MSNBC reports that eBay’s charity auction, which is trying to raise $100 million, is generating controversy and upsetting some users of the on-line auction site.

Noel Davis at O’Reilly.net discusses “a Remote Shell Trojan Linux-based virus, buffer overflows in fetchmail, and problems in the BSD Line Printer Daemon.”

Kelly McNeill writes “Despite the dot-com shakeout, businesses new and old are still rushing to put content on the Internet — movies, music, books, artwork, you name it. And there are hundreds of schemes floating around to extract payment for this content: micropayments, escrow accounts, debit cards, direct account withdrawals, credit cards and many others. But something has happened that the media companies especially have been dreading for years — the content is losing its value even as the cost to produce the content is going up.”

“Lots more merging – it almost looks like there’s a light at the end of the
tunnel.

VM tweaks, notably OOM handling.

And a nasty ptrace bug fixed.” —

Linus

Linux 2.4.10-pre12
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 17:39:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Linus Torvalds 
To: Kernel Mailing List 


Lots more merging - it almost looks like there's a light at the end of the
tunnel.

VM tweaks, notably OOM handling.

And a nasty ptrace bug fixed.

                 Linus

------
pre12:
 - Alan Cox: much more merging
 - Pete Zaitcev: ymfpci race fixes
 - Andrea Arkangeli: VM race fix and OOM tweak.
 - Arjan Van de Ven: merge RH kernel fixes
 - Andi Kleen: use more readable 'likely()/unlikely()' instead of __builtin_expect()
 - Keith Owens: fix 64-bit ELF types
 - Gerd Knorr: mark more broken PCI bridges, update btaudio driver
 - Paul Mackerras: powermac driver update
 - me: clean up PTRACE_DETACH to use common infrastructure

From Robval.com: ” Based on a solid Linux business plan, my client decided that Linux was a good investment for most of the company’s employees, but will retain a few key Windows computers in the office for specific applications. Connecting Linux and Windows computers on the same network, and sharing Office 97/2000 files between the different OSs, is easy and works well, thanks to Linux Red Hat and Star Office. The primary reason for this decision was a $10,000 saving on his IT budget! For support reasons, he decided to use a local Linux supplier for installation and configuration work.”

“As many of you know, I am no longer a Netscape employee; my position at Netscape was eliminated during the last round of AOL layoffs. Many people have asked what this means for my role with mozilla.org.

First, the focus of my role at mozilla.org will change somewhat. As a Netscape employee, I was in daily contact with a broad range of Netscape management. Some of this interaction was gathering data relating to mozilla.org processes, and some of it was acting as the liaison between Netscape management and mozilla.org. This role as liaison is at an end; it should be performed by a Netscape employee.

I expect to devote more of my time to other activities that are critically important to the Mozilla project.” Full statement at MozillaZine.

From ZDNet UK: ”

Fujitsu is poised to release technical details on Tuesday of a humanoid robot that can walk on its own two legs.

The company began selling the automaton, called Hoap-1, last week. The 48cm-tall robot is shaped like a humanoid, weighs 6kg and has been designed “for wide applications in research and development of robotic technologies”, according to the Japanese manufacturer.

Engineers from Fujitsu Laboratories will disclose the internal architecture of Hoap-1 at a meeting of the Robotics Society of Japan, which will be held at Tokyo University. By revealing some of the secrets of the robot, the scientists hope to encourage users to write original programs for it.”

From Reuters: “Red Hat Inc. , best known as a distributor of Linux operating system, on Monday said it had set a buyback plan, effective immediately, of up to 10 percent of its outstanding common shares over the next year.

Red Hat joins dozens of U.S. companies initiating or increasing repurchase programs in the aftermath of last week’s attacks in New York and Washington. The company’s shares were off 19 cents, or 6.1 percent, at $2.93. Earlier, it set a fresh year low at $2.40.”

Linus releases the latest kernel prepatch; changelog and notes below.

Ok, the big thing here is continued merging, this time with Andrea.

I still don't like some of the VM changes, but integrating Andrea's VM
changes results in (a) better performance and (b) much cleaner inactive
page handling in particular. Besides, for the 2.4.x tree, the big priority
is stability, we can re-address my other concerns during 2.5.x.

This also merges the blkdev in page cache patch, and that will hopefully
make it noticeably easier to do the "do bread() with page cache too", at
which point a lot of the current ugly synchronization issues will go away.

Oh, and it gets the direct-IO improvements from Andrea too.

[ Other small patches from Andrea merged just to make future merges
  easier. ]

The console locking merge with Andrew Morton also moves us a bit closer to
the -ac tree..

Full 2.4.10 ChangeLog appended.

                Linus

------
pre11:
 - Neil Brown: md cleanups/fixes
 - Andrew Morton: console locking merge
 - Andrea Arkangeli: major VM merge

pre10:
 - Alan Cox: continued merging
 - Mingming Cao: make msgrcv/shmat check the queue/segment ID's properly
 - Greg KH: USB serial init failure fix, Xircom serial converter driver
 - Neil Brown: nsfd/raid/md/lockd cleanups
 - Ingo Molnar: multipath RAID personality, raid xor update
 - Hugh Dickins/Marcelo Tosatti: swapin read-ahead race fix
 - Vojtech Pavlik: fix up some of the infrastructure for x86-64
 - Robert Love: AMD 761 AGP GART support
 - Jens Axboe: fix SCSI-generic queue handling race
 - me: be sane about page reference bits

pre9:
 - Greg KH: start migration to new "min()/max()"
 - Roman Zippel: move affs over to "min()/max()".
 - Vojtech Pavlik: VIA update (make sure not to IRQ-unmask a vt82c576)
 - Jan Kara: quota bug-fix (don't decrement quota for non-counted inode)
 - Anton Altaparmakov: more NTFS updates
 - Al Viro: make nosuid/noexec/nodev be per-mount flags, not per-filesystem
 - Alan Cox: merge input/joystick layer differences, driver and alpha merge
 - Keith Owens: scsi Makefile cleanup
 - Trond Myklebust: fix oopsable race in locking code
 - Jean Tourrilhes: IrDA update

pre8:
 - Christoph Hellwig: clean up personality handling a bit
 - Robert Love: update sysctl/vm documentation
 - make the three-argument (that everybody hates) "min()" be "min_t()",
   and introduce a type-anal "min()" that complains about arguments of
   different types.

pre7:
 - Alan Cox: big driver/mips sync
 - Andries Brouwer, Christoph Hellwig: more gendisk fixups
 - Tobias Ringstrom: tulip driver workaround for DC21143 erratum

pre6:
 - Jens Axboe: remove trivially dead io_request_lock usage
 - Andrea Arcangeli: softirq cleanup and ARM fixes. Slab cleanups
 - Christoph Hellwig: gendisk handling helper functions/cleanups
 - Nikita Danilov: reiserfs dead code pruning
 - Anton Altaparmakov: NTFS update to 1.1.18
 - firestream network driver: patch reverted on authors request
 - NIIBE Yutaka: SH architecture update
 - Paul Mackerras: PPC cleanups, PPC8xx update.
 - me: reverse broken bootdata allocation patch that went into pre5

pre5:
 - Merge with Alan
 - Trond Myklebust: NFS fixes - kmap and root inode special case
 - Al Viro: more superblock cleanups, inode leak in rd.c, minix
   directories in page cache
 - Paul Mackerras: clean up rubbish from sl82c105.c
 - Neil Brown: md/raid cleanups, NFS filehandles
 - Johannes Erdfelt: USB update (usb-2.0 support, visor fix, Clie fix,
   pl2303 driver update)
 - David Miller: sparc and net update
 - Eric Biederman: simplify and correct bootdata allocation - don't
   overwrite ramdisks
 - Tim Waugh: support multiple SuperIO devices, parport doc updates

pre4:
 - Hugh Dickins: swapoff cleanups and speedups
 - Matthew Dharm: USB storage update
 - Keith Owens: Makefile fixes
 - Tom Rini: MPC8xx build fix
 - Nikita Danilov: reiserfs update
 - Jakub Jelinek: ELF loader fix for ET_DYN
 - Andrew Morton: reparent_to_init() for kernel threads
 - Christoph Hellwig: VxFS and SysV updates, vfs_permission fix

pre3:
 - Johannes Erdfelt, Oliver Neukum: USB printer driver race fix
 - John Byrne: fix stupid i386-SMP irq stack layout bug
 - Andreas Bombe, me: yenta IO window fix
 - Neil Brown: raid1 buffer state fix
 - David Miller, Paul Mackerras: fix up sparc and ppc respectively for kmap/kbd_rate
 - Matija Nalis: umsdos fixes, and make it possible to boot up with umsdos
 - Francois Romieu: fix bugs in dscc4 driver
 - Andy Grover: new PCI config space access functions (eventually for ACPI)
 - Albert Cranford: fix incorrect e2fsprog data from ver_linux script
 - Dave Jones: re-sync x86 setup code, fix macsonic kmalloc use
 - Johannes Erdfelt: remove obsolete plusb USB driver
 - Andries Brouwer: fix USB compact flash version info, add blksize ioctls

pre2:
 - Al Viro: block device cleanups
 - Marcelo Tosatti: make bounce buffer allocations more robust (it's ok
   for them to do IO, just not cause recursive bounce IO. So allow them)
 - Anton Altaparmakov: NTFS update (1.1.17)
 - Paul Mackerras: PPC update (big re-org)
 - Petko Manolov: USB pegasus driver fixes
 - David Miller: networking and sparc updates
 - Trond Myklebust: Export atomic_dec_and_lock
 - OGAWA Hirofumi: find and fix umsdos "filldir" users that were broken
   by the 64-bit-cleanups. Fix msdos warnings.
 - Al Viro: superblock handling cleanups and race fixes
 - Johannes Erdfelt++: USB updates

pre1:
 - Jeff Hartmann: DRM AGP/alpha cleanups
 - Ben LaHaise: highmem user pagecopy/clear optimization
 - Vojtech Pavlik: VIA IDE driver update
 - Herbert Xu: make cramfs work with HIGHMEM pages
 - David Fennell: awe32 ram size detection improvement
 - Istvan Varadi: umsdos EMD filename bug fix
 - Keith Owens: make min/max work for pointers too
 - Jan Kara: quota initialization fix
 - Brad Hards: Kaweth USB driver update (enable, and fix endianness)
 - Ralf Baechle: MIPS updates
 - David Gibson: airport driver update
 - Rogier Wolff: firestream ATM driver multi-phy support

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

**       ::EXPERIMENTAL::
**       Catching up on the backlog a bit.

2.4.9-ac12
o        Yamaha audio wakeup race fix                    (Pete Zaitcev)
o        3c507 ring buffer handling fix                  (Mark Mackenzie)
         | It looks like the same may apply to eexpress and a few
         | others. People may want to check

o        4.4BSD alias syle ioctl bits                    (Matthias Andree)
o        Fix jffs_min compile failure                    (Frank Davies)
o        Fix hid initialisation order                    (Vojtech Pavlik)
o        Add sysrq to mconsole                           (James Stevenson)
o        Remove dead 3c515 stuff                                 (Andres Salomon)
o        Fix UML disk space leak                                 (James Stevenson)
o        uml hz_to_std()                                         (Jeff Dike)
o        uml makefile cleanup                            (Jeff Dike)
o        hostfs cleanup - use pread/pwrite               (Jorgen Cederlof)
o        Fix oops in scsi generic                        (Jens Axboe)
o        Fix missing break in riva fbdev.c               (Steve DuChene)
o        Push spin_trylock_bh into the headers   (Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo)
o        PWC driver update                               ("nemosoft")
o        Fix hz_to_std macro problem                     (Matt)
o        Fix radeon + AMD761 lockup/corruption problem   (Stephen Tweedie)
o        Intermezzo update                               (Peter Braam)
o        USB serial startup fix                          (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)
o        Makefile cleanups                               (Christoph Hellwig)
o        Code cleanup for eepro100                       (Ben LaHaise)
o        Fix pid handling bug in msg queues              (Mingming Cao)
o        Raid multipathing                               (Ingo Molnar)
o        Correct sys_setid return in md                          (Vojtech Pavlik)
o        Clean up isdn sc debug code                     (Vojtech Pavlik)
o        x86_64 random patch                             (Vojtech Pavlik)
o        Add x86_64 ifdefs to various places             (Vojtech Pavlik)
o        Limit granch asm code to x86 fix setup code     (Vojtech Pavlik)
o        Use unsigned long for flags where needed        (Vojtech Pavlik)
o        Fix reiserfs writepage v truncate/mmap race     (Edward Shushkin)
o        Eliminate various bits of reiserfs code and     (Edward Shushkin)
         references to old ext2/minix stuff
o        Support multiple block sizes in reiserfs        (Edward Shushkin)
o        Fix gcc warning building reiserfs               (Edward Shushkin)
o        Fix reiserfs 32bit uid on old format            (Edward Shushkin)
o        Fix yam hamradio driver                                 (Edward Shushkin)
o        Es1888 audio divider change                     (Craig Mahaney)
o        Add a highmem debugging option                  (Christoph Hellwig)
o        Remove crud from lvm.h                          (Joe Thornber)
o        Replace some LVM macros with inlines            (Joe Thornber)
o        Open/Close LVM PV's when using them             (Joe Thornber)
o        Remove lvm_short_version                        (Joe Thornber)
o        Use devfs_register_blkdev etc in LVM
o        Rename fields and consider only active LVM      (Heinz Mauelshagen)
         snapshots [and congratulations on the awar Heinz]
o        Change LVM locking to use rw_semaphores                 (Joe Thornber)
o        Assorted LVM cleanups                   (Joe Thornber and others)
o        IA64 processor prefetch                                 (??)
o        Return the right thing for strnlen_user when    (Andreas Schwab)
         limit = 0
o        More debug info on sysrq                        (Andrea Arcangeli)
o        Keyboard compile fix on Alpha                   (Andrea Arcangeli)
o        Shrink dcache before invalidating the inodes    (Andrea Arcangeli)
         on a umount
o        Fix apm disable handling                        (Thomas Krennwallner)
o        CPIA locking fixes                              (David Hansen)
o        zap_inode_mapping function to invalidate all the(Christoph Hellwig)
         maps of an inode
o        Remove accidental leak of console_lock back     (Andrew Morton)
         into -ac
o        Fix implicit declaration warning                (Dave Jones)
o        Add another promise ide ident                   (Arjan van de Ven)
o        Ignore PRQ bit in apic flags when looking for   (Randy Dunlap)
         unknown configs
o        Matrox driver update                            (Petr Vandrovec,
                                                         David Hansen)
o        NULL checks in lock code                        (Francis Galiegue)
o        Remove duplicate bits on fbmem.c                (Paul Mundt)
o        ia64 arch_init_modules fix                      (Arjan van de Ven)
o        Support tabstops >160                           (Petr Vandrovec)
o        "noac" NFS updates                              (Trond Myklebust)
o        Default P5 MCE to off                           (me)
o        Bluesmoke updates                               (Dave Jones)
o        Handle cpu info that goes over a page long      (James Cleverdon)
         | only tested on ia32/ia64 so far