Changes from 1.1.53 to 1.1.54

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 patch54.gz

• Support for ELF binaries added.
• CDU31A leaves more space for reserved registers.
• CDU31A might segfault if you changed the CD.
• Floppy formatter forgot to indicate that the old floppy contents are gone.
• The entire status of the hard disk driver gets dumped on an error.
• Ignore unexpected interrupts whenever hard disk drive powers down.
• If the hard disk timed out too many times, it called end_request with ints off. Dunno why that is a problem, but if end_request waited for an interrupt, you'd see a silent kernel hang.
• Changes to serial driver (see below).
• Rudimentary ISO 10646/Unicode/UTF-8 character set support (in console.c and keyboard.c)
• Dynamic allocation and resizing of consoles.
• Added dynamic keymaps, function->string mapping to keyboard driver.
• Added DBR ROM switch in depca_close(). Multi DEPCA bug fix.
• Added a PCI ID for the NCR 53C825.
• Reduce Buslogic memory consumption on kernels compiled w/>16Mb support.
• If SCSI device type is unknown, use -1.
• When SCSI cdrom or disk requests need to be requeued, put the right pointer on the queue.
• Ultrastor driver assembly language changed to be a little more efficient.
• ad1848 sound driver had its formats in the wrong place (0-offset instead of 1-offset).
• NFS driver now expires the cache on a write to a file.
• NFS driver lets other processed run if it cannot allocate the memory it needs.
• Proc driver should report I[RWX]USR correctly now.
• Proc driver deals with links correctly (and can do PLAN9_SEMANTICS).
• Some changes to IPX socket code.
• Serial driver changes:
• Sun Oct 9 23:46:03 1994 Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@rt-11)
  • tty_io.c (do_tty_hangup): If the tty driver flags TTY_DRIVER_RESET_TERMIOS is set, then reset the termios settings back to the driver's initial configuration. This allows the termios settings to be reset even if a process has hung up file descriptors keeping a pty's termios from being freed and reset.
  • tty_io.c (release_dev): Fix memory leak. The pty's other termios structure should also be freed.
  • serial.c (rs_close, shutdown): Change how we wait for the transmitter to completely drain before shutting down the serial port. We now do it by scheduling in another process instead of busy looping with the interrupts turned on. This may eliminate some race condition problems that some people seem to be reporting.
• Sun Sep 25 14:18:14 1994 Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@rt-11)
  • tty_io.c (release_dev): When freeing a tty make sure that both the tty and the o_tty (if present) aren't a process's controlling tty. (Previously, we only checked the tty.)
  • serial.c (change_speed): Only enable the Modem Status Interrupt for a port if CLOCAL is not set or CRTSCTS is set. If we're not checking the carrier detect and CTS line, there's no point in enabling the modem status interrupt. This will save spurious interrupts from slowing down systems who have terminals that don't support either line. (Of course, if you want only one of CD and CTS support, you will need a properly wired serial cable.)
• Thu Sep 22 08:32:48 1994 Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@rt-11)
  • tty_io.c (do_SAK): Return if tty is null.
  • tty_io.c (_tty_name): Return "NULL tty" if the passed in tty is NULL.
• Sat Sep 17 13:19:25 1994 Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@rt-11)
  • tty_ioctl.c (n_tty_ioctl): Fix TIOCGLCKTRMIOS and TIOCSLCKTRMIOS, which were totally broken. Remove extra indirection from argument; it should be a struct termios *, not a struct termios **. &real_tty->termios_locked should have been real_tty->termios_locked. This caused us to be reading and writing the termios_locked structure to random places in kernel memory.
  • tty_io.c (release_dev): Oops! Forgot to delete a critical kfree of the locked_termios. This leaves the locked_termios structure pointed at a freed object.
• Fri Sep 16 08:13:25 1994 Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@rt-11)
  • tty_io.c (tty_open): Don't check for an exclusive open until after the device specific open routine has been called. Otherwise, the serial device ref counting will be screwed up.
  • serial.c (rs_open, block_til_ready): Don't set termios structure until after block_til_ready has returned successfully. Modify block_til_ready to check the normal_termios structure directly, so it doesn't rely on termios being set before its called.
• Thu Sep 15 23:34:01 1994 Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@rt-11)
  • serial.c (rs_close): Turn off interrupts during rs_close() to prevent a race condition with the hangup code (which runs during a software interrupt).
  • tty_io.c (release_dev): Don't free the locked_termios structure; its state must be retained across device opens.
  • tty_io.c (tty_unregister_driver): Added function to unregister a tty driver. (For loadable device drivers.)

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