[97975] in RedHat Linux List
Re: Kernel
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Stearns)
Fri Nov 6 00:21:54 1998
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 00:24:42 -0500 (EST)
From: William Stearns <wstearns@pobox.com>
To: Red Hat Mailing List <redhat-list@redhat.com>
cc: "Kevin A. Pieckiel" <kapieckiel@Harding.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SO4.4.02.9811042300520.3137-100000@taz.harding.edu>
Resent-From: redhat-list@redhat.com
Reply-To: redhat-list@redhat.com
Good evening, Kevin,
On Wed, 4 Nov 1998, Kevin A. Pieckiel wrote:
> The latest stable kernel is 2.0.35, right?
Yes, but 2.0.36 is very close to release. Prepatches for it are
available at ftp://ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/alan/2.0/ ; the latest is
2.0.36-prepatch-17.
The official kernels and Linus' prepatches are at
ftp://linux.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/
> I want to add awe32 support to my kernel. I'm using 2.0.35, but
> I'm having trouble. I thought I read somewhere that 2.1.xxx has
> the awe32 stuff in it already. Though this is an unstable (?)
> kernel, I might like to play with it. The docs for kernel
The more accurate term is "development" or "beta" kernel. To be
sure, when the developers are ripping sections of code out and rewriting
them, it's common that things can A) stop working, B) fail to compile at
all, C) be unstable, etc.
However, that sort of development has stopped now on the 2.1
series. We've entered a code freeze, meaning that no new (read "largely
rewritten and hence less tested") code will be accepted. At this point,
only bug fixes should go in, meaning that things should almost always get
_more_ stable.
I've been using the 2.1's for over a year now. There have been
occasional glitches, but I think I can safely say that if the kernel
compiles at all for your hardware (and it usually does), it's going to
work stably for you.
Now is a marvelous time to try them out. If they don't work, you
can always fall back to your existing kernel until they fix whatever's
working. If you feel like submitting a bug report, see the
/usr/src/linux/MAINTAINERS file to find out where to send it.
> 2.1.126 mention that I probably need to upgrade a few packages on
> my box. They are:
>
> Kernel modules (v 2.1.121)
> Procps (v 1.2.9)
> Procinfo (v 14)
> NFS ( 2.2beta37)
> ppp (v 2.3.5)
>
> Where do I find these programs? And is it even a good idea to
With the exception of the first (modutils), all of these packages
are in RedHat 5.2. You don't have to upgrade all of RH52, though, to get
them; simply download the packages that you need to upgrade from an RH
mirror to an empty directory and run "rpm -Uvh *.rpm"
I have been using the modutils-2.1.85 successfully with the 2.1
kernels. There may be an rpm for the modutils-2.1.121 at
contrib.redhat.com by now; that's a great place to look after checking the
current distribution and the RH updates.
> compile and install this new kernel? I've never played with an
> experimental kernel before, only those that come with RHL or are
If this is the first time you've compiled a kernel, try the tool I
wrote, Buildkernel, at http://www.pobox.com/~wstearns/buildkernel/ .
There's even an rpm for it. Once installed, make sure your Internet
connection is up, and type:
buildkernel --NEWESTSTABLE<Enter>
It'll even download the kernel sources for you.
If you'd prefer to do it yourself, see the Kernel-HOWTO at:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/linux/HOWTO (if you installed the howto or
howto-* packages, the kernel howto is somewhere under /usr/doc/howto as
well).
> in the updates directory already in RPM format. These aren't
> standard GNU utilities, are they?
If you're referring to the 5 updated packages above, I suppose
some of them are and some of them are not. Take a look at the
documentation that comes with them (in /usr/doc/...) to find out.
Cheers,
- Bill
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unix _is_ user friendly. It's just very selective about who its friends
are. And sometimes even best friends have fights.
William Stearns (wstearns@pobox.com)
Mason, buildkernel, and named2hosts are at: http://www.pobox.com/~wstearns
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