> Hi again. Decided it was finally time to upgrade my 2.4.6pre2-xfs, which has
>
> been working great, for security and VM fixes. Just grabbed latest CVS an
> hour or two ago (2.4.14pre3).
>
> Thing that makes me nervous is that there was a minor compile error in gvim
> ./drivers/block/paride/pcd.c:
>
> static struct block_device_operations pcd_bdops = {
> owner: THIS_MODULE,
> open: cdrom_open,
> release: cdrom_release,
> ioctl: cdrom_ioctl,
> check_media_change: cdrom_media_changed,
> } /* line 274 */
>
> static struct cdrom_device_ops pcd_dops = {
> pcd_open,
> pcd_release,
> [...]
>
> Note the lack of a semicolon on 274!!! I added it and now it compiles.
> Dunno if that booboo was inherited from Linus or from one of you, but you
> might want to fix it. :-)
>
It was inherited from Linus, most of the files (99%) in the tree are
unmodified by us. In general with this sort of problem if it is not fixed
in the latest pre-xxx kernel from Linus, submit a patch to Linux kernel
and Linus. Unless a fix affects mainline kernel functionality I try to keep
our tree identical to Linus's.
> So that's fixed, but the fact that it was there worries me some! What other
> nasties besides compile errors could be in there?
>
There was a change went into the 2.4.13-pre3 which affects how block device
modules do reference counting to avoid module unload being performed on
running code. Most of this code change was probably a global cut and
paste, a few errors can easily creep into a change like this and they
usually get sorted out fairly quickly.
>
> Think it's "safe" to put this thing on a production server? Again, my
> "problem" is that it's co-located, 500 miles away, so a mistake could be
> costly... but if it works for most people I'm willing to try it.
In general I would not put a pre-xxx kernel up in production unless you
yourself have done fairly extensive testing. The 2.4.13 kernel itself
seems fairly robust, there is a patch for this on the ftp site:
ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/download/patches
Steve
>
> Thanks,
> Micah
>
> --
> Like to travel? http://TravTalk.org
> Micah Yoder Internet Development http://yoderdev.com
|