<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<kc>

<title>Kernel Traffic</title>

<author contact="mailto:zbrown@tumblerings.org">Zack Brown</author>

<issue num="304" date="03 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0800" />

<mailbox-stats>
	<global-stats>
		<generated-at>Sun Apr  3 18:11:22 2005</generated-at>
		<first-message>2005/03/03 12:10:28</first-message>
		<last-message>2005/03/20 21:58:59</last-message>
		<totals>
			<n-messages>1947</n-messages>
			<total-size>11MB</total-size>
			<avg-size>6KB</avg-size>
			<n-writers>670</n-writers>
			<wrote-more-then-1-message>252</wrote-more-then-1-message>
			<n-lines>183633</n-lines>
			<header-size>105371</header-size>
			<n-user-agents>65</n-user-agents>
			<n-organisations>43</n-organisations>
			<n-toplevel-domains>41</n-toplevel-domains>
		</totals>
		<averages>
			<lines-per-message>94</lines-per-message>
			<lines-per-header>54</lines-per-header>
			<header-percent-of-message>57.38%</header-percent-of-message>
			<header-percent-of-total>45.18%</header-percent-of-total>
			<line-length>9064</line-length>
			<bits-per-byte>4.2526</bits-per-byte>
		</averages>
		<importance>
			<low>0.00%</low>
			<normal>0.41%</normal>
			<high>0.00%</high>
		</importance>

	</global-stats>
	<top-writers>
		<top-writer rank="1">
			<e-mail-addr>Andrew Morton</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>119</n-messages>
			<avg-size>5KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>587KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>15:01</mostly-written-at>
		</top-writer>
		<top-writer rank="2">
			<e-mail-addr>Johannes Stezenbach</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>51</n-messages>
			<avg-size>8KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>385KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>02:38</mostly-written-at>
		</top-writer>
		<top-writer rank="3">
			<e-mail-addr>Adrian Bunk</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>46</n-messages>
			<avg-size>5KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>211KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>11:26</mostly-written-at>
		</top-writer>
		<top-writer rank="4">
			<e-mail-addr>Jesper Juhl</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>42</n-messages>
			<avg-size>8KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>328KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>15:04</mostly-written-at>
		</top-writer>
		<top-writer rank="5">
			<e-mail-addr>Jan Engelhardt</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>40</n-messages>
			<avg-size>3KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>118KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>14:39</mostly-written-at>
		</top-writer>
	</top-writers>
	<top-subjects>
		<top-subject rank="1">
			<subject>Real-Time Preemption and RCU</subject>
			<n-messages>57</n-messages>
			<avg-size>7KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>388KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>11:48</mostly-written-at>
		</top-subject>
		<top-subject rank="2">
			<subject>AGP bogosities</subject>
			<n-messages>54</n-messages>
			<avg-size>5KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>222KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>15:28</mostly-written-at>
		</top-subject>
		<top-subject rank="3">
			<subject>[PATCH 1/5] freepgt: free_pgtables use vma list</subject>
			<n-messages>50</n-messages>
			<avg-size>5KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>239KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>13:08</mostly-written-at>
		</top-subject>
		<top-subject rank="4">
			<subject>Linux 2.6.11.2</subject>
			<n-messages>42</n-messages>
			<avg-size>4KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>160KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>11:55</mostly-written-at>
		</top-subject>
		<top-subject rank="5">
			<subject>[PATCH] Xen/i386 cleanups - AGP bus/phys cleanups</subject>
			<n-messages>30</n-messages>
			<avg-size>5KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>125KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>14:15</mostly-written-at>
		</top-subject>
	</top-subjects>
	<top-receivers>
		<top-receiver rank="1">
			<e-mail-addr>LKML</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>355</n-messages>
			<avg-size>8KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>3MB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>13:28</mostly-written-at>
		</top-receiver>
		<top-receiver rank="2">
			<e-mail-addr>Andrew Morton</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>302</n-messages>
			<avg-size>7KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>3MB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>12:25</mostly-written-at>
		</top-receiver>
		<top-receiver rank="3">
			<e-mail-addr>torvalds@osdl.org</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>29</n-messages>
			<avg-size>6KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>166KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>13:47</mostly-written-at>
		</top-receiver>
		<top-receiver rank="4">
			<e-mail-addr>Ingo Molnar</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>28</n-messages>
			<avg-size>9KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>244KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>12:10</mostly-written-at>
		</top-receiver>
		<top-receiver rank="5">
			<e-mail-addr>Jan Engelhardt</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>27</n-messages>
			<avg-size>4KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>99KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>10:48</mostly-written-at>
		</top-receiver>
	</top-receivers>
	<top-ccers>
		<top-ccers rank="1">
			<e-mail-addr>LKML</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>888</n-messages>
			<avg-size>6KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>5MB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>13:18</mostly-written-at>
		</top-ccers>
		<top-ccers rank="2">
			<e-mail-addr>Andrew Morton</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>238</n-messages>
			<avg-size>6KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>2MB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>13:31</mostly-written-at>
		</top-ccers>
		<top-ccers rank="3">
			<e-mail-addr>Greg KH</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>46</n-messages>
			<avg-size>6KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>268KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>12:00</mostly-written-at>
		</top-ccers>
		<top-ccers rank="4">
			<e-mail-addr>dipankar@in.ibm.com</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>43</n-messages>
			<avg-size>8KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>326KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>12:44</mostly-written-at>
		</top-ccers>
		<top-ccers rank="5">
			<e-mail-addr>mingo@elte.hu</e-mail-addr>
			<n-messages>43</n-messages>
			<avg-size>6KB</avg-size>
			<total-size>236KB</total-size>
			<mostly-written-at>13:58</mostly-written-at>
		</top-ccers>
	</top-ccers>
	<top-level-domains>
		<tld rank="1">
			<name>com</name>
			<freq>617</freq>
		</tld>
		<tld rank="2">
			<name>org</name>
			<freq>451</freq>
		</tld>
		<tld rank="3">
			<name>de</name>
			<freq>189</freq>
		</tld>
		<tld rank="4">
			<name>net</name>
			<freq>146</freq>
		</tld>
		<tld rank="5">
			<name>uk</name>
			<freq>64</freq>
		</tld>
	</top-level-domains>
	<top-timezones>
		<tz rank="1">
			<name>+0100</name>
			<freq>725</freq>
		</tz>
		<tz rank="2">
			<name>-0800</name>
			<freq>464</freq>
		</tz>
		<tz rank="3">
			<name>-0500</name>
			<freq>252</freq>
		</tz>
		<tz rank="4">
			<name>+0000</name>
			<freq>160</freq>
		</tz>
		<tz rank="5">
			<name>+1100</name>
			<freq>108</freq>
		</tz>
	</top-timezones>
	<top-organisations>
		<org rank="1">
			<name>None, usuallly detectable by casual observers</name>
			<freq>11</freq>
			<bytes>53KB</bytes>
		</org>
		<org rank="2">
			<name>MontaVista Software</name>
			<freq>10</freq>
			<bytes>58KB</bytes>
		</org>
		<org rank="3">
			<name>OSDL</name>
			<freq>9</freq>
			<bytes>72KB</bytes>
		</org>
		<org rank="4">
			<name>SGI</name>
			<freq>9</freq>
			<bytes>31KB</bytes>
		</org>
		<org rank="5">
			<name>National Security Agency</name>
			<freq>8</freq>
			<bytes>60KB</bytes>
		</org>
	</top-organisations>
	<top-user-agents>
		<useragent rank="1">
			<name>Mozilla</name>
			<freq>44</freq>
			<bytes>962KB</bytes>
		</useragent>
		<useragent rank="2">
			<name>Evolution</name>
			<freq>43</freq>
			<bytes>974KB</bytes>
		</useragent>
		<useragent rank="3">
			<name>Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i</name>
			<freq>39</freq>
			<bytes>2MB</bytes>
		</useragent>
		<useragent rank="4">
			<name>Mozilla/5.0</name>
			<freq>29</freq>
			<bytes>609KB</bytes>
		</useragent>
		<useragent rank="5">
			<name>Mutt/1.4.1i</name>
			<freq>26</freq>
			<bytes>696KB</bytes>
		</useragent>
	</top-user-agents>
	<messages-per-day>
		<Sunday><msgs>143</msgs><bytes>701KB</bytes></Sunday>
		<Monday><msgs>362</msgs><bytes>3MB</bytes></Monday>
		<Tuesday><msgs>432</msgs><bytes>3MB</bytes></Tuesday>
		<Wednesday><msgs>279</msgs><bytes>2MB</bytes></Wednesday>
		<Thursday><msgs>246</msgs><bytes>2MB</bytes></Thursday>
		<Friday><msgs>290</msgs><bytes>2MB</bytes></Friday>
		<Saturday><msgs>178</msgs><bytes>995KB</bytes></Saturday>
	</messages-per-day>
	<messages-per-month>
		<Jan><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></Jan>
		<Feb><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></Feb>
		<Mar><msgs>1930</msgs><bytes>11MB</bytes></Mar>
		<Apr><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></Apr>
		<May><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></May>
		<Jun><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></Jun>
		<Jul><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></Jul>
		<Aug><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></Aug>
		<Sep><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></Sep>
		<Oct><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></Oct>
		<Nov><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></Nov>
		<Dec><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></Dec>
	</messages-per-month>
	<messages-per-day-of-month>
		<day-1><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></day-1>
		<day-2><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></day-2>
		<day-3><msgs>4</msgs><bytes>40KB</bytes></day-3>
		<day-4><msgs>8</msgs><bytes>28KB</bytes></day-4>
		<day-5><msgs>5</msgs><bytes>19KB</bytes></day-5>
		<day-6><msgs>7</msgs><bytes>52KB</bytes></day-6>
		<day-7><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></day-7>
		<day-8><msgs>3</msgs><bytes>12KB</bytes></day-8>
		<day-9><msgs>26</msgs><bytes>99KB</bytes></day-9>
		<day-10><msgs>34</msgs><bytes>146KB</bytes></day-10>
		<day-11><msgs>61</msgs><bytes>343KB</bytes></day-11>
		<day-12><msgs>21</msgs><bytes>101KB</bytes></day-12>
		<day-13><msgs>9</msgs><bytes>34KB</bytes></day-13>
		<day-14><msgs>65</msgs><bytes>479KB</bytes></day-14>
		<day-15><msgs>78</msgs><bytes>350KB</bytes></day-15>
		<day-16><msgs>87</msgs><bytes>560KB</bytes></day-16>
		<day-17><msgs>167</msgs><bytes>2MB</bytes></day-17>
		<day-18><msgs>221</msgs><bytes>2MB</bytes></day-18>
		<day-19><msgs>152</msgs><bytes>876KB</bytes></day-19>
		<day-20><msgs>127</msgs><bytes>617KB</bytes></day-20>
		<day-21><msgs>297</msgs><bytes>2MB</bytes></day-21>
		<day-22><msgs>351</msgs><bytes>2MB</bytes></day-22>
		<day-23><msgs>166</msgs><bytes>768KB</bytes></day-23>
		<day-24><msgs>41</msgs><bytes>302KB</bytes></day-24>
		<day-25><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></day-25>
		<day-26><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></day-26>
		<day-27><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></day-27>
		<day-28><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></day-28>
		<day-29><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></day-29>
		<day-30><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></day-30>
		<day-31><msgs>0</msgs><bytes>0</bytes></day-31>
	</messages-per-day-of-month>
	<messages-per-hour>
		<hour-1><msgs>37</msgs><bytes>274KB</bytes></hour-1>
		<hour-2><msgs>92</msgs><bytes>623KB</bytes></hour-2>
		<hour-3><msgs>28</msgs><bytes>145KB</bytes></hour-3>
		<hour-4><msgs>25</msgs><bytes>193KB</bytes></hour-4>
		<hour-5><msgs>24</msgs><bytes>92KB</bytes></hour-5>
		<hour-6><msgs>19</msgs><bytes>82KB</bytes></hour-6>
		<hour-7><msgs>32</msgs><bytes>143KB</bytes></hour-7>
		<hour-8><msgs>51</msgs><bytes>231KB</bytes></hour-8>
		<hour-9><msgs>86</msgs><bytes>483KB</bytes></hour-9>
		<hour-10><msgs>128</msgs><bytes>585KB</bytes></hour-10>
		<hour-11><msgs>133</msgs><bytes>690KB</bytes></hour-11>
		<hour-12><msgs>99</msgs><bytes>454KB</bytes></hour-12>
		<hour-13><msgs>104</msgs><bytes>516KB</bytes></hour-13>
		<hour-14><msgs>144</msgs><bytes>817KB</bytes></hour-14>
		<hour-15><msgs>144</msgs><bytes>784KB</bytes></hour-15>
		<hour-16><msgs>120</msgs><bytes>823KB</bytes></hour-16>
		<hour-17><msgs>109</msgs><bytes>686KB</bytes></hour-17>
		<hour-18><msgs>76</msgs><bytes>401KB</bytes></hour-18>
		<hour-19><msgs>75</msgs><bytes>399KB</bytes></hour-19>
		<hour-20><msgs>94</msgs><bytes>655KB</bytes></hour-20>
		<hour-21><msgs>90</msgs><bytes>489KB</bytes></hour-21>
		<hour-22><msgs>82</msgs><bytes>346KB</bytes></hour-22>
		<hour-23><msgs>77</msgs><bytes>385KB</bytes></hour-23>
	</messages-per-hour>
	<created-with><name>mboxstats</name><version>2.2</version><developer>folkert@vanheusden.com</developer><url>http://www.vanheusden.com/mboxstats/</url></created-with>
</mailbox-stats>

<section
  title="Secure Digital (SD) Support For 2.6"
  subject="[PATCH][MMC] Secure Digital (SD) support"
  archive="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/msg/a4398087bba70789"
  posts="20"
  startdate="03 Mar 2005 04:22:56 -0800"
  enddate="19 Mar 2005 08:35:00 -0800"
>
<topic>Backward Compatibility</topic>
<topic>FS: sysfs</topic>
<topic>Patents</topic>

<mention>Alan Cox</mention>
<mention>Ian Molton</mention>
<mention>Pavel Machek</mention>

<p>Pierre Ossman said:</p>

<quote who="Pierre Ossman">

<p>Here are the patches for Secure Digital support that I've been sitting
on for a while. I tried to get some feedback on inclusion of this
previously but since I didn't get any I'll just submit the thing.
It was originally diffed against 2.6.10 but it applies to 2.6.11 just
fine (only minor fuzz).</p>

<p>Change summary:</p>

<p>

<ul>

<li>Detects if connected card is SD or MMC. Marks host as in SD mode if SD
is detected (since SD isn't a bus system).</li>
<li>Reads extra registers from SD cards (SCR) and parses CSD differently
depending on SD/MMC mode.</li>
<li>Support for 4-bit mode. This has been design to be fairly isolated
from the SD bit so that it can (hopefully) be reused with MMC.</li>
<li>New callback added for reading the read-only switch on SD cards.</li>

</ul>

</p>

<p>Changed files:</p>

<p>mmc.c : SD detection and register parsing.<br />
mmc_block.c : Checks read-only flag for cards (not SD-specific).<br />
mmc_sysfs.c : Exposes SCR register.<br />
card.h : Added flags to determine card type, RO and new register.<br />
host.h : Added flags for bus width, RO test and mode (SD/MMC).<br />
mmc.h : Added R6 define and new defines.<br />
protocol.h : Added needed SD commands.</p>

<p>This patch is backwards compatible and only needs updated drivers to
take advantage of 4-bit bus and reading the RO switch (unmodified
drivers will default to 1-bit bus and write enable).</p>

<p>There might be new bugs that surface with this though. With my own
drivers I discovered that very small transfers (&lt; 16 bytes) always
failed. Testing is needed but I do not have access to do it myself. MMC
should not break with this since MMC is detected before SD.</p>

</quote>

<p>Pavel Machek was thrilled to see this work being doing. Marcel Holtmann
asked, <quote who="Marcel Holtmann">lately I got a request for the support
of a Bluetooth SD card. These are using SDIO and I think at the moment only
memory cards are handled. Do you have any plans for SDIO support?</quote>
Pierre replied, <quote who="Pierre Ossman">I would if I had some hardware to
play with *hint* *hint* ;) The SDIO spec is publically available on the SD
card associations web page so it shouldn't be too difficult to get some basic
support. But I can't do much as long as I don't have any hardware to test
it with. I might also need specs for the card itself. I haven't looked too
much at SDIO at the moment.</quote> Marcel said he didn't have the hardware
either, and asked if anyone else did - but there was no response. Ian Molton
said he'd also like to work on this, if hardware were available.</p>

<p>Elsewhere, Russell King said to Pierre:</p>

<quote who="Russell King">

<p>Can we please come to a consensus about GEN_FL_REMOVABLE.  After talking
to other kernel developers, particularly in the block interface area, I am
convinced that it is fundamentally incorrect to set this flag for MMC/SD
devices.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, it appears that you're not convinced.  This needs resolving
since it is an interface issue.</p>

</quote>

<p>Pierre said, <quote who="Pierre Ossman">Oh, sorry. That part wasn't supposed
to be included in there.  As I haven't found any applications depending
on any specific behaviour then I'm quite content with your behaviour :)
I can make a new patch or you can just undo that line once you've applied
the current one.</quote> Russell replied:</p>

<quote who="Russell King">

<p>I'd rather not just apply this patch - there's rather a lot there to just
apply on top of what's already merged.</p>

<p>Is there any chance you can split it up into a smaller set of changes so
it's more obvious what's going on at each stage please?</p>

<p>We'll also need to run this by Linus first, explaining why you believe
it's now ok to merge this.</p>

</quote>

<p>Pierre said he'd split up the patches; regarding whether it was OK to
merge the code, he added:</p>

<quote who="Pierre Ossman">

<p>First of, I can't really back up the claim that it isn't
ok. The SDA has a paragraph about non-disclosure in their "IP Policy" (<a
href="http://www.sdcard.org/membership/images/ippolicy.pdf">http://www.sdcard.org/membership/images/ippolicy.pdf</a>)
but it also states that exceptions can be granted.</p>

<p>Against this stands the new information that the SDA is changing its
policy and making the specs public. This information comes from some of the
guys at HP research and hasn't been confirmed by any public statement from
SDA. The SDA have, however, already released the SDIO specs. Presumably as
part of this new policy.</p>

<p>It was also pointed out in the previous thread by myself, Alan Cox and Ian
Molton that SD specs have been publically available from different companies
for quite some time. As such it is difficult for anyone to claim that these
are secret and can be regulated by a NDA. The only part that hasn't been found
in the wild is the spec for the 'secure' parts of the cards. But that also
means that it isn't included in this patch so it shouldn't pose a problem.</p>

<p>As always, IANAL so I can't give any definite answer. But from my point
of view they would have a very weak case if they tried to claim that the
information in this patch is a trade secret.</p>

</quote>

<p>Richard Purdie looked over the PDF Pierre linked to, and said, <quote
who="Richard Purdie">That IP policy covers their members and has no
bearing on us as we have no agreements with them.  The code is "our" own
so it isn't covered by any IP or copyright restrictions other than the GPL.
There aren't any patents relating to SD cards.  The simple sequences we use
have been gleaned from various public documents (intel's website, SD card
manufacturer data sheets, etc.) so nobody can claim we're using anything
secret.  I therefore can't see a problem with including the code.</quote></p>

<p>Later, Pierre broke the patch into smaller chunks, and resubmitted them.</p>

</section>

<section
  title="New timeofday Core Subsystem"
  subject="[RFC][PATCH] new timeofday core subsystem (v. A3)"
  archive="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/msg/62900ef3dce114a5"
  posts="38"
  startdate="11 Mar 2005 17:24:15 -0800"
  enddate="17 Mar 2005 12:28:49 -0800"
>

<p>John Stultz said:</p>

<quote who="John Stultz">

<p>This patch implements the architecture independent portion of the time
of day subsystem. For a brief description on the rework, see here: <a
href="http://lwn.net/Articles/120850/">http://lwn.net/Articles/120850/</a>
(Many thanks to the LWN team for that clear writeup!)</p>

<p>The exciting new changes are ntp_scale() has been removed, speeding up
gettimeofday(), and the periodically run timekeeping code is now called via
soft-timer rather then at interrupt time. So timekeeping can now be done
every tick or every 10 ticks or whatever!</p>

<p>Included below is timeofday.c (which includes all the time of day management
and accessor functions), ntp.c (which includes the ntp scaling calculation
code, leapsecond processing, and ntp kernel state machine code), timesource.c
(for timesource specific management functions), interface definition .h files,
the example jiffies timesource (lowest common denominator time source, mainly
for use as example code) and minimal hooks into arch independent code.</p>

<p>The patch does not function without minimal architecture specific hooks
(i386, x86-64, ppc32, ppc64, and ia64 examples to follow), and it should be
able to be applied to a tree without affecting the code.</p>

<p>New in this version:</p>

<p>

<ul>

<li>ntp_scale has been removed from the gettimeofday fastpath</li>

<li>ntp_advance now pre-calculates the ntp scaling factor for the next
interval</li>

<li>timeofday_periodic_hook is now called by a soft-timer and runs outside
of interrupt context</li>

<li>comment cleanups</li>

</ul>

</p>

<p>Items still on the TODO list:</p>

<p>

<ul>

<li>cyc2ns needs better remainder code</li>

<li>Infrastructure for exporting time values for vsyscall/fsyscall</li>

<li>finer grianed ntp adjustments in ppb instead of ppm</li>

<li>more flexible timesource management interface</li>

<li>Testing, performance and cleanup work</li>

</ul>

</p>

</quote>

</section>

<section
  title="Status Of SquashFS"
  subject="[PATCH][1/2] SquashFS"
  archive="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/msg/342a443721c8635e"
  posts="41"
  startdate="14 Mar 2005 08:24:32 -0800"
  enddate="21 Mar 2005 23:19:34 -0800"
>
<topic>Compression</topic>
<topic>FS: SquashFS</topic>
<topic>FS: ext2</topic>
<topic>FS: ramfs</topic>
<topic>Small Systems</topic>

<p>Phillip Lougher said:</p>

<quote who="Phillip Lougher">

<p>Please apply the following two patches which adds SquashFS to the kernel.
SquashFS is self contained compressed filesystem, and it has been used by
a large amount of projects over the last few years without problems.</p>

<p>A number of people have started to ask me to submit it to the kernel.
Please consider adding it.</p>

<p>The SquashFS patch has been split into two.  This email contains inode.c,
the next email contains everything else.</p>

</quote>

<p>Andrew Morton and others offered some
criticism of the patch. Elsewhere, under the subject: <a
href="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/msg/35a221306f883c3f">Re:
[PATCH][2/2] SquashFS</a>, Pavel Machek remarked, <quote who="Pavel Machek">So
we are replacing severely-limited cramfs with also-limited squashfs... For live
DVDs etc 4Gb filesystem size limit will hurt for sure, and 4Gb file size limit
will hurt, too. Can those be fixed?</quote> Phillip thought it was unfair to
compare SquashFS and CramFS, saying, <quote who="Phillip Lougher">Squashfs
is significantly better than cramfs.  The main aim of Squashfs has been
to achieve the best compression (using zlib of course) of any filesystem
under Linux - which it does, while also being the fastest.  Moving beyond
the 4Gb limit has been a goal, but it has been a secondary goal.  For most
applications 4Gb compressed (this equates to 8Gb or more of uncompressed data
in most usual cases) is ok.</quote> Regarding the 4G file-size limitation,
Phillip added, <quote who="Phillip Lougher">I'm hoping to get greater than
4Gb support this year, it all depends on how much free time I get.</quote></p>

<p>Pavel agreed that SquashFS was significantly better than CramFS, and
apologized for the comparison, but he said, <quote who="Pavel Machek">having
2 different limited compressed filesystems in kernel does not seem good to
me.</quote> He also acknowledged that SquashFS's 8G (uncompressed) filesize
limitation was very useful, though he said he'd prefer to see the size
limitation go away entirely. Willy Tarreau remarked:</p>

<quote who="Willy Tarreau">

<p>squashfs is an *excellent* filesystem with very high compression ratios
and high speed on slow I/O devices such as CDs. I now use it to store my
root FS in initrd, and frankly, having a fully functionnal OS in an image
as small as 7 MB is "a good enough improvement over cramfs".</p>

<p>If the 4 GB limit goes away one day, I hope it will not increase overall
image size significantly, because *this* would then become a regression.
Perhaps it would simply need to be a different version and different format
(eg: squashfs v3) just as we had ext, then ext2, or jffs then jffs2, etc...</p>

</quote>

<p>Phillip also pointed out that there was no reason to try to choose only
one compressed filesystem to include in the official tree, since there were
plenty of non-compressed filesystems, and no one seriously suggested choosing
only one.  He also pointed out that there were already three compressed
filesystems in the main tree: JFFS2, zisoFS, and CramFS - no one complained
when those were accepted, Phillip said, so why complain about SquashFS now?</p>

<p>He added, <quote who="Phillip Lougher">I'm asking for Squashfs to be
put in the kernel _now_ because users are asking me to do it _now_.  If it
doesn't go in, then they'll want to know why the kernel clique has become so
unreceptive to new pieces of work which they consider a key piece of their
Linux 'experience', and for that matter so would I.</quote> Pavel replied,
<quote who="Pavel Machek">Putting it into kernel because users want it
is... not a good reason. You should put it there if it is right thing to do. I
believe you should address those endianness issues and drop V1 support. If
breaking 4GB limit does not involve on-disk format change, it may be okay to
merge. After code is merged, doing format changes will be hard...</quote></p>

<p>Phillip ran out of patience at this point, and started haranguing. Josh
Boyer, however, spoke up for him, saying, <quote who="Josh Boyer">This is
a useful, stable, and _maintained_ filesystem and I'm a bit surprised that
there is this much resistance to it's inclusion.</quote> At this point Andrew
Morton stepped in, saying:</p>

<quote who="Andrew Morton">

<p>Although I've only been following things with half an eye, I don't think
there's a lot of resistance.  It's just that squashfs's proponents are
being asked to explain the reasons why the kernel needs this filesystem.
That's something into which no effort was made in the initial patch release
(there's a lesson there).</p>

<p>Hopefully when the patches are reissued, all of these concerns will be
described and addressed within the covering email.</p>

<p>AFAICT the most substantial issue is the 4GB filesytem limit, and it
seems that the answer there is "this fs is for embedded systems and 4GB
is already insanely large".  If that is indeed the argument then please,
make that argument and we'll dutifully evaluate it.</p>

<p>We shouldn't have to drag out such important and relevant information
with torture-via-email-thread.  You guys are the squashfs exports.  Tell us
stuff.</p>

</quote>

<p>Phillip said he had been more concerned with developing the code than
'selling' it, and Paul Jackson replied:</p>

<quote who="Paul Jackson">

<p>It is not so much selling, in my view, as putting in context.</p>

<p>If one can simply explain to others what is before them, so that they
can quickly understand its purposes, scope, architecture, limitations,
alternatives, and such, then others can quickly evaluate what it is, and
whether such seems like a good idea.</p>

<p>It doesn't necessarily mean they buy it any quicker.  Sometimes it just
means it gets shot down quicker ;).  That's ok.</p>

<p>There's a _lot_ of stuff that flows by here ... be gentle and helpfully
informative to the poor reader ... as best you can.</p>

</quote>

<p>The thread ended here.</p>

</section>

<section
  title="Linux 2.6.11-mm4 Released"
  subject="2.6.11-mm4"
  archive="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/linux.kernel/msg/e40bb10100d92fc1"
  posts="28"
  startdate="16 Mar 2005 04:06:54 -0800"
  enddate="23 Mar 2005 23:09:30 -0800"
>
<topic>Framebuffer</topic>
<topic>Kernel Release Announcement</topic>

<p>Andrew Morton announced Linux 2.6.11-mm4, saying:</p>

<quote who="Andrew Morton">

<p><a
href="ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.11/2.6.11-mm4/">ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.11/2.6.11-mm4/</a></p>

<p>

<ul>

<li>fbdev update</li>

<li>percfctr updates</li>

<li>Lots of ppc32/ppc64 things</li>

<li>Broken on some ia64 machines.  We're still working through fallout from
the recent pagetable walking consolidation patches.</li>

</ul>

</p>

</quote>

<p>Benoit Boissinot reported that the dbdev update refused to compile under
GCC 4.0 because of some static declarations; and Adrian Bunk replied, <quote
who="Adrian Bunk">That was my fault: gcc 3.4 doesn't even warn about this,
and I missed it while grep'ing.</quote></p>

</section>

<section
  title="Minimal Open Source BitKeeper Client Available"
  subject="BKCVS broken ?"
  archive="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/msg/aab595b39cb974a9"
  posts="13"
  startdate="17 Mar 2005 06:45:22 -0800"
  enddate="19 Mar 2005 06:52:59 -0800"
>
<topic>BSD</topic>
<topic>Version Control</topic>

<mention>Stelian Pop</mention>

<p>In the course of debugging some problems with the BitKeeper-to-CVS gateway,
Larry McVoy mentioned:</p>

<quote who="Larry McVoy">

<p>take a look at this: <a
href="http://www.bitkeeper.com/press/2005-03-17.html">http://www.bitkeeper.com/press/2005-03-17.html</a>
which is a link to a very simple open source BK client.  It doesn't do much
except track the head of the tree but it does that well.  It's slightly
better than that, it puts all the checkin comments in BK/ChangeLog so you
don't have to go over the wire to get those.</p>

<p>It's intended for someone who just wants the latest and greatest snapshot,
knows how to do cp -rp and diff -Nur, it's pretty basic.  It's not a CVS
gateway replacement but it does work for every tree on bkbits.net.  Just to
be clear, we are not dropping the CVS gateway, this is "in addition to" not
"instead of".</p>

</quote>

<p>He also mentioned that the BSD license would probably be the one selected
for that code. Erik Andersen replied, <quote who="Erik Andersen">Thanks!
Its nice to finally have an open source tool for sucking down the latest and
greatest directly from bk.  Thus far the tool is working perfectly at fetching
source trees and at updating them when new patches are applied.</quote> Larry
also said:</p>

<quote who="Larry McVoy">

<p>it's open source, I'm hoping that people will take that code and evolve it
do whatever they need.  We're willing to do what we can on this end if people
need protocol changes to support new features, time permitting.  Think of
that code as a prototype.  It's really simple, you can hack it trivially.</p>

<p>If you want us to distribute your changes then send a patch, if not
that's cool too.  You can take that and evolve it to your heart's content.
If you need a different license to start hacking let me know what you want,
I really don't care, you can have that code as public domain if you like.</p>

</quote>

<p>Stelian Pop requested that the client be made to work over HTTP, and
Larry replied, <quote who="Larry McVoy">I don't see why not,</quote> though
he figured it would take a little while to hack the support together.</p>

</section>

<section
  title="New VXEXT Filesystem Version 1.0 Announced"
  subject="[PATCH 2.6.11.4 1/1] fs: new filesystem implementation VXEXT1.0"
  archive="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/msg/343518c8501cf4b7"
  posts="5"
  startdate="17 Mar 2005 07:16:36 -0800"
  enddate="18 Mar 2005 01:22:32 -0800"
>

<p>Jens Langner said:</p>

<quote who="Jens Langner">

<p>The following URL is link to a large patch for a possible integration
of a new filesystem implementation in the misc section of the kernel tree.
It features a reverse engineered implementation of the so called VXEXT1.0
DOS filesystem which is commonly used on VxWorks RTOS systems from Wind
River Inc., where the "extended DOS filesystem" mode is enabled.</p>

<p>The VXEXT filesystem is more or less a FAT16 based filesystem which was
slightly modified by Wind River to allow the storage of more than 2GB data
on a partition, as well as storing filenames with a maximum of 40 characters
length. To achieve that, VxWorks uses a dynamic cluster size calculation
which is based on the partition size where clusters can be larger than 32K. In
addition, it uses a slightly modified directroy entry structure to allow to
store filenames larger than 8+3 characters.</p>

<p>Please find the patch file accessible through the following URL: <a
href="http://www.jens-langner.de/vxext_fs/vxext_fs_1_0-linux-2.6.11.4.patch">http://www.jens-langner.de/vxext_fs/vxext_fs_1_0-linux-2.6.11.4.patch</a></p>

<p>In addition, refer the detailed technical documentation
on my implementation and the root directory of my distribution as well: <a
href="http://www.jens-langner.de/vxext_fs/Documentation/vxext.txt">http://www.jens-langner.de/vxext_fs/Documentation/vxext.txt</a>,
<a
href="http://www.jens-langner.de/vxext_fs/">http://www.jens-langner.de/vxext_fs/</a></p>

<p>Please note that large portions of the implementation are based on the
already existing FAT16 (msdos) implementation in the kernel tree.  However,
instead of patching/drilling the original FAT16 implementation, an "outsourced"
rework for developing the VEXT implementation was considered.</p>

</quote>

<p>Chris Wedgwood asked if, since VXEXT was really FAT16-based, <quote
who="Chris Wedgwood">Can this not then be folded into the existing vfat
filesystem?</quote> Jens replied:</p>

<quote who="Jens Langner">

<p>Sure it can. But I thought that as the VXEXT1.0 filesystem is per definition
not a vfat filesystem it might be better to have it separated and not drill
it into the IMHO anyway overly mixed up vfat/fat code already in the linux
kernel tree. Even if that means that some parts in the code of the vxext
filesystem are probably equal to the msdos implementation, please note that
large parts which were not needed by the vxext implementation was dropped
by me for clarifications.</p>

<p>So I still hope that my implementation is going to be considered for
a future kernel tree integration as it may be quite usefull for embeeded
systems wanting to access VxWorks partitions.</p>

</quote>

</section>

<section
  title="New DM9000 Network Driver"
  subject="[PATCH] DM9000 network driver"
  archive="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/linux.kernel/msg/997a80484234d5ce"
  posts="9"
  startdate="18 Mar 2005 05:31:44 -0800"
  enddate="18 Mar 2005 09:29:57 -0800"
>
<topic>PCI</topic>

<p>Sascha Hauer said, <quote who="Sascha Hauer">This patch adds support for
the davicom dm9000 network driver. The dm9000 is found on some embedded arm
boards such as the pimx1 or the scb9328.</quote> Alan Cox replied, <quote
who="Alan Cox">Unless I'm missing something its just yet another NE2000
(ie 8390) clone and can used the 8390 core or maybe even ne2k-pci?</quote>
Ben Dooks replied:</p>

<quote who="Ben Dooks">

<p>Yes, you are missing something. The dm9000 is definetly not an ne2k
compatible, for a start it only uses two ports (address and data), manages
it's own transmit/receive queues, etc.</p>

<p>As the person who did the updates to Sacha's original driver port, he
should have really checked with me for up-to-date version first, and to
collect a Signed-off-by: line.</p>

<p>Signed-off-by: Ben Dooks &lt;ben-linux@fluff.org&gt;</p>

</quote>

<p>Sascha replied, <quote who="Sascha Hauer">Sorry, Ben. Of course I should
have asked you first, but I had this patch lying around for too long, and I
felt I had to do something.  Do you still have updates to the driver? Then
we should work them in before we go ahead.</quote></p>

</section>

<section
  title="Linux 2.6.11.5 Released; Trouble Identifying Authors"
  subject="Linux 2.6.11.5"
  archive="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/msg/4db03199c42ddd3c"
  posts="4"
  startdate="18 Mar 2005 23:15:15 -0800"
  enddate="20 Mar 2005 02:01:49 -0800"
>

<p>Greg KH announced Linux 2.6.11.5, saying, <quote who="Greg KH">As the
-stable patch review cycle is now over, I've released the 2.6.11.5 kernel
in the normal kernel.org places.  One patch was deemed incorrect, so it
was dropped.  Another one was added, within the review email thread.  So it
seems like the process is working so far, which is refreshing :)</quote>
Panagiotis Issaris replied:</p>

<quote who="Panagiotis Issaris">

<p>The changelog states that the patches for the AMD8111e and VIA-Rhine
originated from dilinger&lt;at&gt;debian.org although I was the one who they
originated from.</p>

<p><a href="http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/282245">http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/282245</a><br />
<a href="http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/282263">http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/282263</a></p>

<p>&lt;dilinger:debian.org>&gt;
<ul>
<li>Possible AMD8111e free irq issue</li>
<li>o Possible VIA-Rhine free irq issue</li>
</ul></p>

</quote>

<p>Greg replied, <quote who="Greg KH">Sorry about that.  Trying to properly
reference original authors when patches are forwarded from different sources
is a tough task.  thanks for being understanding about it.</quote></p>

</section>

<section
  title="Generating Kernel Command-Linux Documentation From Source"
  subject="[PATCH 0/5] autoparam"
  archive="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/msg/9739c0929d356057"
  posts="6"
  startdate="20 Mar 2005 15:06:06 -0800"
  enddate="20 Mar 2005 15:06:32 -0800"
>

<p>Magnus Damm said:</p>

<quote who="Magnus Damm">

<p>Here are a set of patches that makes it possible to autogenerate kernel
command line documentation from the source code. The approach is rather
straightforward - the parameter name, the type and the description are stored
in a section called __param_strings. After vmlinux is built this section
is extracted using objcopy and a script is used to generate a primitive -
but up to date - document.</p>

<p>Right now the section is left in the kernel binary. The document is
currently not generated from the Makefile, so the curious user should
perform:</p>

<p>$ objcopy -j __param_strings vmlinux -O binary foo<br />
$ chmod a+x scripts/section2text.rb<br />
$ cat foo | ./scripts/section2text.rb</p>

<p>And yeah, you need to install ruby to run the script.</p>

<p>The ruby script section2text.rb does some checks to see if
MODULE_PARM_DESC() is used without module_param(). You will find interesting
typos.</p>

<p>Future work that extends this idea could include replacing __setup(name)
with __setup(name, descr). And storing the documentation somewhere to make
it easy for the end user to look up the generated parameter list from the
boot loader.</p>

</quote>

</section>

<section
  title="USB Block Driver Maintainership; Yamaha PCI Sound Maintainership"
  subject="Add myself to MAINTAINERS"
  archive="http://groups-beta.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/msg/b9297f9d90b5ff50"
  posts="2"
  startdate="23 Mar 2005 15:36:51 -0800"
  enddate="23 Mar 2005 23:30:18 -0800"
>
<topic>MAINTAINERS File</topic>
<topic>PCI</topic>
<topic>USB</topic>

<mention>Jan Kasprzak</mention>
<mention>Greg KH</mention>

<p>Pete Zaitcev said, <quote who="Pete Zaitcev">A Jan Kasprzak asked a few
days ago to have a MAINTAINERS entry for ub.  This patch updates my entries
in MAINTAINERS (ub &amp; ymfpci).</quote> Greg KH accepted this patch.</p>

</section>

</kc>

