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Mainline Linux tree for various devices, only for fun :)
67990608c8
- Add a debugfs-based interface for interacting with the ACPICA's AML debugger introduced in the previous cycle and a new user space tool for that, fix some bugs related to the AML debugger and clean up the code in question (Lv Zheng, Dan Carpenter, Colin Ian King, Markus Elfring). - Update ACPICA to upstream revision 20151218 including a number of fixes and cleanups in the ACPICA core (Bob Moore, Lv Zheng, Labbe Corentin, Prarit Bhargava, Colin Ian King, David E Box, Rafael Wysocki). In particular, the previously added erroneous support for the _SUB object is dropped, the concatenate operator will support all ACPI objects now, the Debug Object handling is improved, the SuperName handling of parameters being control methods is fixed, the ObjectType operator handling is updated to follow ACPI 5.0A and the handling of CondRefOf and RefOf is updated accordingly, module-level code will be executed after loading each ACPI table now (instead of being run once after all tables containing AML have been loaded), the Operation Region handlers management is updated to fix some reported problems and a the ACPICA code in the kernel is more in line with the upstream now. - Update the ACPI backlight driver to provide information on whether or not it will generate key-presses for brightness change hotkeys and update some platform drivers (dell-wmi, thinkpad_acpi) to use that information to avoid sending double key-events to users pace for these, add new ACPI backlight quirks (Hans de Goede, Aaron Lu, Adrien Schildknecht). - Improve the ACPI handling of interrupt GPIOs (Christophe Ricard). - Fix the handling of the list of device IDs of device objects found in the ACPI namespace and add a helper for checking if there is a device object for a given device ID (Lukas Wunner). - Change the logic in the ACPI namespace scanning code to create struct acpi_device objects for all ACPI device objects found in the namespace even if _STA fails for them which helps to avoid device enumeration problems on Microsoft Surface 3 (Aaron Lu). - Add support for the APM X-Gene ACPI I2C device to the ACPI driver for AMD SoCs (Loc Ho). - Fix the long-standing issue with the DMA controller on Intel SoCs where ACPI tables have no power management support for the DMA controller itself, but it can be powered off automatically when the last (other) device on the SoC is powered off via ACPI and clean up the ACPI driver for Intel SoCs (acpi-lpss) after previous attempts to fix that problem (Andy Shevchenko). - Assorted ACPI fixes and cleanups (Andy Lutomirski, Colin Ian King, Javier Martinez Canillas, Ken Xue, Mathias Krause, Rafael Wysocki, Sinan Kaya). - Update the device properties framework for better handling of built-in properties, add support for built-in properties to the platform bus type, update the MFD subsystem's handling of device properties and add support for passing default configuration data as device properties to the intel-lpss MFD drivers, convert the designware I2C driver to use the unified device properties API and add a fallback mechanism for using default built-in properties if the platform firmware fails to provide the properties as expected by drivers (Andy Shevchenko, Mika Westerberg, Heikki Krogerus, Andrew Morton). - Add new Device Tree bindings to the Operating Performance Points (OPP) framework and update the exynos4412 DT binding accordingly, introduce debugfs support for the OPP framework (Viresh Kumar, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz). - Migrate the mt8173 cpufreq driver to the new OPP bindings (Pi-Cheng Chen). - Update the cpufreq core to make the handling of governors more efficient, especially on systems where policy objects are shared between multiple CPUs (Viresh Kumar, Rafael Wysocki). - Fix cpufreq governor handling on configurations with CONFIG_HZ_PERIODIC set (Chen Yu). - Clean up the cpufreq core code related to the boost sysfs knob support and update the ACPI cpufreq driver accordingly (Rafael Wysocki). - Add a new cpufreq driver for ST platforms and corresponding Device Tree bindings (Lee Jones). - Update the intel_pstate driver to allow the P-state selection algorithm used by it to depend on the CPU ID of the processor it is running on, make it use a special P-state selection algorithm (with an IO wait time compensation tweak) on Atom CPUs based on the Airmont and Silvermont cores so as to reduce their energy consumption and improve intel_pstate documentation (Philippe Longepe, Srinivas Pandruvada). - Update the cpufreq-dt driver to support registering cooling devices that use the (P * V^2 * f) dynamic power draw formula where V is the voltage, f is the frequency and P is a constant coefficient provided by Device Tree and update the arm_big_little cpufreq driver to use that support (Punit Agrawal). - Assorted cpufreq driver (cpufreq-dt, qoriq, pcc-cpufreq, blackfin-cpufreq) updates (Andrzej Hajda, Hongtao Jia, Jacob Tanenbaum, Markus Elfring). - cpuidle core tweaks related to polling and measured_us calculation (Rik van Riel). - Removal of modularity from a few cpuidle drivers (clps711x, ux500, exynos) that cannot be built as modules in practice (Paul Gortmaker). - PM core update to prevent devices from being probed during system suspend/resume which is generally problematic and may lead to inconsistent behavior (Grygorii Strashko). - Assorted updates of the PM core and related code (Julia Lawall, Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard, Maruthi Bayyavarapu, Rafael Wysocki, Ulf Hansson). - PNP bus type updates (Christophe Le Roy, Heiner Kallweit). - PCI PM code cleanups (Jarkko Nikula, Julia Lawall). - cpupower tool updates (Jacob Tanenbaum, Thomas Renninger). / -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iQIcBAABCAAGBQJWlZOmAAoJEILEb/54YlRxxtEP/ioR0xMOJQcWd5F6Oyj1PZsx vJeXsmL3fXFAlr6riaE966QqclhUTDhhex3kbFmNQvM8WukxOmBWy5UMSjRg2UmM PHrogc/KrrE+xb8hjGZPgqVr+/L9O3C6lZmM+AUciT0hWZJckYgRh5TpHb1xN/Kx MptvtSXRBM62LWytug+EwA4SHt7OFS0yJ/CI1pKvODVtLaYDIPI5k+4ilPU7y6Be vfoysvmUozNTEYxgPOPXfoQqW2P5t2df32Re31uKtLenLXbc8KW0wIYm24DXgSK6 V/TyDVZTNaZk6OpTqWrjqFbedpGvcBpViwYEY7yv33GDCpXGdHQl3ga+Jy6PAUem 7oGDZtA+5Di/8szhH/wSdpXwSaKEeUdFiaj6Uw2MAwiY4wzv5+WmLRcuIjQFDAxT elrTbQhAgaMlMsUkQ9NV4GC7ByUeeQX2NpCielsHngOQgKdYRQHyYUgGXc2Wgjdq UnVrIWRHzXSED0RtPI7IT0Y4PSxkM9UoSEiVUwt3srCue2CFzuENs23qaDgAzeDa 5uwnDl4RhI2BrLVT1WhioIFgFE5Yh5Xx6dSGC+jcU2ss8r2oN6DdUbqOzWAa1iR4 sFhgwwwizpCCfB6pSqEuDdg8W56HjvE9kQY9kcTPPNPbktL0VImC+iiSN/CgZJv9 MH9NbQM8uHkfNcpjsN7V =OlYA -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Merge tag 'pm+acpi-4.5-rc1-1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rafael/linux-pm Pull oower management and ACPI updates from Rafael Wysocki: "As far as the number of commits goes, ACPICA takes the lead this time, followed by cpufreq and the device properties framework changes. The most significant new feature is the debugfs-based interface to the ACPICA's AML debugger added in the previous cycle and a new user space tool for accessing it. On the cpufreq front, the core is updated to handle governors more efficiently, particularly on systems where a single cpufreq policy object is shared between multiple CPUs, and there are quite a few changes in drivers (intel_pstate, cpufreq-dt etc). The device properties framework is updated to handle built-in (ie included in the kernel itself) device properties better, among other things by adding a fallback mechanism that will allow drivers to provide default properties to be used in case the plaform firmware doesn't provide the properties expected by them. The Operating Performance Points (OPP) framework gets new DT bindings and debugfs support. A new cpufreq driver for ST platforms is added and the ACPI driver for AMD SoCs will now support the APM X-Gene ACPI I2C device. The rest is mostly fixes and cleanups all over. Specifics: - Add a debugfs-based interface for interacting with the ACPICA's AML debugger introduced in the previous cycle and a new user space tool for that, fix some bugs related to the AML debugger and clean up the code in question (Lv Zheng, Dan Carpenter, Colin Ian King, Markus Elfring). - Update ACPICA to upstream revision 20151218 including a number of fixes and cleanups in the ACPICA core (Bob Moore, Lv Zheng, Labbe Corentin, Prarit Bhargava, Colin Ian King, David E Box, Rafael Wysocki). In particular, the previously added erroneous support for the _SUB object is dropped, the concatenate operator will support all ACPI objects now, the Debug Object handling is improved, the SuperName handling of parameters being control methods is fixed, the ObjectType operator handling is updated to follow ACPI 5.0A and the handling of CondRefOf and RefOf is updated accordingly, module- level code will be executed after loading each ACPI table now (instead of being run once after all tables containing AML have been loaded), the Operation Region handlers management is updated to fix some reported problems and a the ACPICA code in the kernel is more in line with the upstream now. - Update the ACPI backlight driver to provide information on whether or not it will generate key-presses for brightness change hotkeys and update some platform drivers (dell-wmi, thinkpad_acpi) to use that information to avoid sending double key-events to users pace for these, add new ACPI backlight quirks (Hans de Goede, Aaron Lu, Adrien Schildknecht). - Improve the ACPI handling of interrupt GPIOs (Christophe Ricard). - Fix the handling of the list of device IDs of device objects found in the ACPI namespace and add a helper for checking if there is a device object for a given device ID (Lukas Wunner). - Change the logic in the ACPI namespace scanning code to create struct acpi_device objects for all ACPI device objects found in the namespace even if _STA fails for them which helps to avoid device enumeration problems on Microsoft Surface 3 (Aaron Lu). - Add support for the APM X-Gene ACPI I2C device to the ACPI driver for AMD SoCs (Loc Ho). - Fix the long-standing issue with the DMA controller on Intel SoCs where ACPI tables have no power management support for the DMA controller itself, but it can be powered off automatically when the last (other) device on the SoC is powered off via ACPI and clean up the ACPI driver for Intel SoCs (acpi-lpss) after previous attempts to fix that problem (Andy Shevchenko). - Assorted ACPI fixes and cleanups (Andy Lutomirski, Colin Ian King, Javier Martinez Canillas, Ken Xue, Mathias Krause, Rafael Wysocki, Sinan Kaya). - Update the device properties framework for better handling of built-in properties, add support for built-in properties to the platform bus type, update the MFD subsystem's handling of device properties and add support for passing default configuration data as device properties to the intel-lpss MFD drivers, convert the designware I2C driver to use the unified device properties API and add a fallback mechanism for using default built-in properties if the platform firmware fails to provide the properties as expected by drivers (Andy Shevchenko, Mika Westerberg, Heikki Krogerus, Andrew Morton). - Add new Device Tree bindings to the Operating Performance Points (OPP) framework and update the exynos4412 DT binding accordingly, introduce debugfs support for the OPP framework (Viresh Kumar, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz). - Migrate the mt8173 cpufreq driver to the new OPP bindings (Pi-Cheng Chen). - Update the cpufreq core to make the handling of governors more efficient, especially on systems where policy objects are shared between multiple CPUs (Viresh Kumar, Rafael Wysocki). - Fix cpufreq governor handling on configurations with CONFIG_HZ_PERIODIC set (Chen Yu). - Clean up the cpufreq core code related to the boost sysfs knob support and update the ACPI cpufreq driver accordingly (Rafael Wysocki). - Add a new cpufreq driver for ST platforms and corresponding Device Tree bindings (Lee Jones). - Update the intel_pstate driver to allow the P-state selection algorithm used by it to depend on the CPU ID of the processor it is running on, make it use a special P-state selection algorithm (with an IO wait time compensation tweak) on Atom CPUs based on the Airmont and Silvermont cores so as to reduce their energy consumption and improve intel_pstate documentation (Philippe Longepe, Srinivas Pandruvada). - Update the cpufreq-dt driver to support registering cooling devices that use the (P * V^2 * f) dynamic power draw formula where V is the voltage, f is the frequency and P is a constant coefficient provided by Device Tree and update the arm_big_little cpufreq driver to use that support (Punit Agrawal). - Assorted cpufreq driver (cpufreq-dt, qoriq, pcc-cpufreq, blackfin-cpufreq) updates (Andrzej Hajda, Hongtao Jia, Jacob Tanenbaum, Markus Elfring). - cpuidle core tweaks related to polling and measured_us calculation (Rik van Riel). - Removal of modularity from a few cpuidle drivers (clps711x, ux500, exynos) that cannot be built as modules in practice (Paul Gortmaker). - PM core update to prevent devices from being probed during system suspend/resume which is generally problematic and may lead to inconsistent behavior (Grygorii Strashko). - Assorted updates of the PM core and related code (Julia Lawall, Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard, Maruthi Bayyavarapu, Rafael Wysocki, Ulf Hansson). - PNP bus type updates (Christophe Le Roy, Heiner Kallweit). - PCI PM code cleanups (Jarkko Nikula, Julia Lawall). - cpupower tool updates (Jacob Tanenbaum, Thomas Renninger)" * tag 'pm+acpi-4.5-rc1-1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rafael/linux-pm: (177 commits) PM / clk: don't leave clocks enabled when driver not bound i2c: dw: Add APM X-Gene ACPI I2C device support ACPI / APD: Add APM X-Gene ACPI I2C device support ACPI / LPSS: change 'does not have' to 'has' in comment Revert "dmaengine: dw: platform: provide platform data for Intel" dmaengine: dw: return immediately from IRQ when DMA isn't in use dmaengine: dw: platform: power on device on shutdown ACPI / LPSS: override power state for LPSS DMA device PM / OPP: Use snprintf() instead of sprintf() Documentation: cpufreq: intel_pstate: enhance documentation ACPI, PCI, irq: remove redundant check for null string pointer ACPI / video: driver must be registered before checking for keypresses cpufreq-dt: fix handling regulator_get_voltage() result cpufreq: governor: Fix negative idle_time when configured with CONFIG_HZ_PERIODIC PM / sleep: Add support for read-only sysfs attributes ACPI: Fix white space in a structure definition ACPI / SBS: fix inconsistent indenting inside if statement PNP: respect PNP_DRIVER_RES_DO_NOT_CHANGE when detaching ACPI / PNP: constify device IDs ACPI / PCI: Simplify acpi_penalize_isa_irq() ... |
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arch | ||
block | ||
certs | ||
crypto | ||
Documentation | ||
drivers | ||
firmware | ||
fs | ||
include | ||
init | ||
ipc | ||
kernel | ||
lib | ||
mm | ||
net | ||
samples | ||
scripts | ||
security | ||
sound | ||
tools | ||
usr | ||
virt | ||
.get_maintainer.ignore | ||
.gitignore | ||
.mailmap | ||
COPYING | ||
CREDITS | ||
Kbuild | ||
Kconfig | ||
MAINTAINERS | ||
Makefile | ||
README | ||
REPORTING-BUGS |
Linux kernel release 4.x <http://kernel.org/> These are the release notes for Linux version 4. Read them carefully, as they tell you what this is all about, explain how to install the kernel, and what to do if something goes wrong. WHAT IS LINUX? Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance. It has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged Unix, including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory management, and multistack networking including IPv4 and IPv6. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License - see the accompanying COPYING file for more details. ON WHAT HARDWARE DOES IT RUN? Although originally developed first for 32-bit x86-based PCs (386 or higher), today Linux also runs on (at least) the Compaq Alpha AXP, Sun SPARC and UltraSPARC, Motorola 68000, PowerPC, PowerPC64, ARM, Hitachi SuperH, Cell, IBM S/390, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, Intel IA-64, DEC VAX, AMD x86-64, AXIS CRIS, Xtensa, Tilera TILE, AVR32, ARC and Renesas M32R architectures. Linux is easily portable to most general-purpose 32- or 64-bit architectures as long as they have a paged memory management unit (PMMU) and a port of the GNU C compiler (gcc) (part of The GNU Compiler Collection, GCC). Linux has also been ported to a number of architectures without a PMMU, although functionality is then obviously somewhat limited. Linux has also been ported to itself. You can now run the kernel as a userspace application - this is called UserMode Linux (UML). DOCUMENTATION: - There is a lot of documentation available both in electronic form on the Internet and in books, both Linux-specific and pertaining to general UNIX questions. I'd recommend looking into the documentation subdirectories on any Linux FTP site for the LDP (Linux Documentation Project) books. This README is not meant to be documentation on the system: there are much better sources available. - There are various README files in the Documentation/ subdirectory: these typically contain kernel-specific installation notes for some drivers for example. See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file. Please read the Changes file, as it contains information about the problems, which may result by upgrading your kernel. - The Documentation/DocBook/ subdirectory contains several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can be rendered in a number of formats: PostScript (.ps), PDF, HTML, & man-pages, among others. After installation, "make psdocs", "make pdfdocs", "make htmldocs", or "make mandocs" will render the documentation in the requested format. INSTALLING the kernel source: - If you install the full sources, put the kernel tarball in a directory where you have permissions (eg. your home directory) and unpack it: xz -cd linux-4.X.tar.xz | tar xvf - Replace "X" with the version number of the latest kernel. Do NOT use the /usr/src/linux area! This area has a (usually incomplete) set of kernel headers that are used by the library header files. They should match the library, and not get messed up by whatever the kernel-du-jour happens to be. - You can also upgrade between 4.x releases by patching. Patches are distributed in the xz format. To install by patching, get all the newer patch files, enter the top level directory of the kernel source (linux-4.X) and execute: xz -cd ../patch-4.x.xz | patch -p1 Replace "x" for all versions bigger than the version "X" of your current source tree, _in_order_, and you should be ok. You may want to remove the backup files (some-file-name~ or some-file-name.orig), and make sure that there are no failed patches (some-file-name# or some-file-name.rej). If there are, either you or I have made a mistake. Unlike patches for the 4.x kernels, patches for the 4.x.y kernels (also known as the -stable kernels) are not incremental but instead apply directly to the base 4.x kernel. For example, if your base kernel is 4.0 and you want to apply the 4.0.3 patch, you must not first apply the 4.0.1 and 4.0.2 patches. Similarly, if you are running kernel version 4.0.2 and want to jump to 4.0.3, you must first reverse the 4.0.2 patch (that is, patch -R) _before_ applying the 4.0.3 patch. You can read more on this in Documentation/applying-patches.txt Alternatively, the script patch-kernel can be used to automate this process. It determines the current kernel version and applies any patches found. linux/scripts/patch-kernel linux The first argument in the command above is the location of the kernel source. Patches are applied from the current directory, but an alternative directory can be specified as the second argument. - Make sure you have no stale .o files and dependencies lying around: cd linux make mrproper You should now have the sources correctly installed. SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS Compiling and running the 4.x kernels requires up-to-date versions of various software packages. Consult Documentation/Changes for the minimum version numbers required and how to get updates for these packages. Beware that using excessively old versions of these packages can cause indirect errors that are very difficult to track down, so don't assume that you can just update packages when obvious problems arise during build or operation. BUILD directory for the kernel: When compiling the kernel, all output files will per default be stored together with the kernel source code. Using the option "make O=output/dir" allow you to specify an alternate place for the output files (including .config). Example: kernel source code: /usr/src/linux-4.X build directory: /home/name/build/kernel To configure and build the kernel, use: cd /usr/src/linux-4.X make O=/home/name/build/kernel menuconfig make O=/home/name/build/kernel sudo make O=/home/name/build/kernel modules_install install Please note: If the 'O=output/dir' option is used, then it must be used for all invocations of make. CONFIGURING the kernel: Do not skip this step even if you are only upgrading one minor version. New configuration options are added in each release, and odd problems will turn up if the configuration files are not set up as expected. If you want to carry your existing configuration to a new version with minimal work, use "make oldconfig", which will only ask you for the answers to new questions. - Alternative configuration commands are: "make config" Plain text interface. "make menuconfig" Text based color menus, radiolists & dialogs. "make nconfig" Enhanced text based color menus. "make xconfig" X windows (Qt) based configuration tool. "make gconfig" X windows (GTK+) based configuration tool. "make oldconfig" Default all questions based on the contents of your existing ./.config file and asking about new config symbols. "make silentoldconfig" Like above, but avoids cluttering the screen with questions already answered. Additionally updates the dependencies. "make olddefconfig" Like above, but sets new symbols to their default values without prompting. "make defconfig" Create a ./.config file by using the default symbol values from either arch/$ARCH/defconfig or arch/$ARCH/configs/${PLATFORM}_defconfig, depending on the architecture. "make ${PLATFORM}_defconfig" Create a ./.config file by using the default symbol values from arch/$ARCH/configs/${PLATFORM}_defconfig. Use "make help" to get a list of all available platforms of your architecture. "make allyesconfig" Create a ./.config file by setting symbol values to 'y' as much as possible. "make allmodconfig" Create a ./.config file by setting symbol values to 'm' as much as possible. "make allnoconfig" Create a ./.config file by setting symbol values to 'n' as much as possible. "make randconfig" Create a ./.config file by setting symbol values to random values. "make localmodconfig" Create a config based on current config and loaded modules (lsmod). Disables any module option that is not needed for the loaded modules. To create a localmodconfig for another machine, store the lsmod of that machine into a file and pass it in as a LSMOD parameter. target$ lsmod > /tmp/mylsmod target$ scp /tmp/mylsmod host:/tmp host$ make LSMOD=/tmp/mylsmod localmodconfig The above also works when cross compiling. "make localyesconfig" Similar to localmodconfig, except it will convert all module options to built in (=y) options. You can find more information on using the Linux kernel config tools in Documentation/kbuild/kconfig.txt. - NOTES on "make config": - Having unnecessary drivers will make the kernel bigger, and can under some circumstances lead to problems: probing for a nonexistent controller card may confuse your other controllers - Compiling the kernel with "Processor type" set higher than 386 will result in a kernel that does NOT work on a 386. The kernel will detect this on bootup, and give up. - A kernel with math-emulation compiled in will still use the coprocessor if one is present: the math emulation will just never get used in that case. The kernel will be slightly larger, but will work on different machines regardless of whether they have a math coprocessor or not. - The "kernel hacking" configuration details usually result in a bigger or slower kernel (or both), and can even make the kernel less stable by configuring some routines to actively try to break bad code to find kernel problems (kmalloc()). Thus you should probably answer 'n' to the questions for "development", "experimental", or "debugging" features. COMPILING the kernel: - Make sure you have at least gcc 3.2 available. For more information, refer to Documentation/Changes. Please note that you can still run a.out user programs with this kernel. - Do a "make" to create a compressed kernel image. It is also possible to do "make install" if you have lilo installed to suit the kernel makefiles, but you may want to check your particular lilo setup first. To do the actual install, you have to be root, but none of the normal build should require that. Don't take the name of root in vain. - If you configured any of the parts of the kernel as `modules', you will also have to do "make modules_install". - Verbose kernel compile/build output: Normally, the kernel build system runs in a fairly quiet mode (but not totally silent). However, sometimes you or other kernel developers need to see compile, link, or other commands exactly as they are executed. For this, use "verbose" build mode. This is done by inserting "V=1" in the "make" command. E.g.: make V=1 all To have the build system also tell the reason for the rebuild of each target, use "V=2". The default is "V=0". - Keep a backup kernel handy in case something goes wrong. This is especially true for the development releases, since each new release contains new code which has not been debugged. Make sure you keep a backup of the modules corresponding to that kernel, as well. If you are installing a new kernel with the same version number as your working kernel, make a backup of your modules directory before you do a "make modules_install". Alternatively, before compiling, use the kernel config option "LOCALVERSION" to append a unique suffix to the regular kernel version. LOCALVERSION can be set in the "General Setup" menu. - In order to boot your new kernel, you'll need to copy the kernel image (e.g. .../linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage after compilation) to the place where your regular bootable kernel is found. - Booting a kernel directly from a floppy without the assistance of a bootloader such as LILO, is no longer supported. If you boot Linux from the hard drive, chances are you use LILO, which uses the kernel image as specified in the file /etc/lilo.conf. The kernel image file is usually /vmlinuz, /boot/vmlinuz, /bzImage or /boot/bzImage. To use the new kernel, save a copy of the old image and copy the new image over the old one. Then, you MUST RERUN LILO to update the loading map!! If you don't, you won't be able to boot the new kernel image. Reinstalling LILO is usually a matter of running /sbin/lilo. You may wish to edit /etc/lilo.conf to specify an entry for your old kernel image (say, /vmlinux.old) in case the new one does not work. See the LILO docs for more information. After reinstalling LILO, you should be all set. Shutdown the system, reboot, and enjoy! If you ever need to change the default root device, video mode, ramdisk size, etc. in the kernel image, use the 'rdev' program (or alternatively the LILO boot options when appropriate). No need to recompile the kernel to change these parameters. - Reboot with the new kernel and enjoy. IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG: - If you have problems that seem to be due to kernel bugs, please check the file MAINTAINERS to see if there is a particular person associated with the part of the kernel that you are having trouble with. If there isn't anyone listed there, then the second best thing is to mail them to me (torvalds@linux-foundation.org), and possibly to any other relevant mailing-list or to the newsgroup. - In all bug-reports, *please* tell what kernel you are talking about, how to duplicate the problem, and what your setup is (use your common sense). If the problem is new, tell me so, and if the problem is old, please try to tell me when you first noticed it. - If the bug results in a message like unable to handle kernel paging request at address C0000010 Oops: 0002 EIP: 0010:XXXXXXXX eax: xxxxxxxx ebx: xxxxxxxx ecx: xxxxxxxx edx: xxxxxxxx esi: xxxxxxxx edi: xxxxxxxx ebp: xxxxxxxx ds: xxxx es: xxxx fs: xxxx gs: xxxx Pid: xx, process nr: xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx or similar kernel debugging information on your screen or in your system log, please duplicate it *exactly*. The dump may look incomprehensible to you, but it does contain information that may help debugging the problem. The text above the dump is also important: it tells something about why the kernel dumped code (in the above example, it's due to a bad kernel pointer). More information on making sense of the dump is in Documentation/oops-tracing.txt - If you compiled the kernel with CONFIG_KALLSYMS you can send the dump as is, otherwise you will have to use the "ksymoops" program to make sense of the dump (but compiling with CONFIG_KALLSYMS is usually preferred). This utility can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.<country>.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/ksymoops/ . Alternatively, you can do the dump lookup by hand: - In debugging dumps like the above, it helps enormously if you can look up what the EIP value means. The hex value as such doesn't help me or anybody else very much: it will depend on your particular kernel setup. What you should do is take the hex value from the EIP line (ignore the "0010:"), and look it up in the kernel namelist to see which kernel function contains the offending address. To find out the kernel function name, you'll need to find the system binary associated with the kernel that exhibited the symptom. This is the file 'linux/vmlinux'. To extract the namelist and match it against the EIP from the kernel crash, do: nm vmlinux | sort | less This will give you a list of kernel addresses sorted in ascending order, from which it is simple to find the function that contains the offending address. Note that the address given by the kernel debugging messages will not necessarily match exactly with the function addresses (in fact, that is very unlikely), so you can't just 'grep' the list: the list will, however, give you the starting point of each kernel function, so by looking for the function that has a starting address lower than the one you are searching for but is followed by a function with a higher address you will find the one you want. In fact, it may be a good idea to include a bit of "context" in your problem report, giving a few lines around the interesting one. If you for some reason cannot do the above (you have a pre-compiled kernel image or similar), telling me as much about your setup as possible will help. Please read the REPORTING-BUGS document for details. - Alternatively, you can use gdb on a running kernel. (read-only; i.e. you cannot change values or set break points.) To do this, first compile the kernel with -g; edit arch/i386/Makefile appropriately, then do a "make clean". You'll also need to enable CONFIG_PROC_FS (via "make config"). After you've rebooted with the new kernel, do "gdb vmlinux /proc/kcore". You can now use all the usual gdb commands. The command to look up the point where your system crashed is "l *0xXXXXXXXX". (Replace the XXXes with the EIP value.) gdb'ing a non-running kernel currently fails because gdb (wrongly) disregards the starting offset for which the kernel is compiled.