LWN: Comments on "New stable kernels"

New stable kernels

nix — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 20:18:19 +0000

Confirmed. The problem is somewhere in the 16-bit setup code, I think, though I don't understand why 2.26's generated code is breaking things yet: it looks like an improvement all around, and looks LX-compatible (but, from the behaviour observed, pretty clearly isn't).

Will figure it out and raise a binutils bug report :(

New stable kernels

nix — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 20:42:19 +0000

OK, perhaps not. Either there are half a dozen commits between 4.4.2 and 4.4.3 alone with the same "nothing shown at all, gotta power off" symptoms (which is what bisection says), *none* of which affect anything else even though most of them are in generic code fairly far removed from the serial console, or the recent upgrade here from binutils 2.25 to 2.26 broke something. Probably there are non-Geode-LX instructions finding their way into the instruction stream. I have working and non-working examples, so figuring out what's going on is only a matter of time...

New stable kernels but no more penguins

sgilles — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 19:46:55 +0000

I ran into this as well. If you're unconcerned about the potential memory safety issues, I can confirm that

diff --git a/drivers/video/logo/logo.c b/drivers/video/logo/logo.c
index 10fbfd8..5fec3f5 100644
--- a/drivers/video/logo/logo.c
+++ b/drivers/video/logo/logo.c
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ const struct linux_logo * __init_refok fb_find_logo(int depth)
 {
        const struct linux_logo *logo = NULL;

-       if (nologo || logos_freed)
+       if (nologo)
                return NULL;

        if (depth >= 1) {

will bring back the penguin.

New stable kernels but no more penguins

pr1268 — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 07:48:49 +0000

Along a similar vein, I upgraded from 3.14.x to 4.4.x and now the penguins disappeared. Not sure what happened, but I do have i915 chipset, 1600×900 resolution with the framebuffer code and the 224-color boot logo built-in (not modules). I tried in vain searching various Linux-specific forums but these all seem to be frozen in time at 2011 or thereabouts.

Granted, the make menuconfig options under device drivers have changed slightly, 3.14 → 4.4 is a big jump, and seeing how I run X, this is a moot point. But, I miss my penguins. ;-(

Any quick ideas? Thanks!

New stable kernels

nix — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 22:53:34 +0000

As an aside, it seems likely to me that 4.4.3 breaks the serial console. (That's the best explanation I have for the last thing I see on the serial console being BIOS messages, followed by nothing and no userspace ever starting. Oh look, TTY-layer locking changes...)

I'll bisect this weekend.