[ANNOUNCE]: linux 0.99 patchlevel 11
Nic.funet.fi now contains the newest linux kernel: this is 0.99
patchlevel 11. I've had a few problems with the "ls" and "dir" commands
on nic, so if this is true for others as well, you may not be able to
see the files, but they are available as:
pub/OS/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus:
- RELEASE-0.99.11 -- release notes
- README -- same as RELEASE..
- linux-0.99.11.tar.gz -- full sources
- linux-0.99.patch11.gz -- patches against pl10
I don't know if I'll actually have the energy to update the RELEASE
files every time, but that's the idea (with README being a copy of the
latest one). The README gives info on what changed, how to install it,
how to compile the kernel, and what to do with error dumps like "unable
to handler kernel paging request" and the like. Maybe it results in
better bug-reports. Maybe not.
Pl11 uses (as you all know by now) C++, so you'll need to have g++
installed. Also, there seems to be problems compiling the newer kernels
with gcc-2.3.3: there have been various reports that even pl10 (which
isn't C++) had problems which go away when compiled with gcc-2.4.3 or
newer.
As always, please send any bug-reports etc at least Cc'd to me: I'll be
wanting to know if things work or not.
Linus
<RELEASE-0.99.11>
Linux kernel release 0.99 patchlevel 11
These are the release notes for linux version 0.99.11. Read them
carefully, as they explain how to install the kernel, and what to do if
something goes wrong.
CHANGES since 0.99 patchlevel 10 and earlier:
- The keyboard is dynamically changeable (this is true of pl10 as
well), and you need to get the "keytables.tar.z" archive to set the
keyboard to suit your taske unless you want to live with the default
US keymaps.
Use the "loadkeys map/xxx.map" command to load the keyboard map: you
can edit the maps to suit yourself if you can't find a suitable one.
The syntax of the keyboard maps should be obvious after looking at
the examples.
- The memory manager has been cleaned up substantially, and mmap()
works for MAP_PRIVATE. MAP_SHARED is still not supported for
anything else than /dev/mem, but even so it actually is usable for a
lot of applications. The shared library routines have been rewritten
to use mmap() instead of the old hardcoded behaviour.
- The kernel is now compiled with C++ instead of plain C. Very few
actual C++ features are used, but even so C++ allows for more
type-checking and type-safe linkage.
- The filesystem routines have been cleaned up for multiple block
sizes. None of the filesystems use it yet, but people are working on
it.
- named pipes and normal pipes should hopefully have the right select()
semantics in the presense/absense of writers.
- QIC-02 tape driver by Hennus Bergman
- selection patches in the default kernel
- fixed a bug in the pty code which led to busy waiting in some
circumstances instead of sleeping.
- Compressed SLIP support (Charles Hedrick). See net/inet/CONFIG
INTERNAL kernel changes:
- the 'clear_bit()' function was changed to return the previous setting
of the bit instead of the old "error-code". This makes use of the
bit operations more logical.
- udelay() function for short delays (busy-waiting) added. Used
currently only by the QIC driver.
- fork() and sheduler changes to make task switches happen only from
kernel mode to kernel mode. Cleaner and more portable than the old
code which counted on being able to task-switch directly into user
mode.
- debugging malloc code.
INSTALLING the kernel:
- if you install by patching, you need a *clean* 0.99.10 source tree,
which presumably exists in /usr/src/linux. If so, to get the kernel
patched, just do a
cd /usr/src
patch -p0 < linux-0.99.patch11
and you should be ok. You may want to remove the backup files (xxx~
or xxx.orig), and make sure that there are no failed patches (xxx# or
xxx.rej).
- If you install the full sources, do a
cd /usr/src
tar xvf linux-0.99.11.tar
to get it all put in place.
- make sure your /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm directories
are just symlinks to the kernel sources:
cd /usr/include
rm -rf linux
rm -rf asm
ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/linux .
ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/asm .
- make sure you have no stale .o files and dependencies lying around:
cd /usr/src/linux
make mrproper
make dep
You should now have the sources correctly installed.
CONFIGURING the kernel:
- do a "make config" to configure the basic kernel. "make config"
needs bash to work: it will search for bash in $BASH, /bin/bash and
/bin/sh (in that order), so hopefully one of those is correct.
- edit net/inet/CONFIG to configure the networking parts of the kernel.
The comments should hopefully clarify it all.
- Check the top Makefile for further site-dependent configuration
(default SVGA mode etc).
COMPILING the kernel:
- make sure you have gcc-2.4.3 or newer available with g++. It seems
older gcc versions can have problems compiling linux 0.99.10 and
newer versions. If you upgrade, remember to get the new binutils
package too (for as/ld/nm and company)
- do a "make zImage" to create a compressed kernel image. If you want
to make a bootdisk (without root filesystem or lilo), insert a floppy
in your A: drive, and do a "make zdisk". It is also possible to do
"make zlilo" if you have lilo installed to suit the kernel makefiles,
but you may want to check your particular lilo setup first.
- keep a backup kernel handy in case something goes wrong.
- reboot with the new kernel.
IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG:
- if you have problems that seem to be due to kernel bugs, please mail
them to me (Linus.Torvalds@Helsinki.FI), and possibly to any other
relevant mailing-list or to the newsgroup. The mailing-lists are
useful especially for SCSI and NETworking problems, as I can't test
either of those personally anyway.
- In all bug-reports, *please* tell what kernel you are talking about,
how to duplicate the problem, and what your setup is (use your common
sense). If the problem is new, tell me so, and if the problem is
old, please try to tell me when you first noticed it.
- if the bug results in a message like
unable to handle kernel paging request at address C0000010
Oops: 0002
EIP: 0010:xxxxxxxx
eax: xxxxxxxx ebx: xxxxxxxx ecx: xxxxxxxx edx: xxxxxxxx
esi: xxxxxxxx edi: xxxxxxxx ebp: xxxxxxxx
ds: xxxx es: xxxx fs: xxxx gs: xxxx
Pid: xx, process nr: xx
xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx
or similar kernel debugging information on your screen or in your
system log, please duplicate it *exactly*. The dump may look
incomprehensible to you, but it does contain information that may
help debugging the problem. The text above the dump is also
important: it tells something about why the kernel dumped code (in
the above example it's due to a bad kernel pointer)
- in debugging dumps like the above, it helps enourmously if you can
look up what the EIP value means. The hex value as such doesn't help
me or anybody else very much: it will depend on your particular
kernel setup. What you should do is take the hex value from the EIP
line (ignore the "0010:"), and look it up in the kernel namelist to
see which kernel function contains the offending address.
To find out the kernel function name, you'll need to find the system
binary associated with the kernel that exhibited the symptom. In the
case of compressed kernels, this will be 'linux/tools/zSystem', while
uncompressed kernels use the file 'tools/system'. To extract the
namelist and match it against the EIP from the kernel crash, do:
nm tools/zSystem | sort | less
This will give you a list of kernel addresses sorted in ascending
order, from which it is simple to find the function that contains the
offending address. Note that the address given by the kernel
debugging messages will not necessarily match exactly with the
function addresses (in fact, that is very unlikely), so you can't
just 'grep' the list: the list will, however, give you the starting
point of each kernel function, so by looking for the function that
has a starting address lower than the one you are searching for but
is followed by a function with a higher address you will find the one
you want. In fact, it may be a good idea to include a bit of
"context" in your problem report, giving a few lines around the
interesting one.
If you for some reason cannot do the above (you have a pre-compiled
kernel image or similar), telling me as much about your setup as
possible will help.
-----
From: torvalds@cc.helsinki.fi (Linus Torvalds)
Subject: ALPHA-pl11 available on nic: C++ support
Date: Sun, 4 Jul 93 00:03:03 GMT
For those brave souls that enjoy testing new releases, there is an
ALPHA-release of the 0.99.11 version available on nic.funet.fi in the
usual place (pub/OS/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus). This has a few changes from
the last one, the most notable being that it is compiled using C++, as
there was some interest in that on the c.o.l newsgroup. Note that very
few C++ features are actually used: the major changes were some minor
syntactic editing and the addition of 'extern "C"' to functions called
from assembly code. The C++ changes are not the same as those done by
Tristan (although you should thank him for getting it rolling), as I
wanted to resolve the differences between C and C++ a bit differently.
The C++ changes shouldn't actually change the way the kernel works, and
it's mainly used currently to do stricter pointer checking. The name
mangling probably breaks the kmem based 'ps' once again.. Actual code
changes for this test-version:
- I added the patches by Charles Hedrick for SLIP: this actually means
that only CSLIP is available for now, so.. The net code is still not
ready: Fred is working on it, so this is just an interim version when
it comes to networking (there are some other minor patches in there as
well).
- The mm has been cleaned up since pl10, and mmap() actually works for
most things, while malloc() will return NULL when the kernel thinks
there isn't enough memory. Similarly, the buffer cache code should
now support different block sizes (although this is still in the
"early alpha" stage. Most of the changes by Eric Youngdale, with mm
cleanups by me.
- A problem with the dynamic inode code (insufficient inode
invalidation) that could result in fs corruption under some
circumstances is fixed.
People who have written drivers etc should probably check out the
changes I did due to the stricter C++ pointer checking.
Linus
199 files changed
