Re: v2.6 vs v3.0

Mikael Pettersson
2002-10-01T07:49:27Z

Jens Axboe writes:
> On Mon, Sep 30 2002, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> > On Sun, 29 Sep 2002, Jens Axboe wrote:
> > > 2.5 IDE stability should be just as good as 2.4-ac.
> >
> > A laudable goal.
>
> If you know of any points where this is currently not true, I'd like to
> hear about it. I'm considering this goal reached. Whether 2.4-ac is at
> the level we want is a different story.

2.5.39 IDE is nowhere near as stable as 2.4.20-pre8:

- I have several boxes with decent PCI chipsets (BX, HX) but old disks.
With 2.5.39, they tend to spew a couple of ..._intr errors on boot.
(Sorry, can't be more specific right now. I won't be near those
boxes until Saturday.)

- Same ..._intr errors on my 486 with a qd6580 VLB controller.
It also has, in post-2.5.36 kernels, an instant-reboot problem which
occurs whenever I pass the ide0=qd65xx kernel option required to
activate its chipset support. (I _believe_ this is because the code
does something, like a kmalloc, which is illegal at the early
point IDE's __setup runs.) With 2.5.3x kernels, this box also sees
a steady stream of spurious interrupts while doing a kernel recompile,
something it doesn't see in older kernels.

- My Intel AL440LX box (440LX chipset, 20G Quantum Fireball) worked
brilliantly up to 2.5.36, but hangs *hard* with 2.5.39 as soon
as I tar zxf the kernel source tarball.
(May or may not be IDE. I'll try a minimal 2.5.39 tonight.)

All of these work perfectly with 2.4.20-pre8, indeed all previous 2.4
standard kernels, 2.2 + Andre's ide-patch, and with the exception of
the ..._intr errors, 2.5.36.

OTOH, I have three boxes which do appear to work fine with 2.5.39.

/Mikael