Based on kernel version 2.6.26. Page generated on 2008-07-16 21:12 EST.
1 Intro 2 ===== 3 4 This document is designed to provide a list of the minimum levels of 5 software necessary to run the 2.6 kernels, as well as provide brief 6 instructions regarding any other "Gotchas" users may encounter when 7 trying life on the Bleeding Edge. If upgrading from a pre-2.4.x 8 kernel, please consult the Changes file included with 2.4.x kernels for 9 additional information; most of that information will not be repeated 10 here. Basically, this document assumes that your system is already 11 functional and running at least 2.4.x kernels. 12 13 This document is originally based on my "Changes" file for 2.0.x kernels 14 and therefore owes credit to the same people as that file (Jared Mauch, 15 Axel Boldt, Alessandro Sigala, and countless other users all over the 16 'net). 17 18 Current Minimal Requirements 19 ============================ 20 21 Upgrade to at *least* these software revisions before thinking you've 22 encountered a bug! If you're unsure what version you're currently 23 running, the suggested command should tell you. 24 25 Again, keep in mind that this list assumes you are already 26 functionally running a Linux 2.4 kernel. Also, not all tools are 27 necessary on all systems; obviously, if you don't have any ISDN 28 hardware, for example, you probably needn't concern yourself with 29 isdn4k-utils. 30 31 o Gnu C 3.2 # gcc --version 32 o Gnu make 3.79.1 # make --version 33 o binutils 2.12 # ld -v 34 o util-linux 2.10o # fdformat --version 35 o module-init-tools 0.9.10 # depmod -V 36 o e2fsprogs 1.29 # tune2fs 37 o jfsutils 1.1.3 # fsck.jfs -V 38 o reiserfsprogs 3.6.3 # reiserfsck -V 2>&1|grep reiserfsprogs 39 o xfsprogs 2.6.0 # xfs_db -V 40 o pcmciautils 004 # pccardctl -V 41 o quota-tools 3.09 # quota -V 42 o PPP 2.4.0 # pppd --version 43 o isdn4k-utils 3.1pre1 # isdnctrl 2>&1|grep version 44 o nfs-utils 1.0.5 # showmount --version 45 o procps 3.2.0 # ps --version 46 o oprofile 0.9 # oprofiled --version 47 o udev 081 # udevinfo -V 48 o grub 0.93 # grub --version 49 50 Kernel compilation 51 ================== 52 53 GCC 54 --- 55 56 The gcc version requirements may vary depending on the type of CPU in your 57 computer. 58 59 Make 60 ---- 61 62 You will need Gnu make 3.79.1 or later to build the kernel. 63 64 Binutils 65 -------- 66 67 Linux on IA-32 has recently switched from using as86 to using gas for 68 assembling the 16-bit boot code, removing the need for as86 to compile 69 your kernel. This change does, however, mean that you need a recent 70 release of binutils. 71 72 System utilities 73 ================ 74 75 Architectural changes 76 --------------------- 77 78 DevFS has been obsoleted in favour of udev 79 (http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/) 80 81 32-bit UID support is now in place. Have fun! 82 83 Linux documentation for functions is transitioning to inline 84 documentation via specially-formatted comments near their 85 definitions in the source. These comments can be combined with the 86 SGML templates in the Documentation/DocBook directory to make DocBook 87 files, which can then be converted by DocBook stylesheets to PostScript, 88 HTML, PDF files, and several other formats. In order to convert from 89 DocBook format to a format of your choice, you'll need to install Jade as 90 well as the desired DocBook stylesheets. 91 92 Util-linux 93 ---------- 94 95 New versions of util-linux provide *fdisk support for larger disks, 96 support new options to mount, recognize more supported partition 97 types, have a fdformat which works with 2.4 kernels, and similar goodies. 98 You'll probably want to upgrade. 99 100 Ksymoops 101 -------- 102 103 If the unthinkable happens and your kernel oopses, you may need the 104 ksymoops tool to decode it, but in most cases you don't. 105 In the 2.6 kernel it is generally preferred to build the kernel with 106 CONFIG_KALLSYMS so that it produces readable dumps that can be used as-is 107 (this also produces better output than ksymoops). 108 If for some reason your kernel is not build with CONFIG_KALLSYMS and 109 you have no way to rebuild and reproduce the Oops with that option, then 110 you can still decode that Oops with ksymoops. 111 112 Module-Init-Tools 113 ----------------- 114 115 A new module loader is now in the kernel that requires module-init-tools 116 to use. It is backward compatible with the 2.4.x series kernels. 117 118 Mkinitrd 119 -------- 120 121 These changes to the /lib/modules file tree layout also require that 122 mkinitrd be upgraded. 123 124 E2fsprogs 125 --------- 126 127 The latest version of e2fsprogs fixes several bugs in fsck and 128 debugfs. Obviously, it's a good idea to upgrade. 129 130 JFSutils 131 -------- 132 133 The jfsutils package contains the utilities for the file system. 134 The following utilities are available: 135 o fsck.jfs - initiate replay of the transaction log, and check 136 and repair a JFS formatted partition. 137 o mkfs.jfs - create a JFS formatted partition. 138 o other file system utilities are also available in this package. 139 140 Reiserfsprogs 141 ------------- 142 143 The reiserfsprogs package should be used for reiserfs-3.6.x 144 (Linux kernels 2.4.x). It is a combined package and contains working 145 versions of mkreiserfs, resize_reiserfs, debugreiserfs and 146 reiserfsck. These utils work on both i386 and alpha platforms. 147 148 Xfsprogs 149 -------- 150 151 The latest version of xfsprogs contains mkfs.xfs, xfs_db, and the 152 xfs_repair utilities, among others, for the XFS filesystem. It is 153 architecture independent and any version from 2.0.0 onward should 154 work correctly with this version of the XFS kernel code (2.6.0 or 155 later is recommended, due to some significant improvements). 156 157 PCMCIAutils 158 ----------- 159 160 PCMCIAutils replaces pcmcia-cs (see below). It properly sets up 161 PCMCIA sockets at system startup and loads the appropriate modules 162 for 16-bit PCMCIA devices if the kernel is modularized and the hotplug 163 subsystem is used. 164 165 Pcmcia-cs 166 --------- 167 168 PCMCIA (PC Card) support is now partially implemented in the main 169 kernel source. The "pcmciautils" package (see above) replaces pcmcia-cs 170 for newest kernels. 171 172 Quota-tools 173 ----------- 174 175 Support for 32 bit uid's and gid's is required if you want to use 176 the newer version 2 quota format. Quota-tools version 3.07 and 177 newer has this support. Use the recommended version or newer 178 from the table above. 179 180 Intel IA32 microcode 181 -------------------- 182 183 A driver has been added to allow updating of Intel IA32 microcode, 184 accessible as a normal (misc) character device. If you are not using 185 udev you may need to: 186 187 mkdir /dev/cpu 188 mknod /dev/cpu/microcode c 10 184 189 chmod 0644 /dev/cpu/microcode 190 191 as root before you can use this. You'll probably also want to 192 get the user-space microcode_ctl utility to use with this. 193 194 Powertweak 195 ---------- 196 197 If you are running v0.1.17 or earlier, you should upgrade to 198 version v0.99.0 or higher. Running old versions may cause problems 199 with programs using shared memory. 200 201 udev 202 ---- 203 udev is a userspace application for populating /dev dynamically with 204 only entries for devices actually present. udev replaces the basic 205 functionality of devfs, while allowing persistent device naming for 206 devices. 207 208 FUSE 209 ---- 210 211 Needs libfuse 2.4.0 or later. Absolute minimum is 2.3.0 but mount 212 options 'direct_io' and 'kernel_cache' won't work. 213 214 Networking 215 ========== 216 217 General changes 218 --------------- 219 220 If you have advanced network configuration needs, you should probably 221 consider using the network tools from ip-route2. 222 223 Packet Filter / NAT 224 ------------------- 225 The packet filtering and NAT code uses the same tools like the previous 2.4.x 226 kernel series (iptables). It still includes backwards-compatibility modules 227 for 2.2.x-style ipchains and 2.0.x-style ipfwadm. 228 229 PPP 230 --- 231 232 The PPP driver has been restructured to support multilink and to 233 enable it to operate over diverse media layers. If you use PPP, 234 upgrade pppd to at least 2.4.0. 235 236 If you are not using udev, you must have the device file /dev/ppp 237 which can be made by: 238 239 mknod /dev/ppp c 108 0 240 241 as root. 242 243 Isdn4k-utils 244 ------------ 245 246 Due to changes in the length of the phone number field, isdn4k-utils 247 needs to be recompiled or (preferably) upgraded. 248 249 NFS-utils 250 --------- 251 252 In 2.4 and earlier kernels, the nfs server needed to know about any 253 client that expected to be able to access files via NFS. This 254 information would be given to the kernel by "mountd" when the client 255 mounted the filesystem, or by "exportfs" at system startup. exportfs 256 would take information about active clients from /var/lib/nfs/rmtab. 257 258 This approach is quite fragile as it depends on rmtab being correct 259 which is not always easy, particularly when trying to implement 260 fail-over. Even when the system is working well, rmtab suffers from 261 getting lots of old entries that never get removed. 262 263 With 2.6 we have the option of having the kernel tell mountd when it 264 gets a request from an unknown host, and mountd can give appropriate 265 export information to the kernel. This removes the dependency on 266 rmtab and means that the kernel only needs to know about currently 267 active clients. 268 269 To enable this new functionality, you need to: 270 271 mount -t nfsd nfsd /proc/fs/nfsd 272 273 before running exportfs or mountd. It is recommended that all NFS 274 services be protected from the internet-at-large by a firewall where 275 that is possible. 276 277 Getting updated software 278 ======================== 279 280 Kernel compilation 281 ****************** 282 283 gcc 284 --- 285 o <ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/> 286 287 Make 288 ---- 289 o <ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/> 290 291 Binutils 292 -------- 293 o <ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/devel/binutils/> 294 295 System utilities 296 **************** 297 298 Util-linux 299 ---------- 300 o <ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/> 301 302 Ksymoops 303 -------- 304 o <ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/ksymoops/v2.4/> 305 306 Module-Init-Tools 307 ----------------- 308 o <ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/modules/> 309 310 Mkinitrd 311 -------- 312 o <ftp://rawhide.redhat.com/pub/rawhide/SRPMS/SRPMS/> 313 314 E2fsprogs 315 --------- 316 o <http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/e2fsprogs/e2fsprogs-1.29.tar.gz> 317 318 JFSutils 319 -------- 320 o <http://jfs.sourceforge.net/> 321 322 Reiserfsprogs 323 ------------- 324 o <http://www.namesys.com/pub/reiserfsprogs/reiserfsprogs-3.6.3.tar.gz> 325 326 Xfsprogs 327 -------- 328 o <ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/download/> 329 330 Pcmciautils 331 ----------- 332 o <ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/> 333 334 Pcmcia-cs 335 --------- 336 o <http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/> 337 338 Quota-tools 339 ---------- 340 o <http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxquota/> 341 342 DocBook Stylesheets 343 ------------------- 344 o <http://nwalsh.com/docbook/dsssl/> 345 346 XMLTO XSLT Frontend 347 ------------------- 348 o <http://cyberelk.net/tim/xmlto/> 349 350 Intel P6 microcode 351 ------------------ 352 o <http://www.urbanmyth.org/microcode/> 353 354 Powertweak 355 ---------- 356 o <http://powertweak.sourceforge.net/> 357 358 udev 359 ---- 360 o <http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev.html> 361 362 FUSE 363 ---- 364 o <http://sourceforge.net/projects/fuse> 365 366 Networking 367 ********** 368 369 PPP 370 --- 371 o <ftp://ftp.samba.org/pub/ppp/ppp-2.4.0.tar.gz> 372 373 Isdn4k-utils 374 ------------ 375 o <ftp://ftp.isdn4linux.de/pub/isdn4linux/utils/isdn4k-utils.v3.1pre1.tar.gz> 376 377 NFS-utils 378 --------- 379 o <http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=14> 380 381 Iptables 382 -------- 383 o <http://www.iptables.org/downloads.html> 384 385 Ip-route2 386 --------- 387 o <ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/net/ip-routing/iproute2-2.2.4-now-ss991023.tar.gz> 388 389 OProfile 390 -------- 391 o <http://oprofile.sf.net/download/> 392 393 NFS-Utils 394 --------- 395 o <http://nfs.sourceforge.net/>
