Re: v2.6 vs v3.0

[Mikael Pettersson]

Jens Axboe writes:
 > On Mon, Sep 30 2002, Bill Davidsen wrote:
 > > On Sun, 29 Sep 2002, Jens Axboe wrote:
 > > > 2.5 IDE stability should be just as good as 2.4-ac.
 > > 
 > > A laudable goal.
 > 
 > If you know of any points where this is currently not true, I'd like to
 > hear about it. I'm considering this goal reached. Whether 2.4-ac is at
 > the level we want is a different story.

2.5.39 IDE is nowhere near as stable as 2.4.20-pre8:

- I have several boxes with decent PCI chipsets (BX, HX) but old disks.
  With 2.5.39, they tend to spew a couple of ..._intr errors on boot.
  (Sorry, can't be more specific right now. I won't be near those
  boxes until Saturday.)

- Same ..._intr errors on my 486 with a qd6580 VLB controller.
  It also has, in post-2.5.36 kernels, an instant-reboot problem which
  occurs whenever I pass the ide0=qd65xx kernel option required to
  activate its chipset support. (I _believe_ this is because the code
  does something, like a kmalloc, which is illegal at the early
  point IDE's __setup runs.) With 2.5.3x kernels, this box also sees
  a steady stream of spurious interrupts while doing a kernel recompile,
  something it doesn't see in older kernels.

- My Intel AL440LX box (440LX chipset, 20G Quantum Fireball) worked
  brilliantly up to 2.5.36, but hangs *hard* with 2.5.39 as soon
  as I tar zxf the kernel source tarball.
  (May or may not be IDE. I'll try a minimal 2.5.39 tonight.)

All of these work perfectly with 2.4.20-pre8, indeed all previous 2.4
standard kernels, 2.2 + Andre's ide-patch, and with the exception of
the ..._intr errors, 2.5.36.

OTOH, I have three boxes which do appear to work fine with 2.5.39.

/Mikael