LTC bulletin: November 15, 2001
News in brief from IBM's Linux Technology CenterMaya Stodte (mstodte@yahoo.com)
Technology journalist
November 2001
Our biweekly news from the IBM Linux Technology Center -- where all the Linux-related technologies happening inside IBM are tracked -- briefs you on the new Jikes Research Virtual Machine, three new Samba patches, and a massive System Installer release. You'll also learn about updates to the ACP modem (Mwave) driver, which Linus Torvalds integrated into the Linux kernel 2.4.11. To find out more about any of these projects and more, go directly to the Linux Technology Center.
ACP modem driver
At the end of last month, Linus Torvalds integrated the ACP modem (Mwave) driver
into the Linux kernel 2.4.11, and configuration patches were accepted into 2.4.13-pre3.
According to Alan Cox's changelog on Linux Today, MWave support was originally merged
into the kernel with 2.4.9-ac16.
The ACP modem (Mwave) for Linux is a WinModem. "It is composed of a loadable kernel module and a user-level application," notes the team. "Together these components support direct attachment to public switched telephone networks (PSTNs) and support selected worldwide countries." It supports the IBM ThinkPad 600E and the standard communications port interface (ttySx), and is compatible with the Hayes AT Command Set.
ATM on Linux
The LTC recently released version 2.4.0 of ATM on Linux, as well as a HOWTO on ATM
Linux by Paul Schroeder. In the 2.4.0 version, experimental patches sent in to the
project by contributors will begin to be integrated. Limited release notes are available
at the project's site on SourceForge. Among notable changes are the merger of the
two libraries, which now compose a single libatm 1.0.0, the inclusion of init scripts,
and RPMS, which will also be available in 2.4.0.
The ATM on Linux project is working on drivers and tools to support ATM networking on Linux, which will also include support for DSL modems in the future. ATM is the Asynchronous Transfer Mode of high-speed digital communication.
DLM
Distributed Lock Manager has released version 0.8. Quite a bit of unused code was
removed in this new release, and a corresponding number of bugs were fixed. External
interface changes were also made, including the addition of an init script. The
/proc interface was also completely re-written. A detailed list of changes is available
in the dlm-devel mailing list archive. The team is preparing for the upcoming release
of DLM 1.0.
The Distributed Lock Manager provides an implementation of the classic VAX Cluster, locking semantics for a Linux cluster, as the team describes it. The DLM handles recovery from failure of various components within the cluster, and provides a defined interface for connecting to arbitrary cluster infrastructures. The current implementation connects to the Heartbeat clustering toolkit.
EVMS
Enterprise Volume Management Systems has made the 0.2.2 release available, which
is a new packaged version of EVMS. Among the changes are support for Devfs, Dual
on-disk copies of EVMS-native metadata (system data and feature headers), and an
OS/2 region manager. Complete Release Notes are available on the project's home
page.
EVMS does logical volume management with plug-in model architecture in order to maximize extensibility and flexibility.
High Availability Linux
The High Availability Linux project has put out the Heartbeat 0.4.9.0k and 0.4.9.0h
beta releases. "The heartbeat monitors hosts and informs the cluster when one of
them dies," in the words of the project team. "It includes Horms's "Fake" code for
IP address takeover. It currently works for 2-node clusters and supports multiple
interfaces per node." A complete Heartbeat changelog is available through the site.
"Heartbeats" are the code for Linux High Availability. Currently over a dozen High Availability Linux machines are up and running, and the project team is beginning a close collaboration with the Linux Virtual Server. Heartbeat now ships as part of SuSE Linux , Conectiva Linux , and Mandrake Linux . Mission Critical Linux is also building one of their products on it, as is VA Linux with their Ultra Monkey. A complete guide to Linux High Availability and Hearbeat has been made available by Rudy Pawul.
Hotplug PCI
Hotplug PCI version 20011024 for the 2.4.13 kernel has been released. Changes include
a documentation update, an update to the kernel doc files, the addition of a spinlock
to protect the list of pci slots, and several bug fixes. A complete changelog is
available through the project site.
"The PCI Hot Plug driver for Linux is part of a project to add support for PCI Hot Plug into the Linux kernel," as noted by the project team. "This project includes source for a driver (cpqphp.o) for the Compaq PCI Hot Plug controller found in Compaq ProLiant and other servers. Also, there are GUI and command-line interfaces to PCI Hot Plug. Using this software and a 2.4 Linux kernel, it is possible to add or remove most PCI adapters in a server with the supporting hardware."
Internationalization patches (I18N)
Two new Internationalization patches have been released, one updating the internationalization
patch for the GNU textutils by Mitsuru Chinen, and one new glibc patch for additional
iconv converters by Masahide Washizawa, which enables additional IBM codeset conversions.
IPv6 patch
A new IPv6 patch by Joy Latten has been released, which fixes a bug: users add a
policy to the SPD and an EINVAL error is received, but the policy is added anyway.
The patch was accepted by the USAGI project.
The USAGI (UniverSAl playGround for Ipv6) Linux development project works to deliver the IPv6 protocol stack to the Linux system. The project works in collaboration with the WIDE Project (Widely Integrated Distributed Environment), the KAME Project and the TAHI Project.
Jikes
The Jikes project has released its Jikes Research Virtual Machine 2.0.0, which is
a testbed to prototype new virtual machine technologies, and currently runs on AIX/PowerPC,
Linux/PowerPC, and Linux/IA-32. It was developed as a part of the Jalapeno project
at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center . Jalapeno's a research virtual machine solely
for Java.
Jikes is an open source, strictly Java-compatible, high performance line compiler that translates Java source files into the bytecoded instruction set and binary format defined in The Java Virtual Machine Specification. It also performs a dependency analysis, which provides incremental builds and makefile generation. The project provides access to the complete CVS development tree, which includes not only Jikes, but also the source for the Jacks Test Suite and the Jikes Parser Generator used to build Jikes.
Linux for S/390
An article covering Linux for S/390 and zSeries porting hints and tips has been
posted. The projects have also released updated zSeries HiperSockets support documentation,
a linux-2.2.16 alpha patch for the DASD driver, and a zSeries FAQ.
Linux for S/390 is a port of Linux to the S/390 architecture. It is a pure Linux from a user point of view. It supports the S/390 processor architecture and some devices that are specific to S/390 environments. S/390 is IBM's standard bearer for enterprise computing.
Linux Kernel Crash Dumps patch
Linux Kernel Crash Dump has released a patch by Vamsi Krishna to fix a build issue.
"This patch," according to Vamsi, "fixes a build problem due to the lack of a target
in the drivers/dump/Makefile that depended on dump_rle.o, which meant that it never
compiled, irrespective of the config settings."
The LKCD is developing methods to detect, save, and examine Linux system crashes, in a contribution to the ongoing effort to increase Linux stability.
Linux Kernel SCTP
The Linux Kernel Stream Control Transmission Protocol, recently added to the list
of LTC projects, has released version 2.4.1-0.3.2. The release includes support
for Multi-Homing failover and rwnd processing.
The Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is a multi-homed, multi-streamed transport protocol. Two SCTP mailing lists are available through the SCTP developers forum.
Miscellaneous patches
Under miscellaneous patches produced by members of the LTC, a Linux kernel patch
for reading/parsing the MPC oem tables has been posted. "This patch will parse the
OEM extensions to the mps tables (if present)," according to its author, Martin
Bligh. "This gives me a mapping to tell which device lies in which NUMA node (the
current code just guesses)."
NGPT
Next Generation POSIX Threads release 1.0.3 is now available. The release includes
changes to the kernel patch. "There is also an increased binary compatibility with
LinuxThreads and significantly better load balancing," as stated by Bill Abt of
the NGPT project. "We've yet to experience a hang or crash using this release. It
is quite stable and performs very well, especially on SMP machines." Complete release
notes and an NGPT changelog are available.
The Next Generation POSIX Threading project derives from the GNU Pth package. It aims to solve problems associated with the pthreads library on Linux.
OpenLDAP
OpenLDAP has released a stable version 2.0.18. Changes in this release include an
enhanced standalone server and improved platform subsystem detection.
OpenLDAP is an implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, which defines protocols for updating and searching directories running over TCP/IP. It was designed by the Internet Engineering Taskforce to encourage use of the standard X.500 directories from the International Telecommunications Union, covering electronic directory services.
Samba
Three new Samba patches for the "net" command and remote adding of shares have been
posted. An smbmount compile patch by Jim McDonough has been committed in CVS to
fix a compile failure in smbmount.c. A commonly used function was added to lib/util.c
but not removed from smbmount.c. Jim also wrote a build patch for "net" utility,
which has been committed in CVS as well. Steve French wrote an OS/2 support fix
patch, which allows the Samba head branch to connect to OS/2 servers. It was also
committed to the CVS.
Jim McDonough and Steve French, the most frequent authors of Samba patches at the LTC, are now officially Samba team members.
System Installer
System Installer has released version 0.5, which includes so many new features that
the team decided to skip the 0.4 release. Detailed Release Notes are available through
the project page or in the README file.
System Installer builds Linux images. It works in tandem with System Configurator and System Imager, which make up the System Installation Suite. SIS is the result of a recent merger between the LTC LUI project and SystemImager from VA Linux. Read more about the merger in the LTC bulletin from June 19, 2001.
Resources
About the author
Maya Stodte, previously a contributing writer and editor for developerWorks, is
now working as a freelancer. She can be reached at mstodte@yahoo.com.
Copyright 2001