KernelTrap - 2.6.0

Linux Kernel 2.6.0 Changelog

Jeremy — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 08:04:00 +0000

Linux: Measuring Scheduler Improvements

Jeremy — Fri, 19 Sep 2003 13:27:00 +0000

Mark Wong posted a series of benchmark results from Rusty Russell's Hackbench. Rusty describes Hackbench as a minimized 'chat benchmark' that doesn't use threads or semaphores. The benchmark launches groups of processes that each listen on a given socket, and complimentary groups of processes that write 100 messages to each of the listening sockets, measuring the time this takes. This process is repeated multiple times with an increasing number of groups of processes, therby measuring the scalability of the scheduler with an increasing number of processes.

Mark's results begin with the 2.5.28 development kernel and continue up through the current 2.6.0-test5 kernel. In a second email he also offers results of the -mm tree, beginning with 2.5.66-mm1 and continuing up through 2.6.0-test5-mm2. Andrew Morton [interview] glanced at the results and commented that they looked "great, but tragically incomprehensible", going on to ask for an explanation, "do we rock or do we suck?". Mark replied, "the general trend in the metric indicates everything has been improving, so I think we rock."

Linux: HowTo Upgrade 2.6 With Patches; 2.6.0-test5 Released

Jeremy — Mon, 08 Sep 2003 23:50:00 +0000

Linux creator Linus Torvalds has released the linux 2.6.0-test5 kernel, with the following comments:

"Lots of small stuff, as usual. I think the biggest "core" change is the Futex changes by Jamie and Hugh, and the dev_t preparations by Al Viro. But there are ARM and ppc updates here too, and a few drivers have bigger fixes (tg3 driver and the USB gadget interface stand out on diffstat). Watchdog driver updates etc. And Russell King fixed more PCMCIA issues."

Read on for the full changelog.

Additionally, if you followed my recent upgrade howto [story], are running a 2.6.0-test kernel, and are interested in upgrading to 2.6.0-test5, read on for a few simple tips on upgrading with incremental patches.