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David Weinehall [interview] has released the 2.0.40 kernel, also known as "The Moss-covered Tortoise". This is the first stable release of the 2.0 kernel since 2.0.39 was released over three years ago in January of 2001 [story]. David explains:
"This release fixes several remote information-leaks, a few local exploits, possible group descriptor corruption for ext2fs, a few network related issues, a few SUS/LSB compliance issues, and various other minor changes. A complete changelog can be found at the same places the kernel itself can be downloaded."
Download a copy of the 2.0.40 stable kernel and changelog from a local kernel.org mirror. Read on for David's full email, further discussing why you might want to upgrade.
From: David Weinehall [email blocked] To: Linux-Kernel Mailing List [email blocked] Subject: [ANNOUNCE] Linux-kernel 2.0.40 aka ``The Moss-covered Tortoise'' Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2004 17:39:10 +0100 Umea, Sweden, 2004-02-08, 14:30 CET Hereby I wish to announce Linux-kernel v2.0.40, aka ``The Moss-covered Tortoise''. This release fixes several remote information-leaks, a few local exploits, possible group descriptor corruption for ext2fs, a few network related issues, a few SUS/LSB compliance issues, and various other minor changes. A complete changelog can be found at the same places the kernel itself can be downloaded. This upgrade is of medium urgency, and is a recommended upgrade if you experience problems. This kernel is only maintained, not developed, and hence, if you miss support for hardware/software or any feature, then you should consider upgrading to either the latest v2.4.xx kernel or the latest v2.6.xx kernel. The kernel can be found at: ftp.xx.kernel.org (where xx is your country-code) Complete tarballs (compressed with gz and bzip2 respectively): /pub/linux/kernel/v2.0/linux-2.0.40.tar.gz /pub/linux/kernel/v2.0/linux-2.0.40.tar.bz2 As a patch to be applied on top of the v2.0.39 kernel-tree (compressed with gz and bzip2 respectively): /pub/linux/kernel/v2.0/patch-2.0.40.gz /pub/linux/kernel/v2.0/patch-2.0.40.bz2 Note that some mirrors might not keep both compression-formats. Regards: David Weinehall [email blocked] -- /) David Weinehall [email blocked] /) Northern lights wander (\ // Maintainer of the v2.0 kernel // Dance across the winter sky // \) http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/ (/ Full colour fire (/
Finally!
Finally it is here! I hope we don't need to wait another 3 years for 2.0.41. :-)
--
Regards,
Markus
The wait for 2.0.41
Oh, rather, hope that we have to wait another 3 years. I won't release anytime soon unless any important security or stability issues surface, thus it would be rather bad to see 2.0.41 too soon ;-)
Seriously though, I hope to release the first pre-release for 2.0.41 within the next few months, but that one will likely only contain fixes for warnings, and some updates to menuconfig.
Ritgh
Hopefully you wont release 2.0.41-pre1 before I have the chance to try out 2.0.40 (1.3, maintainance week) :)
And of course, as we talked earlier, the 32 bit jiffie will roll over before 2.0.41 though, but maybe I could go the -pre way this time too, so I wouldn't have to wait as long. :)
And of course, three years is a good release cycle.
--
Regards,
Markus
That depends on how long you
That depends on how long you take to test 2.0.40... I guess you have a few months at least.
As for jiffie rollover, you're welcome to submit a patch that fixes this. I cannot promise to accept it, but I will at least have a serious look at it.
new breath for my 286 :)
my good old 286 router serves me for that 3 years, without any hardware failure! So i'll give him a new kernel as a present :)
And exactly how do you manage
And exactly how do you manage to run a Linux-kernel on a 286? The 286 has never been a supported processor... I assume you mean a 386 at least?!
sorry, ofcourse i mean 386, a
sorry, ofcourse i mean 386, and i want to type "386". it's all a bad sleep...
much more easily...
...than running it on my AN/UYK-7...
Kernel names
I wish I could name a kernel... I might fork my own tree :)
2.6.3-np1 "The Frivolous Forker"
RE: Kernel Names
Now that name is bloody beautiful :)
I would download it just to use a kernel named forker.
Most efficient for older hardware?
Which would be more efficient for older hardware like a 386 or 486, 2.0 or 2.2? I'd assume 2.4 and 2.6 wouldn't do as well for a multitude of reasons, size being just one. Is it true that the TiVo runs on 2.0 (perhaps still?)? Spiffy that then.
re: Most efficient for older hardware?
The fact is that it's possible to use both, and that 2.6 may even be faster for old computers. 2.4 runs fine on one p133, and 2.6 too. The problem may come in with various hardware or different vga=".." options.
I think it's possible to run anything on a i386, I just happen to run 2.0.40 atm.
And the size isn't a problem, just configure the kernel right and you'll get a _small_ kernel, whatever you're using.
--
Regards,
Markus
I saw a feature in the kernel
I saw a feature in the kernel section of lwn.net in the last couple of weeks about a project to pare done the 2.6 kernel for running on small 386 machines. They've aparently gotten a compressed image file down to under 200k, which is better I managed back in the days when I cared. Somebody even claims to be running it on a 2.5MB 386 system.
I would guess that if you can get hold of a sufficiently pared down kernel for your memory constraints, that you may benefit from using the 2.6 kernel, since the scheduler is supposed to deal with high loads better than its predicessors. That's the sort of problem that is going to be far bigger on a 386 than a fancy new 10GHZ system. Unfortunately I think the overhead for operations has crept up over the years, and the cost is far higher on a 386.
Optimising
If you choose your options in the kernel carefully and set the Hz to 100 then 2.6 will perform very well on low spec machines. The only thing so far that has been shown to be an issue is under heavy swap pressure it performs badly, but Nick Piggin and the namesys people (of reiserFS fame) are working on it.