See also: last week's Kernel page.

Kernel development

If code that actually works is too boring, you can always get the 2.3.7 patch from the testing directory. But do take note of the "dangerous" in the file name. This patch includes some serious reworking of the page cache writing scheme, with the result that a lot of file systems are broken. 2.3.7 pre1 is known to cause filesystem corruption in some cases; pre2 is out but should be approached with caution. While the real 2.3.7 will not be released until the developers are reasonably convinced that it will not trash filesystems, even hard core bleeding-edge kernel folks may want to approach that release with caution and a good backup in hand.

On the stable side, 2.2.10 has been released, finally. It contains lots of small tweaks, including the patch for the denial of service hole; it also has the new Adaptec driver and a few other larger changes. Alan Cox has immediately started adding on to this release with 2.2.10ac2.

For really stable people, 2.0.37 has been released as well. This should be the last ever 2.0 release, unless some sort of horrific security problem turns up.

Version 0.3 of the USB HOWTO has been released. Anybody who wants to play with the new USB support should have a look at this document. It is also a good overview of the state of USB support at this point.

ACPI support for Linux. ACPI (the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is a new power management scheme being put together by Intel, Microsoft, and Toshiba; it is supposed to be the successor to the older APM interface. More about ACPI can be found on the ACPI web page. Linux does not yet support ACPI out of the box; there is, however, an active Linux ACPI development projectout there. Their current release can handle powering down the system, and not a whole lot more, but they have a lot of the framework in place. They have a list of projects in need of developers; this could be a good place for aspiring kernel hackers to jump in and help out.

Knfsd 1.4 has been released by H.J. Lu. H.J. (and others) continue the steady process of ironing out problems and creating a stable NFS implementation for Linux 2.2.

The eternal devfs battle. Richard Gooch has announced version 111 of his devfs patch, along with an accompanying devfsd release. Meanwhile, the fight in linux-kernel over whether devfs should be incorporated into the kernel has surfaced yet again. The arguments are mostly the same (is it needed, does it belong in kernel space, ...) and have been reported here before. Certainly anybody less persistent than Mr. Gooch would have given up some time ago.

The real issue is how Linux will deal with a world where devices are far more dynamic, and there are many more of them. Devfs is one approach to this problem. But, given the strength and sources of the objections, it seems unlikely to make it into the kernel in its current form. The ideas worked out there, however, may well eventually become part of a bigger scheme for managing large, changing device pools.

QLinux. Something we missed last week: the QLinux project has released a version of the Linux kernel with a number of quality of service (QOS) enhancements. QLinux can not only provide QOS guarantees for network traffic (a capability the Linux kernel already has), it can apply them to CPU usage and disk scheduling as well. Their current release is based on 2.2.0; they will have one based on 2.2.9 later this summer.

Section Editor: Jon Corbet

For other kernel news, see: Kernelnotes Kernel traffic Kernel Newsflash

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