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linux 2.3.99pre1 --rocks! (mostly)
this weekend I decided to try out a development kernel. I figured
2.3.99 is close enough to 2.4 that it should be fairly stable; especially on
low-end generic hardware like mine. so I grabbed 2.3.99pre1 from
ftp.kernel.org; and built it.
gotta say that people should try it, if they're even halfway
interested in how linux is progressing. going through the configuration
('make menuconfig' in my case) will show you a whole pile of improvements,
many of which don't make the media articles on 2.4. some of the ones which
stuck out for me:
-better help descriptions for kernel options! anything but perfect
and complete; but much improved documentation from the 2.2 series.
-better IDE/ATA support. there's an experimental "blacklist" which
knows about out-of-spec drives; and uses the most conservative settings for
accessing them. there are a lot more configuration options as well; and good
descriptions for them.
-better framebuffer support! I added framebuffer support for my
video card; and when I booted the kernel, it worked great! showed a nifty
little picture of Tux in the upper left corner of the screen as the boot
messages went by. haven't tried the XFB server yet.
-DRI (Direct Rendering Interface) support. yep; more graphics stuff
in the kernel. if you want it, you can have it; if not, you don't. from what
i uderstand this will be great for games & high-end graphics.
-more ppp configuration options. there are now options for 'ppp
deflate' and 'BSD compression' under ppp. I think 2.2 just built these for
you automatically. (I could be wrong).
-more filesystem support. smbfs (for smb mounts) is in the kernel;
UDF is an option now (someone was asking about that on the list not long
ago..). no reiserfs or ext3, tho.
built without a hitch, and I installed it.
booted up perfectly; going to frambuffer mode (80x30 characters) soon after
loading the kernel. (showed a little picture of tux at boot time).
only problem was that the System.map file for it was wrong; so I symlinked
to the proper one and rebooted. (is there a LILO option or boot parameter to
tell the kernel which system.map file to use? or a way to do without it?)
poked around at it for a few minutes; then tried dialing my ISP (Real-Time)
to send mail.
ppp refused to connect, tho. :(
it would dial, handshake normally, but then hang up and try dialing again.
it did this several times.
/var/log/messages said something about a connection timeout
so I tried to kill the process... difficult, since it keeps respawning (and
has a different PID each time, of course). "killall pppd" didn't catch it;
so I did a 'ps ax', found the PID, and quickly typed "kill -KILL 786"
*** WHAM! kernel panic! ***
guess there's a reason they call these "development kernels", and warn
people not to use them. :)
if I have some time, I'll try to see if I can duplicate this; and then see
if changing any kernel build options will affect it.
anyone have any advice on how to report a kernel bug?
in case anyone is curious, I attached my dmesg. (minus the Tux picture). ;>
Carl Soderstrom
*********************************************************
who is this "Colonel Panic" and why is he on my computer?
dmesg from 2.3.99pre1 follows:
Linux version 2.3.99-pre1 (root@iron) (gcc version egcs-2.91.66
19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)) #2 Sat Mar 18 21:29:51 CST 2000
e820: 0009fc00 @ 00000000 (usable)
e820: 00000400 @ 0009fc00 (reserved)
e820: 00010000 @ 000f0000 (reserved)
e820: 00010000 @ ffff0000 (reserved)
e820: 02f00000 @ 00100000 (usable)
On node 0 totalpages: 12288
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 8192 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Initializing CPU#0
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 133.12 BogoMIPS
Memory: 46024k/49152k available (1098k kernel code, 2740k reserved, 91k
data, 172k init, 0k highmem)
Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok.
Buffer-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
CPU: Cyrix 6x86L 2x Core/Bus Clock stepping 02
Checking 386/387 coupling... OK, FPU using exception 16 error reporting.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.36 (20000221) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfb640
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
Limiting direct PCI/PCI transfers.
Activating ISA DMA hang workarounds.
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.3
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 4096 bind 4096)
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd v1.6
matroxfb: Matrox Mystique (PCI) detected
matroxfb: MTRR's turned on
matroxfb: 640x480x8bpp (virtual: 640x6547)
matroxfb: framebuffer at 0xE0000000, mapped to 0xc3805000, size 4194304
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 80x30
fb0: MATROX VGA frame buffer device
Serial driver version 4.92 (2000-1-27) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI
enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS03 at 0x02e8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.30
ide: Assuming 40MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PIIX3: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
PIIX3: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
hda: ST32140A, ATA DISK drive
hdb: Maxtor 90680D4, ATA DISK drive
hdc: FUJITSU MPD3108AT, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: ST32140A, 2015MB w/128kB Cache, CHS=1023/64/63
hdb: Maxtor 90680D4, 6485MB w/256kB Cache, CHS=13176/16/63, (U)DMA
hdc: FUJITSU MPD3108AT, 10300MB w/512kB Cache, CHS=20928/16/63, (U)DMA
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 >
hdb: [EZD] [remap 0->1] [826/255/63] hdb1 < hdb5 >
hdc: hdc1 hdc2 < hdc5 hdc6 hdc7 hdc8 >
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
PPP generic driver version 2.4.1
PPP generic driver version 2.4.1
PPP Deflate Compression module registered
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 172k freed
Adding Swap: 131504k swap-space (priority -1)