News

[Robert Dinse <nanook@eskimo.com>]

     Tonight we tried to boot Linux 2.2.0 on News.  We have a real interest in
getting this working because the 2.0.x kernels won't work with four CPU's on
the 4/670MP, and we have four CPU's for that machine and would really like to
be able to use them. 

     The 2.1.x kernels have been attempting to address this problem but to date
have not made it into multi-user modem without crash-n-burn. 

     This kernel, 2.2.0 did make it farther than any we've tried to date.  It
did actually come up and run in multi-user mode but the portmapper didn't work
properly under it.  Aaron had this same problem on his machine but it was fixed
in 2.2.1.  Also, we have to compile a newer version of mount. 

     Portmapper not working properly made it impossible to properly shut the
machine down.  As a result it has to do file system checks (fsck) on the
partitions and this generally takes somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour
and fifteen minutes.

     I apologize for this down time but I wanted to try this new kernel as soon
as possible.  This machine does saturate on CPU time at times so it could
really benefit from having all four CPU's on-line.