muesli's Blog

Today I discovered Ketchup, a little command-line tool to manage your Linux kernel sources. If you're one of the weirdos, who is still compiling his kernel manually for whatever reason (like I do), I can only recommend it. Ketchup nicely eases up the entire process of checking for updates and applying them to your system.

Let's not hesitate and look at few usage examples... Want to know what's the latest version of a particular kernel-tree?

$ ketchup -s 2.6
2.6.17.7
$ ketchup -s 2.6-mm
2.6.18-rc1-mm2

Let's play with your kernel sources a bit. First of all, you surely want to check what version you currently got lying around...

$ cd /usr/src/linux
$ ketchup -m
2.6.17.6

Let's assume there is a newer kernel version available and you want to download it, bunzip it, revert the old patch and apply the new one. Nothing easier than that:

# cd /usr/src/linux
# ketchup 2.6-tip
2.6.17.6 -> 2.6.17.7
Applying patch-2.6.17.6.bz2 -R
Applying patch-2.6.17.7.bz2

That's really it. It will download the patches, revert and apply them, so all you will have to do is watch and wait
Switching to an entirely different kernel versions is just as easy:

# cd /usr/src/linux
# ketchup 2.6.16.2

Final note: If Ketchup should abort with a gpg error, then it couldn't verify the patch's or kernel's signature. Either add the 2.6 public key to your keyring (this is the proper solution) or call Ketchup with an additional -G parameter (this will override signature checking). I'd suggest the former, which is really easy to do by downloading it from a public pgp server:

# gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 0x517D0F0E

Have fun compiling,
muesli

Well, 2.6's pre-releases are out for some time now, but I refused to upgrade my desktop yet, since I couldn't find proper NVidia support.

Guess what - this changed and here they come: http://www.minion.de offers patches for the recent NVidia Installers.

There's a patching-HowTo, so it's quite easy to install it. This is what I did:

# sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4496-pkg2.run --extract-only
# cd NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4496-pkg2
# cd usr/src/nv
# patch -p1 < ../../../../NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-4496-2.6.diff
# ln -s Makefile.kbuild Makefile
# make install

The last make call already loads the nvidia module. Make sure you're going to load it on future system start-ups. You could also start the ./nvidia-installer binary, now!

After some heavy using, I'm pretty impressed of the early stability this kernel (test-11) provides. The performance is also great, although I was already used to the coolness of the preemptive patches, which you could apply to your 2.4 sources.

In the end I expected more problems from the whole kernel upgrading, but as it turned out, the only thing you have to take care of are changes in the modules namespace (e.g. usb-ohci is ohci_hcd now). Otherwise: just take your old 2.4 .config, copy it to your 2.6 tree, run make menuconfig, make bzImage modules modules_install and you're on the way

So much for now,
muesli

Commenting on your source code is one of the pleasures, a developer receives. In the beginning it's a pain in the ***. After a while, you're realising what comments are good for:

1. Giving you hints, extra information and guide others through your code.
2. Make fun of yourself and others.

Examples? Do this:
# cd /usr/src/linux ; egrep -ir "( fuck)|( bullshit)" *

Here are just some of the results:

drivers/scsi/qlogicpti.c: // bullshit
include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_limit.h: // Ugly, ugly fucker.
fs/binfmt_aout.c: // Fuck me plenty...
drivers/scsi/qlogicpti.h: // Am I fucking pedantic or what?
arch/parisc/kernel/signal.c: // ARGH! Fucking brain damage. You don't want to know.

Funny operating system, I'm using...
muesli

Just shortly after Linus has changed his employer to get some more kernel development time, he already released a 2.6-test1! This is great news and in his announcement posting he also clarifies, that the progress till the final release 2.6.0 should not be as time-expensive as the 2.4.0 development was (7 months, actually).

Let's go testing. Hopefully I get the NVidia card running with OpenGL.

have fun,
muesli