Changes from 1.1.45 to 1.1.46

These changes are archived on ftp.crynwr.com:pub/kchanges and http://www.crynwr.com/kchanges. I cannot answer questions about Linux -- I merely summarize the kernel patches after reading them. I try to make them useful to everyone, but kernel hackers should take them with a grain of salt and read the patches themselves. The patch file is patch46.gz

• More spelling fixes (I before E except after C or when pronounced like an A as in neighbor or weigh, unless it's spelled weird).
• boot code changed so bootlin works.
• CONFIG_I_AM_A_BROKEN_BSD_WEENIE added to config.in
• IPX configuration turned off in config.in. This is often an indication that the code is not yet ready for prime time.
• A few missing cli()'s added to hard disk driver.
• Virtual console keyboard lock and keyboard led are now maintained independently.
• As many as 16 slip devices can be supported.
• Buglogic fixes in determining the translation type for disks >1GB.
• Switch from release 2 to release 3 of PAS16 SCSI driver:
  • A little more initialization performed on the PAS16 SCSI driver.
  • PAS16 SCSI write wasn't waiting for the adapter to be ready.
  • PAS16 SCSI write failed to use the outsb procedure.
• MIDI sequencer recognizes a note of 255 as special.
• A few variable sizes and casts were changed from unsigned int's to loff_t's (portability).
• Switch from version 0.5 of ext2 to version 0.5a.
  • New mount options: bsddf and minixdf. bsddf causes ext2fs to remove the blocks used for FS structures from the total block count in statfs. With minixdf, ext2fs mimics Minix behavior in statfs (i.e. it returns the total number of blocks on the partition). This is intended to make bde happy :-)
  • New file attributes:
    • Immutable files cannot be modified. Data cannot be written to these files. They cannot be removed, renamed and new links cannot be created. Even root cannot modify the files. He has to remove the immutable attribute first.
    • Append-only files: can only be written in append-mode when writing. They cannot be removed, renamed and new links cannot be created. Note: files may only be added to an append-only directory.
    • No-dump files: the attribute is not used by the kernel. My port of dump uses it to avoid backing up files which are not important.
  • New check in ext2_check_dir_entry: the inode number is checked.
  • Support for big file systems: the copy of the FS descriptor is now dynamically allocated (previous versions used a fixed size array). This allows to mount 2GB+ FS.
  • Reorganization of the ext2_inode structure to allow other operating systems to create specific fields if they use ext2fs as their native file system. Currently, ext2fs is only implemented in Linux but will soon be part of Gnu Hurd and of Masix.
• If a file is opened append-only, don't clear O_APPEND if they set the flags.
• Long filenames are now detected properly.

[Index][Next]