Marcelo Tosatti released the 2.4.25 kernel, unchanged from the earlier 2.4.25-rc4. On other Linux news, this article gives an in-depth walk-through on installing Fedora Core 1 on a Dell Inspiron 8600 machine, with some tips for the 2.6.x kernel series as well.
Linux kernel 2.4.25, Security Fixes; Fedora on a Dell Laptop
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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do you post compile errors for 2.4.25.. and 2.6.x for that matter.. i’m having trouble with both …
Here is the link: http://www.isrec.isb-sib.ch/~agrosdid/ressources/fedora_dell.html
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com
http://www.tuxmobil.com
Don’t go out of your house without those. ;^)
Good to hear that the ndis wrapper steaming along. Realtek actually has linux drivers for the wireless card in my notebook, but they’re completely unstable(kernel panic when rmmod), and it won’t work for any kernel over 2.4.21.
2.6.3 fixes the same security problem: http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/2404
Patch for 2.2.25: http://seclists.org/lists/fulldisclosure/2004/Feb/1059.html
I only have one message for the Fedora group. How come this kernel isn’t a part of the updates? It would be nice to see it than the 2.4.22-XXXX Updates.
I don’t want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Linux fanatics? I’ve been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Linux box (a PIII 800 w/512 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Linux box, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Mozilla will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Emacs Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won’t bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I’ve encountered while working on various Linux machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I’ve never seen a Linux box that has run faster than its Windows counterpart, despite the Linux machines faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 800 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don’t get how people can claim that Linux is a “superior” machine.
Linux addicts, flame me if you’d like, but I’d rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Linux over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
I don’t known why your machine behaves that way. I had the exact same problem on my Win XP book some weeks ago.
Anyhow. Something is b0rked. Which kernel do you run?
Copying 21MB to another folder takes 2 seconds on my machine and it is a slow laptop!
tux ~$ ls -l file.txt
-rw-r–r– 1 xxx yyy 21151744 Feb 19 17:21 file.txt
tux ~$ time cp file.txt lalle/
real 0m2.544s
user 0m0.003s
sys 0m0.095s
Better check with your sysadmin.
Check the hard drives performance.
As root, issue
/sbin/hdparm -t /dev/hda (or /dev/sda, if it’s a SCSI drive)
You should get a response along these lines:
/dev/hda:
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 3.40 seconds = 18.82 MB/sec
The check above was done on a Pentium III 800Mhz PC with 768MB RAM. Check to see if DMA and 32-bit support are enabled:
/sbin/hdparm -dc /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
using_dma = 1 (on)
The only time I’ve had performance problems with hard drive access is with an improperly compiled kernel. I would say you have a problem, but it is not necessary a “fault” of the operating system.
You didn’t mention if the system has a stock kernel or customized kernel? A copy operation at the speed above should only be around a few seconds.
Another factor: the hard drive may be on it’s way out. These are some things to think about on ANY platform.
since his last line was about faster, cheaper, more stable systems – I suspect he’s trolling.
In addition to Randy’s great post i’d like to add that it’s wise to read the hdparm manpage (man hdparm) for additional flags which improve performance. Be careful with some options (the manpage warns you for dangerous options). To become aware of what your harddisk is capable of try: hdparm -i /dev/hda. You might also have a bad IDE cable. I’m happily using: hdparm -q -A1 -c3 -d1 -X69 -m16 -W1 -k1 /dev/hde which greatly boosts performance (see manpage for what this does; hde = 3rd ide controller’s master, you’ll probly have hda which is 1st ide controller’s master). Then again, there could be a lot other factors too.
Tools, this is a well known flame. The poster just copy and pasted from one of the many I have seen on slashdot…
He was trolling and you fell for it.
Before blaming Linux, perhaps you should figure out if you have a problem with your machine. I’ve copied iso images (~650 MB) from one disk to another and it took less than a minute, and there was barely any performance impact on other processes (file operations requiring very little CPU and/or memory). (I’m at work, so I can’t give you exact performance, but I’ll do so tonight.)
It’s obvious something’s wrong with your setup. I suggest trying what Randy said, but you shouldn’t have to do this. Any modern distro will set up your drives correctly.
Due to the inflammatory tone of your posts (you mention “Linux fanatics” in the very first sentence), I’m inclined to think that you are simply trolling, and/or made up this “problem.” One thing’s for sure, is that none of the other Linux users in this thread seem to have it…
You might check google Usenet pages for compile problems, or post your problem to the linux.kernel mailing list.
FWIW, 2.4.25 compiled fine for me on a Gentoo box (using vanilla-sources). Funny, I had just completed the install with 2.4.24, when the “emerge -pu world” showed that 2.4.25 had just popped up. Copying over the .config using “make oldconfig” worked fine. There were a few new options for devices plus a question on XFS. There may be some issues if you root mount XFS, but checking the changelog is advisable.
Count me among those who isn’t installing 2.6.x until all the support tools play nice and stable with it on install.
Hi
”
Count me among those who isn’t installing 2.6.x until all the support tools play nice and stable with it on install.
”
if you are using a non critical desktop system you might want to try it out now. 2.6.3 has been released as of yesterday and this series itself is widely acknowledged to be stable.
advantages
speed
alsa
udev
….
Jess
The 2.6 series kernels are being released at quite a fast pace. What’s up ? Is it a “kernel of the week” contest ?
Hi
There was quite a large number of minor non critical patches waiting on queue for linus to release his 2.6.0 release. he has started merging them in now along with andrew morton. if you look at the change log you will find that they are fairly minor patches. one important fix in this release is a local privelage security issue in a kernel function called mmremap. since distributions like fedora and mandrake are going to release a distro with a 2.6 kernel and many early adoptors have jumped in it was considered important to release the fix soon and hence the frequency
regards
Rahul
Geez! Are they letting Microsofties work on the kernel now?
http://www.isec.pl/vulnerabilities04.html
Perhaps, you should check your hard disk, even with compilation problems there is no reason to your operation wast 10x more time.
I guess the 2.6.x kernel series will be remembered for being launched too early, before all of the security problems were sorted out. I’m glad Longhorn was pushed back to 2006 to take care of these sorts of things!
Hi
Its actually a related bug and both exhibit the same behavior. due to the absence of bounds checking a local exploit is theoritically possible. however all practical code causes a memory leak subsequently leading to a crash.
regards
Rahul
We were able to create a robust proof-of-concept exploit code giving full super-user privileges on all vulnerable kernel versions. The exploit code will be released next week.
http://www.isec.pl/vulnerabilities/isec-0014-mremap-unmap.txt
Security through obscurity. 😉