Linux-2.5.17
I can live with not building, crashing, or even eating filesystems. Those things will be fixed sooner or later. But breaking userspace programs -- that may well be permanent. If there was a good chance it would be working again by the time 2.6 comes out, it wouldn't bother me. But I really don't expect this to change, so it looks like I won't be able to use 2.5 (or anything later) until I get another version of gtop, or fix this one myself. And so there will be yet another nonstandard change to my patchwork system that I'll have to deal with (if I even remember it) the next time I try to upgrade (i.e., reinstall) Slackware.
Russell King <[email protected]> on 05/21/2002 06:29:23 PM
To: Wayne Brown/Corporate/Altec@Altec
cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Linux-2.5.17
Quoted 3 lines · On Tue, May 21, 2002 at 06:20:56PM -0500, [email protected] wrote:
So, I'm just getting used to the idea of using new tools to build kernels, and now I learn that 2.5 breaks an ordinary program that I use all day, every day. It just keeps getting better and better...
The 2.<odd> series, like 2.5 is a strictly development kernel series; new features go into these all the time. You can expect it to:
1. not build.
2. crash.
3. silently eat your filesystems.
4. break userspace programs.
or any combination of the above. If you're looking for stability, stick with the 2.<even> series.
--
Russell King ([email protected]) The developer of ARM Linux
http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/personal/aboutme.html
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Quoted 4 lines · On Tue, 21 May 2002 [email protected] wrote:
I get another version of gtop, or fix this one myself. And so there will be yet another nonstandard change to my patchwork system that I'll have to deal with (if I even remember it) the next time I try to upgrade (i.e., reinstall) Slackware.
Change isn't such a bad thing, and if you want consistency, 2.5 is hardly what you should be using.
Cheers,
Zwane Mwaikambo
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http://function.linuxpower.ca
Quoted 3 lines · In <[email protected]> [email protected] writes:
I can live with not building, crashing, or even eating filesystems. Those things will be fixed sooner or later. But breaking userspace programs -- that may well be permanent.
Looking at the source code to libgtop-1.0.6 (the version I have easy access to), the parser used to extract the swap information from /proc/meminfo is extremely fragile (read: broken). Rather than looking at the tag at the start of each line for the one it requires, it assumes that the "Swap:" details are on the 3rd line (and doesn't even verify the label).
You can't expect the kernel to keep compatability for such poor user-space code (especially during a development cycle).
The change to /proc/meminfo came about in 2.5.1, and this removed the first two lines from the old, inflexible layout (that has been deprecated for a while, and should probably been removed during the 2.1.x development cycle).
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