We have progressed to the second release candidate for the upcoming release of Slackware stable (version 13.37 no less). There is probably not going to be a lot of other updates before final release; the TODO list should be quite short now. The only one to know for sure is Pat Volkerding… I am only speculating of course.

Noticable is that the Slackware -current’s kernel has again been updated – this time to 2.6.37.4. And again, as part of a Slackware kernel update, the glibc packages were rebuilt against the new kernel’s header files.

If you have enhanced your 64bit Slackware-current with multilib capabilities, you can upgrade to the new multilib glibc packages that I compiled for you.

Get the glibc packages for your multilib Slackware64-current at http://slackware.com/~alien/multilib/current/ as usual (or visit my mirror at http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/multilib/current/).

I also updated the content of the slackware64-compat32 directory. In there you will find a copy of all the packages which are created by running the massconvert32.sh script. Install these packages on top of your multilib Slackware64-current in order to make your computer fully support 32bit applications (or use “upgradepkg –install-new” if you already installed a previous set of these packages).

No idea what I have been talking about?

If you want to know about 64bit Slackware Linux (which is a pure 64bit OS) and how to “upgrade” to a multilib system (supporting 32bit as well as 64bit applications), you should definitelty read http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=slackware:multilib …

Eric

I had two issues after the upgrade, which were related to the new 2.6.33 kernel.

1. My WPA-secured wireless connections would not last longer than a few seconds. After days of despair, I finally found out that the 2.6.33 kernel has a new driver for my wireless card, the “rt2800pci”. This driver is being loaded by default now. Slackware’s kernel also ships the “rt2860sta” driver which is part of the Linux “staging area” i.e. not considered fully stable. This is the driver which would be used with Slackware kernels before 2.6.33. It is in fact a very stable driver which never failed me before.
   By coincidence I saw that both modules were mentioned as supporting the Eeepc’s wireless card in the output of “lspci -v”. After I added the line “blacklist rt2800pci” to the file “/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf” and rebooted the Eeepc, I had fully functional and stable wireless connectivity again, now using the “rt2860sta” driver!
2. My sound was gone, or at least working at a very very low volume… I could hear the KDE logout sound if I put my ear to the keyboard but that was about it. Getting normal sound output levels through my headphones was no problem at all, however.
   The ALSA troubleshooting guide for HDA Intel audio hardware pointed me in the right direction: not getting sound through the built-in speakers while the headphone output works well is quite common, and often caused by not raising the correct channel’s volume.
   It turned out that after the upgrade to the 2.6.33 kernel, I need to set the “speaker” channel’s output level to anything non-zero or else there would be no sound…

I have to mention one other piece of strangeness I experienced on my netbook:

It is an issue not related to Slackware-current but rather to my use of the new “netbook” interface of KDE 4.4′s plasma workspace manager. I toyed with the netbook interface a bit, because it lets you use the small screen more efficiently – by removing unnecessary stuff like window elements and task bars. One typical treat is that every application window in the plasma-netbook workspace runs full-screen exclusively – there is no “minimize” button but instead you have to use the application switcher in order to access other running applications’ windows. Unfortunately, when I switched back to the “normal” plasma workspace, the “minimize” buttons did not re-appear in the title bar!
I had to manually re-add this button through “system settings > appearance > windows > buttons” and drag the “minimize” button into the titlebar preview.

Just so you know.

Eric

Today, I upgraded to the latest set of slackware64-current packages, including the new 2.6.32.7 kernel and when I rebooted to that new kernel, I saw an error message scrolling by stating that “the vboxdrv kernel modules failed to load”. Of course… a new kernel needs all external modules to be recompiled.

When installing VirtualBox, I had already noticed that the installer is Slackware friendly; it installed a nice “/etc/rc.d/rc.vboxdrv” boot script and updated the “rc.local” script so that it runs “rc.vboxdrv” on boot. Well done!

It is easy to rebuild the missing VirtualBox kernel modules using that rc script: you just need to run it once with the “setup” parameter.

root@alienteepee:~# /etc/rc.d/rc.vboxdrv setup
Stopping VirtualBox kernel module ...done.
Recompiling VirtualBox kernel module ...done.
Starting VirtualBox kernel module ...done.
root@alienteepee:~#

That’s all there is to it!

Cheers, Eric

The new kernels exclusively use “libata”. The last bits of the old IDE/ATA subsystem have finally been removed.

This means, that your IDE disk will be recognized as a “SCSI disk”. The device name “/dev/hda” will change to “/dev/sda” when you boot the new kernel. As a result, your computer will refuse to boot because the bootloader (grub or lilo) can not find the root device.

Robby Workman has written a HOWTO for anyone who wants to do this upgrade. The article was published as http://rlworkman.net/howtos/libata-switchover. By following the HOWTO you will not have any issues in upgrading to the new kernel.

I will print Robby’s HOWTO in full below to give it some more coverage:

libata_switchover
20100110
rworkman

/*
Thanks to David Somero, Old_Fogie, gegechris99, and GazL for valuable
feedback and enhancements to this document.
*/

This is written to provide one of several ways to retain a working system after upgrading from Slackware 13.0′s kernel to the newer kernel in -current (which removes support for the “old” ide subsytem, thereby causing all /dev/hd* devices to have /dev/sd* names.

1. Upgrade the kernel and kernel-modules packages normally.

2. Edit /etc/fstab to reflect the change from hd* to sd*.

If you have multiple SATA devices, and especially if you have some of
both hd* and sd* devices present already, then you’re basically going
to be playing a guessing game right now, and you probably want to
consider using some of the persistent symlinks in /dev/disk/by-*/
instead of raw device nodes.

* If you are using one of the generic kernels (requiring an initrd),
then use the sd* name for the root device when creating the image
(edit /boot/initrd-tree/rootdev and then re-run “mkinitrd”).

* You will almost surely want to remove the udev rules file for cdrom
devices (it will be regenerated on the next boot with correct
information reflecting the new libata stuff):
# rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-cd.rules

* Speaking of optical devices, if you have multiple disk drives and an
optical drive using the old ide subsystem, then be aware that the
optical drive will get a /dev/sr* name instead of /dev/sd* — this is
relevant because you might see something like this (if your optical
drive is currently /dev/hdb):

Old Name –> New Name
/dev/hda /dev/sda
/dev/hdb /dev/sr0
/dev/hdc /dev/sdb

3. Run lilo. Note that you have made no edits at all to it yet, unless
you needed to edit it for the new kernel. Specifically, do not make
any changes with respect to hd* –> sd*.

4. Reboot. At the lilo prompt, press <TAB> and add an append for the
real root device (which will no longer be /dev/hd*). For example, if
the old root device was /dev/hda1, and it will now be /dev/sda1, and
the name of your kernel image is “Linux” then you would type this:

Linux root=/dev/sda1

5. Once the system comes back up, then fix /etc/lilo.conf, run lilo, and
reboot again to be sure everything is correct.

Good luck! Eric

PS: I have refreshed the copy of Robby’s text so that it reflects the updates he made to the original after feedback from several people.

Slackware Linux development made a big leap today, when Pat Volkerding updated the distro’s “vital organs” of kernel, glibc and gcc. The “dull” phase of the slackware-current development cycle is over hopefully, and it’s back to the bleeding edge.

To be fair, gcc 4.4.2 has been sitting in “testing” area for quite a while now, and we think it is time to promote it into the core. With glibc 2.11.1 we are pushing it, as this is the most recent stable release, and the 2.6.32.2 kernel was much-anticipated by those who run -current on their computers.

Note that the new kernel has full support for EFI (the Extensible Firmware Interface which is going to be the replacement for the ageing BIOS on modern computers). This means that there is also support for GPT partitions. GUID Partition Table is a standard for the layout of the partition table on a physical hard disk (part of the EFI specification and meant to overcome the 2 TB size limitation of MBR partitions). We still have to look into updating the Slackware installer for automatic GPT partition recognition, but you will be able to use GPT partitions if you do some footwork yourself before running “setup”.

With this update to Slackware’s vitals, the stage is set for further tweaks of the core, but I think that for now, you will have plenty to play with.

And as promised to those running the 64-bit version of Slackware-current, I have made available multilib versions of the new gcc and glibc packages! Thanks to Pat Volkerding who allowed me sufficient time to build and rebuild these packages on my old computer until they were just perfect (I hope) and could be released along with the Slackware originals.

You can get them here: http://slackware.com/~alien/multilib/13.1/ (I took the liberty of assuming that 13.1 will be the version of the next Slackware release, mainly because I needed to give that directory a name).

For detailed instructions about what multilib means to the 64-bit Slackware and how you can add it, read this wiki article: http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=slackware:multilib

Have fun! Eric

Although Slackware -current still has a 2.6.29.x kernel, I am sure that people are experimenting with 2.6.30 kernels. In some cases, and only on Slackware for the x86_64 architecture so far, this may lead to boot problems. There is a problem that manifests itself when you are using an initial ramdisk with your kernel. The error message that you may see (unless it scrolls off your screen too fast) is this:

“initramfs unpacking failed: junk in compressed archive“

As a result, your computer will fail to boot.

Now, what is happening here?

By default, LILO loads your initial ramdisk (/boot/initrd.img) into the first 15MB of memory. This circumvents a BIOS limitation for older systems (typically, computers produced before 2001).

However, the linux kernel has been growing in size, and there are combinations of kernel and initrd that will no longer fit into the first 15MB of memory. This leads to boot failure. Because of the fact that the kernel and initrd files are compressed archives, the rule of thumb is that these issues appear when the combined size of your kernel and initrd files is larger than 8 MB. The kernel will then overwrite part of the initrd in memory, leading to the above error message.

For computers with a x86_64 capable CPU, it is safe to assume that the computer has a BIOS without the 15MB limitation. In this case, you can add the following parameter to your “/etc/lilo.conf” file:

large-memory

This option instructs LILO to use a larger memory window when loading the initial ramdisk (do not forget to run the “lilo” command after making this change). It will cure the issue.

I think this should be added as a default option in the lilo.conf file generated by the liloconfig utility of slackware64.

Eric

Today, a lot of changes found their way into slackware-current.  Slackware’s development speed shows leaps and bounds   The newest set of updates is nearly as long as last month when Slackware added KDE4 to mainstream. The kernel packages have now arrived at 2.6.29.1 which is the most recent kernel available to date.  The KDE series is now at 4.2.2, which is a bug fix release to the previous 4.2.1. We also updated a lot of the KDE dependencies.

New packages which were added: jasper (provides jpeg2000 support in Okular), crda and iw (user-space support for wireless drivers in the new kernel, useful for people in non-US countries).  M2Crypt, libnl and libmcrypt are other newcomers (and the php package has now been compiled with mcrypt support, this was a much asked-for feature).  An interesting addition is xz.  This compression tool based on Lasse Collin’s LZMA offers better compression than bzip2 and much faster de-compression than bzip2.

The curl package was recompiled with support for a set of CA root certificates. This provides a fix for the errors people would get if they used curl to download stuff from secure (aka https://) web sites.  The mkinitrd package was enhanced with the mkinitrd_command_generator.sh script (written by PiterPUNK and me) which makes it very easy to build an initrd.gz image for your kernel. It can also write an update for your /etc/lilo.conf file. Just run:

sh /usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh -h

to see what it can do.

Again, there were changes which did not make their way into the official ChangeLog.txt announcement…

I will not give full disclosure and let you find out for yourself. The changes are in the Slackware installer. One will be quite obvious from the start (just look at the messages during the final stage of the boot), the second will only become apparent for those of you who perform NFS installs and the third is not even visible – consider it an easter egg (tested only by me thusfar I believe). It adds yet another possible package source when installing Slackware.

Have fun with this new installment of slackware-current! And don’t get scared when you boot your updated computer and see the new kernel logo: a small animal (Tuz) which replaces the familiar penguin (Tux) for the duration of the 2.6.29.x kernel releases…

Eric

Many of the core packages have received an version upgrade, but those changes may not be immediately visible to the average end user. Some of the absolute highlights mentioned in the ChangeLog are indication of a big step forward for Slackware: a new kernel (2.6.28.7), new gcc (4.3.3), new glibc (still called 2.9 but the snapshot we use is more like 2.10), a new XFCE (4.6.0) and most importantly: KDE 3.5.10 is gone, replaced by KDE 4.2.1 (which had been living in the /testing directory for a long time).

I have been working with KDE4 releases for nearly a year now, running it as my default desktop, and 4.2.1 is stable, fast and beautiful. People who heard or read that the new KDE is bloated and slow, should try it out and decide for themselves; I think it performs better than KDE3. I also ran the new XFCE for a while and it looks sweet. Note that when you upgrade from XFCE 4.4 you may experience missing icons in the panel. This happens because the Rodent icon theme was removed from XFCE in the new release. The file CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT (located in the toplevel directory of slackware-current) explains this issue and what you can do about it.

One neat feature addition which did not make the ChangeLog, but is definitely worth mentioning: the initrd.img and usbboot.img files which contain the Slackware installer,  have also been updated for the new 2.6.28.7 kernel. As a result, you can now install Slackware to an ext4 filesystem!

If anyone out there with a Netbook (one of those Intel Atom powered, 9 or 10 inch sized laptops with long battery life) is going to install Slackware-current on it, I would like to hear your impressions. Leave a comment to this blog post.

Have fun, Eric