Y2K fixes (a bit late, wouldn't you say?)

Might relabeling them 3rd Millennium fixes do any good? :-)

Anyhow, thanks.

-- 
Matthias Andree
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Re: And oh, btw..

[Anders Gustafsson]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 04:01:22PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^

> same people test it over and over again. In short, 2.4.0 is out there.

Happy birthday 2.4-kernel!

-- 
Anders Gustafsson - andersg@0x63.nu - http://0x63.nu/