1. 23 Nov, 2007 40 commits
    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      Import 0.99.15d · 17e969fb
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      Import 0.99.15c · 728d1c78
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      pl15a fixes the buffer cache growing problem, adds emulation for a · 17d2d71c
      Linus Torvalds authored
      few unimportant floating point instructions (i287 instructions that
      are No-Ops on the i387, so "emulating" them is easy :^) and fixes a
      silly bug when mmap'ing stuff write-only.  It also fixes a buggy lock
      in the networking.
      17d2d71c
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      [PATCH] Linux-0.99.15 (February 2, 1994) · a4c5b0f7
      Linus Torvalds authored
      sbpcd (Sound Blaster Pro CD interface) driver.
      
      Andries Brouwer cleans up and re-does keyboard driver diacritical handling.
      
      Lots of new sound drivers.
      
      Sysvfs added (Xenix, SystemV/386 and Coherent support).  Linux was
      starting to have a lot of users move over..
      
      MAP_ANONYMOUS flag added to mmap().
      
      Loadable modules added.
      
      Alan Cox is active in networking.
      
      [original changelog below]
      
      Linux 0.99.15 released: Codefreeze for 1.0
      
      People who look into my directory on ftp.funet.fi will already have
      noticed that the latest version of linux (0.99.15) is available, and I
      assume it will be available on most other linux sites soon.  As
      explained in a previous announcement, 0.99.15 is "it", in that this will
      be the base for 1.0 after about a month of testing.  No further patches
      are accepted until the 1.0 release, unless they obviously fix a serious
      bug.
      
      **** NOTE 1 ****
      
        For this code-freeze to be effective yet still potential bugs be
        found, testing is needed, along with good reports of errors and
        problems.  Thus, nobody should think "hey, the *real* release will be
        out in a month, let's wait for that", but instead think: "hey, I'd
        better test this one, so that the *real* release won't result in any
        ugly surprises for me".
      
        In short: test it out, preferably even more than you usually do.  Run
        "crashme" for the whole month if you have the CPU-power to spare,
        and/or just misuse your machine as badly as you can.  And if there are
        problems, report them to me (and the better the report, the more
        likely I am to be able to do something about it).
      
      **** NOTE 2 ****
      
        Bumping the linux version number to 1.0 doesn't mean anything more
        than that: it's only a version number change.  More explicitly, it
        does *NOT* mean that linux will become commercial (the copyright will
        remain as-is), nor does it mean that development stops here, and that
        1.0 will be anything special in that respect.
      
        I'm also afraid that just changing the version number will not make
        potential bugs magically disappear: this has been amply proven by
        various software houses over the years.  This code-freeze is there in
        order to avoid most of the problems that people sometimes associate
        with "X.0 releases", and I hope that it will mean that we have a
        reasonably stable release that we can call 1.0 and one that I won't
        have to be ashamed of.
      
        Ok, enough said, I hope.  The pl15 release is hopefully good, but I'll
        continue to make ALPHA patches against it along the whole month as
        problems crop up.  The networking code has been much maligned, and is
        not perfect by far yet, but it's getting its act together thanks to
        various developers and testers.  And as wiser men than I have said (or
        if they haven't, they should have):
      
            "There is life after 1.0"
      
        Any rumors that the world is coming to an end just because I'm about to
        release a 1.0-version are greatly exaggerated.  I think.
      
                          Linus
      
      ----------
      Things that remained the same between 0.99.14 and 0.99.15:
      
      - I again forgot to update the README before uploading the release.  In
        pl14, I talked about pl13, while the all new and improved README has
        now caught up with pl14.  Remind me to buy a new brain one of these
        days.
      
      Changes between versions 0.99.14 and 0.99.15:
      
       - improved Pentium detection.  Some of you may have had linux report
         your 4086DX2 as a pentium machine, but the new kernel will tell you
         the sad truth.  Whee.
       - Network driver updates by Donald Becker.  New drivers added, old ones
         updated.
       - FPU emulation updates by Bill Metzenthen.  Various minor errors and
         misfeatures fixed (mostly error handling).
       - Support for the SoubdBlaster Pro CD-ROM driver added by Eberhard
         Moenkeberg.
       - extended support for keyboard re-definition, along with font
         re-programming (Eugene Crosser, Andries Brouwer et al).
       - tty handling fixes: true canonical mode with most features supported
         by Julian Cowley.  This may make your canonical mode behave funnily
         if you happen to use old and broken programs that happened to work
         with the old and broken behaviour (this includes at least some
         'getty' programs).
       - serial driver changes and tty fixes by Theodore Ts'o.
       - SCSI fixes by Drew Eckhardt, Eric Youngdale, Rik Faith, Kai Mdkisara
         et al.
       - Updated sound card driver to version 2.4 (Hannu Savolainen)
       - COFF binary loading support (but you will still need the experimental
         iBCS2 patches to run non-linux i386 COFF binaries) by Al Longyear.
       - Upgraded ext2fs filesystem routines (0.4a -> 0.4b), with new
         features.  Read the fs/ext2/CHANGES file for details.  Remy Card and
         Stephen Tweedie.  Get a new fsck that knows about the new features.
       - pipe behaviour fixed in the presense of multiple writers (now
         actually conforms to POSIX specs about atomic writes).  Much of the
         code by Florian Coosmann.
       - minix filesystem extended to support the clean flag: get a new fsck
         that knows about it.
       - System V filesystem (support for Xenix, Coherent and SysV
         filesystems) by Doug Evans, Paul Monday, Pascal Haible and Bruno
         Haible.
       - loadable modules (various authors, don't remember original author of
         the "modules" code).
       - Lots of networking fixes by various people: Alan Cox, Charles
         Hedrick, me and various other people.  Non-byte-aligned networks
         work, and the networking code should be much stabler in general.
      
       + various bugfixes and enhacements here and there (mcd driver update by
         Jon Tombs, atixlmouse fix by Chris Colohan, /dev/full by XXX etc etc)
      
      All in all, the patches come out to 1.5MB uncompressed (about 400kB
      gzip-9'd), so there is little or no idea to make patches to plain pl14
      available.  Incremental patches and ALPHA-releases can be found on
      ftp.funet.fi: pub/OS/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus/ALPHA-pl14.
      a4c5b0f7
    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      Import 0.99.14z · 0d202675
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      Import 0.99.14y · f614125e
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      Import 0.99.14x · 3448e1a6
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      Import 0.99.14w · 3ba1ba97
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      Import 0.99.14v · b168ffdf
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      Import 0.99.14u · bfeedc98
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      Import 0.99.14t · 50a32c2c
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      Import 0.99.14s · 7ec55aac
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    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      This is a general announcement of the imminent code-freeze that will · 1f3d6740
      Linus Torvalds authored
      hopefully make linux 1.0 a reality.  The plan has been discussed a bit
      with various developers already, and is already late, but is still in
      effect otherwise.
      
      In short, the next version of linux (0.99.15) will be a "full-featured"
      release, and only obvious bug-fixes to existing features will be applied
      before calling it 1.0.  If this means that your favourite feature or
      networking version won't make it, don't despair: there is life even
      after beta (and it's probably not worth mailing me about it any more:
      I've seen quite a few favourite features already ;-).
      
      In fact, 1.0 has little "real meaning", as far as development goes, but
      should be taken as an indication that it can be used for real work
      (which has been true for some time, depending on your definition of
      "real work").  Development won't stop or even slow down: some of it has
      even been shelved pending a 1.0 already.
      
      Calling it 1.0 will not necessarily make all bugs go away (quite the
      opposite, judging by some other programs), but I hope it will be a
      reasonably stable release.  In order to accomplish this, the code-freeze
      after 0.99.15 will be about a month, and I hope people will test out
      that kernel heavily, instead of waiting for "the real release" so that
      any potential bugs can be found and fixed.
      
      As to where we are now: as of this moment, the latest release is the 'r'
      version of pl14 (aka "ALPHA-pl14r").  I've made ALPHA releases available
      on ftp.funet.fi almost daily, and expect a final pl15 within a few more
      days.  Testing out the ALPHA releases is not discouraged either if you
      like recompiling kernels every day or two..
      
      And finally: we also try to create a "credits" file that mentions the
      developers of the kernel and essential linux utilities.  The credit file
      compilator is jmartin@opus.starlab.csc.com (John A. Martin), and if you
      feel you have cause to be mentioned in it, please contact him.
      
                  Linus
      1f3d6740
    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      Import 0.99.14q · ac27c05b
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      Import 0.99.14p · 36f4514a
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      Import 0.99.14o · ddd9ed00
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      Import 0.99.14n · 28067f4d
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      Import 0.99.14m · 170720a2
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      Import 0.99.14l · 01928531
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      Import 0.99.14k · 4fc7833c
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      Import 0.99.14j · c6145b38
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      Import 0.99.14i · 27c43263
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      Import 0.99.14h · 3b100d90
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      Import 0.99.14g · 9d094864
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      Import 0.99.14f · 88ba9b13
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      Import 0.99.14e · 1f5ed52f
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      Import 0.99.14d · d80e0e9b
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      Import 0.99.14c · 39b3ec53
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      Import 0.99.14b · 20f1405b
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      Import 0.99.14a · 6da98bdd
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    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      [PATCH] Linux-0.99.14 (November 28, 1993) · 7e842588
      Linus Torvalds authored
      Original Changelog:
      
      CHANGES since 0.99 patchlevel 13:
      
       - new kernel source layout: drivers separated
       - lots of networking bugs fixed, and new network card drivers (Alan Cox,
         Donald Becker &co)
       - sound driver added to the default source distribution (Hannu
         Savolainen)
       - updated SCSI driver code (Eric Youngdale, Drew Eckhardt &co)
       - readonly OS/2 filesystem support (HPFS) added (Chris Smith)
       - NTP support (Philip Gladstone, Torsten Duwe, ??)
       - fixed 16MB swap-area limit
       - lots of minor cleanups, buxfixes etc.
      7e842588
    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      Import 0.99.13k · 537b6ff0
      Linus Torvalds authored
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    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      [PATCH] Linux-0.99.13 (September 19, 1993) · 4779b38b
      Linus Torvalds authored
      We get enable_irq()/disable_irq()
      
      The C++ experiment is not going well.  Get rid of the 'extern "C"', but
      replace it with an "asmlinkage" #define that allows us to experiment.
      
      ELF binary support it a notable change.
      
      Original ChangeLog:
      
       - the bad memory management one-liner bug in pl12 is naturally fixed.
       - compiled with plain C by default instead of C++
       - ELF binary support (Eric Youngdale)
       - Quickport mouse support (and some changes to the PS/2 mouse driver)
         by Johan Myreen and co)
       - core file name change ("core" -> "core.xxxx" where xxxx is the name
         of the program that dumped code).  Idea from ???.  Also, core-files
         now correctly truncate any existing core file before being written.
       - some mmap() fixes: better error returns, and handling of non-fixed
         maps for /dev/mem etc.
       - one kludgy way to fix the wrong arp packets that have plagued net-2d
         (resulting in arp packets that had the first four bytes of the
         ethernet address as the IP address).
       - I fixed the mount-point handling of 'rename()' and 'unlink()/rmdir()'
         so that they should now work and/or give appropriate error messages.
         An early version of this patch was already sent to the KERNEL
         channel, which fixed the rename problem but not a similar bug with
         unlink.
       - packet mode fixes by Charles Hedrick.  Sadly, these are likely to
         break old telnet/rlogin binaries, but it had to be done in order to
         communicate correctly with the rest of the world.
       - FPU emulator patches from Bill Metzenthen.  The fprem1 insn should be
         correct now (not that anybody seems to have seen the incorrect
         behaviour..)
       - a few fixes for SCSI (Drew and Eric)
       - signal.c changes to handle multiple segments (for Wine) correctly.
       - updated drivers from Donald Becker: 3c509 and AT1500 drivers, but
         also some other drivers have been edited, and some networking fixes.
      4779b38b
    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      Very small patch to 0.99pl12 · 9dab425e
      Linus Torvalds authored
      I hate to put out patches this soon after a release, but there is one
      potentially major problem in pl12 which is very simple to fix..  I'm
      including patches: both in plain ascii and as a uuencoded gzip file
      (it's the same patch - the uuencoded one is in case there is any
      newsserver that messes up whitespace).
      
      The main patch is just the change from __get_free_page(GFP_BUFFER) into
      get_free_page(GFP_KERNEL), and the two minor patches just add checks
      that actually enforce the read-only nature of current file mmap'ings so
      that any program that tries to do a write mapping at least will be told
      that it won't work.
      
      I'd suggest anybody compiling pl12 should add at least the file_table.c
      patch: thanks to Alexandre Julliard for noticing this one.
      
                  Linus
      9dab425e
    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      [PATCH] Linux-0.99.12 (August 14, 1993) · 9636d570
      Linus Torvalds authored
      CDU31A and MCD CD-ROM drivers.  Ahh, the bad old days of every sound
      card manufacturer having their own CD interface.
      
      Much nicer keymaps for keyboards.
      
      Many more network drivers by Donald Becker for the improving NET-2 code.
      
      Eric Youngdale makes executables and libraries use the new mmap()
      functionality.  The old special-cased sharing goes away.  Hurray! This
      also means that mmap gets a lot more testing.  It also means that NFS
      has to be fixed to allow mmaps. Done.
      
      "sys_modify_ldt()" appears, the extended DOS emulators want it.
      
      Still using C++ to compile the kernel.
      
      Original changelog:
      
       - The memory manager cleanup has continued, and seems to be mostly
         ready, as proven by the ease of adding mmap() over NFS with the new
         routines.  So yes, the pl12 kernel will demand-load your binaries
         over NFS, sharing code and clean data, as well as running shared
         libraries over NFS.  Memory management by Eric and me, while the NFS
         mmap code was written by Jon Tombs,
      
       - ** IMPORTANT **: The keyboard driver has been enhanced even further,
         and almost everything is completely re-mappable.  This means that
         there is a new version of 'loadkeys' and 'dumpkeys' that you must use
         with this kernel or you'll have problems.  The default keyboard is
         still the US mapping, but if you want to create your own mappings
         you'll have to load them with the new binaries.  Get the 'kbd.tar.gz'
         archive from the same place you get the kernel.
      
         The new keymappings allow things like function key string changes,
         remapping of the control keys, and freedom to remap any of the normal
         keyboard functions: including special features like rebooting,
         console switching etc.  The keyboard remapping code has been done
         mostly by Risto Kankkunen (Risto.Kankkunen@Helsinki.FI).
      
       - updated network drivers by Donald Becker
      
       - updated serial drivers - tytso@Athena.mit.edu
      
       - updated 387 emulation (Bill Metzenthen).  The updated emulator code
         has more exact trigonometric functions and improved exception
         handling.  It now behaves very much like a real 486, with only small
         changes (greater accuracy, slightly different denormal NaN handling
         etc - hard to detect the differences even if you are looking for
         them).
      
       - network timer fixes by Florian La Roche (much cleaned up net/inet/timer.c
         and some bad race-conditions fixed).
      
       - Scsi code updates by Eric Youngdale and others
      
       - Sony CDU-31A CDROM driver by Corey Minyard added to the standard
         kernel distribution.
      
       - The Mitsumi CDROM driver is now part of the standard kernel.  Driver
         by Martin Harriss with patches by stud11@cc4.kuleuven.ac.be (yes, he
         probably has a real name, but no, I haven't found it) and Jon Tombs.
      
       - various other minor patches (preliminary ldt support etc)
      9636d570
    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      PATCH: fork.c bug in 0.99.pl11 · 9a2aa682
      Linus Torvalds authored
      There is at least one known problem with 0.99pl11 - it's very minor and
      will not lead to any real problems, but it's also very easy to fix,
      so...
      
      The problem is a one-liner oversight in kernel/fork.c (thanks to TjL for
      noticing the symptoms - they aren't easy to see), which is fixed by the
      following patch:
      
      In fact, it's probably easiest to "apply" this patch by hand: just
      change the "p->tss.fs = KERNEL_DS" in fork.c to "p->tss.fs = USER_DS"
      and you should be fine.
      
                  Linus
      9a2aa682
    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      [PATCH] Linux-0.99.11 (July 17, 1993) · d9f8e0ec
      Linus Torvalds authored
      Real file mmap with page sharing in the VM code.  We don't do writable
      shared mappings (and we won't do them for a _long_ time yet), but this
      is a big step forward!
      
      Note in the COPYING file that the GPL only covers the kernel, not user
      programs. People were starting to find Linux more and more interesting..
      
      Improved configure script.
      
      Use nicer "save_flags()/cli()/restore_flags()" macros instead of
      hardcoding the inline assembly.  Clean up other inline assembly usage
      too.
      
      Trying to compile the kernel with C++ compiler.  It will be a failed
      experiment.
      
      Original ChangeLog:
      
       - The keyboard is dynamically changeable (this is true of pl10 as
         well), and you need to get the "keytables.tar.z" archive to set the
         keyboard to suit your taske unless you want to live with the default
         US keymaps.
      
         Use the "loadkeys map/xxx.map" command to load the keyboard map: you
         can edit the maps to suit yourself if you can't find a suitable one.
         The syntax of the keyboard maps should be obvious after looking at
         the examples.
      
       - The memory manager has been cleaned up substantially, and mmap()
         works for MAP_PRIVATE.  MAP_SHARED is still not supported for
         anything else than /dev/mem, but even so it actually is usable for a
         lot of applications.  The shared library routines have been rewritten
         to use mmap() instead of the old hardcoded behaviour.
      
       - The kernel is now compiled with C++ instead of plain C.  Very few
         actual C++ features are used, but even so C++ allows for more
         type-checking and type-safe linkage.
      
       - The filesystem routines have been cleaned up for multiple block
         sizes.  None of the filesystems use it yet, but people are working on
         it.
      
       - named pipes and normal pipes should hopefully have the right select()
         semantics in the presense/absense of writers.
      
       - QIC-02 tape driver by Hennus Bergman
      
       - selection patches in the default kernel
      
       - fixed a bug in the pty code which led to busy waiting in some
         circumstances instead of sleeping.
      
       - Compressed SLIP support (Charles Hedrick). See net/inet/CONFIG
      
       - the 'clear_bit()' function was changed to return the previous setting
         of the bit instead of the old "error-code".  This makes use of the
         bit operations more logical.
      
       - udelay() function for short delays (busy-waiting) added.  Used
         currently only by the QIC driver.
      
       - fork() and sheduler changes to make task switches happen only from
         kernel mode to kernel mode.  Cleaner and more portable than the old
         code which counted on being able to task-switch directly into user
         mode.
      
       - debugging malloc code.
      d9f8e0ec
    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      [PATCH] Linux-0.99.10 (June 7, 1993) · 9cb9f18b
      Linus Torvalds authored
      People finally gave up on net-1, Ross Biro grew tired of the flames, and
      net-2 appears with Fred van Kempen as maintainer.  This is the big
      switch-over version.
      
      fsync() isn't just a stub any more, and System V IPC is also showing up.
      
      The "struct file" filetable is made dynamic, instaed of a static
      allocation.  For the first time you can have _lots_ of files open.
      
      Stub for iBCS2 emulation code.
      
      [original announcement below]
      
      I've finally released an official version of linux-0.99 patchlevel 10:
      there have been various alpha versions floating around which differ in
      details (notably networking code), which shouldn't be used any more.
      The new linux version is available only as full source code: the diffs
      would have been too big to be useful.  You can find linux-0.99.10.tar.z
      (along with keytables.tar.z) on nic.funet.fi: pub/OS/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus
      and probably on tsx-11 and other linux archives within a day or two (so
      check there first if you are in the states).
      
      Linux-0.99 pl10 has a number of new features and changes in interface.
      The most notable of these are:
      
       - the networking code is reorganized (generally called "net-2",
         although unrelated to the BSD release).  The new code implements a
         lot of standard features lacking in net-1, and also changes the user
         interface to be closer to the BSD standards.  Notably, the old
         configuration binaries won't work, so to get the new networking to
         work you'll have to get the net-2 binaries as well.  The networking
         binaries are available on tsx-11.mit.edu (and mirrors) under the
         directory pub/linux/packages/net/net-2 (and the setup syntax has
         changed somewhat..)
      
         The networking code has been mainly organized and rewritten by Fred
         van Kempen, with drivers by Donald Becker.
      
       - serial line setup has been changed: linux 0.99 pl10 does *not* try to
         autodetect serial ports very agressively.  If you have other serial
         ports than the standard com1/com2, or nonstandard IRQ etc values,
         this means that it's less likely to work without any help.  The
         solution is not to recompile the kernel - you should get the
         "setserial" program available from tsx-11.mit.edu in the directory
         pub/linux/sources/sbin/setserial-2.01.tar.z that allows you to
         dynamically configure your serial ports to suit your setup.
      
         The main organizer behind the serial line changes is tytso (Theodore
         Ts'o).
      
       - Keyboard setup has changed: it is no longer hardcoded at compile
         time, but instead you can use the new "loadkeys" program to load in a
         new keyboard map on the fly.  The default keyboard map is the normal
         US keyboard (yes, I should have used the Finnish one by default, but
         after thinking of all the problems that would have resulted in I
         forgot about that idea).  The loadkeys code can be found in the
         "keytables.tar.z" archive, which also contains keymaps for most
         normal keyboard types.  To create a custom keyboard table is very
         easy - just take a 5 minute look at the existing map files (they
         resemble the ones used by xmodmap, so if you are familiar with
         those..)
      
         The loadable keymaps were mostly implemented by Risto Kankkunen.
      
      There are a lot of other internal kernel changes, but they should be
      mostly transparent, and noticeable only indirectly due to new features
      or (hopefully) better/faster/whatever operation.  These include:
      
       - the SysV IPC patches are in by default: Krishna Balasubramanian.
         If you need these, you know what it's about (notably, dosemu 0.49
         wants them).
       - inode handling is updated: inodes and files are now dynamically
         allocated within the kernel, and use a hash table for faster lookup
         (along with a NFU algorithm for the inode cache).  Steven Tweedie.
       - Updated FPU emulation: mostly exception handling changes, making the
         emulator handle most exceptions the same way a 486 does.  The
         emulator is written by Bill Metzenthen.
       - a few ext2-fs updates by Remy Card and Steven Tweedie.
       - support for the 'fsync()' function (Steven Tweedie)
       - various (minor) SCSI patches to catch some error conditions, add
         support for VLB adaptec controllers without DMA and so on (different
         people).
       - other changes - I forget.
      
      In addition to patches sent in by others, I've naturally made my own
      changes (often *to* the patches sent in by others :-).  Among other
      things, the pl10 buffer cache code now also tries to share pages with
      executables, resulting in better cacheing especially of binaries (giving
      noticeable improvements in kernel recompilation speed on some machines).
      Also, I've changed a lot of low-level things around to help the iBCS2
      project: this includes things like internal segment handling and the
      signal stack (which now looks the same as on SysV i386 unixes).  All in
      all, pl10 has a disturbing amount of new code, but will hopefully work
      well despite (due to?) the number of changes.
      
      The new networking code in particular will change the network setup a
      lot - it now looks more standard, but if you were used to the old way of
      doing things..  On the other hand, most people actively using the
      networking features have hopefully gotten warnings about this on the NET
      channel for the last few weeks.  Also, the networking code still isn't
      perfect: Fred is still working on it, but it seems to have reached a
      reasonably stable platform on which it will be easier to build.  Look
      out for the new-and-improved networking manual, hopefully out soon(?).
      
      Standard request: please try it all out, give it a real shakedown, and
      send comments/bug-reports to the appropriate place (I'm always
      appropriate, but you may want to send the report to the mailing lists
      and/or the newsgroup as well).  I apologize for the lateness of the
      release (forcing hlu to make interim gcc releases that relied on
      nonstandard kernels etc), and the changes are somewhat bigger than I'd
      prefer, so the more testerts that try it out, the faster we can try to
      fix any possible problems.  The new kernel has gone through various
      stages of ALPHA-diffs and some late ALPHA-pl10's, so there shouldn't be
      any major surprises, but alpha releases tend not to get even close to
      the coverage a real release gets...
      
                          Linus
      9cb9f18b
    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      [PATCH] Linux-0.99.9 (April 23, 1993) · 3579bc6f
      Linus Torvalds authored
      Bill's math emulator now passes paranoia.
      
      Last argument to ioctl is "long".
      
      sys_clone() appears.
      
      [original announcement below]
      
      The latest kernel release is 0.99.9, and can be found on nic.funet.fi:
      pub/OS/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus, both as patches relative to pl8 and as full
      sources.  The only major new feature is that the ST-0x driver has
      finally been updated to the scatter-gather code: ST-0x users should with
      luck get about 5 times the performance on disk-operations..  Seagate
      code written by Drew Eckhardt.
      
      0.99.9 also fixes:
      - the FPU-emulator should now handle all rounding-modes correctly, and
        pass all the paranoia package tests.  Patches by Bill Metzenthen.
      - bootup enhancements by Chrisoph Niemann (but the SVGA mode numbers
        have changed, so you may have to edit your lilo configuration file
        and/or the main Makefile to get the mode you normally want)
      - ext2fs updated to the very latest release.  Code by Remy Card and
        Stephen Tweedie.
      - various minor patches, some of them cosmetic, some of them fixes to
        smaller bugs..  Thanks to everybody who sent them in (even though not
        all made it)
      
      It might be a good idea to test it all out,
      
                  Linus
      3579bc6f