Kernel-Patch von Alan Cox

[pixel]

Hi@all,

immer wieder lese ich von sog. AC-Patches von Alan Cox. Diese stehen auch auf Kernel.org zur Verfügung. Da gibt es für meinen Kernel (2.4.21-pre5):

patch-2.4.21-pre5-ac1.gz
patch-2.4.21-pre5-ac2.gz

Für was sind diese Patch's gut bzw. wo gibt es Dokus darüber?

Gruss Pixel

[pixel]

Hi@all,

ich habe das mal selbst ausgetestet. Im Kernel 2.4.21-pre5 ist Unterstützung für den nforce2-Chipsatzt enthalten. Patcht man diesen dann allerdings auf ...-ac1 oder ...-ac2 (ac steht übrigens für Alan Cox) ist weit und breit nichts mehr vom nforce2 Chipsatz zu sehen.

In einem Artikel im Linux-Magazin stand ebenfalls das es um IDE im Linux Kernel im Moment ein grossens HickHack gibt. Bleibt abzuwarten wie das weiter läuft.

Gruss Pixel

[kippndreser]

bei -ac -mm -dj -aa etc.. Kernel-Patches sollte man schon in etwa wissen was da "drin" ist: erstens ist das nicht sooo gut ausgetestet, zweitens bringt es ja nix einen speziellen Kernel-Patch zu verwenden wenn man gar nicht weiß was der für Vorteile bringt ;)
Alan Cox macht meistens eine Zusammenfassung über die Neuerungen "seines Kernels" und macht eine Abschätzung wie gefährlich das sein könnte. Man kriegt das z.B. bei linuxtoday.com mit: http://linuxtoday.com/search.php3?query=alan+cox
Vieles aus den -ac-Patches kommt dann in den nächsten oder übernächsten "Vanilla"-kernel, je nachdem ob es als gut und nützlich befunden wird oder eben nicht...

[kippndreser]

gerade noch ein paar Infos zu den verschiedenen "Kernels" gefunden:
http://kt.zork.net/kernel-traffic/kt20030710_222.html
4. Explanations Of Various Kernel Trees
25 Jun - 28 Jun (6 posts) Archive Link: "Is their an explanation of various kernel versions/brances/patches/? (-mm, -ck, ..)"
Topics: Clustering, Virtual Memory
People: Peter C. Ndikuwera, Brian Jackson, Samuel Flory, William Lee Irwin III, Hugh Dickins, Stephen Hemminger, Con Kolivas, Rik van Riel, Alan Cox, Andrea Arcangeli, Chris Wright, Dave Jones, Andrew Morton

Orion Poplawski noticed that a lot of people had their own kernel trees, ranging from Alan Cox's -aa tree, to Andrew Morton's -mm tree. Orion asked if there was any information about what all these different trees were for.

Peter C. Ndikuwera said, "http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/index.php3#trees has a few of them. Maybe you could alert the web maintainers to the entries in this thread? :-)"

Brian Jackson also replied to Orion, saying:

here goes my knowledge of the different patchsets:

for the most part all of them are testing grounds for patches that someday hope to be in the vanilla kernel

* mm - Andrew Morton - vm related testing ground for dev tree
* ck - Con Kolivas - desktop/interactivity patches
* kj - Kernel Janitors - testing ground for kernel cleanups on development trees
* mjb - Martin J Bligh - scalability stuff
* wli - William Lee Irwin - other vm related stuff for dev tree that Andrew Morton may not have time for
* ac - Alan Cox - lately it's been a testing ground for new ide
* lsm - Chris Wright - Linux Security Modules, provides a lightweight, general purpose framework for access control
* osdl - Stephen Hemminger, ? maybe enterprise stuff
* laptop - Hanno B?ck - unproven laptop type patches
* aa - Andrea Arcangeli - stable series vm stuff
* dj - Dave Jones - cleanups/AGP
* rmap - Rik van Riel - reverse mapping vm for 2.4
* pgcl - William Lee Irwin - ?

Others? Oh yes. Maybe this is something that should be tracked on a webpage somewhere.

Samuel Flory pointed out that Alan's -ac tree "is often the test ground for new 2.4 fixes, and features." And William Lee Irwin III said that his pgcl tree was for "Page clustering. A vague attempt at a forward port of Hugh Dickins' 2.4.7 patch for the same purpose, WIP. I'd say it's more of one patch than a patch set." And someone else also pointed out the existence of -dis, for laptop-related patches, and -jp, for security and performance issues.

und hier der andere Link: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/index.php3#trees

What are the various kernel trees for ?


-ac
Maintainer: Alan Cox
Pending patches for sending to Marcelo (for 2.4 series), and extra add-ons, fixes. etc.
-mm
Maintainer: Andrew Morton
Fancy new features and fixes with a focus on VM hacks.
-aa
Maintainer: Andrea Arcangeli
VM updates, a multitude of fixes and various improvements from Andrea.
-dj
Maintainer: Dave Jones
Forward ports of 2.4 bugfixes to 2.5 series, plus some other bits. (a slightly less bloody bleeding edge)
-ck
Maintainer: Con Kolivas
A stable 2.4 based patchset with a focus on performance tweaks to the scheduler and vm, with specific tuning for the desktop to improve system responsiveness.
-osdl
For data center or carrier grade linux, tuning especially for large machines and high database performance.
-rmap
Maintainer: Rik van Riel
Rmap has a reverse mapping from page frames to virtual mappings mostly in order to make a more predictable VM, to get rid of some worst case VM behaviours and smooth things out. The reverse mappings provide infrastructure to make a more flexible VM possible ... which means that VM strategies in -rmap often change.