Kernel 3.4 RC1 now up

[SteveRiley]

Why? Because it's there.

Breaks VMplayer, though. When the modules attempt to recompile, this error is thrown:


And vmblock fails to build. Otherwise, 3.4 seems cool -- literally. Lower temperature on my keyboard, fewer fan starts/stops.

[Fintan]

Good to know

Will these work on 11.10?

Did you have any problems with mounting USB drives?

I had that with 3.3 on 11.10, so I got rid of it again.

[SteveRiley]

Dunno, let's find out...

{ /me is walking the 30 feet from 3rd floor bedroom to 2nd floor living room just for Fintan }

Inserted USB drive, observed expected Device Notifer behavior, mounted the drive, opened in Dolphin. All good.

[Fintan]

Thanks for the effort.

The excerise does you good

I'll go and see if it works on 11.10

[dibl]

There was a period of about 3 months last year, after the "Big Kernel Lock" was dropped from the Debian kernels (2.6.39+) that I was stuck using VBox for running my Win 7 VM, until a patch was developed for VMware Player. I won't be shocked if we're facing that sort of development lag with the 3.4 series as well.

Note to self: don't remove kernels that work .....

[Fintan]

So far it is behaving on 11.10. As for vmware, that is another reason I got rid of 3.3.
Not even your patch worked correctly on that dible.

Having a beer in your name, bythw

[SteveRiley]

There was a period of about 3 months last year, after the "Big Kernel Lock" was dropped from the Debian kernels (2.6.39+) that I was stuck using VBox for running my Win 7 VM, until a patch was developed for VMware Player. I won't be shocked if we're facing that sort of development lag with the 3.4 series as well.

Curiously, even though vmblock fails to compile, the player will start. And I can run my VM. But once I terminate the VM and the player, subsequent attempts fail. The player notices that vmblock is missing and attempts to recompile everything.. This fails more spectacularly, since the other four modules already exist in /lib/modules/kernel-version and are in memory. I have to delete those modules from disk and then reboot -- even rmmod fails, claiming the modules are owned by "[permanent]" (eh?).

I wonder...what would happen if I copy the compiled vmblock from the 3.2 kernel directory into the one for 3.4? Hm, something to test tonight...

[dibl]

So far it is behaving on 11.10. As for vmware, that is another reason I got rid of 3.3.
Not even your patch worked correctly on that dible.

I think something must have been hinky with either your VMware installation or your process to patch it. I have not verified a case where that procedure fails, if you follow it precisely (to pun a little).

Having a beer in your name, bythw

Cheers to you Fintan -- I raise my vodka martini in salute! I got a glorious photo of the Thunersee when I was there, and it now serves as a very fine KDE desktop background.

[SteveRiley]

Copying the vmblock from the 3.2 module directory didn't work, as I suspected.

Stefano Angeleri already has a fix in his Weltall's blog. I tried the script, but it threw some errors -- probably because a few modules were loaded and also because I didn't start with pristine sources. So I applied the fix manually, which is nothing more than changing one function call. After this, vmblock compiled and the Player runs fine. No apparent problems with the differences in gcc versions.

I didn't want to start from clean sources because I still need the 3.2 patches as well, just in case I want to revert to an upgraded 3.2 kernel that would force yet another recompile. Presumably, the fix for vmblock will backport. We'll see...

[dibl]

Copying the vmblock from the 3.2 module directory didn't work, as I suspected.

Stefano Angeleri already has a fix in his Weltall's blog.

Great news -- thanks Steve!

[SteveRiley]

RC2 posted. Patched VMware modules compiled without error.

[Fintan]

I have been running 3.4 RC2 for a while now, my fan ist almost always on and it doesn't seem to like my sandy bridge on my laptop.

Any suggestions?

[SteveRiley]

Hm. What kind of laptop? I'm using a ThinkPad X1 for my Precise build, and have configured thinkfan, so my fan is reasonably well-controlled. Did you notice any difference in fan behavior with RC1 vs. RC2?

[GreyGeek]

mmm... I thought I was using the latest kernel with 3.2.0-22

[Snowhog]

3.4 is the mainline kernel -- the one in current development/testing.