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 From : Sergey Lentsov                       2:4615/71.10   29 Nov 2001  17:11:16
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 Subject : URL: http://www.lwn.net/2001/1129/kernel.php3
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    See also: [13]last week's Kernel page.
    
 Kernel development
 
    The current development kernel release is 2.5.0. For the first time
    since January, there actually is an official development kernel. As
    development kernels go, it's a relatively boring start - it's the same
    as the (allegedly) stable 2.4.15 release. A [14]2.5.1-pre1 prepatch
    exists, but it's limited to a couple of small updates and, of course,
    the 2.4.15 filesystem corruption fix. A [15]2.5.1-pre3 prepatch was
    released shortly before press time, with a few more cleanups.
    
    The current stable kernel release is 2.4.16. This [16]release, the
    first by Marcelo Tosatti, contains little beyond the filesystem fix.
    This release does seem to deserve the name "stable," though there are
    still some persistent complaints about interactive response in the
    presence of heavy I/O. The culprit appears to be the disk I/O
    scheduler; a real fix for that problem could be long in coming. The
    [17]2.4.17-pre1 prepatch contains a number of items including a new
    USB maintainer and a devfs update.
    
    Those of you in the very old world may be interested in
    [18]2.0.40-pre3, released by David Weinehall.
    
    The new development series begins - on a bit of a sour note. Linus
    pushed out [19]2.4.15 just before the Thanksgiving holiday, and made a
    copy called 2.5.0. Unfortunately, a late filesystem tweak broke the
    systems unmounting code, meaning that users found corrupt filesystems
    the second time they booted the new systems. Not the best beginning.
    
    How could such a mistake happen? Linus's [20]explanation is that he
    doesn't like doing maintenance.
    
      The fact that I've held on to 2.4.x for too long, mostly due to the
      VM problems, really doesn't help. That just makes me _less_ likely
      to be careful. Especially when the last known VM problem was fixed
      (ie the Oracle highmem deadlock), I had a very strong urge to just
      "get the d*mn thing out to Marcelo".
      
    He predicts that 2.4 releases will be of higher quality now that
    Marcelo is handling them.
    
    Amusingly, there were arguably more complaints about the name Linus
    chose for this release: 2.4.15-greased-turkey. Linus's [21]reasoning:
    
      It's a worthy follow-up to the 2.2.x "greased weasel" releases, but
      as yesterday was Thanksgiving here in the US, and a lot of turkeys
      offered their lives in celebration of the new 2.5.0 tree, the 2.4.x
      series got christened a "greased turkey" instead of a weasel.
      
    The extended version number caused things (like loadable modules) to
    be installed in a surprising place, and a few people didn't like that.
    Others suggested that "2.4.15-dead-duck" was a more appropriate name.
    Then, [22]a patch was submitted for those vegetarian users out
    there...
    
    Meanwhile, people are interested in how to avoid this sort of
    embarrassment in the future. Marcelo, evidently, is going to put out
    special "release candidate" prepatches before a stable release; these
    will be available for people to pound on for a period of time. If a
    particular release candidate appears solid, it will be turned directly
    into the stable release; otherwise a new release candidate will be
    made. Linus has not said whether he will follow the same convention,
    but, then, development kernels are supposed to be broken sometimes.
    
    The prepatches move on kernel.org. There is a move afoot to better
    standardize the locations of prepatches on the kernel.org mirror
    system. It seems that each kernel release directory (i.e.
    .../kernel/v2.4/) will have a testing subdirectory under it. The
    upper-level testing directory will go away. Linus and Marcelo are
    already using this scheme for the 2.5 and 2.4 prepatches,
    respectively. It looks like Alan Cox will do the same for version 2.2,
    and David Weinehall will follow suit with 2.0.
    
    A new USB maintainer. Greg Kroah-Hartman has been the acting
    maintainer of the USB subsystem for a couple of months. Now previous
    maintainer Johannes Erdfelt has [23]made it official: Greg is the
    real, official USB maintainer.
    
    Meanwhile, discussion has started on [24]a set of 2.5 development
    goals for the USB subsystem posted by Brad Hards.
    
    System calls or /proc files? Ingo Molnar recently posted [25]a patch
    adding a new set of system calls which will bind a process to a subset
    of the available CPUs on a system. Ingo has also posted [26]chaff, a
    tool for changing processor affinities of running processes. Nobody
    seems to doubt that this is a useful thing to be able to do. Binding
    processes can improve cache behavior. If a process is handling data
    from a busy device, attaching that process and the device's interrupt
    handler to the same processor can also help improve performance.
    
    While the idea has been accepted, there are some complaints about the
    implementation. In particular [27]some people think that new system
    calls should not be added for this sort of feature. Instead, the
    kernel should just set up some files in /proc which provide access to
    affinity settings. Robert Love has, indeed, provided [28]a patch which
    implements this approach to affinities. The advantages, it is said,
    are a reduction in the size of the system call table and an easy
    ability for command-line tools to work with affinities.
    
    Of course, not everybody likes the /proc approach either. Some systems
    do not have /proc enabled at all; if affinities are controlled only
    through that interface, they will not be available on systems without
    /proc. And, to some, anything that dumps more stuff into /proc is bad
    news. /proc is already messy enough as it is.
    
    No resolution has been reached in this particular case. There is a
    bigger issue to be resolved here, however: how, exactly, should new
    kernel features be made available to user space? Should every
    capability be made available via a system call? Or are
    filesystem-based approaches the proper solution? At some point, the
    kernel hackers are going to need to come to a policy decision on this
    issue.
    
    Other patches and updates released this week include:
    
      * Pavel Machek has posted [29]a new software suspend patch against
        2.4.14. "Warning. This probably corrupts memory."
      * [30]modutils 2.4.12 has been released by Keith Owens.
      * Also from Keith is [31]release 1.9 of the new kbuild code. It
        still doesn't support CML2, however.
      * Speaking of which, Eric Raymond has posted [32]CML2 1.9.0.
      * Richard Gooch has posted [33]devfs v198. He's looking for people
        to test out the new code...
      * Rusty Russell has posted [34]a new version of his patch changing
        how modules handle initialization, shutdown, and parameters. (See
        [35]the September 6 kernel page for the discussion of this patch).
      * Jens Axboe's latest [36]block highmem patch is available.
      * Perhaps not the most exciting patch of the week: Padraig Brady has
        [37]a large patch which strips trailing whitespace from the kernel
        source.
      * [38]Version 2.5.1 of the NetWare filesystem patch was posted by
        Jeff Merkey.
      * Jeff Dike has [39]released User-mode Linux 0.52-2.4.15.
      * Willy Tarreau has [40]released a version of kmsgdump for 2.4
        kernels.
      * Andre Hedrick has posted [41]a proposal for a new storage model.
        Support for all "real spindle devices" (i.e. disks) would be
        expected to follow this plan.
      * Momchil Velikov has [42]posted a new page cache implementation
        which is intended to be more scalable. It turns out that Ingo
        Molnar has [43]a patch of his own which tries to improve page
        cache performance. Ben LaHaise, meanwhile, [44]thinks both patches
        are wrong, and has proposed a solution of his own.
      * [45]ethtool 1.4 was released by Jeff Garzik.
      * Jari Ruusu has [46]posted version v1.4h of the loop-AES file
        crypto package.
      * [47]Linux-ABI 2.4.15.0 was announced by Christoph Hellwig.
        
    Section Editor: [48]Jonathan Corbet
    November 29, 2001
    
    For other kernel news, see:
      * [49]Kernel traffic
      * [50]Kernel Newsflash
      * [51]Kernel Trap
    
    Other resources:
      * [52]Kernel Source Reference
      * [53]L-K mailing list FAQ
      * [54]Linux-MM
      * [55]Linux Scalability Effort
      * [56]Kernel Newbies
      * [57]Linux Device Drivers
    
    
    
                                                   [58]Next: Distributions
    
    [59]Eklektix, Inc. Linux powered! Copyright Л 2001 [60]Eklektix, Inc.,
    all rights reserved
    Linux (R) is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
 
 References
 
    1. http://lwn.net/
    2. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/pageid=001-012-132-000-000-003-000-000-012
    3. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/
    4. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/security.php3
    5. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/dists.php3
    6. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/devel.php3
    7. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/commerce.php3
    8. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/press.php3
    9. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/announce.php3
   10. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/history.php3
   11. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/letters.php3
   12. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/bigpage.php3
   13. http://lwn.net/2001/1122/kernel.php3
   14. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/2.5.1-pre1.php3
   15. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/2.5.1-pre3.php3
   16. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/2.4.16.php3
   17. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/2.4.17-pre1.php3
   18. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/2.0.40-pre3.php3
   19. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/2.4.15.php3
   20. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/lt-maintainer.php3
   21. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/lt-turkey.php3
   22. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/tofu.php3
   23. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/usb-maintainer.php3
   24. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/usb-goals.php3
   25. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/affinity.php3
   26. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/chaff.php3
   27. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/rl-affinity.php3
   28. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/proc-affinity.php3
   29. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/swsusp.php3
   30. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/modutils.php3
   31. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/kbuild.php3
   32. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/cml.php3
   33. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/devfs.php3
   34. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/modules.php3
   35. http://lwn.net/2001/0906/kernel.php3
   36. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/block-highmem.php3
   37. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/whitespace.php3
   38. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/netware.php3
   39. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/uml.php3
   40. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/kmsgdump.php3
   41. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/spindle.php3
   42. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/pagecache.php3
   43. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/im-pagecache.php3
   44. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/bcrl-pagecache.php3
   45. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/ethtool.php3
   46. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/aes.php3
   47. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/a/linux-abi.php3
   48. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
   49. http://kt.zork.net/
   50. http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/kernel-newsflash.html
   51. http://www.kerneltrap.com/
   52. http://lksr.org/
   53. http://www.tux.org/lkml/
   54. http://www.linux.eu.org/Linux-MM/
   55. http://lse.sourceforge.net/
   56. http://www.kernelnewbies.org/
   57. http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/index.html
   58. http://lwn.net/2001/1129/dists.php3
   59. http://www.eklektix.com/
   60. http://www.eklektix.com/
 
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