2.6 Linux Kernel improvements.

[drag]

I was visiting Arstechnica.com and they had a article about Linux 2.6

Apperently Linus has decided to release the latest and hopefully last of the 2.6.0 test series.

2.6.0-10test

They had a link to this wonderfull article outlining the improvements and differences in the new 2.6 kernel vs the 2.4 series. One of the major being new scedualling for more responsive desktop, and support for MMU-less embedded style cpu archatectures, better support for non-i386 and legacy-less x86 (like SGI machines using Intel proccessors), and better support for NUMA-style supercomputers and a host of other stuff.

One major thing I thought was cool was improvement over support for a wider range of USB devices and USB 2.0 support. The most major (in my mind) is the support of X-Box gamepads.

All in all a quite nice outline of 2.6

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Now if only I could get the thing to boot.

 

[drag]

One thing that was interesting that I just noticed is that it is now possible to build a alternate security linux module that includes much finer control over user's ability other then the old superuser stuff. All kernel stuff has been revamped to recognize this.

You could, if you want, now eliminate the root user completely, and institute a "roles" oriented security model like used in the up and coming Solaris 10.

(but right now only the normal security system is aviable thru the stock kernel sources)

edit:

I guess all that stuff comes from selinux and it's inclusion in the mainline 2.6 sources...

from here

The National Security Agency (NSA)
Researchers in NSA's Information Assurance Research Group designed and implemented flexible mandatory access controls in the major subsystems of the Linux kernel and implemented the new operating system components provided by the Flask architecture, namely the security server and the access vector cache. The NSA researchers reworked the LSM-based SELinux for inclusion in mainline 2.6.

 

[Sunner]

You can try out Gentoo's SELinux here.

Coutesy of n0c.
Well, courtesy of the Gentoo folks I guess, but I got the link from n0c

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
Now if only I could get the thing to boot.

You were thinking your problems came from devfs right? (maybe not, but for some reason this is what I remember ) According to a random post on /. (yes, I know how unreliable that is ) devfs isn't being maintained because the maintainer disappeared and no one else has worked on it. They are using something like udev now.

This may have been a wasted post.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Sunner
You can try out Gentoo's SELinux here.

Coutesy of n0c.
Well, courtesy of the Gentoo folks I guess, but I got the link from n0c

No credit needed here. Anything that makes me interrested in/excited about running Linux has to be a good thing. The one Linux box I currently have only exists because of lack of good SMP in Open/Net BSD. But that gentoo site makes me want to get another Linux box. :Q

Between PaX/grsecurity, SELinux, and systrace; Linux gets more and more interresting every day.

 

[Vadatajs]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
Now if only I could get the thing to boot.

You were thinking your problems came from devfs right? (maybe not, but for some reason this is what I remember ) According to a random post on /. (yes, I know how unreliable that is ) devfs isn't being maintained because the maintainer disappeared and no one else has worked on it. They are using something like udev now.

This may have been a wasted post.

I've been using devfs in 2.6 since test4 (when I started using 2.6), so it probably isn't that. I did have to update lilo to get it working though.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Vadatajs

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
Now if only I could get the thing to boot.

You were thinking your problems came from devfs right? (maybe not, but for some reason this is what I remember ) According to a random post on /. (yes, I know how unreliable that is ) devfs isn't being maintained because the maintainer disappeared and no one else has worked on it. They are using something like udev now.

This may have been a wasted post.

I've been using devfs in 2.6 since test4 (when I started using 2.6), so it probably isn't that. I did have to update lilo to get it working though.

If I am remembering correctly (and I'm probably not, wish I could search for strings in posts not just titles, THANKS FOR GETTING RID OF SUBSCRIBERS!) he had problems because he wasn't using devfs. I never checked out to see whether development for devfs has stopped or not, although I pobably should have before my last post

 

[drag]

From what I understand is that DevFS is depreciated in 2.6

So I suppose that means they are keeping it only for backward compatability....

I guess they prefer the current manual /dev/ stuff until someone thinks of something better.

Maybe udev?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I'm not using devfs, the problem was that it wasn't finding /dev or something like that. At the time I thought it was because I was supposed to be using devfs (which I wasn't), but I think I just missed a compile option or something. Dunno. When it comes to kernels and hardware-related stuff, I'm just totally disenchanted anymore.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
I'm not using devfs, the problem was that it wasn't finding /dev or something like that. At the time I thought it was because I was supposed to be using devfs (which I wasn't), but I think I just missed a compile option or something. Dunno. When it comes to kernels and hardware-related stuff, I'm just totally disenchanted anymore.

Well it just sounds like you need a break from messing around with that sort of stuff. Take a break from playing around with kernels and stuff. After that tiger board crapped out I can understand the frustration.

 

[Sunner]

When I installed 2.6 on my Gentoo box, it didn't complain about DevFS, while is leaving it out on a 2.4 kernel, the system would complain about this at boot.

I must say, genkernel, which comes with Gentoo, is really nice for making something "just work".