This is the ELF kernel source. It is a preliminary release. Please upgrade to 2.0 firmware before you try building/installing the ELF kernel. Documentation for the new firmware is available on San's status page, http://www.netwinder.org/devel/notes/sanm.html. See also my documentation section http://www.netwinder.org/~ralphs/ and also in Stany's "Rescue FAQ" in directory users/s/stany on the ftp.netwinder.org site. You can obtain the most recent firmware from ftp://ftp.netwinder.org/pub/ccc/firmware. Instructions for building this kernel can be found at http://www.netwinder.org/~ralphs/knotes.html ralphs@netwinder.org IMPORANT NOTE: ============= The ELF kernels no longer reset the text mode after you exit from graphics mode (such as from X or SVGAlib). It is expected that your applications do that by themselves, like in the x86 world. However the old X server (the one that uses framebuffer) does not do the right thing, so upon exit your screen will not go back to text mode. Best thing to do is to upgrade your X server, the second best thing is to (blindly) type 'textmode' and/or 'setfont' to restore your display. Or you can do CTRL-ALT-DEL to reset, that will clear things up too. You can also switch to the new, accelerated X server (which should be somewhere on this site, probably in /users/p/patb) [Note that most everybody now has this SVGA server as the default X server]. FILE DESCRIPTIONS: ================= Kernel releases are numbered in the format YYMMDD, and we hope not to make more than one release per day. A full release will have four files, namely: netwinder-linux-YYMMDD.tar.gz = the full source tree vmlinux-YYMMDD.gz = binary kernel include-YYMMDD.tar.gz = header files modules-YYMMDD.tar.gz = dynamic modules The latter three are intended for people who do not want to recompile their kernels. Those people should take the vmlinux, include and modules archives and install them into /boot, /usr/src/linux, and /lib/modules respectively. Remember to decompress the kernel (vmlinux) when you put in in /boot. There are also a number of patch files which I make available to those without CVS access or if you wish to apply the patches yourself for some reason. The naming convention is pretty straightforward, the files are called `patch-YYMMDD-YYMMDD.gz'. These patches can be conveniently applied to a tree by the command `zcat patch-YYMMDD-YYMMDD.gz | patch -p1'. VERSION DESCRIPTIONS: ==================== 981006 Initial release of the ELF kernel. It builds, that's about it. There are a lot of warnings and other nasties in there but it's pretty stable and solves many of the problems of the a.out kernel. 981007 Identical to first release, but the source tree now includes the CVS directories as well. This means that registered developers can update their kernel source tree via CVS at any time by cd'ing into the tree and typing `cvs -d :pserver:YOURNAME@netwinder.org:/cvsroot update'. This version also adds /dev/rtc as a default, so that `clock' works. 981009 Fixes the clock shaker problem, which causes all timing to be off. Most noticable symptom was that sleep() would run fast/slow, the BogoMips were off (262 is normal). Due to mail server problems, this version was not announced very well. 981014 PCI bus speed adjustment; missing syscalls added to unistd.h; cpu usage indicator function in kernel hacking options; system timer modifications 981015 PatB: added palette control setting; this will bring up the system in "low brightness" mode, like other computers; this setting persists into X and svgalib programs. 981023: Mostly a cleanup of printk()'s during booting, to make it less verbose. 981029: Switch the system timer to timer4 to avoid troubles with the shaker circuit. The "board rev" number is also corrected in case it reads "F1FF" since this just means that the resistors haven't been properly placed during manufacturing. rescue: This is a rescue kernel for disk image 2.0 and above. Since most of the binaries on these disk images are recompiled and no longer are the old a.out version, the trick of using init=/bin/ash no longer works if you need to reboot the machine and the FP emulator fails to load. This kernel provides a work-around - use it instead of vmlinux and boot as normal. Note that this kernel is not tested very much and it should not be used for "daily" operations - just when FP em fails to load. 981210: This is the first 2.0.35 kernel -- an interim release, not for general usage just yet. This kernel has several serious problems that cause very ugly Oops'es to be generated, for example, when trying collecting dependency information during an RPM build. These problems are being investigated and a new release will be made, along with a better description of what has changed, when a fix is available. This kernel works reliably for running Apache and fixes the keep-alive problems and the need to run Apache on multiple ports. Note: several device drivers have moved to new names and/or device numbers - most notably the flash driver is now called "nwflash" and has moved to 10,160. 981211: A fixed version of the 2.0.35 kernel - this one solves the major problems described in yesterday's kernel. All of the notes from 981210 about different device names and numbers still apply. The sound config section is still broken, please download "soundconf" and rename it to ~/.soundconf if you want to build this kernel yourself to ensure you have the new IRQ settings. Remember to run the "old sound config script" in make menuconfig, and say "yes" when it says it found the .soundconf file. 990121: This is a 2.0.35 kernel for use with NeTTrom 2.0.6 (firmware). It will work with older firmware, but new firmware will not work with older kernels. Therefore this kernel should be installed *before* updating the firmware to version 2.0.6. Please see http://www.netwinder.org/~ralphs/compat.html for more details. It implements the "standard" parameter passing structure (instead of passing everything on a command line) for getting boot-time variables passed to the main kernel. Other highlights in this kernel include: 'make xconfig' now works, sound configuration is now working (no more 'old sound config'), enhancements to the parallel port drivers (and EPP mode by default). The binary distribution format has now been changed, there is only a single tarball with kernel, modules, and header files included. Please see http://www.netwinder.org/~ralphs/kinstall.html for details.