To: Linux-Activists@BLOOM-PICAYUNE.MIT.EDU From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux Subject: Second 0.95a alpha-patch, part 1/2 Date: 4 Apr 92 14:42:10 GMT This is the promised patch to 0.95a, which hopefully corrects some of the problems encountered. This is /not/ an offical new release: it's just a set of patches to get the same kernel I am currently running. Bugfixes: - extended partitions should finally work correctly (this release also contains code for the hd-ioctl call, needed for fdisk). Code mostly by hedrick. - I corrected my original ptrace-fix (writing a long word to another process' data space could fail with my original patches) - 387-emulation bug with the instructions "fcom[p] %st(x)" which resulted in bad results on non-387 machines with newer versions of gcc. The emulation is still ugly, but it seems to work. - the cooked mode deletion/linekill bugs should be fixed. - various error-returns were wrong: I correted some of them (thanks to bruce evans who pointed them out). The bad error-values resulted in incorrect or spurious error-messages from 'rm' etc. - various minor fixes (including some in the hd-driver: this might help persons with unexpected-interrupt and/or timeout errors) Additionally this version contains VFS-code from entropy, and a readdir() system call needed for the VFS. The latter was inspired by patches sent by Remy Card, who did it with a getdirents sys-call. My version is slightly simpler, but is probably slower. Things might yet change. The installation has also changed slightly: the keyboard type and math-emulation are specified in the main Makefile. That one also contains the -fcombine-regs flag needed for 1.40. The other makefiles should no longer need editing. I've also incorporated the ps095 kernel patches: to get the actual user-level stuff you still have to get the ps-distribution. Printer ports /still/ aren't in there, but this time I positively /promise/ to put it in next week. Really. People who have been patching their kernel might have problems getting this patch to work: it was made against a clean 0.95a kernel. I'll consider a patched-up kernel version 0.95c - and I'd appreciate if future patches to me would be sent against this version. I'll still accept older patches, or course. Linus