Re: Linux 2.1.0 _development_ kernel released..

george h byrkit (ghbyrkit@cris.com)
Tue, 01 Oct 1996 10:05:25 -0400

Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> Ok, I released the final 2.1.0 (both as full source and as patches against
> 2.0.21), and as always I'm interested in any comments on it.
>
> NOTE! The driver situation has improved, but is by no means perfect. Most
> notably, there is no working aic7xx0 driver (aha2940 based cards) available
> right now. Quite frankly, I can't fix this on my own, so I would really be
> very grateful if somebody who has the hardware and the inclination would look
> into it.
>
> (I looked into it just enough to see that it's ugly: the scatter-gather lists
> used by the SCSI code use virtual addresses, and the aic7xx0 controller code
> uses those scatter-gather lists directly. The high-level SCSI code would
> either have to use bus addresses instead of virtual addresses, or the aic7xx0
> driver should do the translation either on the CPU or in the aic7xx0
> assembly).
>
> Most other drivers would seem to work, although some of them (like the xd
> driver) haven't been tested.
>
> Other than the virtual kernel address setup changes on x86, the 2.1.0 release
> also changes the VFS interface (lseek/read/write get longer types). There are
> also quite a lot of m68k-specific changes (but I'm waiting with the generic
> m68k changes until the driver situation has calmed down a bit). There is also
> a tentative patch for the pty problems people have reported (that will be fed
> back to the 2.0.x tree too, but you can test it out in the 2.1.x series
> first)
>
> Linus

OK, I'll bite.

I've got the hardware (AHA-2940U Rev B), the motivation (won't boot
2.1.0), and the inclination (i'm a hacker...). Can you email me any
other clues before I embark on this 'glorious adventure'?

Regards,
George Byrkit