ftp://ft
p.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/linux-2.4/
Intermediate diffs are available from
http://www.bzimage.org

* Next chunk of patches
*
* Email warning: It's possible my static ip range will evaporate
* about monday. If so that may cause some disruption to the
* ukuu.org.uk, bc.nu, cabal.tm domains and to my email while I shuffle
* stuff around.

2.4.10-ac6
o Fix nfs symlink breakage (Trond Myklebust)
o Fix SCpnt->pid value (Dario Ballabio)
o LDM partition merge fix (Al Viro)
o Namespace fixes from 2.4.11pre* (Al Viro)
o pipe.c cleanup (Al Viro)
o Fix the iobuf oops (Anwar Payyoorayil)
o Fix bootp image loader on Alpha (Jay Estabrook)
o scsi tape module locking fixes (Kai Mäkisara)
o opl3sa2 dual DMA fix (Jerome Auge)
o Quota fixes for -ac using S_NOQUOTA flags (Jan Kara)
o Fix pci64 broken irq mask hack and an SRM fix (Jay Estabrook)
o Fix DRM procfs oops (Abraham vd Merwe)
o Toshiba SMM driver check laptop is a Toshiba (Jonathan Buzzard)
o Clean up rep_nop stuff in init/main.c for (Paul Mackerras)
portability
o Update EV6/EV67 cpu selection (Jay Estabrook)
o Small alpha fixups (Jay Estabrook)
o Remove ASSEMBLY bits (Keith Owens)
o Change PPC64 contact person (Dave Engebretsen)
o Update cyberpro frame buffer driver (Bradley LaRonde,
Russell King)
o Add sysrq-M memory zone free info (Marcelo Tosatti)
o Fix mtd export oddments (David Woodhouse)
o Export handling cleanup/doc update (Keith Owens)
o Irda cleanups (Jean Tourrilhes)
o Irda discovery in passive mode fixes (Jean Tourrilhes)
o Irda usb updates (Jean Tourrilhes)
o VLSI irda updates (Martin Diehl)
o PPP over ATM support (Mitchell Blank,
Jens Axboe)
2.4.10-ac5
o Initial fix for the ELF loader bug (Linus Torvalds)
o Revert 2.4.10 sys_personality ABI change bug (Paul Larson)
o Add support for 16 byte commands to scsi (Khalid)
(only some controllers handle this)
o Small updates to the ide raid drivers (Arjan van de Ven)
o Update the hermes drivers (David Gibson)
o Airo driver update (Javier Achirica)
o NCR 53c700 update (James Bottomley)
o Next set of pnpbios work (Thomas Hood)
o Update ARM includes (Russell King)
o Update nwflash driver (Russell King)
o ARM alignment fix (Russell King)
o More pci.ids (Russell King)
o Add another SB variant (Jerome Cornet)
o SMBfs updates (Urban Widmark)
o Further mtd driver updates (David Woodhouse)
o Update ibmcam idents (Dmitri)

2.4.10-ac4
o Switch to Linus behaviour for kmap (Trond Myklebust)
in generic_file_write - should fix NFS oopses
| I dont have any highmem boxes so you get to test 8)

o ext3 deadlock versus truncate fix (Tachino Nobuhiro)
o Small reiserfs transaction fix (Nikita Danilov)
o Fix a fencepost error in the vm decision making (Rik van Riel)
o Shmem accounting fix (Christoph Rohland)
o BH async flag changes from 2.4.10 (Andrea Arcangeli)
o Remove wbinvd macro the acpi people re-added (Dave Jones)
o Make the kiobuf init code only clean needed (Andrew Bond)
fields (noticably speeds up Oracle)
o Move DMI scanning earlier in the kernel boot (Stelian Pop)
| This is needed to detect the vaio early enough

o Try and fix 21041 problems with tulip, better (Herbert Xu)
o Tulip rx dropped calculation
o Add further PCI idents (Jeff Garzik)
o Add another ident to the clgen fb (Jeff Garzik)
o Add intel i830 to the agp code idents (Christof Efkemann)
o pl2303 usb serial fixes (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)
o ipconfig typo fix (Ralf Baechle)
o Fix user mode linux build with new ptrace (Jeff Dike)
o JFFS tags update (David Woodhouse)
o Kill of remaining old style video4linux inits (Ladis Michl)
o Update i2c to rev 2.6.1 (Christoph Hellwig)

2.4.10-ac3
o Fix page_kills_ppro call (Peter Blomgren)
o mtd jffs and jffs2 updates (David Woodhouse)
o Partition handling updates (Al Viro)
o S/390 documentation updates (Martin Schwidefsky)
o S/390 code updates (Martin Schwidefsky)
o Add clean config for bust_spinlock generics (Martin Schwidefsky)
o Correct EXPORT_MODULE_GPL (Keith Owens)
o NFSv3 mkdir fix (Glen Serre)
o Clean up NFS yielding (Trond Myklebust)

2.4.10-ac2
o Merge Configure.help changes from 2.4.10
o Fix the spin_unlock oostore to maybe work (me)
o Fix for pentium pro errata #50 (me)
o initio driver type cleanups (Arjan van de Ven)
o rpc_queue_lock needs to be non static (Frank Davies)
o Fix a potential crash in ldm partition code (Al Viro)
o Acenic updates (Jes Sorensen)
o Fix scsi tur direction info (James Bottomley)
o Further natsemi updates (Manfred Spraul)
o Add license tags to jffs/jffs2 (Frank Davies)
o Console driver optimisations (Geert Uytterhoeven)
o Add belkin F5U120 serial to belkin_sa (Amy Fong)
o Big endian fixes for console drivers (Geert Uytterhoeven)
o Add module tags to the mwave driver (Thomas Hood)
o i2o header file cleanups (Russell King)
o Fix C2 power state in ACPI (Martin Röder)
o Deadlock and error handling fixes for 8139too (Manfred Spraul)
o Update NR_DEAD in keyboard driver (Arnaldo Carvalho
de Melo)
o Fix race in processor init sequence (Martin Bligh)
o Check procfs returns in acpi (Pavel Machek)
o Add DMI handles for problem K7V-RM and (Pavel Machek)
Tosh 4030cdt
o Fix analog joystick breakage from 2.4.10 (Vojtech Pavlik)
o Work around vaio weird pnpbios happenings (Thomas Hood)
o Update ninja scsi driver (YOKOTA Hiroshi)
o Adbmouse typo fix (Paul Mackerras)

2.4.10-ac1
o Merge with Linux 2.4.10 tree
- Drop VM changes
- Drop raw/block I/O changes
- Drop out O_DIRECT
- Basically remove the seriously unsafe stuff and
  keep the -ac VM
- I've not applied the obvious fixes so ACPI and joysticks
  are still icky - that is for ac2
o Fix the noncompile of SMP OOSTORE kernels (me)

BBC News reports that a popular Korean Web site has asked the Seoul District Court to block the sale of Windows XP in that country. Daum Communications is arguing that XP’s tighter integration of desktop and Internet functions, including MSN Messenger, will stifle its own Internet messaging services. About 20 percent of Internet users in Korea currently use Daum’s instant messaging software.

WatchGuard Technologies senior vp and gm for server security Jack Danahy has written an opinion piece for ZDNet that discusses Gartner’s recent reccomendation that companies dump Microsoft IIS for the sake of security. While there’s certainly merit in Danahy’s assertion that switching platforms will not make any operation magically secure, his blame-the-victim approach to defend Microsoft from Gartner’s list of IIS shortcomings is, to be polite, innovative.

Security issues with Linux, Unix, and Solaris systems were a hot topic of discussion this week at the Virus Bulletin Conference in Prague. Jakub Kaminski, of Computer Associates Australia, predicts that the rising popularity of Linux systems will deliver more viruses that use a “cocktail” blend of code and scripts to cross platforms and wreak havoc on computer systems worldwide. Trend Micro’s Joe Hartmann fixated on the increasing number of buffer overflow vulnerabilities causing headaches for system administrators, placing the blame on C++ for its lack of buffer clean-up capabilities. Read the report at Vnunet.

Red Herring has a piece from its October 1 print edition on the “ingeniously subversive” Mono Project from Ximian, which aims to build an Open Source version of Microsoft’s .NET framework. The Mono developers have a lot of work ahead of them, working from the partial set of blueprints Microsoft submitted to European Computer Manufacturer’s Association, outlining the C# programming language and related common language infrastructure. Developers will have to fill in some of the blanks to make Mono complete, figuring out on their own the guidelines for linking applications to databases and automatically generating Web pages.

Subterrian.net has a copy of the presentation delivered by Sean Lewis at ToorCon 2001, held last weekend in San Diego, Calif. Lewis discusses BSD essential BSD security issues, working well as a primer for new and experienced users alike. Read all about encrypted communication, filesystem lockdowns, kernel securelevels, services, ftpd, Apache, and security auditing.

Much going on in the world of Mandrake this week, including first looks at Mandrake Linux 8.1 and its many new features, a look at DeadlyServers’ use of Mandrake Linux to host its various game servers for Half-life, Quake 3, and other multiplayer favorites, and a roundup of news items related to the Linux distribtion. Posted at Linux Weekly News.

The very latest links of note in the world of python development: A BSD sockets tutorial, pre-2.2 python’s all-or-nothing attribute accessor scheme and how to avoid certain overhead issues with sub-objects, and a discussion about parsing text drifts into a conversation about the relative merits of scanf. Posted at Linux Weekly News

Compaq has announced a worldwide recall and replacement program for the AC power adapters used with select models of its computer notebooks. The adapters, which were made by a third party for Compaq, could overheat, and have caused at least five fires so far. Check the Compaq information page for details about various Armada, Prosignia, and Presario models affected, and how to go about getting a free replacement.

Closed source giant Microsoft continues to generate controversy with its newer, more expensive licensing schemes. Most corporations will likely pay up than deal with the logistics of switching to another platform, but government agencies (at least the ones on a local level) have never been known for having deep pockets. The Finnish city of Turku is faced with the choice of paying up or switching platforms, and has decided to perform a study as to whether or not Linux would meet their needs. If Turku decides to go with the penguin, anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 desktops will make the switch. The Register has the report.