Kernel release status [LWN.net]

The current 2.6 kernel is 2.6.3; Linus has made no kernel releases or prepatches in the last week. His BitKeeper repository is full, however; it contains support for Intel's "ia32e" architecture (see below), a new syscalls.h include file with prototypes for the various sys_* functions, various network driver fixes, a UTF-8 tty mode, dynamic PTY allocation (allowing up to a million PTY devices), sysfs support for SCSI tapes and bluetooth devices, the "large number of groups" patch (covered in the October 2 Kernel Page), the generic kernel thread code (January 7 Kernel Page), and a massive number of other fixes -- over 500 changesets in all.

It's worth noting that Linus is now using a PPC64 system as his home machine. Before long that should result in improved support for that architecture; meanwhile, he finds himself unable to fix his own kernel.

The current tree from Andrew Morton is 2.6.3-mm3. Recent additions to the -mm series include a new HFS filesystem implementation, multipath and crypto target support in the device mapper, a big ide-scsi update, the MODULE_VERSION macro (finally), some virtual memory tweaks, a (read-only) UFS2 filesystem implementation, a big set of parallel port fixes, many big architecture updates, and a large number of fixes.

The current 2.4 kernel is 2.4.25. Marcelo has started off the 2.4.26 process with 2.4.26-pre1; it contains a small set of fixes and a fair number of networking patches, including an SCTP update, a bonding driver update, and the nVidia Force driver.

For 2.2 users, Marc-Christian Petersen has released 2.2.26, which contains the latest security fixes.

(Log in to post comments)

Kernel release status

Posted Feb 26, 2004 3:48 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]

> various network driver fixes

I sure hope they fixed the Vortex (3c905) driver. My biggest gripe with 2.6 so far is that when I reboot, I cannot use the network. When a process, such as DHCP, tries to access it, it hangs for a couple minutes and then times out. I have to literally power cycle the box to get my networking back. Very annoying.

I've had that problem since test6 and still do with 2.6.3

Kernel release status

Posted Feb 26, 2004 9:02 UTC (Thu) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link]

Did you post that as a report to the kernel list?
I had a problem with SCSI DVD in 2.6.3 (system hanging, requiring reboot). I reported it to linux-scsi, several other people also reported similar symptoms, and a fix was posted within a couple of days. I assume it is going to make it into the next -rc release.