README
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- Linux kernel release 2.4.xx
- These are the release notes for Linux version 2.4. Read them carefully,
- as they tell you what this is all about, explain how to install the
- kernel, and what to do if something goes wrong.
- WHAT IS LINUX?
- Linux is a Unix clone written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with
- assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net.
- It aims towards POSIX compliance.
- It has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged
- Unix, including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries,
- demand loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory
- management and TCP/IP networking.
- It is distributed under the GNU General Public License - see the
- accompanying COPYING file for more details.
- ON WHAT HARDWARE DOES IT RUN?
- Linux was first developed for 386/486-based PCs. These days it also
- runs on ARMs, DEC Alphas, SUN Sparcs, M68000 machines (like Atari and
- Amiga), MIPS and PowerPC, and others.
- DOCUMENTATION:
- - There is a lot of documentation available both in electronic form on
- the Internet and in books, both Linux-specific and pertaining to
- general UNIX questions. I'd recommend looking into the documentation
- subdirectories on any Linux FTP site for the LDP (Linux Documentation
- Project) books. This README is not meant to be documentation on the
- system: there are much better sources available.
- - There are various README files in the Documentation/ subdirectory:
- these typically contain kernel-specific installation notes for some
- drivers for example. See ./Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what
- is contained in each file. Please read the Changes file, as it
- contains information about the problems, which may result by upgrading
- your kernel.
- - The Documentation/DocBook/ subdirectory contains several guides for
- kernel developers and users. These guides can be rendered in a
- number of formats: PostScript (.ps), PDF, and HTML, among others.
- After installation, "make psdocs", "make pdfdocs", or "make htmldocs"
- will render the documentation in the requested format.
- INSTALLING the kernel:
- - If you install the full sources, put the kernel tarball in a
- directory where you have permissions (eg. your home directory) and
- unpack it:
- gzip -cd linux-2.4.XX.tar.gz | tar xvf -
- Replace "XX" with the version number of the latest kernel.
- Do NOT use the /usr/src/linux area! This area has a (usually
- incomplete) set of kernel headers that are used by the library header
- files. They should match the library, and not get messed up by
- whatever the kernel-du-jour happens to be.
- - You can also upgrade between 2.4.xx releases by patching. Patches are
- distributed in the traditional gzip and the new bzip2 format. To
- install by patching, get all the newer patch files, enter the
- directory in which you unpacked the kernel source and execute:
- gzip -cd patchXX.gz | patch -p0
- or
- bzip2 -dc patchXX.bz2 | patch -p0
- (repeat xx for all versions bigger than the version of your current
- source tree, _in_order_) and you should be ok. You may want to remove
- the backup files (xxx~ or xxx.orig), and make sure that there are no
- failed patches (xxx# or xxx.rej). If there are, either you or me has
- made a mistake.
- Alternatively, the script patch-kernel can be used to automate this
- process. It determines the current kernel version and applies any
- patches found.
- linux/scripts/patch-kernel linux
- The first argument in the command above is the location of the
- kernel source. Patches are applied from the current directory, but
- an alternative directory can be specified as the second argument.
- - Make sure you have no stale .o files and dependencies lying around:
- cd linux
- make mrproper
- You should now have the sources correctly installed.
- SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
- Compiling and running the 2.4.xx kernels requires up-to-date
- versions of various software packages. Consult
- ./Documentation/Changes for the minimum version numbers required
- and how to get updates for these packages. Beware that using
- excessively old versions of these packages can cause indirect
- errors that are very difficult to track down, so don't assume that
- you can just update packages when obvious problems arise during
- build or operation.
- CONFIGURING the kernel:
- - Do a "make config" to configure the basic kernel. "make config" needs
- bash to work: it will search for bash in $BASH, /bin/bash and /bin/sh
- (in that order), so one of those must be correct for it to work.
- Do not skip this step even if you are only upgrading one minor
- version. New configuration options are added in each release, and
- odd problems will turn up if the configuration files are not set up
- as expected. If you want to carry your existing configuration to a
- new version with minimal work, use "make oldconfig", which will
- only ask you for the answers to new questions.
- - Alternate configuration commands are:
- "make menuconfig" Text based color menus, radiolists & dialogs.
- "make xconfig" X windows based configuration tool.
- "make oldconfig" Default all questions based on the contents of
- your existing ./.config file.
-
- NOTES on "make config":
- - having unnecessary drivers will make the kernel bigger, and can
- under some circumstances lead to problems: probing for a
- nonexistent controller card may confuse your other controllers
- - compiling the kernel with "Processor type" set higher than 386
- will result in a kernel that does NOT work on a 386. The
- kernel will detect this on bootup, and give up.
- - A kernel with math-emulation compiled in will still use the
- coprocessor if one is present: the math emulation will just
- never get used in that case. The kernel will be slightly larger,
- but will work on different machines regardless of whether they
- have a math coprocessor or not.
- - the "kernel hacking" configuration details usually result in a
- bigger or slower kernel (or both), and can even make the kernel
- less stable by configuring some routines to actively try to
- break bad code to find kernel problems (kmalloc()). Thus you
- should probably answer 'n' to the questions for
- "development", "experimental", or "debugging" features.
- - Check the top Makefile for further site-dependent configuration
- (default SVGA mode etc).
- - Finally, do a "make dep" to set up all the dependencies correctly.
- COMPILING the kernel:
- - Make sure you have gcc 2.95.3 available. gcc 2.91.66 (egcs-1.1.2) may
- also work but is not as safe, and *gcc 2.7.2.3 is no longer supported*.
- Also remember to upgrade your binutils package (for as/ld/nm and company)
- if necessary. For more information, refer to ./Documentation/Changes.
- Please note that you can still run a.out user programs with this kernel.
- - Do a "make bzImage" to create a compressed kernel image. If you want
- to make a boot disk (without root filesystem or LILO), insert a floppy
- in your A: drive, and do a "make bzdisk". It is also possible to do
- "make install" if you have lilo installed to suit the kernel makefiles,
- but you may want to check your particular lilo setup first.
- To do the actual install you have to be root, but none of the normal
- build should require that. Don't take the name of root in vain.
- - In the unlikely event that your system cannot boot bzImage kernels you
- can still compile your kernel as zImage. However, since zImage support
- will be removed at some point in the future in favor of bzImage we
- encourage people having problems with booting bzImage kernels to report
- these, with detailed hardware configuration information, to the
- linux-kernel mailing list and to H. Peter Anvin <hpa+linux@zytor.com>.
- - If you configured any of the parts of the kernel as `modules', you
- will have to do "make modules" followed by "make modules_install".
- Read Documentation/modules.txt for more information. For example,
- an explanation of how to use the modules is included there.
- - Keep a backup kernel handy in case something goes wrong. This is
- especially true for the development releases, since each new release
- contains new code which has not been debugged. Make sure you keep a
- backup of the modules corresponding to that kernel, as well. If you
- are installing a new kernel with the same version number as your
- working kernel, make a backup of your modules directory before you
- do a "make modules_install".
- - In order to boot your new kernel, you'll need to copy the kernel
- image (found in .../linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage after compilation)
- to the place where your regular bootable kernel is found.
- For some, this is on a floppy disk, in which case you can copy the
- kernel bzImage file to /dev/fd0 to make a bootable floppy.
- If you boot Linux from the hard drive, chances are you use LILO which
- uses the kernel image as specified in the file /etc/lilo.conf. The
- kernel image file is usually /vmlinuz, /boot/vmlinuz, /bzImage or
- /boot/bzImage. To use the new kernel, save a copy of the old image
- and copy the new image over the old one. Then, you MUST RERUN LILO
- to update the loading map!! If you don't, you won't be able to boot
- the new kernel image.
- Reinstalling LILO is usually a matter of running /sbin/lilo.
- You may wish to edit /etc/lilo.conf to specify an entry for your
- old kernel image (say, /vmlinux.old) in case the new one does not
- work. See the LILO docs for more information.
- After reinstalling LILO, you should be all set. Shutdown the system,
- reboot, and enjoy!
- If you ever need to change the default root device, video mode,
- ramdisk size, etc. in the kernel image, use the 'rdev' program (or
- alternatively the LILO boot options when appropriate). No need to
- recompile the kernel to change these parameters.
- - Reboot with the new kernel and enjoy.
- IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG:
- - If you have problems that seem to be due to kernel bugs, please check
- the file MAINTAINERS to see if there is a particular person associated
- with the part of the kernel that you are having trouble with. If there
- isn't anyone listed there, then the second best thing is to mail
- them to me (torvalds@transmeta.com), and possibly to any other
- relevant mailing-list or to the newsgroup. The mailing-lists are
- useful especially for SCSI and networking problems, as I can't test
- either of those personally anyway.
- - In all bug-reports, *please* tell what kernel you are talking about,
- how to duplicate the problem, and what your setup is (use your common
- sense). If the problem is new, tell me so, and if the problem is
- old, please try to tell me when you first noticed it.
- - If the bug results in a message like
- unable to handle kernel paging request at address C0000010
- Oops: 0002
- EIP: 0010:XXXXXXXX
- eax: xxxxxxxx ebx: xxxxxxxx ecx: xxxxxxxx edx: xxxxxxxx
- esi: xxxxxxxx edi: xxxxxxxx ebp: xxxxxxxx
- ds: xxxx es: xxxx fs: xxxx gs: xxxx
- Pid: xx, process nr: xx
- xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx
- or similar kernel debugging information on your screen or in your
- system log, please duplicate it *exactly*. The dump may look
- incomprehensible to you, but it does contain information that may
- help debugging the problem. The text above the dump is also
- important: it tells something about why the kernel dumped code (in
- the above example it's due to a bad kernel pointer). More information
- on making sense of the dump is in Documentation/oops-tracing.txt
- - You can use the "ksymoops" program to make sense of the dump. This
- utility can be downloaded from
- ftp://ftp.<country>.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/ksymoops.
- Alternately you can do the dump lookup by hand:
- - In debugging dumps like the above, it helps enormously if you can
- look up what the EIP value means. The hex value as such doesn't help
- me or anybody else very much: it will depend on your particular
- kernel setup. What you should do is take the hex value from the EIP
- line (ignore the "0010:"), and look it up in the kernel namelist to
- see which kernel function contains the offending address.
- To find out the kernel function name, you'll need to find the system
- binary associated with the kernel that exhibited the symptom. This is
- the file 'linux/vmlinux'. To extract the namelist and match it against
- the EIP from the kernel crash, do:
- nm vmlinux | sort | less
- This will give you a list of kernel addresses sorted in ascending
- order, from which it is simple to find the function that contains the
- offending address. Note that the address given by the kernel
- debugging messages will not necessarily match exactly with the
- function addresses (in fact, that is very unlikely), so you can't
- just 'grep' the list: the list will, however, give you the starting
- point of each kernel function, so by looking for the function that
- has a starting address lower than the one you are searching for but
- is followed by a function with a higher address you will find the one
- you want. In fact, it may be a good idea to include a bit of
- "context" in your problem report, giving a few lines around the
- interesting one.
- If you for some reason cannot do the above (you have a pre-compiled
- kernel image or similar), telling me as much about your setup as
- possible will help.
- - Alternately, you can use gdb on a running kernel. (read-only; i.e. you
- cannot change values or set break points.) To do this, first compile the
- kernel with -g; edit arch/i386/Makefile appropriately, then do a "make
- clean". You'll also need to enable CONFIG_PROC_FS (via "make config").
- After you've rebooted with the new kernel, do "gdb vmlinux /proc/kcore".
- You can now use all the usual gdb commands. The command to look up the
- point where your system crashed is "l *0xXXXXXXXX". (Replace the XXXes
- with the EIP value.)
- gdb'ing a non-running kernel currently fails because gdb (wrongly)
- disregards the starting offset for which the kernel is compiled.