Linux 2.2 Kernel Patches
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About the Kernel Patch Summaries

These summaries are written after each kernel release by examining the chunks of each patch file and figuring out what has changed. Occasionally, they are supplemented by notes that Linus (and others) posted to the linux-kernel mailing list.

The summaries from 2.2.0 onwards were put together by Myrdraal@deathsdoor.com -- originally appearing on the Cutting Edge Linux website.

Also, remember to check Richard Gooch's Kernel Newsflash page for last-minute notes.

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Kernels 2.2.0 to 2.2.9

*Linux 2.2.9 patch - patch-2.2.9.gz (13-May-99)
    [Patch Browser]

*Linux 2.2.8 patch - patch-2.2.8.gz (11-May-99)
    [Patch Browser]

Notes: Due to the changes in this kernel's buffer code, you may want to disable the update (bdflush) daemon in your init scripts.

As some people have already noticed, I yesterday released 2.2.8, and in the same breath made a 2.3.x release tree (where 2.3.0 is exactly the same as 2.2.8 except the numbers have changed - making it easier to synchronize the two in the beginning).

Most of 2.2.8 by far is just architecture updates: arm, ppc and m68k stand out as having been pretty much synchronized to their respective devel trees, but there are some fixes to alpha and x86 too.

The one major fix in 2.2.8 is the SMP fix for disable_irq(), courtesy of Andrea Arcangeli (I disagreed in details and did it differently in the end, but all the heavy lifting was done by Andrea). This is the thing that caused silenth deaths for some people with certain network adapters (3c509 and 8390-based cards in particular: the latter covers ne2000 clones which are fairly common).

There are lots of smaller things (driver updates, filesystem cleanups and some networking fixes), but the SMP irq thing is the one to kill for if you happened to have any of the affected cards.

As to 2.3.x, we're beginning with a long overdue waitqueue cleanup, which means that a lot of small details need to get fixed in a variety of files. A working pre-patch of this is to be found as pre-patch-2.3.1-3, but not all drivers have been fixed - and help is appreciated (even drivers that _have_ been fixed have not necessarily actually been tested due to lack of hardware).

      Linus

*Linux 2.2.7 patch - patch-2.2.7.gz (28-Apr-99)
    [Patch Browser]

Notes: Compiles and runs very nicely for me. Your mileage may vary. :)

*Linux 2.2.6 patch - patch-2.2.6.gz (16-Apr-99)
    [Patch Browser]

*Linux 2.2.5 patch - patch-2.2.5.gz (29-Mar-99)
    [Patch Browser]

I made Linux-2.2.5 yesterday (as some people already have noticed: due to popular demand I try to delay the announcement for some time in order to let the thing percolate to mirror sites, in case anybody wondered).

The 2.2.5 release is meant to be a final cleanup release before I leave for a two-week vacation. So please take these release notes to also mean that it is probably a good idea to hold off emailing me stuff directly, unless it is a major bug that you really think I should look at immediately. I would suggest people discuss problems on the mailing list and on the newsgroups, where other competent people are, rather than expecting me to do much about it.

Also, note that there have been various indications that egcs potentially miscompiles the kernel, or at least makes some problems worse. We don't know whether that is due to one or more kernel bugs, compiler problems, or just combinations of "features" in both. I would suggest that if you have problems you at least verify whether the problems still exist with gcc-2.7.2.

That said, I bet that both the kernel people and the egcs people would be really happy the more people look into this - if somebody feels motivated enough and sees problems with egcs, it would be extremely powerful to try to pinpoint the particular file that seems to bring on the problems. I'm afraid it needs a known failure mode and lots of legwork to find out what triggers it, though.

Anyway, 2.2.5 does:

Have fun, because I will,

      Linus

*Linux 2.2.4 patch - patch-2.2.4.gz (23-Mar-99)
    [Patch Browser]

There's a new 2.2.x version out there now.

As of 2.2.4, I shoul dbe synchronized with the Sparc[64] and PPC ports, which is the major reason why the patch is pretty huge. Apart from the architecture synchronizations, 2.2.4 does:

Most of the fixes aren't all that noticeable, but some of them can be showstoppers depending on whether you've ever seen them.

I hope to hear reports of the new kernel, and I'm going on a two-week vacation starting mid next week, so please give this a whirl.

      Linus

*Linux 2.2.3 patch - patch-2.2.3.gz (08-Mar-99)
    [Patch Browser]

*Linux 2.2.2 patch - patch-2.2.2.gz (22-Feb-99)
    [Patch Browser]

Notes: Mostly nice bugfixes here. If you aren't having problems with 2.2.1, this is probably not a critical upgrade.

At about a week late due to various silly problems (davem crashed his disk with the TCP fixes on it etc), it's out there. Go and have fun,

      Linus

*Linux 2.2.1 patch - patch-2.2.1.gz (28-Jan-99)
    [Patch Browser]

Notes: This small patch fixes the showstoppers in 2.2.0. From what Linus has said, it'll probably be a few weeks until 2.2.2, so have fun pounding on 2.2.1.

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
Subject: Linux-2.2.1 - the Brown Paper Bag release

The subject says it all. We did have a few paper-bag-inducing bugs in 2.2.0, so there's a 2.2.1 out there now, just a few days after 2.2.0.

Oh, well. These things happen,

      Linus

*Linux 2.2.0-final patch - f tp / http / mirrors (25-Jan-99)
    [Patch Browser]

Notes: In case there is any confusion: This changelist is versus 2.2.0pre9. Also, you can find the patch against 2.2.0pre9 in v2.1/ directory. It's called patch-2.2.0-final.gz and patch-2.2.0-final.bz2. One more note - If you like to compile your sound driver into the kernel, you will probably need this (esstype-2.2.0.diff) patch from Christopher Seawood to compile.

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