LTC bulletin: News in brief from IBM's Linux Technology Center
Who's new, what's fresh, and where the conferences areMaya Stodte (mstodte@us.ibm.com)
Contributing editor, developerWorks
April 2001
This column gives you a quick look at the news from the Linux Technology Center, which tracks all the Linux-related technologies happening inside IBM. The LTC offers a more detailed site where they track all the technical contributions IBM makes to the Linux community. But those of you who are looking for The News In Brief will find it here, along with links to greater detail.
Samba news
Jim McDonough has written several patches, and they have been committed to CVS.
One patch, against CVS (SAMBA_2_2 branches), allows OS/2 clients to drag-and-drop
file objects onto network printer objects from a Samba server. It allows Samba to
download printer drivers to both Windows and OS/2 clients from the same printer
object. Documentation is inside the patch via updates to docs/textdocs/OS2-Client-HOWTO.txt.
You can download the patch for OS/2 drag-and-drop printing and download the printer
drivers for Windows and OS/2.
Another patch fixes the error "The Remote Procedure Call Failed" on the Windows NT Server tools.
McDonough also wrote a patch against CVS (SAMBA_2_2 and HEAD branches) that fixes User Manager for Domains from a Windows 2000 client to a Samba domain showing user properties.
POSIX news
The Next Generation POSIX Threading project has released version 0.9.2. This is
the first release of NGPT to include a Linux 2.4 kernel patch that exploits new
features and provides advanced threading capabilities. See the release notes for
details.
iSeries news
The iSeries Linux kernel patches team had their first drop. The iSeries team warns
that this is for advanced techies with Linux experience only. No distribution supports
iSeries currently, but in the not too distant future, SuSE, RedHat, and TurboLinux
will have offerings.
Boot methods:
CD-ROM, PReP boot partition, and STMF
Adapter support:
Does not exist at this level of the code for access to PCI devices directly from
Linux.
Hardware support:
Is being defined. The exact set of iSeries machines that will be able to run Linux
in an LPAR partition are tentatively listed on the iSeries project page. To run
Linux on your iSeries machine, you need the next version of OS/400, which is in
beta test. If you'd like to help beta test the next version, talk to your local
IBM representative and join the Early Customer Program.
Kernel:
The first set of patches are available. Apply these against the 2.4.2 kernel source
trees from kernel.org.
KGDB and PowerPC news
Paul Albrecht wrote a KGDB fix for PowerPC, which includes changes to the Linux
kernel so that you can use gdb thread commands to display kernel threads and user
processes. Note that there are still some problems using thread commands connected
with the idle task, because gdb assumes pid zero isn't valid. For example, if you
quit gdb or kill the program when the idle task is current, the remote debugee will
hang because the gdb debugger never sends the "kill" command across the serial port
to the remote Linux host. Fortunately this problem is easily circumvented by simply
changing current with the "thread" command to some other kernel thread or user process
before quitting gdb or killing the remote program.
ACP (Mwave) news
The ACP Modem driver version 20010315 has been released. The ACP modem (Mwave) for
Linux is a WinModem composed of a loadable kernel module and a user-level application.
Together these components support direct attachment to public switched telephone
networks (PSTNs) and support selected countries worldwide. The driver supports he
IBM ThinkPad 600E as well as the standard communications port interface (ttySx).
It's also compatible with the Hayes AT Command Set.
JFS news
JFS release 0.2.1 is available. The Journaled File System technology from IBM, currently
used in its enterprise servers, is designed for high-throughput server environments.
Work is underway to complete the port to Linux.
S/390 news
The YAMD patch for S/390 build fixes has been updated by the S/390 Linux Application
Tools and Enablement team. YAMD is Yet Another Malloc Debugger. It's a package to
help find bugs related to dynamic memory allocation (such as memory leaks and array
boundary checking, etc.), and you can download the source for YAMB.
If you're extracting YAMD, run: tar xzvf yamd-0.32.tar.gz. This creates a subdirectory called yamd-0.32. To apply the patch, while in the base directory, type: patch -d yamd-0.32 < yamd-s390.patch, and cd to yamd-0.32.
Note that YAMD requires a kernel patch to pass the values of trap_no and prot_addr to YAMD. The patch is called linux-2.2.16-signal and is currently included with other patches in a gzipped tar file called alpha-patches.tar.gz. You must apply the patch and rebuild the kernel to run YAMD. Future versions of the kernel will include this change and therefore will not have to be patched and rebuilt.
In other news, updated documentation is available for S/390 and zSeries in the ELF Application Binary Interface Supplement manual. And the experimental linux-2.2.18 patch for Linux kernel version 2.2.18 and OCO modules has been completed. The patch includes:
An OpenMotif patch for S/390 build fixes against openmotif-2.1.30 has also been completed. Motif is a set of user interface guidelines that specify how an X Window System application should look and feel. It includes a user interface toolkit, an application programming interface, a user interface language, and a window manager. The current patch for S/390 Linux, openmotif-L390.patch, is based on Open Motif 2.1.30, standard Open Motif, with fixes Patch 1, 2, and 5 applied. The Open Motif source code is available from the The Open Group. You must register with them to get the fixes, patch 1, 2 and 5.
Before applying this patch:
More info on the Linux for S/390 project is available.
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About the author
Maya Stodte is a freelance writer and contributing writer and editor for developerWorks.
She can be reached at mstodte@us.ibm.com
Copyright 2001