Andrea Arcangeli released 2.4.23pre6aa2 with several fixes. One bug he describes:

"Fixup overflow in p6 checksum routing that crashes sendfile, from Andi Kleen. IIRC I found and fixed (though fixed w/o fixmap) this same bug too in 1999, but at that time nobody listened about my claim that it would eventually crash machines due alignment issues."

The next -aa release is slated to include "libata for SATA" and a "UML update". Read on for the full changelog.

Andrea Arcangeli's recent 2.4.23pre6aa1 kernel introduces some interesting new dynamic functionality. He explains:

"Probably the most notable new feature is that you can now pass 'desktop' as parameter to the kernel in lilo to ask the kernel to behave optimally for a desktop machine. No need of compile time options anymore. For more experienced users HZ=500/HZ=50/HZ=200 should work fine too, then you can tune the timeslices by hand but you must know what you're doing."

Later in the email he cautions users, "Due the amount of changes you may not want to run this on any production box", though noting that it's the other changes to be concerned about, not the new ability to dynamically configure HZ and timeslices. Read on for the full changelog with many more details. Scroll down toward the bottom of the changelog for more information about dynamic HZ and dynamic timeslices.

Andrew Morton [interview] released the 2.6.0-test6-mm2 kernel with the following comments,

"A large series of VFS patches from Al Viro which replace usage of file->f_dentry->d_inode->i_mapping with the new file->f_mapping. This is mainly so we can get disk hot removal right. More work on the O_DIRECT-vs-buffered data coherency problem. It's still not quite there."

Read on for the full changelog.

Marcelo Tosatti has release 2.4.23-pre6 with the following comments:

"It contains several ACPI fixes (the USB "not working anymore" problems in -pre5 should be gone), support for the SCTP protocol, x86-64/PPC/SH merges, network drivers update (EMAC, e1000, sk98lin), megaraid update, amongst others."

Read on for the full changelog.

Andrew Morton [interview] released 2.6.0-test6-mm1 with the following comments,

"Lots of small things mainly. The O_DIRECT-vs-buffers I/O locking changes appear to be complete, so testing attention on O_DIRECT workloads would be useful."

Read on for the full changelog.

Is there any information regarding how to compile the 2.6 kernel to work with Redhat 9 / Redhat Fedora? I've gotten it to compile and boot just fine, however it does not recognize any USB devices, PCMCIA devices, or FireWire drives.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds released the 2.6.0-test6 Linux development kernel today with the following comments:

"Ok, too long between test5 and test6 again, so the patch is pretty big. Lots of driver updates and architectures fixed, but also lots of merges from Andrew Morton [interview]. Most notably perhaps Con's scheduler changes [story] that have been discussed extensively and made it into the -mm tree for testing.

"This also finally gets one of the last "must-fix" things for 2.6.0 [story]: the extended 32-bit dev_t support. Courtesy of Al Viro (with a lot of prodding and input over the years from Andries)."

For a better understanding of what dev_t ("device type") is and why it has long been only 16-bits, refer to these pages from 'Linux Device Drivers'. Read on for the lengthy changelog.

Nick Piggin [interview] has released v15a of his scheduler policy patches. He explains:

"No changes apart from a sync with Linus' tree now that it includes Con's stuff. It basically just reverts the patches that have gone in. I'm not sure what the right way to do this would be, but it seems cleaner than to wade through the remains of my patches after a brute force merge."

Andrew Morton [interview] has released 2.6.0-test5-mm4 with the following comments, "A series of patches from Al Viro which introduce 32-bit dev_t support. Various new fixes".

One piece of excitement found in the -mm4 changelog is that the Con Kolivas [interview] interactivity patches [forum], rolled together under the name "sched-interactivity.patch", have been merged into the mainline 2.6-test development kernel, and will be found in 2.6.0-test6. Read on for the full 2.6.0-test5-mm4 changelog.

Marcelo Tosatti has released the 2.4.23-pre5 kernel with the following comments:

"Here goes -pre5. It contains a bunch of important ACPI fixes, adds a very important missing hunk from -aa VM merge, amongst others."

Read on for the full changelog.

So,

Does anyone else on the planet burn CDs in 2.6.0-test5 with cdrecord and ATAPI access? I cant seem to compile the cdrecord betas and alphas against 2.6. i am really looking forward to using ATAPI over scsi emulation, and help to be had?

-mix

[root@BettyBoop libscg]# make
==> MAKING "all" ON SUBCOMPONENT ".../libscg.mk"
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/cdrtools-2.01/libscg'

Alan Cox [interview] released 2.4.22-ac4 with the following comments:

"Trying to squash various little bugs. Again IDE changes, handle with care. Hopefully the ALi hang is now fixed."

Read on for the complete changelog.

Andrew Morton [interview] released 2.6.0-test5-mm3, describing the changes vaguely as, "Lots of random things."

Read on for the full changelog.

Bernhard Rosenkraenzer has released 2.4.23-pre4-pac2, synchronizing with 2.4.22-ac3 [story], updating the APCI code, and updating the device mapper.

The full changelog follows.

Is there a comparision between Linux 2.6 and FreeBSD 5.1 about these topics: VM, VFS, scheduler, SMP and threading?