Cliff’s List Filter – March 1 – 15, 2004

This week we’re introducing a new feature on Linux.com. We plan to monitor the mailing lists of key open source projects and excerpt highlights that should help our readers stay informed. Consider this week’s posting version 1.0 — we hope you’ll suggest ways we can make this feature work even better for you. For instance, are there other mailing lists
that you don’t see here but whose content you find interesting?Linux Kernel

• If you are running a 2.6 kernel and are having problems with your USB printer, you
  might be interested in trying this
  patch, from Barry K. Nathan.
• For those laptop owners who have upgraded from 2.6.1 to a later kernel revision,
  if you are having problems with your laptop freezing after a suspend, consider
  reverting back to 2.6.1 for the time being and see if that helps. You can find more
  information in this
  message from Antony Dovgal.
• Interested in filesystem benchmarks under 2.6.3? You may want to read
  Peter
  Nelson’s writeup. For the full skinny on the results and the test
  methodology used, you can visit his 2.6
  benchmarking page.
• It looks like Linux has now been ported to the M32R processor, a 32-bit RISC
  processor from Renesas Technology! Feel free to read the
  announcement from Hirokazu Takata. Currently this port only exists for 2.4
  kernels, with hope for a 2.6.0 release, in the near future.
• Having problems with the I2O subsystem under Linux 2.6.3? If so, you may want to look
  into this
  patch, from Markus Lidel. For those interested, you can find the patch
  details, here.
• If you are using kernel 2.6 and do a lot of CD ripping, you might want to
  try this
  performance enhancing patch from Jens Axboe, which is supposed to enable cdda
  ripping from DMA, as opposed to PIO. cdparanoia users should definitely notice the
  improvements.
• Using Large Block Devices under Linux 2.6? If so, you might want to apply
  thesepatches
  for Linux 2.6.3, from Eric Sandeen, as well as
  this patch,
  from Andrew Morton.
• If your Samba shares are not respecting the “uid” or “gid” mount parameters, you
  may want to see if this
  patch, from Søren Hansen, will fix the problem. Those interested in this patch
  may also be interested in this
  thread on a UID/GID mapping system. Please be aware of the potential security
  concerns that may impinge on your network before applying this patch.
• Interested in limiting process tree depth? Try this
  patch from Marco Molinaro. It uses the rlimit framework to set the maximum depth of
  a process tree, impeding a process’s ability to fork depending on its depth from the process
  parent.
• For those of you interested in benchmarks, Mark Wong recently posted some
  LVM2 perform
  numbers. Check out the details
  here.
• If you are running a SiS900 based networking card (ala an RTL8201) and are having
  problems with low transfer rates, you might want to try this
  patch from Grischa Jacobs, and see if your transfer rates improve.
• James Ketrenos announces the launch of an open source driver for the Intel
  Pro/Wireless 2100 miniPCI network adapter. The driver is in “early beta” and is
  in active development. Support for the 2.4 and 2.6 Linux kernel’s is available.
  If you are interested in taking part in development, you can visit the
  the website, or you can sign up for the
  mailing list.
• According to James Smart, Emulex is also starting on an initiative to open
  source the driver for their LightPulse Fibre Channel Adapter family. Their
  SourceForge page is open and
  there is a currently-in-progress FAQ there. If you are interested in helping
  development, drop by and sign-on.
• Those of you interested in a better tracing tool than ‘strace’ might be interested in
  LTT, as mentioned in
  this
  message from Karim Yagmour.
• Greg Kroah-Hartman recently announced the release
  of udev 022. For those of you unfamiliar with udev, it’s a devfs replacement that
  runs outside of the kernel, which attempts to address many of the devfs drawbacks.
• It was only a matter of time. Valdis Kletnieks points out that rootkits
  have now made their way to the 2.6 kernel. So here comes the obligatory warning:
  keep those systems patched!

GNOME

• Andrew Sobala is calling for
  dynamic and exciting screenshots that show off GNOME 2.6 in action. If you think
  you have such a desktop, feel free to snap off a few and send them on.
• While on the topic of screenshots, Arafat Medini was gracious enough to
  show off a
  few of his own displaying Gnome 2.6 in Arabic!
• Did you miss out on Gnome related news during the last week of Feb?
  Don’t fret! Sri Ramkrishna has the GNOME
  Summary for February 22nd-28th ready for your perusal!
• Tim Janik announces
  the release of BEAST v0.6.1, the Bedevilled Audio SysTem. BEAST is a music
  composition and modular synthesis application. This should make a fine addition to the
  toolbox of musicians who are looking to add more free-software to their music making
  arsenal, along with other free sound software like
  Audacity,
  Ardour and
  other fine utilities.

KDE

• Would you like new sound fonts for KDE? If so, you might be interested in
  this
  announcement by Artemio. His experience as a sound designer and a music
  composer have brought forth KDEvibes.
  Give them a try!

Mozilla

• For those of you who would like the ability to hover over a link
  and have a tooltip displayed with the link’s URL, you might be
  interested in this
  thread, between Fred Holmes and Ed Mullen. Another good tip from
  this thread are the pointers to the
  Mozilla and
  Foxfire extensions. Take
  a look, and see the other ways in which you can extend the functionality of your
  browser.
• Trying to un-install the Quicktime Plug-in, and are having problems? The information in
  this
  thread, might be useful to you.
• Want to include your IE bookmarks into another browser (like Mozilla)?
  Try this
  thread for a helpful tip.
• If you are using Mozilla 1.6+ and are having problems accessing webservers on
  nonstandard ports, you might be interested in the second paragraph on
  this
  page, as noted by Jerry Talkington in this
  thread.
• Windows XP or 98 users who would prefer to keep their Mozilla
  profiles off of the C-Drive, might be interested in this
  thread.
• Interested in backing up your Mozilla Profile, like
  this
  fellow? You might be interested in Mozilla
  Backup.