Archive of posts from 2010
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USB serial console
If you're trying to use a USB serial adapter as your Linux kernel console...
The kernel needs to be compiled with CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_SERIAL=y
That's CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_CONSOLE.
Debian kernels do not appear to be. Somewhat strangely, the config option doesn't even wind up in the config file in the typical commented-out manner, so you don't even know the option exists until you discover it from random Web searching, and then looking at drivers/usb/serial/Kconfig in the kernel source.
Console drivers need to be built-in, so CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_CONSOLE depends on CONFIG_USB_SERIAL=y. We build the USB serial code as a module so CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_CONSOLE is not an available option. This is unlikely to change, as a built-in feature takes memory from every Debian GNU/Linux installation.
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RCBW(eekend) 2010-11-01
- #595396 - probably fixable with a binNMU, but I also changed debian/rules to catch regressions
- #596646 - downgraded; no justification given for 'serious' severity
- #597059 - closed as not a bug
- #599262 - reassigned to the kernel (linux-2.6) and downgraded as not RC there
- #599709 - applied the upstream fix
- #599711 - backported the upstream fix; downgraded as it's only a denial of service and may not even affect Debian
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Boot loader disruption in sid
Something was bound to go wrong when changing the policy for boot loaders. Let me try that again.
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'This Week in Debian' podcast
A few weeks ago Zack wrote about preparations for a new podcast to be called 'This Week in Debian'. I volunteered to be interviewed, and have now talked with Jonathan Nadeau for about 30 minutes about the work of the kernel team and the release process. Hopefully he'll be editing down my rambling so the first episode won't be too boring! If you do work on Debian that you'd like to talk about to an interested audience, follow the link above and add yourself to the list of potential interviewees.
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Cancelling a command in bash
[...] whenever I was typing a command line, changed my mind and pressed C-c, I got a ^C printed on the screen, usually overwriting one or two characters of what I had typed. And this prevented me from automatically copying and pasting the command that I had typed.
There is an alternative to using C-c, and that is M-#. This adds a '#' to the start of the line, commenting it out, and then behaves as if you pressed Return. The result is that the command is cancelled but still remains on-screen and in your history. You can then copy the command later using the mouse or keyboard.
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Adding debian/source/format
Neil Williams writes:The new lintian addition "missing-debian-source-format" is starting to remind me of a pestering nanny.
I use source format 3.0 only where I see a technical benefit and that - so far - is restricted to packages that use a .tar.bz2 upstream and one or two with really tricky patching requirements.
You are missing the point - debian/source/format allows you to make it explicit that the source format is 1.0, if you want to stick with that.
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Debian Linux packages: the 'Big Bang' release
Max Attems uploaded a new version of the Linux kernel package (linux-2.6) today. This includes the last major changes to the package before Debian 6.0 'squeeze', which led me to label it the 'Big Bang' release:
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KVM reliability
Russell Coker writes:I had also hoped that it would be really reliable and work with the latest kernels (unlike Xen) but it is giving me problems with 2.6.32 on Opteron.
This is a regression caused by a recent security fix (CVE-2010-0298, "KVM: x86 emulator: fix memory access during x86 emulation"). It appears to affect only recent Linux kernels running as guests on AMD systems, and it will probably be fixed soon.
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FOSDEM 10 Distribution Developer Room videos now available
As previously announced elsewhere, video recordings from the Distribution Developer Rooms at FOSDEM 10 are now available. All but two talks were recorded and are available in Ogg Theora+Vorbis format, in low-bandwidth (~300 kbit/s) and high-bandwidth (~1.5 Mbit/s) versions.
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This season I have mostly been building kernels
As some people noticed, a driver update to support a major hardware release in my day job and a long series of trivial patches motivated by Debian kernel work combined to make me joint most prolific change author for Linux 2.6.33. This was a fluke, and 2.6.34 is likely to be fairly quiet for me.