"Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel" updated
I have updated my article "Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel" that was originally posted on Advogato just before 2.4.0 was release and posted it in a new location: http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/articles/whytestkernel/ I welcome your comments, please write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] A number of people wrote in with comments and corrections after I wrote the original article, but Advogato doesn't provide for editing an article once it's posted - one can only make replies. In this revision I could fix things throughout the text and can keep it updated as I think of ways to improve it in the future. It discusses why its important to test the kernel, where to get test kernels and how to get started with them, gives the minimum version numbers of the programs listed in Documentation/Changes from 2.4.4, with links to where to download updates, and ends with an in-depth discussion of why something like a kernel needs particularly thorough testing - the reason being that disrupting the virtual machine in a kernel has non-local effects on a system; screwing up a user-mode program will usually just mess up that one program, but screwing up a kernel can make all kinds of weird things happen. Regards, Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel updated
I have updated my article Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel that was originally posted on Advogato just before 2.4.0 was release and posted it in a new location: http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/articles/whytestkernel/ I welcome your comments, please write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] A number of people wrote in with comments and corrections after I wrote the original article, but Advogato doesn't provide for editing an article once it's posted - one can only make replies. In this revision I could fix things throughout the text and can keep it updated as I think of ways to improve it in the future. It discusses why its important to test the kernel, where to get test kernels and how to get started with them, gives the minimum version numbers of the programs listed in Documentation/Changes from 2.4.4, with links to where to download updates, and ends with an in-depth discussion of why something like a kernel needs particularly thorough testing - the reason being that disrupting the virtual machine in a kernel has non-local effects on a system; screwing up a user-mode program will usually just mess up that one program, but screwing up a kernel can make all kinds of weird things happen. Regards, Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Linux Quality Database on Newsforge
chromatic has written a very nice article on the Linux Quality database at Newsforge: Linux Quality Database: One man's quest for kernel quality http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/05/17/204213=thread The site itself is at http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/ You will see it is still in the planning stages. Life has been quite hectic these last months, but I am making slow progress and I'm starting to get more time now. I have written a couple of articles you may find useful, one on testing the kernel and the other on testing web applications. The kernel testing article is at: Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/articles/testsuites/ Best, Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Linux Quality Database on Newsforge
chromatic has written a very nice article on the Linux Quality database at Newsforge: Linux Quality Database: One man's quest for kernel quality http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/05/17/204213mode=thread The site itself is at http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/ You will see it is still in the planning stages. Life has been quite hectic these last months, but I am making slow progress and I'm starting to get more time now. I have written a couple of articles you may find useful, one on testing the kernel and the other on testing web applications. The kernel testing article is at: Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/articles/testsuites/ Best, Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Win98 Setup ignores partition table, corrupts filesystems
s had done it again.
It's also a good idea to check that your partition table is still what
you want after a Windows format.
Another option is to just not allow Windows to format your C: drive, but
format it under Linux with mkdosfs or mkfs.msdos, or use some utility
like System Commander. If you can move the drive to another machine (I
couldn't easily, because it was a laptop), you can move the drive to
another machine and format it under an installed version of Windows.
I had trouble using mkfs.msdos, Windows setup seemed to be happy with it
and copied its files to fat volume but then the machine wouldn't restart
off of the partition to continue the installation, so I finally did end
up figuring out what was going on and allowing a successful format under Windows.
What I had to do was use a Linux partitioning utility and mark my spare
FAT partition as Linux Native (83, I think). Then setup happily lived
within its means.
After I had Windows completely installed I could use Linux again to
change the partition type, then the volume showed up as an unformatted
volume in Windows "My Computer", and I could format it with the
formatter you get from right-clicking on the volume icon.
Part of the reason I have my partitions set up as so was so that I could
have lots of data storage and a good size swap space, but all of my
operating systems would live below the 1024 cylinder limit. I have two
different versions of the BeOS on, Slackware Linux and Windows 98, and
the OS installs are all in the first four partitions and linux swap and
user data areas are all in the remaining partitions above 1024 cylinders.
Being careful about things I could use GNU Grub and boot Linux higher
than 1024 cylinders, but mixing lots of different OSes, most of which
have to be chain-loaded, it just seemed wiser to keep everything below
1024 cylinders.
Here's one more tip. Before doing anything else, make a backup of your
partition table and copy it to some other computers. Print it out and
tape it to the front of the machine or the wall. Do it this way:
sfdisk -d /dev/{drivename} > partition.sav
where {drivename} would be hda for the first IDE drive or sda for the
first SCSI disk.
Restore the partitions like this:
sfdisk /dev/{drivename} < partition.save
You can make a more readable display of your partitions for the first
IDE drive like this:
sfdisk -l /dev/hda
I think sfdisk only works on x86. Other architectures like Macintosh
have different kinds of partition tables. I don't know how you could do
a backup of your table like this on a Mac but maybe there is another
utility that someone could describe that does.
I haven't tried parted yet, but sfdisk is better than fdisk or cfdisk at
making sure you get exactly what you want out of a partition. The
problem is that it is fussy.
What you want to do is use sfdisk -d to get the partition map from an
existing drive and edit it to describe the partition map you want. You
want to always end in a cylinder boundary, allow at least a block of
unpartitioned space for the boot record at the start and a block before
each logical partition, but if you're going to be using DOS or Windows
leave a track instead (use cfdisk to check your partitions after laying
them down; if the flags say "NC" then it is Not Compatible with DOS).
You can use sfdisk interactively but it is difficult. It is much easier
to edit a file that will be used as standard input to write the
partition map all at once. If you have a spare drive around, try
practicing with sfdisk until you can use it well, I think it is worth
the effort.
Also, after creating a DOS partition, set its first block to zeros to
avoid problems with DOS format (this is not what caused my trouble above)
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/{partitionname} bs=512 count=1
carefully, as you may destroy something! Using the drive name rather
than your partition name will destroy something.
It is worth your effort to put some time and thought into partitioning
your drive. Use a spreadsheet to work out how you want to partition it.
Calculate the start and end of your partitions down to the sector. Try
out different options in your spreadsheet to see how they work out.
Note that Linux is more flexible about partitions and the 1024 cylinder
limit, besides being able to use grub you could put your kernels in a
small partition all by themselves that your sure is below and have your
other partitions (/, /home etc.) crossing the boundary or above.
Ever Faithful,
Mike
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Win98 Setup ignores partition table, corrupts filesystems
.
It's also a good idea to check that your partition table is still what
you want after a Windows format.
Another option is to just not allow Windows to format your C: drive, but
format it under Linux with mkdosfs or mkfs.msdos, or use some utility
like System Commander. If you can move the drive to another machine (I
couldn't easily, because it was a laptop), you can move the drive to
another machine and format it under an installed version of Windows.
I had trouble using mkfs.msdos, Windows setup seemed to be happy with it
and copied its files to fat volume but then the machine wouldn't restart
off of the partition to continue the installation, so I finally did end
up figuring out what was going on and allowing a successful format under Windows.
What I had to do was use a Linux partitioning utility and mark my spare
FAT partition as Linux Native (83, I think). Then setup happily lived
within its means.
After I had Windows completely installed I could use Linux again to
change the partition type, then the volume showed up as an unformatted
volume in Windows My Computer, and I could format it with the
formatter you get from right-clicking on the volume icon.
Part of the reason I have my partitions set up as so was so that I could
have lots of data storage and a good size swap space, but all of my
operating systems would live below the 1024 cylinder limit. I have two
different versions of the BeOS on, Slackware Linux and Windows 98, and
the OS installs are all in the first four partitions and linux swap and
user data areas are all in the remaining partitions above 1024 cylinders.
Being careful about things I could use GNU Grub and boot Linux higher
than 1024 cylinders, but mixing lots of different OSes, most of which
have to be chain-loaded, it just seemed wiser to keep everything below
1024 cylinders.
Here's one more tip. Before doing anything else, make a backup of your
partition table and copy it to some other computers. Print it out and
tape it to the front of the machine or the wall. Do it this way:
sfdisk -d /dev/{drivename} partition.sav
where {drivename} would be hda for the first IDE drive or sda for the
first SCSI disk.
Restore the partitions like this:
sfdisk /dev/{drivename} partition.save
You can make a more readable display of your partitions for the first
IDE drive like this:
sfdisk -l /dev/hda
I think sfdisk only works on x86. Other architectures like Macintosh
have different kinds of partition tables. I don't know how you could do
a backup of your table like this on a Mac but maybe there is another
utility that someone could describe that does.
I haven't tried parted yet, but sfdisk is better than fdisk or cfdisk at
making sure you get exactly what you want out of a partition. The
problem is that it is fussy.
What you want to do is use sfdisk -d to get the partition map from an
existing drive and edit it to describe the partition map you want. You
want to always end in a cylinder boundary, allow at least a block of
unpartitioned space for the boot record at the start and a block before
each logical partition, but if you're going to be using DOS or Windows
leave a track instead (use cfdisk to check your partitions after laying
them down; if the flags say NC then it is Not Compatible with DOS).
You can use sfdisk interactively but it is difficult. It is much easier
to edit a file that will be used as standard input to write the
partition map all at once. If you have a spare drive around, try
practicing with sfdisk until you can use it well, I think it is worth
the effort.
Also, after creating a DOS partition, set its first block to zeros to
avoid problems with DOS format (this is not what caused my trouble above)
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/{partitionname} bs=512 count=1
carefully, as you may destroy something! Using the drive name rather
than your partition name will destroy something.
It is worth your effort to put some time and thought into partitioning
your drive. Use a spreadsheet to work out how you want to partition it.
Calculate the start and end of your partitions down to the sector. Try
out different options in your spreadsheet to see how they work out.
Note that Linux is more flexible about partitions and the 1024 cylinder
limit, besides being able to use grub you could put your kernels in a
small partition all by themselves that your sure is below and have your
other partitions (/, /home etc.) crossing the boundary or above.
Ever Faithful,
Mike
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in
the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Config files for Compaq Presario 1800T Laptop
I have found that kernel 2.4.3 and XFree86 4.0.3 work very well on my Compaq Presario 1800T laptop. I did a lot of fiddling to get things just right, so to make things easer for other Presario 1800 owners I have archived my kernel .config, lilo.conf and XF86Config files here: http://goingware.com/laptop/linux/config/ Have you figured out the configuration for some hard-to-figure-out hardware? Post the config files on your website! The only real problem I have is that the DEC 21143 ethernet chip causes trouble if I do a soft reboot between Windows and any other operating system. If I start with Windows 98 and reboot into either Linux or the BeOS, the ethernet won't work. If I start with Linux 2.4.3 and reboot into Windows 98, Windows will hang partway through boot. Everything works fine if I power off before I go between Windows and another OS. I am using the de4x5 driver for the chip. That and the tulip driver both claim to offer support for it, but only de4x5 actually works. Curiously, at some point I pulled a development version of the tulip.c driver source off the author's ftp site and compiled it into a 2.2 kernel, and found that it worked fine. I don't think either driver works in the stock 2.2 kernels that I've tried. XFree86 4.0.3 works well with 2D accelleration but not 3D (DRI). The ATI Rage 3D Mobility Pro is an AGP 3D accellerated chip but is uses the Mach64 driver rather than the ati128; I don't think DRI has been done for Mach64 yet (correct me if it should work, and I'll keep trying). I can use the atyfb framebuffer driver in unaccellerated mode but not accellerated. Regards, Mike Crawford -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Config files for Compaq Presario 1800T Laptop
I have found that kernel 2.4.3 and XFree86 4.0.3 work very well on my Compaq Presario 1800T laptop. I did a lot of fiddling to get things just right, so to make things easer for other Presario 1800 owners I have archived my kernel .config, lilo.conf and XF86Config files here: http://goingware.com/laptop/linux/config/ Have you figured out the configuration for some hard-to-figure-out hardware? Post the config files on your website! The only real problem I have is that the DEC 21143 ethernet chip causes trouble if I do a soft reboot between Windows and any other operating system. If I start with Windows 98 and reboot into either Linux or the BeOS, the ethernet won't work. If I start with Linux 2.4.3 and reboot into Windows 98, Windows will hang partway through boot. Everything works fine if I power off before I go between Windows and another OS. I am using the de4x5 driver for the chip. That and the tulip driver both claim to offer support for it, but only de4x5 actually works. Curiously, at some point I pulled a development version of the tulip.c driver source off the author's ftp site and compiled it into a 2.2 kernel, and found that it worked fine. I don't think either driver works in the stock 2.2 kernels that I've tried. XFree86 4.0.3 works well with 2D accelleration but not 3D (DRI). The ATI Rage 3D Mobility Pro is an AGP 3D accellerated chip but is uses the Mach64 driver rather than the ati128; I don't think DRI has been done for Mach64 yet (correct me if it should work, and I'll keep trying). I can use the atyfb framebuffer driver in unaccellerated mode but not accellerated. Regards, Mike Crawford -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Update to kernel test suite article
After I posted the URL in the comments on tonight's Slashdot article on "Making Software Suck Less", I thought I should incorporate some of the comments people had made about my article over the past few weeks: Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/articles/testsuites/index.html I knew I had a couple HTML errors in it, so I ran it through the W3C validation service until it came out 4.01-strict clean: http://validator.w3.org/ Try the validator on your own pages, it's pretty embarrassing what it can find. On an old page of mine I'd accidentally copied and pasted a whole repetition of the tags and all the text in between at the end of the file - but it didn't show up in any browser. I added these tests: - PostgreSQL's regression tests - Mauve - VA Linux Cerberus - cpuburn - Lucifer the last three are hardware stress tests and should be used with caution, and probably not on a machine you would be concerned about setting on fire. There are a few more suites to be added that I need to dig out of my email. Fortuitously, while I was editing the new draft, a helpful fellow from IBM Israel named Michael Veksler wrote in with some suggestions for improvement of some really bad grammar errors I'd committed, and a suggestion that I add some comments about test coverage - making sure that all components of the kernel get tested by some test or other. I've taken his grammar suggestions but still need to write about the test coverage. I'm going to write on article on web application testing next. Besides discussing the W3C validation service, I'll also talk about load generators for web servers. A recent client of mine could have avoided hiring me at all if he'd gone to http://freshmeat.net and entered the word "stress" into the search box. Regards, Mike Crawford -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Update to kernel test suite article
After I posted the URL in the comments on tonight's Slashdot article on "Making Software Suck Less", I thought I should incorporate some of the comments people had made about my article over the past few weeks: Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/articles/testsuites/index.html I knew I had a couple HTML errors in it, so I ran it through the W3C validation service until it came out 4.01-strict clean: http://validator.w3.org/ Try the validator on your own pages, it's pretty embarrassing what it can find. On an old page of mine I'd accidentally copied and pasted a whole repetition of the body/body tags and all the text in between at the end of the file - but it didn't show up in any browser. I added these tests: - PostgreSQL's regression tests - Mauve - VA Linux Cerberus - cpuburn - Lucifer the last three are hardware stress tests and should be used with caution, and probably not on a machine you would be concerned about setting on fire. There are a few more suites to be added that I need to dig out of my email. Fortuitously, while I was editing the new draft, a helpful fellow from IBM Israel named Michael Veksler wrote in with some suggestions for improvement of some really bad grammar errors I'd committed, and a suggestion that I add some comments about test coverage - making sure that all components of the kernel get tested by some test or other. I've taken his grammar suggestions but still need to write about the test coverage. I'm going to write on article on web application testing next. Besides discussing the W3C validation service, I'll also talk about load generators for web servers. A recent client of mine could have avoided hiring me at all if he'd gone to http://freshmeat.net and entered the word "stress" into the search box. Regards, Mike Crawford -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
OK to mount multiple FS in one dir?
I was groping around my FAT/NTFS directories from Linux, mounting and unmounting them into /mnt, and was suprised at some point that I got the message "/dev/sda5 already mounted or /mnt busy". (I'm using a SCSI disk, use hda* for IDE). Upon further examination, I found that I'd accidentally mounted /dev/sda1 (VFAT) on /mnt while /dev/sda5 (NTFS) was still mounted there. The NTFS files remained invisible until I'd unmounted /dev/sda1 and then I could see them again. This is with the 2.4.1 kernel on a Pentium III machine with an Adaptec 29160 SCSI controller. I found I could mount three partitions on /mnt, and they'd all show up as mounted at /mnt in the "mount" command, but if I unmounted one of them (only tried with the currently visible one), then it appeared that there were no filesystems mounted there, but I could continue umounting until the other two were gone. I'm suprised this works. Note that the kernel rejected an attempt to mount a filesystem that was already mounted, but not to mount a filesystem at a point that was already in use. It looks like there is a stack of mounts on the mount point. Looking at Documentation/Changes, I see that I need util-linux 2.10o. I had 2.10l. But I had the 2.10r util-linux sources on my machine and installed mount and umount from it, and I find that it gets it right mostly when I mount and unmount multiple things, with the exception that if /dev/sda5 was mounted before /dev/sda1, then if I give the command "umount /dev/sda5", sda1 is the one that gets unmounted rather than sda5, so it takes the most recently mounted filesystem rather than the one you specify. Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
OK to mount multiple FS in one dir?
I was groping around my FAT/NTFS directories from Linux, mounting and unmounting them into /mnt, and was suprised at some point that I got the message "/dev/sda5 already mounted or /mnt busy". (I'm using a SCSI disk, use hda* for IDE). Upon further examination, I found that I'd accidentally mounted /dev/sda1 (VFAT) on /mnt while /dev/sda5 (NTFS) was still mounted there. The NTFS files remained invisible until I'd unmounted /dev/sda1 and then I could see them again. This is with the 2.4.1 kernel on a Pentium III machine with an Adaptec 29160 SCSI controller. I found I could mount three partitions on /mnt, and they'd all show up as mounted at /mnt in the "mount" command, but if I unmounted one of them (only tried with the currently visible one), then it appeared that there were no filesystems mounted there, but I could continue umounting until the other two were gone. I'm suprised this works. Note that the kernel rejected an attempt to mount a filesystem that was already mounted, but not to mount a filesystem at a point that was already in use. It looks like there is a stack of mounts on the mount point. Looking at Documentation/Changes, I see that I need util-linux 2.10o. I had 2.10l. But I had the 2.10r util-linux sources on my machine and installed mount and umount from it, and I find that it gets it right mostly when I mount and unmount multiple things, with the exception that if /dev/sda5 was mounted before /dev/sda1, then if I give the command "umount /dev/sda5", sda1 is the one that gets unmounted rather than sda5, so it takes the most recently mounted filesystem rather than the one you specify. Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Where to get reiserfs-utils?
www & ftp.namesys.com seem to be down (or at least I get "no route to host) so I can't go look there. I get the impression that with previous patches utilities like "mkreiserfs" were in linux/fs/reiserfs/utils, but now that ReiserFS is in the main kernel tree the utilities aren't there. I've searched everywhere to find a mirror that would have a matching set of utilities to what's in the kernel (Hans Reiser warns about the need to keep versions in sync in his README) but I can only find older patches, no current reiserfs-utils. Does anyone know where there is a mirror? Another question: I'll try it when I get the utilities, but do you know if it should work to mount a ReiserFS filesystem using loopback from a regular file in an Ext2 filesystem? Yes this sounds like a silly thing to do (journaling on top of non-journaled storage) but is a safe way to exercise the code. I don't have an extra partition handy to try it out on, and I don't want to use it on my real files yet. Thanks, Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: Can't compile shmem.c in 2.4.0-ac9
My apologies I see this was already encountered and a patch submitted. 2.4.0-pre8 builds OK for me. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Can't compile shmem.c in 2.4.0-ac9
I get the following errors trying to build 2.4.0-ac9 just now. I'll send you my .config upon request, or post it on my website gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/home/mike/Kernel/linux/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -march=i686-c -o shmem.o shmem.c shmem.c:971: `shmem_readlink' undeclared here (not in a function) shmem.c:971: initializer element for `shmem_symlink_inode_operations.readlink' is not constant shmem.c:972: `shmem_follow_link' undeclared here (not in a function) shmem.c:972: initializer element for `shmem_symlink_inode_operations.follow_link' is not constant shmem.c:973: initializer element for `shmem_symlink_inode_operations' is not constant shmem.c:973: initializer element for `shmem_symlink_inode_operations' is not constant make[2]: *** [shmem.o] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/mike/Kernel/linux/mm' make[1]: *** [first_rule] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/mike/Kernel/linux/mm' make: *** [_dir_mm] Er Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Can't compile shmem.c in 2.4.0-ac9
I get the following errors trying to build 2.4.0-ac9 just now. I'll send you my .config upon request, or post it on my website gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/home/mike/Kernel/linux/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -march=i686-c -o shmem.o shmem.c shmem.c:971: `shmem_readlink' undeclared here (not in a function) shmem.c:971: initializer element for `shmem_symlink_inode_operations.readlink' is not constant shmem.c:972: `shmem_follow_link' undeclared here (not in a function) shmem.c:972: initializer element for `shmem_symlink_inode_operations.follow_link' is not constant shmem.c:973: initializer element for `shmem_symlink_inode_operations' is not constant shmem.c:973: initializer element for `shmem_symlink_inode_operations' is not constant make[2]: *** [shmem.o] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/mike/Kernel/linux/mm' make[1]: *** [first_rule] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/mike/Kernel/linux/mm' make: *** [_dir_mm] Er Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: Can't compile shmem.c in 2.4.0-ac9
My apologies I see this was already encountered and a patch submitted. 2.4.0-pre8 builds OK for me. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Where to get reiserfs-utils?
www ftp.namesys.com seem to be down (or at least I get "no route to host) so I can't go look there. I get the impression that with previous patches utilities like "mkreiserfs" were in linux/fs/reiserfs/utils, but now that ReiserFS is in the main kernel tree the utilities aren't there. I've searched everywhere to find a mirror that would have a matching set of utilities to what's in the kernel (Hans Reiser warns about the need to keep versions in sync in his README) but I can only find older patches, no current reiserfs-utils. Does anyone know where there is a mirror? Another question: I'll try it when I get the utilities, but do you know if it should work to mount a ReiserFS filesystem using loopback from a regular file in an Ext2 filesystem? Yes this sounds like a silly thing to do (journaling on top of non-journaled storage) but is a safe way to exercise the code. I don't have an extra partition handy to try it out on, and I don't want to use it on my real files yet. Thanks, Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Doc bug? Is Sangoma S514 PCI WAN card supported?
Under 2.4.0-ac4 I find lots of mentions of the Sangoma S514 PCI Multiprotocol
Wide Area Networking card in
drivers/net/wan/sdla*
But in Documentation/Configure.help under CONFIG_VENDOR_SANGOMA I only see
mention of the S502E(A), S503 and S508. These same cards are listed in
documentation/networking/framerelay.txt but not S514.
I can't find the 502 or 503 cards on http://www.sangoma.com so maybe they're
obsolete and while the 508 looks like a pretty good card, it's an ISA card and
I'd much rather use the 514 which is PCI. The PCI card is $579 and the ISA card
is $529 so you don't have to pay much extra to get a card that's going to be
better for your box's well-being.
I'm moving to the first house I've ever owned in my life (so I'll get to drill
holes in the walls) and the only affordable high-speed internet option there
which allows the subscriber to run their own servers and have multiple static IP
addresses is frame relay.
(You can also do synchronous PPP, HDLC and X.25 with these cards).
An advantage of using a WAN card over a dedicated router is:
- it's cheaper
- you get the source code
- you can combine the function of the router with other things like webservers
and firewalls (I was going to run a separate FRAD and firewall - $$$) You can
probably get dedicated routers with firewalls built in but you don't then have
the option of source code or, likely, timely notification from your vendors
about security holes.
- the WAN router is running on a box with lots of memory, hard disk, XWindows,
etc. Routers often run some kind of Unix as their OS but have very limited
resources for loading them up with fun diagnostic tools.
- you get to learn lots of interesting acronyms and enthrall your friends and
relatives with your knowledge of wide area networking protocols
- cool diagnostics by indicating link status, send and receive by lighting up
your keyboard LED's.
These folks at Sangoma seem like they're some pretty cool froods to be providing
specs and drivers for their cards which they appear to have kept supported over
an extended period of time so we should support their efforts by letting Linux
users know all the options for the hardware that helpful vendors such as these
sell.
My first thought, quite unfairly, was that Sangoma was only releasing the specs
for the older ISA cards and keeping the PCI specs a secret.
The following two passages from the WANPIPE user manual
(ftp://ftp.sangoma.com/documents/wanpipe.pdf) have me pretty convinced this is a
vendor worth looking into:
> Make sure your "other end" is set up correctly. Many third party routers
> default to proprietary, non standard protocols, while WANPIPE adheres strictly
> to Internet or IETF standards of encapsulation.
well that's pretty reasonable and what I'd expect but check this out:
> You will find these utilities will turn you into a WAN guru.
> You will always know more about the WAN connection than either the
> network provider or the third party at the other end.
Reminds me of the days when I used to call up Sun support and talk their
technicians through the process of giving me tech support. Not to mention
dealing with a typical ISP's tech support ("ifconfig? which version of Windows
are you running, anyway?")
Lotsa good linux WAN stuff at ftp://ftp.sangoma.com/linux
Clueless about frame relay? I was before this evening spent a-googling. These
two pages are helpful places to start:
The Frame Relay Forum
http://www.frforum.com
They have an intro book you can read online as HTML or download as PDF.
IBM Frame Relay Guide
http://www.raleigh.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr/BOOKS/EZ305800/CCONTENTS
Pretty dry but quite informative.
the abovementioned wanpipe.pdf file has some pretty helpful introductory info it
too. There's also a document called WanpipeForLinux.pdf which is helpful. It's
available actually in both PDF and text format at
ftp://ftp.sangoma.com/linux/current_wanpipe/doc/
Now I just hope there's enough physical wires running into my house to _get_
frame relay. May have to send the telephone man on top of a pole to drop me a
line. How many wires into your building are required for frame relay to work?
Can't seem to find _that_ anywhere, and this house isn't exactly in a place
where the telco would have thought to plan for lots of extra capacity.
Mike
--
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Doc bug? Is Sangoma S514 PCI WAN card supported?
Under 2.4.0-ac4 I find lots of mentions of the Sangoma S514 PCI Multiprotocol
Wide Area Networking card in
drivers/net/wan/sdla*
But in Documentation/Configure.help under CONFIG_VENDOR_SANGOMA I only see
mention of the S502E(A), S503 and S508. These same cards are listed in
documentation/networking/framerelay.txt but not S514.
I can't find the 502 or 503 cards on http://www.sangoma.com so maybe they're
obsolete and while the 508 looks like a pretty good card, it's an ISA card and
I'd much rather use the 514 which is PCI. The PCI card is $579 and the ISA card
is $529 so you don't have to pay much extra to get a card that's going to be
better for your box's well-being.
I'm moving to the first house I've ever owned in my life (so I'll get to drill
holes in the walls) and the only affordable high-speed internet option there
which allows the subscriber to run their own servers and have multiple static IP
addresses is frame relay.
(You can also do synchronous PPP, HDLC and X.25 with these cards).
An advantage of using a WAN card over a dedicated router is:
- it's cheaper
- you get the source code
- you can combine the function of the router with other things like webservers
and firewalls (I was going to run a separate FRAD and firewall - $$$) You can
probably get dedicated routers with firewalls built in but you don't then have
the option of source code or, likely, timely notification from your vendors
about security holes.
- the WAN router is running on a box with lots of memory, hard disk, XWindows,
etc. Routers often run some kind of Unix as their OS but have very limited
resources for loading them up with fun diagnostic tools.
- you get to learn lots of interesting acronyms and enthrall your friends and
relatives with your knowledge of wide area networking protocols
- cool diagnostics by indicating link status, send and receive by lighting up
your keyboard LED's.
These folks at Sangoma seem like they're some pretty cool froods to be providing
specs and drivers for their cards which they appear to have kept supported over
an extended period of time so we should support their efforts by letting Linux
users know all the options for the hardware that helpful vendors such as these
sell.
My first thought, quite unfairly, was that Sangoma was only releasing the specs
for the older ISA cards and keeping the PCI specs a secret.
The following two passages from the WANPIPE user manual
(ftp://ftp.sangoma.com/documents/wanpipe.pdf) have me pretty convinced this is a
vendor worth looking into:
Make sure your "other end" is set up correctly. Many third party routers
default to proprietary, non standard protocols, while WANPIPE adheres strictly
to Internet or IETF standards of encapsulation.
well that's pretty reasonable and what I'd expect but check this out:
You will find these utilities will turn you into a WAN guru.
You will always know more about the WAN connection than either the
network provider or the third party at the other end.
Reminds me of the days when I used to call up Sun support and talk their
technicians through the process of giving me tech support. Not to mention
dealing with a typical ISP's tech support ("ifconfig? which version of Windows
are you running, anyway?")
Lotsa good linux WAN stuff at ftp://ftp.sangoma.com/linux
Clueless about frame relay? I was before this evening spent a-googling. These
two pages are helpful places to start:
The Frame Relay Forum
http://www.frforum.com
They have an intro book you can read online as HTML or download as PDF.
IBM Frame Relay Guide
http://www.raleigh.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr/BOOKS/EZ305800/CCONTENTS
Pretty dry but quite informative.
the abovementioned wanpipe.pdf file has some pretty helpful introductory info it
too. There's also a document called WanpipeForLinux.pdf which is helpful. It's
available actually in both PDF and text format at
ftp://ftp.sangoma.com/linux/current_wanpipe/doc/
Now I just hope there's enough physical wires running into my house to _get_
frame relay. May have to send the telephone man on top of a pole to drop me a
line. How many wires into your building are required for frame relay to work?
Can't seem to find _that_ anywhere, and this house isn't exactly in a place
where the telco would have thought to plan for lots of extra capacity.
Mike
--
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Article: Using test suites to test the new kernel
I've written a brief article on the topic of using test suites to test new linux kernels. It is my hope that anyone who wants to play with the new kernels will try out some of these suites, not just people doing a formal QA process, so that more coverage of configurations can be achieved. Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/articles/testsuites/ I cover the use of suites that test the correct functioning of applications (for example, language compliance tests for Python and Kaffe's Java implementation) as well as test suites aimed directly at testing Linux itself. Links to five different packages with test suites are given. I'd appreciate hearing of any more that you know about. I also appreciate your comments on how I can improve the article. This is a first draft. Regards, Mike Crawford -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Article: Using test suites to test the new kernel
I've written a brief article on the topic of using test suites to test new linux kernels. It is my hope that anyone who wants to play with the new kernels will try out some of these suites, not just people doing a formal QA process, so that more coverage of configurations can be achieved. Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/articles/testsuites/ I cover the use of suites that test the correct functioning of applications (for example, language compliance tests for Python and Kaffe's Java implementation) as well as test suites aimed directly at testing Linux itself. Links to five different packages with test suites are given. I'd appreciate hearing of any more that you know about. I also appreciate your comments on how I can improve the article. This is a first draft. Regards, Mike Crawford -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: FS callback routines
Regarding notification when there's a change to the filesystem: This is one of the most significant things about the BeOS BFS filesystem, and something I'd dearly love to see Linux adopt. It makes an app very efficient, you just get notified when a directory changes and you never waste time polling. I think it would require changes to the VFS layer, not just to the filesystems, because this is a concept POSIX filesystems do not presently possess. The other is indexed filesystem attributes, for example a file can have its mimetype in the filesystem, and any application can add an attribute and have it indexed. There's a method to do boolean queries on indexed attributes, and you can find files in an entire filesystem that match a query in a blazingly short time, much faster than walking the directory tree. If you want to try out the BeOS, there's a free-as-in-beer version at http://free.be.com for Pentium PC's. You can also purchase a version that comes for both PC's and certain PowerPC macs. There are read-only versions of this for Linux which I believe are under the GPL. The original author is here: http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA008030/bfs/ He refers you to here to get a version that works under 2.2.16: http://milosch.net/beos/ The author's intention was to take it read-write, but it's complex because it is a journaling filesystem. Daniel Berlin, a BeOS developer modified the Linux BFS driver so it works with 2.4.0-test1. I don't know if it works with 2.4.0. The web site where it used to be posted isn't there anymore, and the laptop where I had it is in for repair. I may have it on a backup, and I'll see if I can track Daniel down. While Be, Inc.'s implementation is closed-source, the design of the BFS (_not_ "befs" as it is sometimes called) is explained in Practical File System Design with the Be File System by Dominic Giampolo, ISBN 1-55860-497-9. Dominic has since left Be and I understand works at Google now. -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: DRI doesn't work on 2.4.0 but does on prerelease-ac5
J Sloan ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) sez: > This is a little OT for linux-kernel Off-topic to debug a new kernel feature that will significantly add to the competitiveness of Linux on the desktop and in engineering applications? Remember, my original report was that DRI was reported to be working in before the final 2.4.0 release, but stopped when the penguin peed on it, but now that I've done what should be done to fix this, I don't have the results that others are seeing. While this may be due to problems with Mesa, XFree86 4.0.2, or the kernel, the fact is that in our brave new world they operate as an integrated whole so it is important to figure it out as a unit. And I'm not really trying to play quake here but QA the kernel in general - it was in noticing a discrepancy while running the Mesa test suite that I got onto this, not because I care so much about 3D performance. I've yet to find a programmer's editor where 3D performance makes much of a difference. Comments posted here and received privately indicate that some get blazing speed from 4.0.2 + 2.4.0, and some get, well, software speeds. So there's a problem to be worked out. I've done what others have suggested, removing any GL libraries other than the ones in /usr/X11R6/lib to make sure my applications used that one. The build of the Mesa demos are hardwired to use the libraries from within the source distribution directories. If you take the gloss binary somewhere else, delete those libraries, and make a link to the X11 GL library in /usr/lib, gloss will run, at the amazing (and previously observed) frame rate of 7.5 FPS. So that doesn't work. glxinfo says dri is not available if I remove the library as I did. So I rebuilt Mesa and reinstalled it. The full output of glxinfo on my machine follows. Note that it says "direct rendering: Yes" but the version strings don't match. Does that indicate the problem? Server: 1.3 Mesa 3.4 Client: 1.2 Mesa 3.4 OpenGL: 1.2 Mesa 3.4 display: :0.0 screen:0 direct rendering: Yes server glx vendor string: Brian Paul server glx version string: 1.3 Mesa 3.4 server glx extensions: GLX_MESA_pixmap_colormap, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_release_buffers, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_ARB_get_proc_address client glx vendor string: Brian Paul client glx version string: 1.2 Mesa 3.4 client glx extensions: GLX_MESA_pixmap_colormap, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_release_buffers, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_ARB_get_proc_address GLX extensions: GLX_MESA_pixmap_colormap, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_release_buffers, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_ARB_get_proc_address OpenGL vendor string: Brian Paul OpenGL renderer string: Mesa X11 OpenGL version string: 1.2 Mesa 3.4 OpenGL extensions: GL_ARB_multitexture, GL_ARB_texture_cube_map, GL_ARB_tranpose_matrix, GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_blend_color, GL_EXT_blend_func_separate, GL_EXT_blend_logic_op, GL_EXT_blend_minmax, GL_EXT_blend_subtract, GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint, GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array, GL_EXT_histogram, GL_EXT_packed_pixels, GL_EXT_paletted_texture, GL_EXT_point_parameters, GL_EXT_polygon_offset, GL_EXT_rescale_normal, GL_EXT_shared_texture_palette, GL_EXT_stencil_wrap, GL_EXT_texture3D, GL_EXT_texture_env_add, GL_EXT_texture_env_combine, GL_EXT_texture_object, GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias, GL_EXT_vertex_array, GL_HP_occlusion_test, GL_INGR_blend_func_separate, GL_MESA_window_pos, GL_MESA_resize_buffers, GL_NV_texgen_reflection, GL_PGI_misc_hints, GL_SGI_color_matrix, GL_SGI_color_table, GL_SGIS_pixel_texture, GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp, GL_SGIX_pixel_texture visual x bf lv rg d st colorbuffer ax dp st accumbuffer ms cav id dep cl sp sz l ci b ro r g b a bf th cl r g b a ns b eat -- 0x23 24 tc 0 24 0 r . . 8 8 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None 0x24 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None 0x25 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None 0x26 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None 0x27 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None 0x28 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None 0x29 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None 0x2a 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: DRI doesn't work on 2.4.0 but does on prerelease-ac5
OK, I built XFree86 4.0.2 and DRI seems to be working for me now under 2.4.0-ac4. (Starting with 2.4.0, it wouldn't, this is with an ATI XPert 2000 AGP). BUT - although /var/log/XFree86.0.log documents the startup of DRI, DRM and AGP, and states the info about their initialization and stuff so that it looks like they're working, I don't notice any performance difference running any of the Mesa-3.4 demos whether or not I use DRI, and whether I run 4.0.1 or 4.0.2. This makes me suspect it's not really working, or else my build of the Mesa-3.4 library wasn't configured right - but note that if I disable DRI, one of the Mesa demos will comment that it's not available. A specific example is Mesa-3.4/demos/gloss. It's a rotating textured cylinder that is partially reflective of what seems to be a landscape that is in front of the screen being reflecting back to the viewer. I get a pretty consistent 7.5 frames per second: - in 4.0.1 with no DRI - in 4.0.1 with DRI - in 4.0.2 with no DRI - in 4.0.2 with DRI Having agpgart and drm/r128 compiled in or as modules also doesn't appear to make a difference. The frame rate for gloss drops to about 3.5 if I run geartrain (another demo) alongside it. Geartrain by itself seems to be about the same speed in all cases, though it doesn't report a number. There are a couple benchmarking tools in Mesa if someone wanted hard numbers from me. Can anyone suggest any 3D code that I can download that does more complex things than the mesa demos that I can test this with? Is my DRI really working? If not, any tips on getting it to do so? Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: DRI doesn't work on 2.4.0 but does on prerelease-ac5
OK, I built XFree86 4.0.2 and DRI seems to be working for me now under 2.4.0-ac4. (Starting with 2.4.0, it wouldn't, this is with an ATI XPert 2000 AGP). BUT - although /var/log/XFree86.0.log documents the startup of DRI, DRM and AGP, and states the info about their initialization and stuff so that it looks like they're working, I don't notice any performance difference running any of the Mesa-3.4 demos whether or not I use DRI, and whether I run 4.0.1 or 4.0.2. This makes me suspect it's not really working, or else my build of the Mesa-3.4 library wasn't configured right - but note that if I disable DRI, one of the Mesa demos will comment that it's not available. A specific example is Mesa-3.4/demos/gloss. It's a rotating textured cylinder that is partially reflective of what seems to be a landscape that is in front of the screen being reflecting back to the viewer. I get a pretty consistent 7.5 frames per second: - in 4.0.1 with no DRI - in 4.0.1 with DRI - in 4.0.2 with no DRI - in 4.0.2 with DRI Having agpgart and drm/r128 compiled in or as modules also doesn't appear to make a difference. The frame rate for gloss drops to about 3.5 if I run geartrain (another demo) alongside it. Geartrain by itself seems to be about the same speed in all cases, though it doesn't report a number. There are a couple benchmarking tools in Mesa if someone wanted hard numbers from me. Can anyone suggest any 3D code that I can download that does more complex things than the mesa demos that I can test this with? Is my DRI really working? If not, any tips on getting it to do so? Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: DRI doesn't work on 2.4.0 but does on prerelease-ac5
J Sloan ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) sez: This is a little OT for linux-kernel Off-topic to debug a new kernel feature that will significantly add to the competitiveness of Linux on the desktop and in engineering applications? Remember, my original report was that DRI was reported to be working in before the final 2.4.0 release, but stopped when the penguin peed on it, but now that I've done what should be done to fix this, I don't have the results that others are seeing. While this may be due to problems with Mesa, XFree86 4.0.2, or the kernel, the fact is that in our brave new world they operate as an integrated whole so it is important to figure it out as a unit. And I'm not really trying to play quake here but QA the kernel in general - it was in noticing a discrepancy while running the Mesa test suite that I got onto this, not because I care so much about 3D performance. I've yet to find a programmer's editor where 3D performance makes much of a difference. Comments posted here and received privately indicate that some get blazing speed from 4.0.2 + 2.4.0, and some get, well, software speeds. So there's a problem to be worked out. I've done what others have suggested, removing any GL libraries other than the ones in /usr/X11R6/lib to make sure my applications used that one. The build of the Mesa demos are hardwired to use the libraries from within the source distribution directories. If you take the gloss binary somewhere else, delete those libraries, and make a link to the X11 GL library in /usr/lib, gloss will run, at the amazing (and previously observed) frame rate of 7.5 FPS. So that doesn't work. glxinfo says dri is not available if I remove the library as I did. So I rebuilt Mesa and reinstalled it. The full output of glxinfo on my machine follows. Note that it says "direct rendering: Yes" but the version strings don't match. Does that indicate the problem? Server: 1.3 Mesa 3.4 Client: 1.2 Mesa 3.4 OpenGL: 1.2 Mesa 3.4 display: :0.0 screen:0 direct rendering: Yes server glx vendor string: Brian Paul server glx version string: 1.3 Mesa 3.4 server glx extensions: GLX_MESA_pixmap_colormap, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_release_buffers, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_ARB_get_proc_address client glx vendor string: Brian Paul client glx version string: 1.2 Mesa 3.4 client glx extensions: GLX_MESA_pixmap_colormap, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_release_buffers, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_ARB_get_proc_address GLX extensions: GLX_MESA_pixmap_colormap, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_release_buffers, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_ARB_get_proc_address OpenGL vendor string: Brian Paul OpenGL renderer string: Mesa X11 OpenGL version string: 1.2 Mesa 3.4 OpenGL extensions: GL_ARB_multitexture, GL_ARB_texture_cube_map, GL_ARB_tranpose_matrix, GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_blend_color, GL_EXT_blend_func_separate, GL_EXT_blend_logic_op, GL_EXT_blend_minmax, GL_EXT_blend_subtract, GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint, GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array, GL_EXT_histogram, GL_EXT_packed_pixels, GL_EXT_paletted_texture, GL_EXT_point_parameters, GL_EXT_polygon_offset, GL_EXT_rescale_normal, GL_EXT_shared_texture_palette, GL_EXT_stencil_wrap, GL_EXT_texture3D, GL_EXT_texture_env_add, GL_EXT_texture_env_combine, GL_EXT_texture_object, GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias, GL_EXT_vertex_array, GL_HP_occlusion_test, GL_INGR_blend_func_separate, GL_MESA_window_pos, GL_MESA_resize_buffers, GL_NV_texgen_reflection, GL_PGI_misc_hints, GL_SGI_color_matrix, GL_SGI_color_table, GL_SGIS_pixel_texture, GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp, GL_SGIX_pixel_texture visual x bf lv rg d st colorbuffer ax dp st accumbuffer ms cav id dep cl sp sz l ci b ro r g b a bf th cl r g b a ns b eat -- 0x23 24 tc 0 24 0 r . . 8 8 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None 0x24 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None 0x25 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None 0x26 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None 0x27 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None 0x28 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None 0x29 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None 0x2a 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: FS callback routines
Regarding notification when there's a change to the filesystem: This is one of the most significant things about the BeOS BFS filesystem, and something I'd dearly love to see Linux adopt. It makes an app very efficient, you just get notified when a directory changes and you never waste time polling. I think it would require changes to the VFS layer, not just to the filesystems, because this is a concept POSIX filesystems do not presently possess. The other is indexed filesystem attributes, for example a file can have its mimetype in the filesystem, and any application can add an attribute and have it indexed. There's a method to do boolean queries on indexed attributes, and you can find files in an entire filesystem that match a query in a blazingly short time, much faster than walking the directory tree. If you want to try out the BeOS, there's a free-as-in-beer version at http://free.be.com for Pentium PC's. You can also purchase a version that comes for both PC's and certain PowerPC macs. There are read-only versions of this for Linux which I believe are under the GPL. The original author is here: http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA008030/bfs/ He refers you to here to get a version that works under 2.2.16: http://milosch.net/beos/ The author's intention was to take it read-write, but it's complex because it is a journaling filesystem. Daniel Berlin, a BeOS developer modified the Linux BFS driver so it works with 2.4.0-test1. I don't know if it works with 2.4.0. The web site where it used to be posted isn't there anymore, and the laptop where I had it is in for repair. I may have it on a backup, and I'll see if I can track Daniel down. While Be, Inc.'s implementation is closed-source, the design of the BFS (_not_ "befs" as it is sometimes called) is explained in Practical File System Design with the Be File System by Dominic Giampolo, ISBN 1-55860-497-9. Dominic has since left Be and I understand works at Google now. -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: [PATCH] typo in vesafb.c (against 2.4.0-ac3)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said: > > this looks like a typo and fixes a compile error in > 2.4.0-ac3. (replacing temp_sze with temp_size in drivers/video/vesafb.c) I had this problem too. For some reason this patch kept getting rejected by the patch program when I tried to apply it, but editing the file by hand to do what the patch does fixed the problem. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
ReL DRI doesn't work on 2.4.0 but does on prerelease-ac5
I get, with XFree86 4.0.1 and an ATI Rage Millenium card: > (EE) r128(0): R128DRIScreenInit failed (DRM version = 2.1.2, expected 1.0.x). > Disabling DRI. Jeff Hartmann ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) says: > XFree 4.0.2 will fix this OK, so I'll give a try at building 4.0.2 the Slackware way. While unfortunately the Slackware packages for 4.0.2 are not yet available, the diffs to the 4.0.1 sources (mostly the Imake files and site.def) used to build their version (with its different directory layout) are in: ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-current/contrib/contrib-sources/XFree86-4.0.1/ Steven Walter ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) suggested that the incompatibility would be fixed by using a -ac version since 2.4.0. I built 2.4.0, but it didn't fix it, so given what Jeff said I guess this is a feature not a bug. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: What test suites can you tell me about?
Nate Straz of the Linux Test Project at SGI ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said: > The Linux Test Project (http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ltp/) was set up to > create a set of automated tests for Linux. Nate, This is most excellent news! I'd like you to look at http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/ The objectives of the Linux Quality Database are: - to get more people testing the new Linux kernels in a meaningful way - to give them tips on how to do it effectively, such as a link to your site and other test suites - in the long run, to provide an easy-to-use web interface to make it easier for people to log more meaningful bug reports, with a powerful search interface to make it easy to find the bugs a developer wants to know about - to improve the overall quality of free software in general through advocacy and education I'd be most interested in your comments about the site and what I'm trying to achieve. Also see "Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel" at: http://advogato.org/article/224.html Unfortunately, Advogato doesn't provide for editing an article once one presses the final "submit" button. So I'm going to post an edited and updated version of that on the Linuxquality site. Regards, -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: What test suites can you tell me about?
Nate Straz of the Linux Test Project at SGI ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said: The Linux Test Project (http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ltp/) was set up to create a set of automated tests for Linux. Nate, This is most excellent news! I'd like you to look at http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/ The objectives of the Linux Quality Database are: - to get more people testing the new Linux kernels in a meaningful way - to give them tips on how to do it effectively, such as a link to your site and other test suites - in the long run, to provide an easy-to-use web interface to make it easier for people to log more meaningful bug reports, with a powerful search interface to make it easy to find the bugs a developer wants to know about - to improve the overall quality of free software in general through advocacy and education I'd be most interested in your comments about the site and what I'm trying to achieve. Also see "Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel" at: http://advogato.org/article/224.html Unfortunately, Advogato doesn't provide for editing an article once one presses the final "submit" button. So I'm going to post an edited and updated version of that on the Linuxquality site. Regards, -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
ReL DRI doesn't work on 2.4.0 but does on prerelease-ac5
I get, with XFree86 4.0.1 and an ATI Rage Millenium card: (EE) r128(0): R128DRIScreenInit failed (DRM version = 2.1.2, expected 1.0.x). Disabling DRI. Jeff Hartmann ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) says: XFree 4.0.2 will fix this OK, so I'll give a try at building 4.0.2 the Slackware way. While unfortunately the Slackware packages for 4.0.2 are not yet available, the diffs to the 4.0.1 sources (mostly the Imake files and site.def) used to build their version (with its different directory layout) are in: ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-current/contrib/contrib-sources/XFree86-4.0.1/ Steven Walter ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) suggested that the incompatibility would be fixed by using a -ac version since 2.4.0. I built 2.4.0, but it didn't fix it, so given what Jeff said I guess this is a feature not a bug. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: [PATCH] typo in vesafb.c (against 2.4.0-ac3)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said: this looks like a typo and fixes a compile error in 2.4.0-ac3. (replacing temp_sze with temp_size in drivers/video/vesafb.c) I had this problem too. For some reason this patch kept getting rejected by the patch program when I tried to apply it, but editing the file by hand to do what the patch does fixed the problem. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
What test suites can you tell me about?
Can you tell me about any ready-to-use test suites, for any software package that should run under Linux, that I can build and run to test the new kernel? Besides running all these tests myself on my machine, I'm going to document them in an article at: http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/articles/ (there are no articles there yet but I'm composing a couple that will be posted soon) For example, if you build Python (http://www.python.org) and say "make check", it will run a bunch of python programs that test the correctness of the programming language. This is of interest in part because lots of the Python tests make system calls, but also because it tests that the compilers generate correct code under the new kernel (another test I do is, after I boot off a new kernel, I do "make clean", build it again and boot off _that_). "make exec" under the Mesa 3.4 library builds a bunch of graphics demos, a few of which are kind of whizzy but most of which exercise a few basic functions in OpenGL. So one can watch that they don't crash, that the images look correctly drawn and so on. This enabled me to realize that DRI wasn't working under 2.4.0 but it was under 2.4.0-prerelease-ac5, which I've detailed in a separate message. Another test suite I know about comes with Kaffe (http://www.kaffe.org) and verifies that Kaffe's implementation of Java is running correctly on your system. One I read about somewhere but have no clue where to get it is this memory stress-testing tool that does lots of DMA and stuff off of the disks. There must be a lot of these tools available, if only we had them listed all in one place. If you maintain such a test tool, it would be helpful if you provided the option to run the whole suite completely unattended. Mesa provides a good test for lots of functions of the kernel, but one problem is that one has to quit the tests after each one runs, usually by pressing the ESC key. Unattended testing also allows one to run lots of tests simultaneously to test a heavily loaded system. In some cases, the tests really do need to have some user input, like navigating around a 3D world or turning various rendering options on and off, but it's possible the tests could be extended to allow this input from a script (Python provides a nice way to bolt a script interpreter to any application). Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
DRI doesn't work on 2.4.0 but does on prerelease-ac5
I was testing the 2.4.0 kernel by running "make exec" in the Mesa-3.4 sources, which builds and runs a bunch of demos, and was suprised to see one of the tests emit a message that said DRI wasn't available. It had been working before. Just to make sure I then booted off of 2.4.0-prerelease-ac5 and it was working again. This is with XFree86 4.0.1 on Slackware 7.1. I have an ATI Rage Millenium card on a machine with a 667 MHz Pentium III and 128 MB of 133 MHz RAM. The motherboard is an ASUS P3V4X. It has an ACPI bios but ACPI is disabled in the config. Could XFree86 4.0.2 fix this? I had been waiting until the binary packages were available from ftp.slackware.com because Patrick Volkerding lays out the directories in a slightly different manner that he argues pretty convincingly is preferable, but it would be a drag for me to reproduce by building it myself. AGP, VIA support, DRM, and r128 DRM are all compiled in statically rather than as modules. In the /var/log/XFree86.0.log file I see the following under 2.4.0 final release: (EE) r128(0): R128DRIScreenInit failed (DRM version = 2.1.2, expected 1.0.x). Disabling DRI. (0): [drm] failed to remove DRM signal handler (0): failed to destroy server context (0): [drm] removed 1 reserved context for kernel (0): [drm] unmapping 4096 bytes of SAREA 0xc5bb3000 at 0x40014000 in the corresponding point of the same file under 2.4.0-prerelease-ac5 I have: (II) r128(0): [agp] Mode 0x1f000203 [AGP 0x1106/0x0691; Card 0x1002/0x5246] (II) r128(0): [agp] 8192 kB allocated with handle 0xcc82b000 (II) r128(0): [agp] ring handle = 0xe400 (II) r128(0): [agp] Ring mapped at 0x421d9000 (II) r128(0): [agp] ring read ptr handle = 0xe4101000 (II) r128(0): [agp] Ring read ptr mapped at 0x40015000 (II) r128(0): [agp] vertex buffers handle = 0xe4102000 (II) r128(0): [agp] Vertex buffers mapped at 0x422da000 (II) r128(0): [agp] indirect buffers handle = 0xe4202000 (II) r128(0): [agp] Indirect buffers mapped at 0x423da000 (II) r128(0): [agp] AGP texture map handle = 0xe4302000 (II) r128(0): [agp] AGP Texture map mapped at 0x424da000 (II) r128(0): [drm] register handle = 0xdd00 (II) r128(0): [drm] Added 64 16384 byte vertex buffers (II) r128(0): [drm] Mapped 64 vertex buffers The relevant parts of my .config file are as follows (and are identical between the two kernel versions, I used "make oldconfig" and didn't change any options): CONFIG_AGP=y # CONFIG_AGP_INTEL is not set # CONFIG_AGP_I810 is not set CONFIG_AGP_VIA=y # CONFIG_AGP_AMD is not set # CONFIG_AGP_SIS is not set # CONFIG_AGP_ALI is not set CONFIG_DRM=y # CONFIG_DRM_TDFX is not set # CONFIG_DRM_GAMMA is not set CONFIG_DRM_R128=y # CONFIG_DRM_I810 is not set # CONFIG_DRM_MGA is not set If you want my whole .config file I could mail it in or post it on my website. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
DRI doesn't work on 2.4.0 but does on prerelease-ac5
I was testing the 2.4.0 kernel by running "make exec" in the Mesa-3.4 sources, which builds and runs a bunch of demos, and was suprised to see one of the tests emit a message that said DRI wasn't available. It had been working before. Just to make sure I then booted off of 2.4.0-prerelease-ac5 and it was working again. This is with XFree86 4.0.1 on Slackware 7.1. I have an ATI Rage Millenium card on a machine with a 667 MHz Pentium III and 128 MB of 133 MHz RAM. The motherboard is an ASUS P3V4X. It has an ACPI bios but ACPI is disabled in the config. Could XFree86 4.0.2 fix this? I had been waiting until the binary packages were available from ftp.slackware.com because Patrick Volkerding lays out the directories in a slightly different manner that he argues pretty convincingly is preferable, but it would be a drag for me to reproduce by building it myself. AGP, VIA support, DRM, and r128 DRM are all compiled in statically rather than as modules. In the /var/log/XFree86.0.log file I see the following under 2.4.0 final release: (EE) r128(0): R128DRIScreenInit failed (DRM version = 2.1.2, expected 1.0.x). Disabling DRI. (0): [drm] failed to remove DRM signal handler (0): failed to destroy server context (0): [drm] removed 1 reserved context for kernel (0): [drm] unmapping 4096 bytes of SAREA 0xc5bb3000 at 0x40014000 in the corresponding point of the same file under 2.4.0-prerelease-ac5 I have: (II) r128(0): [agp] Mode 0x1f000203 [AGP 0x1106/0x0691; Card 0x1002/0x5246] (II) r128(0): [agp] 8192 kB allocated with handle 0xcc82b000 (II) r128(0): [agp] ring handle = 0xe400 (II) r128(0): [agp] Ring mapped at 0x421d9000 (II) r128(0): [agp] ring read ptr handle = 0xe4101000 (II) r128(0): [agp] Ring read ptr mapped at 0x40015000 (II) r128(0): [agp] vertex buffers handle = 0xe4102000 (II) r128(0): [agp] Vertex buffers mapped at 0x422da000 (II) r128(0): [agp] indirect buffers handle = 0xe4202000 (II) r128(0): [agp] Indirect buffers mapped at 0x423da000 (II) r128(0): [agp] AGP texture map handle = 0xe4302000 (II) r128(0): [agp] AGP Texture map mapped at 0x424da000 (II) r128(0): [drm] register handle = 0xdd00 (II) r128(0): [drm] Added 64 16384 byte vertex buffers (II) r128(0): [drm] Mapped 64 vertex buffers The relevant parts of my .config file are as follows (and are identical between the two kernel versions, I used "make oldconfig" and didn't change any options): CONFIG_AGP=y # CONFIG_AGP_INTEL is not set # CONFIG_AGP_I810 is not set CONFIG_AGP_VIA=y # CONFIG_AGP_AMD is not set # CONFIG_AGP_SIS is not set # CONFIG_AGP_ALI is not set CONFIG_DRM=y # CONFIG_DRM_TDFX is not set # CONFIG_DRM_GAMMA is not set CONFIG_DRM_R128=y # CONFIG_DRM_I810 is not set # CONFIG_DRM_MGA is not set If you want my whole .config file I could mail it in or post it on my website. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
What test suites can you tell me about?
Can you tell me about any ready-to-use test suites, for any software package that should run under Linux, that I can build and run to test the new kernel? Besides running all these tests myself on my machine, I'm going to document them in an article at: http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/articles/ (there are no articles there yet but I'm composing a couple that will be posted soon) For example, if you build Python (http://www.python.org) and say "make check", it will run a bunch of python programs that test the correctness of the programming language. This is of interest in part because lots of the Python tests make system calls, but also because it tests that the compilers generate correct code under the new kernel (another test I do is, after I boot off a new kernel, I do "make clean", build it again and boot off _that_). "make exec" under the Mesa 3.4 library builds a bunch of graphics demos, a few of which are kind of whizzy but most of which exercise a few basic functions in OpenGL. So one can watch that they don't crash, that the images look correctly drawn and so on. This enabled me to realize that DRI wasn't working under 2.4.0 but it was under 2.4.0-prerelease-ac5, which I've detailed in a separate message. Another test suite I know about comes with Kaffe (http://www.kaffe.org) and verifies that Kaffe's implementation of Java is running correctly on your system. One I read about somewhere but have no clue where to get it is this memory stress-testing tool that does lots of DMA and stuff off of the disks. There must be a lot of these tools available, if only we had them listed all in one place. If you maintain such a test tool, it would be helpful if you provided the option to run the whole suite completely unattended. Mesa provides a good test for lots of functions of the kernel, but one problem is that one has to quit the tests after each one runs, usually by pressing the ESC key. Unattended testing also allows one to run lots of tests simultaneously to test a heavily loaded system. In some cases, the tests really do need to have some user input, like navigating around a 3D world or turning various rendering options on and off, but it's possible the tests could be extended to allow this input from a script (Python provides a nice way to bolt a script interpreter to any application). Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Is your component's config help up-to-date?
I'd like to request that if you are responsible for an option that can be configured in the kernel, that you look at the help for it and make sure it is currently up to date. I know that it is more important to the correct function of the kernel that your software actually be fully implemented and bug-free, but the config help is often the only thing that a lot of people will know about your part of the kernel until they've been working with the new system for a while. At the very least you'll save yourself answering some questions and looking into bogus bug reports if you make sure the help is correct. It's my experience that after a while of testing lots of new kernels I stop looking at the help much. Maybe you haven't looked at it very much since you originally composed it, but the behaviour of your component has changed so that it no longer matches the description. This is in the file linux/Documentation/Configure.help (to edit it). You can of course also read it by configuring a kernel and checking the help on your option. - Are there any questions frequently asked on the mailing list that you could head off by answering them in the config help? - Is the help written in a clear and unambiguous way? Have a friend who isn't an expert read it and tell you what he thinks it means. Rememember that many people who will be reading it do not have English as their mother tongue and may even be using a translation dictionary to understand it. - Does the help describe the current behavior of your option? - Have you added support for new hardware in a driver that's not yet mentioned in the help? - If the behavior depends on the configuration of other options, is the described behavior actually what currently happens when those other options are set various ways? I know this can take sime time to test out the different options by actually building and trying out the kernels but it's important to head off a bunch of mystified users. - Does the recommendation that the help gives correspond to your current thinking? - Are any URL's or references to external doc given in the help correct? - Could you add any URL's or references to doc like HOWTOs that would be helpful? Yours, Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: How to Power off with ACPI/APM?
> Silly question, but have you realized that you don't have to enable > SMP in kernel to do multithreading ? Lest anyone think me completely clueless, yes, I'm well aware of that. It's just that I wanted to have that warm fuzzy feeling the comes from pretending I had the cash to buy a dual processor machine when I bought this PC. I had planned too, but my laptop died and I needed a new box in a hurry so I had to get what I could get. It's a decent motherboard though, for being single processor. On the other hand, I did identify that you can't power off with smp enabled unless (as someone helpfully posted) you give this parameter in lilo or grub: apm=power-off While the SMP config option says APM doesn't work if you have SMP enabled (so I should have known), it would be helpful to mention that you can still power off this way. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: You've Been Slashdotted
I gather from the combination of what I read on Slashdot and what folks replied here that the mirrors are actually lightly loaded, but Slashdot readers don't know about them because they couldn't read the home page at http://www.kernel.org that directed them to the mirror list. So I posted the algorithm for calculating the URL to your nearest mirror on Slashdot. Maybe that'll help some Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: You've Been Slashdotted
I gather from the combination of what I read on Slashdot and what folks replied here that the mirrors are actually lightly loaded, but Slashdot readers don't know about them because they couldn't read the home page at http://www.kernel.org that directed them to the mirror list. So I posted the algorithm for calculating the URL to your nearest mirror on Slashdot. Maybe that'll help some Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: How to Power off with ACPI/APM?
Silly question, but have you realized that you don't have to enable SMP in kernel to do multithreading ? Lest anyone think me completely clueless, yes, I'm well aware of that. It's just that I wanted to have that warm fuzzy feeling the comes from pretending I had the cash to buy a dual processor machine when I bought this PC. I had planned too, but my laptop died and I needed a new box in a hurry so I had to get what I could get. It's a decent motherboard though, for being single processor. On the other hand, I did identify that you can't power off with smp enabled unless (as someone helpfully posted) you give this parameter in lilo or grub: apm=power-off While the SMP config option says APM doesn't work if you have SMP enabled (so I should have known), it would be helpful to mention that you can still power off this way. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Is your component's config help up-to-date?
I'd like to request that if you are responsible for an option that can be configured in the kernel, that you look at the help for it and make sure it is currently up to date. I know that it is more important to the correct function of the kernel that your software actually be fully implemented and bug-free, but the config help is often the only thing that a lot of people will know about your part of the kernel until they've been working with the new system for a while. At the very least you'll save yourself answering some questions and looking into bogus bug reports if you make sure the help is correct. It's my experience that after a while of testing lots of new kernels I stop looking at the help much. Maybe you haven't looked at it very much since you originally composed it, but the behaviour of your component has changed so that it no longer matches the description. This is in the file linux/Documentation/Configure.help (to edit it). You can of course also read it by configuring a kernel and checking the help on your option. - Are there any questions frequently asked on the mailing list that you could head off by answering them in the config help? - Is the help written in a clear and unambiguous way? Have a friend who isn't an expert read it and tell you what he thinks it means. Rememember that many people who will be reading it do not have English as their mother tongue and may even be using a translation dictionary to understand it. - Does the help describe the current behavior of your option? - Have you added support for new hardware in a driver that's not yet mentioned in the help? - If the behavior depends on the configuration of other options, is the described behavior actually what currently happens when those other options are set various ways? I know this can take sime time to test out the different options by actually building and trying out the kernels but it's important to head off a bunch of mystified users. - Does the recommendation that the help gives correspond to your current thinking? - Are any URL's or references to external doc given in the help correct? - Could you add any URL's or references to doc like HOWTOs that would be helpful? Yours, Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: Change of policy for future 2.2 driver submissions
You might find it interesting to read the section entitled "Monkeywrenching the Virtual Machine" towards the end of "Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel". It's in my second comment after the main article: http://advogato.org/article/224.html I understand Linus' desire to have more widespread testing done on the kernel, and certainly he can accomplish that by labeling some random build as the new stable version. But I think a better choice would have been to advocate testing more widely - don't just announce it to the linux-kernel list, get on National Public Radio, the Linux Journal and Slashdot and stuff. Don't just announce the existence of a kernel that people ought to test, but hit the streets and provide advice and assistance and encouragement to those who might help out. That's the kind of thing I was trying to do in my article above. My concern is that declaring this kernel as production and stable, with patching still happening by the minute, is that a lot of people who don't know what they're doing will slap it into machines they depend on for their livelihood, and a lot of distributions will quickly adopt it in order to be perceived as competitive. The very first experience many people will ever have with Free Software will boot off Linux 2.4.0 - not 2.4.1, because some distro will want to be the first. You might think this is great because of all the extra testing the new users will do but I assert that it isn't. The environment for Linux is quite different these days than when 2.2 or 2.0 were released. A lot of the people who will be using it are not technically savvy people, and many of those who do know technology depend on its reliability for the profitability of large businesses but may not read Linus' message that indicates this is really just for testing. It would be really bad if this particular version of the kernel turns out to have a lot of problems. I guess you can get more people testing by releasing it yourselves than I can with my websites saying people should test, but I feel that having the testing done by people who know what they're getting into and have some guidance is a wiser course of action. If you're in the neighborhood, please stop by: http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: How to Power off with ACPI/APM?
As suggested, I added: apm=power-off to the kernel line of my grub menu.lst file and now I can power off. I almost jumped when the machine snapped off - my bloody monitor doesn't go dark when it loses signal it lights up with an RGB test pattern (TTX - don't buy one). I think the real reason it wasn't working was that, although I'm using a one-processor machine with a motherboard that only allows for one processor, I had enabled SMP in the kernel, and this disables APM. In my own work I mostly do multithreaded software development and I just sort of felt like it would be good karma to enable it even if my machine didn't support it. Go figure. So this was mostly a user error, although I guess I've been helpful in discovering the current interaction of ACPI and APM. I'll read up a bit more on ACPI and see what I can do with that later on. Thanks for the help. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by: http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: How to Power off with ACPI/APM?
> How is each of your setups, ie, what is compiled in kernel and what is > a module ? My guess is: > - ACPI+APM in kernel: ACPI wins > - APM in kernel, ACPI module; APM starts, blocks ACPI > - and so on Nope. If they're both in the kernel, APM wins. When I built with both ACPI and APM, and then APM ran first. ACPI started up in the kernel, commented that APM was already there, and exited. Many folks have given me tips on getting power off to work, I'll screw around to see if I can get it to go. But I guess the fact that ACPI exits if APM is enabled is a real bug. I know it's hip, cool and efficient to use modules but I often start by hardwiring things into the kernel because I may not have stuff set up right yet to load the modules after getting the new kernel. Just saying Y instead of M often makes things work without further trouble. CONFIG_PM=y CONFIG_ACPI=y CONFIG_APM=y # CONFIG_APM_IGNORE_USER_SUSPEND is not set # CONFIG_APM_DO_ENABLE is not set # CONFIG_APM_CPU_IDLE is not set # CONFIG_APM_DISPLAY_BLANK is not set # CONFIG_APM_RTC_IS_GMT is not set # CONFIG_APM_ALLOW_INTS is not set # CONFIG_APM_REAL_MODE_POWER_OFF is not set -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
You've Been Slashdotted
Even mighty ftp.kernel.org has fallen under the /. effect after they ran the annoucenement: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/01/05/0049246=thread You're probably not going to have much luck getting any source off any servers tonight. Might I suggest you pop over to Slashdot and give the clueless some clues on getting their new kernels working? They need help. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: How to Power off with ACPI/APM?
I said: > Looking back in the ACPI kernel config help, it says you can use ACPI > if you also have APM enabled, which I didn't do at first. [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Daniel) replied: > That's wrong then, you can't use ACPI and APM at the same time. I think the documentation in the kernel config help is unclear. The way it's phrased seems to imply that you want to use them together. Thinking about it, I believe what is really meant is that if ACPI and APM are both enabled, ACPI will take precedence - but that is not what happens. APM gives its message first in the boot process, then later ACPI does. But ACPI says something like "APM already present, exiting", so the doc is wrong both ways you read it, or else ACPI doesn't succeed in the intended behavior to override APM. in linux/Documentation/Configure.help, the following text appears in ACPI's entry: If both ACPI and Advanced Power Management (APM) support are configured, ACPI is used. Perhaps better wording would be (um, perhaps someone could show this clueless old Mac programmer how to use diff to make a patch?): If both ACPI and Advanced Power Management (APM) support are configured, ACPI takes precedence and APM is not used. but that's not what actually happens, in practice APM gets used. Anyway, I turned off ACPI in my config and rebuilt my kernel, and I still can't power off. Just to make sure, I tried to force the power off with this: sync sync sync halt -f -p I got the message "Power Down" but my system stayed on and I was still in my shell. I verfied that apmd got started at boot time and that the file /proc/apm exists and has some stuff in it: 1.14 1.2 0x03 0x01 0xff 0x80 -1% -1 ? I'm using the binary of halt that came with Slackware 7.1. Do I need to update any of my executable programs to work with the new kernel? The only thing I've done is installed the latest modutils. I did download the latest util-linux from kernel.org but this didn't appear to have the same program Slackware uses - there's a shutdown program, but on slackware I think shutdown is a script and there's a halt binary with reboot symlinked to it. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: How to Power off with ACPI/APM?
I said: Looking back in the ACPI kernel config help, it says you can use ACPI if you also have APM enabled, which I didn't do at first. [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Daniel) replied: That's wrong then, you can't use ACPI and APM at the same time. I think the documentation in the kernel config help is unclear. The way it's phrased seems to imply that you want to use them together. Thinking about it, I believe what is really meant is that if ACPI and APM are both enabled, ACPI will take precedence - but that is not what happens. APM gives its message first in the boot process, then later ACPI does. But ACPI says something like "APM already present, exiting", so the doc is wrong both ways you read it, or else ACPI doesn't succeed in the intended behavior to override APM. in linux/Documentation/Configure.help, the following text appears in ACPI's entry: If both ACPI and Advanced Power Management (APM) support are configured, ACPI is used. Perhaps better wording would be (um, perhaps someone could show this clueless old Mac programmer how to use diff to make a patch?): If both ACPI and Advanced Power Management (APM) support are configured, ACPI takes precedence and APM is not used. but that's not what actually happens, in practice APM gets used. Anyway, I turned off ACPI in my config and rebuilt my kernel, and I still can't power off. Just to make sure, I tried to force the power off with this: sync sync sync halt -f -p I got the message "Power Down" but my system stayed on and I was still in my shell. I verfied that apmd got started at boot time and that the file /proc/apm exists and has some stuff in it: 1.14 1.2 0x03 0x01 0xff 0x80 -1% -1 ? I'm using the binary of halt that came with Slackware 7.1. Do I need to update any of my executable programs to work with the new kernel? The only thing I've done is installed the latest modutils. I did download the latest util-linux from kernel.org but this didn't appear to have the same program Slackware uses - there's a shutdown program, but on slackware I think shutdown is a script and there's a halt binary with reboot symlinked to it. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
You've Been Slashdotted
Even mighty ftp.kernel.org has fallen under the /. effect after they ran the annoucenement: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/01/05/0049246mode=thread You're probably not going to have much luck getting any source off any servers tonight. Might I suggest you pop over to Slashdot and give the clueless some clues on getting their new kernels working? They need help. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: How to Power off with ACPI/APM?
How is each of your setups, ie, what is compiled in kernel and what is a module ? My guess is: - ACPI+APM in kernel: ACPI wins - APM in kernel, ACPI module; APM starts, blocks ACPI - and so on Nope. If they're both in the kernel, APM wins. When I built with both ACPI and APM, and then APM ran first. ACPI started up in the kernel, commented that APM was already there, and exited. Many folks have given me tips on getting power off to work, I'll screw around to see if I can get it to go. But I guess the fact that ACPI exits if APM is enabled is a real bug. I know it's hip, cool and efficient to use modules but I often start by hardwiring things into the kernel because I may not have stuff set up right yet to load the modules after getting the new kernel. Just saying Y instead of M often makes things work without further trouble. CONFIG_PM=y CONFIG_ACPI=y CONFIG_APM=y # CONFIG_APM_IGNORE_USER_SUSPEND is not set # CONFIG_APM_DO_ENABLE is not set # CONFIG_APM_CPU_IDLE is not set # CONFIG_APM_DISPLAY_BLANK is not set # CONFIG_APM_RTC_IS_GMT is not set # CONFIG_APM_ALLOW_INTS is not set # CONFIG_APM_REAL_MODE_POWER_OFF is not set -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: How to Power off with ACPI/APM?
As suggested, I added: apm=power-off to the kernel line of my grub menu.lst file and now I can power off. I almost jumped when the machine snapped off - my bloody monitor doesn't go dark when it loses signal it lights up with an RGB test pattern (TTX - don't buy one). I think the real reason it wasn't working was that, although I'm using a one-processor machine with a motherboard that only allows for one processor, I had enabled SMP in the kernel, and this disables APM. In my own work I mostly do multithreaded software development and I just sort of felt like it would be good karma to enable it even if my machine didn't support it. Go figure. So this was mostly a user error, although I guess I've been helpful in discovering the current interaction of ACPI and APM. I'll read up a bit more on ACPI and see what I can do with that later on. Thanks for the help. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by: http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: Change of policy for future 2.2 driver submissions
You might find it interesting to read the section entitled "Monkeywrenching the Virtual Machine" towards the end of "Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel". It's in my second comment after the main article: http://advogato.org/article/224.html I understand Linus' desire to have more widespread testing done on the kernel, and certainly he can accomplish that by labeling some random build as the new stable version. But I think a better choice would have been to advocate testing more widely - don't just announce it to the linux-kernel list, get on National Public Radio, the Linux Journal and Slashdot and stuff. Don't just announce the existence of a kernel that people ought to test, but hit the streets and provide advice and assistance and encouragement to those who might help out. That's the kind of thing I was trying to do in my article above. My concern is that declaring this kernel as production and stable, with patching still happening by the minute, is that a lot of people who don't know what they're doing will slap it into machines they depend on for their livelihood, and a lot of distributions will quickly adopt it in order to be perceived as competitive. The very first experience many people will ever have with Free Software will boot off Linux 2.4.0 - not 2.4.1, because some distro will want to be the first. You might think this is great because of all the extra testing the new users will do but I assert that it isn't. The environment for Linux is quite different these days than when 2.2 or 2.0 were released. A lot of the people who will be using it are not technically savvy people, and many of those who do know technology depend on its reliability for the profitability of large businesses but may not read Linus' message that indicates this is really just for testing. It would be really bad if this particular version of the kernel turns out to have a lot of problems. I guess you can get more people testing by releasing it yourselves than I can with my websites saying people should test, but I feel that having the testing done by people who know what they're getting into and have some guidance is a wiser course of action. If you're in the neighborhood, please stop by: http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
"Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel" on Advogato
I just submitted an article entitled "Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel" to http://advogato.org the article is at http://advogato.org/article/224.html If you're not familiar with it, Advogato is an online community for Free Software developers. I would venture to say any Linux kernel developer would qualify for a membership. I hope you like what I have to say. Perhaps if you'd like to encourage a friend to test the kernel you could forward them the URL. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
How to power off with ACPI/APM?
I have an ASUS P3V4X motherboard with an ACPI BIOS. This is a desktop machine, and while APM is normally of concern for laptops, it seems to me from what I read in the kernel config help that I should be able to make the machine power itself off. If I have ACPI enabled but not APM, when I do "shutdown -h now", I see these messages at the end: Power Down ACPI: S5 failed and the machine stays powered on. Looking back in the ACPI kernel config help, it says you can use ACPI if you also have APM enabled, which I didn't do at first. I enabled it, and the "S5 failed" message goes away at the end, but my machine still doesn't power down. I notice in the kernel messages at boot time that ACPI says something like "APM already enabled, exiting". This isn't that big a deal to me personally (I can always hit the power switch) but if it's a kernel bug I want to help track it down. Alternatively, if it's something I'm doing wrong I can help clarify and document the procedure for making this work. I'm using 2.4-prerelease-ac5, which generally seems to be working pretty good for me. Other exciting details of this machine are that it has an adaptec 28160 Ultra160 SCSI host bus adapter that works fine with the disk. I'll try burning a CD with it shortly. It's got a Pentium III 667 with 128MB of ram running at 133 MHz, a 3C905B 10/100 ethernet card and a ATI Rage Millenium with 32 MB of video ram. I've got XFree86 4.0.1 on it with DRI working (and DRM and AGP enabled in the kernel) with a VIA chipset on the motherboard - I generally had little luck ever getting accellerated drivers to work under XFree86 3.x, but things went much better with 4. I get on the internet with the ppp_async module via a 56k external modem. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
How to power off with ACPI/APM?
I have an ASUS P3V4X motherboard with an ACPI BIOS. This is a desktop machine, and while APM is normally of concern for laptops, it seems to me from what I read in the kernel config help that I should be able to make the machine power itself off. If I have ACPI enabled but not APM, when I do "shutdown -h now", I see these messages at the end: Power Down ACPI: S5 failed and the machine stays powered on. Looking back in the ACPI kernel config help, it says you can use ACPI if you also have APM enabled, which I didn't do at first. I enabled it, and the "S5 failed" message goes away at the end, but my machine still doesn't power down. I notice in the kernel messages at boot time that ACPI says something like "APM already enabled, exiting". This isn't that big a deal to me personally (I can always hit the power switch) but if it's a kernel bug I want to help track it down. Alternatively, if it's something I'm doing wrong I can help clarify and document the procedure for making this work. I'm using 2.4-prerelease-ac5, which generally seems to be working pretty good for me. Other exciting details of this machine are that it has an adaptec 28160 Ultra160 SCSI host bus adapter that works fine with the disk. I'll try burning a CD with it shortly. It's got a Pentium III 667 with 128MB of ram running at 133 MHz, a 3C905B 10/100 ethernet card and a ATI Rage Millenium with 32 MB of video ram. I've got XFree86 4.0.1 on it with DRI working (and DRM and AGP enabled in the kernel) with a VIA chipset on the motherboard - I generally had little luck ever getting accellerated drivers to work under XFree86 3.x, but things went much better with 4. I get on the internet with the ppp_async module via a 56k external modem. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel on Advogato
I just submitted an article entitled "Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel" to http://advogato.org the article is at http://advogato.org/article/224.html If you're not familiar with it, Advogato is an online community for Free Software developers. I would venture to say any Linux kernel developer would qualify for a membership. I hope you like what I have to say. Perhaps if you'd like to encourage a friend to test the kernel you could forward them the URL. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
VM thrashing in test13-pre4 with Netscape
I don't know if this is a Netscape problem, or an XFree86 4.0.1 problem, or a kernel problem. I hadn't noticed it with previous kernels so I thought I should mention it. I'll download the latest kernel source tonight and try it out. I'm using 2.4.0-test13-pre4 with XFree86 4.0.1 and Netscape Communicator 4.73. The distro is slackware 7.1 on a Pentium III 667 MHz machine with an ASUS motherboard with a Via chipset and an Adaptec 29160 SCSI host bus adapter. It has 128 MB of 133 MHz ram. If I browse with Netscape for a while, after a while I start hearing a lot of disk activity and the response of the machine slows way down. "top" often shows kswapd as having the top CPU time. In one instance of this, Netscape was using 60% of the memory and XFree86 was using 40%. (I'm not sure if this is the memory in use or percentage of all available memory). If I quit netscape the thrashing stops, and I can start it up again and run OK for a while, but it seems to start up again much sooner. After a while I have to reboot. When it happens, the onset seems pretty sudden. It doesn't appear like something's slowly leaking memory. It feels more like something suddenly goes haywire. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
VM thrashing in test13-pre4 with Netscape
I don't know if this is a Netscape problem, or an XFree86 4.0.1 problem, or a kernel problem. I hadn't noticed it with previous kernels so I thought I should mention it. I'll download the latest kernel source tonight and try it out. I'm using 2.4.0-test13-pre4 with XFree86 4.0.1 and Netscape Communicator 4.73. The distro is slackware 7.1 on a Pentium III 667 MHz machine with an ASUS motherboard with a Via chipset and an Adaptec 29160 SCSI host bus adapter. It has 128 MB of 133 MHz ram. If I browse with Netscape for a while, after a while I start hearing a lot of disk activity and the response of the machine slows way down. "top" often shows kswapd as having the top CPU time. In one instance of this, Netscape was using 60% of the memory and XFree86 was using 40%. (I'm not sure if this is the memory in use or percentage of all available memory). If I quit netscape the thrashing stops, and I can start it up again and run OK for a while, but it seems to start up again much sooner. After a while I have to reboot. When it happens, the onset seems pretty sudden. It doesn't appear like something's slowly leaking memory. It feels more like something suddenly goes haywire. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
ACPI: S5 failed in 2.4.0-test13-pre4
When I do a "shutdown -h now" in Slackware 7.1 with the 2.4.0-test13-pre4 kernel, sometimes after the words "Power down" appear I get the message: ACPI: S5 Failed (I think that's the phrasing, of course since it only happens when I shutdown for the night my memory is a little fuzzy). It doesn't appear to cause any actual trouble but I thought I should report it because it's out of the ordinary. This is with an ASUS p3v4x mothboard, Pentium III 667 MHz, 128 MB 133 MHz ram, Adaptec 29160 Ultra160 SCSI Host Bus Adapter. It has an ATI XPert 2000 video card with AGP and DRM enabled in the kernel. The kernel is built for SMP but it's not an SMP motherboard. Mike Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
ACPI: S5 failed in 2.4.0-test13-pre4
When I do a "shutdown -h now" in Slackware 7.1 with the 2.4.0-test13-pre4 kernel, sometimes after the words "Power down" appear I get the message: ACPI: S5 Failed (I think that's the phrasing, of course since it only happens when I shutdown for the night my memory is a little fuzzy). It doesn't appear to cause any actual trouble but I thought I should report it because it's out of the ordinary. This is with an ASUS p3v4x mothboard, Pentium III 667 MHz, 128 MB 133 MHz ram, Adaptec 29160 Ultra160 SCSI Host Bus Adapter. It has an ATI XPert 2000 video card with AGP and DRM enabled in the kernel. The kernel is built for SMP but it's not an SMP motherboard. Mike Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Linux Quality Database Project
Last may I posted a message to the list with the subject "Organized Linux QA?" asking if there'd be any interest in building a web database to collect bug reports in linux kernel test versions and to make it easier to search for bugs (and success reports) based on things like hardware configuration and kernel configuration (the database would parse .config files and you could search by the options in it). My original message is archived at: http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0005.3/1437.html and was posted Wed, May 31 2000. You can read the brief thread that ensued from the archives. I felt the process of reporting a bug to the linux-kernel list and staying on the list to ensure the bug got fixed and stayed fix was likely to be intimidating to a lot of the people who might otherwise be helpful to you in reporting bugs. I thought a web application like this would encourage more users to participate, basically you'd need to know enough to apply a patch, build a kernel from source and log the results into a web form. Things got kind of nuts in my consulting business for a while (I also got married, on July 22, to a woman from Newfoundland - I'm from California) and I couldn't deal with this for a while. But my life is settling down a bit and I'd like to take this back up. So far the project has nothing but a home page saying what it's about, but it's hosted at SunSITE Denmark (http://sunsite.dk), which has a powerful server and provides a lot of services to the open source community: http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk If you'd like to participate or know someone who would there's instructions on subscribing to the database developer's mailing list on the page (send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ) Of course, the sort of programming one usually does for a database-backed web application is typically different than kernel programming so I don't expect many of you will want to help write the thing. But I would appreciate having some of you participate in the design so that we can ensure the result will serve your needs, and passing this message on to web applications programmers who you think might want to participate. I want to say right off that it is not my objective to impose some kind of corporate quality process on the Linux kernel developers. That would be pretty presumptuous of me as I've never been a kernel developer, let alone any kind of leader in the Linux community. So there will be explicitly no requirement that any developer participate at all to work with the bug database - I'm not suggesting you all should start tracking your open bugs on my database or closing them when they're fixed or referring them back to testers as is the usual practice in big company software projects. I do want to provide configurable levels of participation, ranging from a request that submitted bugs in a particular component just be forwarded to the linux-kernel list, to mailing problem summaries to a developer who would then browse the database, to the possibility of interacting regularly with the database. It would be fine if the database served as a passive repository of bug info that you could browse at your leisure. (I'm not subscribed to the linux-kernel list, but will be reading it off an archive. Subscribing last spring filled my inbox so full that it overflowed /tmp on my hosting service when I ran elm). Regards, Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. -Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Linux Quality Database Project
Last may I posted a message to the list with the subject "Organized Linux QA?" asking if there'd be any interest in building a web database to collect bug reports in linux kernel test versions and to make it easier to search for bugs (and success reports) based on things like hardware configuration and kernel configuration (the database would parse .config files and you could search by the options in it). My original message is archived at: http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0005.3/1437.html and was posted Wed, May 31 2000. You can read the brief thread that ensued from the archives. I felt the process of reporting a bug to the linux-kernel list and staying on the list to ensure the bug got fixed and stayed fix was likely to be intimidating to a lot of the people who might otherwise be helpful to you in reporting bugs. I thought a web application like this would encourage more users to participate, basically you'd need to know enough to apply a patch, build a kernel from source and log the results into a web form. Things got kind of nuts in my consulting business for a while (I also got married, on July 22, to a woman from Newfoundland - I'm from California) and I couldn't deal with this for a while. But my life is settling down a bit and I'd like to take this back up. So far the project has nothing but a home page saying what it's about, but it's hosted at SunSITE Denmark (http://sunsite.dk), which has a powerful server and provides a lot of services to the open source community: http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk If you'd like to participate or know someone who would there's instructions on subscribing to the database developer's mailing list on the page (send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ) Of course, the sort of programming one usually does for a database-backed web application is typically different than kernel programming so I don't expect many of you will want to help write the thing. But I would appreciate having some of you participate in the design so that we can ensure the result will serve your needs, and passing this message on to web applications programmers who you think might want to participate. I want to say right off that it is not my objective to impose some kind of corporate quality process on the Linux kernel developers. That would be pretty presumptuous of me as I've never been a kernel developer, let alone any kind of leader in the Linux community. So there will be explicitly no requirement that any developer participate at all to work with the bug database - I'm not suggesting you all should start tracking your open bugs on my database or closing them when they're fixed or referring them back to testers as is the usual practice in big company software projects. I do want to provide configurable levels of participation, ranging from a request that submitted bugs in a particular component just be forwarded to the linux-kernel list, to mailing problem summaries to a developer who would then browse the database, to the possibility of interacting regularly with the database. It would be fine if the database served as a passive repository of bug info that you could browse at your leisure. (I'm not subscribed to the linux-kernel list, but will be reading it off an archive. Subscribing last spring filled my inbox so full that it overflowed /tmp on my hosting service when I ran elm). Regards, Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. -Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
