RE: new beta?

[Pavel Rozenboim <pavelr coresma com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Benjamin Vander Jagt [mailto:benjaminvanderjagt adelphia net]
> Sent: Sun, June 01, 2003 7:28 PM
> To: shrike-list redhat com
> Subject: Re: new beta?
> 
> 
> I still don't understand the version numbering scheme for the Linux
> Kernel.  are 2.x kernels unstable if x is an odd number?  I'm just
> wondering why 2.2 and 2.4 went up to the 20's, and 2.5 is up to 70 and
> have not been seen anywhere...  if it is numbered like that, why not
> just have all released ending with 0 (e.g., 2.2.0) be stable and
> everything in between be unstable?

Well, the notion stable/unstable is not very good - even the stable series
are not bug free (and nothing is :). But the stable series are in feature
freeze and there is no active development made on them - just bug fixes and
small features being added. The "unstable" (2.5.xx) series is where the most
active development is going on - this means that kernel can be completely
broken or not even compile. When this series will stabilize, it will become
2.6.0 and new active development cycle will happen on version 2.7.


> 
> I'm also really confused about the 2.5 kernel itself.  what 
> do I need to
> do to get the thing to boot without locking up?  it doesn't panic, it
> just lists the first few lines of info and stops...on several of my
> systems.

You need to compile virtual console and keyboard support into the kernel.
This was the default in 2.4 kernels configuration, but for some reason not
in 2.5. Your kernel probably works fine, but you can't see that, because
there is no console and keyboard. I believe this was resolved in latest
kernels, but I'm not sure. Of course, there is a possibility that your
kernels don't work for some other reason, but the VC issue is most common.

> 
> I read the instructions on getting the 2.5 kernel to work, but I can't
> figure it out.  it looks like just about the same process as for the
> 2.4, and all the 2.4 kernels I compile work fine.  is there something
> special about getting the 2.5 to work, like some option I 
> have to select
> in menuconfig?  it won't work as preconfigured nor with any of the
> changes I made...
> 
> I saw a 2.5.44 kernel RPM, and I installed it and my system 
> never booted
> again.  *sob*  actually, all I had to do was make the boot partition
> again and shove the 2.4.18 back in...
> 
> 
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