[PATCH] Linux-0.98.3 (October 27, 1992)

[PATCH] Linux-0.98.3 (October 27, 1992)

More networking updates.. Ross Biro is still struggling with net-1.

Michael Johnson (now RH kernel release manager) works on line printer
driver.

Locking function cleanups (for inodes, superblocks, buffer heads).  We
also now pass in the superblock pointer instead of the device number to
the filesystem routines.  That cleans up use and locking of
"get_super()" a lot.

[Original announcement below]

Ok, I already sent out an announcement last night, but due to the time
(6AM over here) I wasn't really in a mood to write a real annoucement.
Here it is.

linux-0.98.3 is available by anonymous ftp at least on nic.funet.fi:
pub/OS/Linux/testing/Linus, both as context diffs against 0.98.2 and the
pre-version of 0.98.3 and as complete source. The complete source
package was done by directly applying the diffs - this means that the
Makefile dependancies are probably not 100% up-to-date as I remove those
from the diffs. It shouldn't be any problem, and you can always do a
"make dep ; make clean" before actually compiling the kernel.

0.98 pl3 fixes several bugs, and should remove all known NULL-pointer
problems that made 0.98.2 unusable for most people. In addition to the
NULL pointer fixes, the following things have changed:

- removed most of the cli-sti pairs in the filesystem code by rewriting
  the locking routines to use a different algorithm, possible due to
  the rewritten wait-queue code that I did back in 0.96c or so.
  Interrupt latency should be better on slow machines, but I don't know
  if it's noticeable.
- Minor 387-emulation fixes by Bill Metzenthen - only noticeable under
  special conditions.
- Corrected various error-returns in the fs (thanks to Bruce Evans for
  running some error diagnostics). Error messages when opening (and
  renaming etc) files that had a non-directory in the path were wrong,
  and should be ok now (ie giving ENOTDIR instead of EACCESS or ENOENT).
  Some other problems reported by Bruce fixed.
- Changed the interface for some fs-related functions due to cleaning
  up super-block handling. Most noticeably, iget() and related
  functions no longer specify the inode with a device and inode number,
  but instead with a super-block pointer and inode number. This is
  more logical, and should make unnamed devices (ie internal
  filesystems like nfs and /proc) cleaner. Also note that the calling
  sequence for sb->s_op->put_inode() also has changed since 0.98. This
  is of interest only if you are writing filesystem drivers..
- ASK_SVGA was broken in 0.98.2 - it should be ok now.

Also, various minor fixes as usual. No new features, but I hope 0.98.3
will be a lot less bug-prone due to the changes since 0.98.1. Some
minor tcp/ip corrections (but most of them were in the pre-release), and
I removed a race-condition in the tty-handling code.

Note that people who use math without a co-processor should certainly
upgrade to 0.98.3: the new emulator is much better than my original one
both in speed and accuracy/exception handling. x11perf is very much
bearable now even without a 387, and things like ray-tracing etc
shouldn't be a problem any more. It's slower than hardware fp, of
course, but at least it works.

The new emulator also means there is no reason for a separate soft-float
library, so I'd assume that will be gone in the next gcc release for
linux.

As usual, a new kernel version probably means you'll have to recompile
'ps' and friends. But at least the same 'ps' sources that worked for
0.97.6 should still work.

                Linus