Kernel Traffic #241 For 16�Nov�2003

By Zack Brown

Table Of Contents

• Printer-Friendly Format
• Text Format
• XML Source
• Czech Translation
• French Translation
• Mailing List Stats For This Week
• Threads Covered

  1.	4�Nov�2003�-�7�Nov�2003	(21 posts)	QLogic qla2xxx Driver Update Released For 2.6
  2.	7�Nov�2003�-�9�Nov�2003	(2 posts)	CramFS Maintainership
  3.	7�Nov�2003	(1 post)	Driver Model Regression Test For OSDL's Scalable Test Platform Released
  4.	7�Nov�2003�-�9�Nov�2003	(15 posts)	New Driver For Ethernet Interface Of NVidia's nForce Chipset
  5.	10�Nov�2003�-�12�Nov�2003	(15 posts)	Linux 2.4.23-rc1 Released
  6.	11�Nov�2003	(1 post)	kdb 4.3 Released For Kernel 2.4.23-rc1

Mailing List Stats For This Week

We looked at 1044 posts in 5197K.

There were 396 different contributors. 175 posted more than once. 160 posted last week too.

The top posters of the week were:

• 43 posts in 269K by Jens Axboe
• 26 posts in 76K by Linus Torvalds
• 25 posts in 85K by Andrew Morton
• 18 posts in 57K by Greg KH
• 16 posts in 56K by Nick Piggin
• Full Stats

1. QLogic qla2xxx Driver Update Released For 2.6

4�Nov�2003�-�7�Nov�2003 (21 posts) Subject: "[ANNOUNCE] QLogic qla2xxx driver update available (v8.00.00b6)."

Topics: Clustering, Ioctls

People: Andrew Vasquez,�Christoph Hellwig,�Mike Anderson,�Jens Axboe,�Arjan van de Ven

Andrew Vasquez announced:

        driver source in /tmp/qla8_b6

        # cd <kernel source>
        # patch -p1 < /tmp/qla8_b6/add_to_kernel.diff
        # mkdir drivers/scsi/qla2xxx
        # cp /tmp/qla8_b6/* drivers/scsi/qla2xxx
        # make ...

Christoph Hellwig remarked, "your ioctl API gets worse and worse. You don't expect this huge dungpile of ioctls all marked _BAD to be merged, do you? Also having different ioctl values for different plattforms is not an option for Linux." Andrew acknowledged the problem, and said he really didn't think the ioctl code would be merged. But he explained, "Software (SMS 3.0) has been built on top of the this IOCTL interface. We painfully discovered this problem when we began to look at other non-x86 platforms (ppc64)." Regarding having different ioctl values for different architectures, Andrew added, "The better (right) fix would be to push this interface change onto the caller of the IOCTLs where they can manage the differences there, and the driver could once and for all shed itself of this nagging problem. That is the consensus here. The _BAD conversion was only done so the driver would compile." Arjan van de Ven felt that most or all of the ioctl mess could just be removed, in favor of using APIs already defined elsewhere throughout the kernel. But Andrew didn't see how this could be done with existing APIs. His ioctls, he said, did considerably more than the generic functions defined elsewhere; and there was no more discussion on that point.

Elsewhere, Mike Anderson asked Andrew, "Can you give more information on why clustering was turned off starting in b5?" Andrew explained:

Jens Axboe came in here, saying that while Andrew's first bullet-point was true, the second was not: Jens explained that Linux would never allow crossing a 4GB boundary, and so there was no need to guard against it. Jens' conclusion was that although there may be little benefit to clustering in this case, "In 2.6 clustering comes for free, so it would be silly not to enable it." Andrew accepted the correction, and said he'd reenable clustering for the next driver version. They chatted some more on peripheral details, and the thread petered out.

2. CramFS Maintainership

7�Nov�2003�-�9�Nov�2003 (2 posts) Subject: "CRAMFS"

Topics: FS: ramfs

People: Bradley Bozarth,�H. Peter Anvin,�Daniel Quinlan

Bradley Bozarth asked who currently maintained CramFS. He said, "Daniel Quinlan originally maintained this, now it is orphaned. His endian patch, which implemented the correct behavior according to the docs (which basically listed always do little endian as a todo), was dropped. We have been maintaining this patch on our kernel, but it really should go in - I don't want to spend a ton of time like I did last time to have it dropped again, however - is anyone thinking of maintaining cramfs? What are the chances of the endian fix going in if I submit it again? (if even the former maintainer had no success). I would maintain cramfs if desired - it hasn't really changed in a long time except in regards to higher level fs changes." H. Peter Anvin replied, "I think Al Viro has been doing a rewrite. You may want to check with him."

3. Driver Model Regression Test For OSDL's Scalable Test Platform Released

7�Nov�2003 (1 post) Subject: "[ANNOUNCE] STP Driver Model Regression Test"

People: Leann Ogasawara

Leann Ogasawara announced:

4. New Driver For Ethernet Interface Of NVidia's nForce Chipset

7�Nov�2003�-�9�Nov�2003 (15 posts) Subject: "[PATCH 2.4] forcedeth"

Topics: Networking

People: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger,�Jeff Garzik,�Manfred Spraul,�Christoph Hellwig,�Krzysztof Halasa

Carl-Daniel Hailfinger announced on behalf of himself, Manfred Spraul, and Andrew de Quincey:

Jeff Garzik was very happy to see this. He said:

Elsewhere, Christoph Hellwig suggested using a name closer to the hardware, such as 'nforce_eth'. Krzysztof Halasa agreed with this, but Jeff said there were trademark issues to consider in this case, and that "I would prefer to avoid the issue completely, rather have to chase down some lawyers and get a definitive answer." Carl-Daniel also said, "We (Manfred, Andrew and I) debated the name for quite a long time and forcedeth, forced and forceeth were the final candidates. forcedeth was not only a descriptive name, but also a clever pun. So it won the compo."

5. Linux 2.4.23-rc1 Released

10�Nov�2003�-�12�Nov�2003 (15 posts) Subject: "Linux 2.4.23-rc1"

People: Marcelo Tosatti,�Willy Tarreau

Marcelo Tosatti announced Linux 2.4.23-rc1 and said, "It contains network driver fixes (b44, tg3, 8139cp), several x86-64 bugfixes, amongst others." Willy Tarreau remarked, "Interestingly, tg3, which had a slight tendency to hang on 2.4.22 when duplex mismatched seems rock solid now. I could even force renegociation and duplex mismatches during heavy loads (pktgen) without even a warning in the logs."

6. kdb 4.3 Released For Kernel 2.4.23-rc1

11�Nov�2003 (1 post) Subject: "Announce: kdb v4.3 is available for kernel 2.4.23-rc1"

People: Keith Owens

Keith Owens announced:

�

�

�

�

�

�

Sharon And Joy
�