1Intro 2===== 3 4This document is designed to provide a list of the minimum levels of 5software necessary to run the 3.0 kernels. 6 7This document is originally based on my "Changes" file for 2.0.x kernels 8and therefore owes credit to the same people as that file (Jared Mauch, 9Axel Boldt, Alessandro Sigala, and countless other users all over the 10'net). 11 12Current Minimal Requirements 13============================ 14 15Upgrade to at *least* these software revisions before thinking you've 16encountered a bug! If you're unsure what version you're currently 17running, the suggested command should tell you. 18 19Again, keep in mind that this list assumes you are already functionally 20running a Linux kernel. Also, not all tools are necessary on all 21systems; obviously, if you don't have any ISDN hardware, for example, 22you probably needn't concern yourself with isdn4k-utils. 23 24o Gnu C 3.2 # gcc --version 25o Gnu make 3.80 # make --version 26o binutils 2.12 # ld -v 27o util-linux 2.10o # fdformat --version 28o module-init-tools 0.9.10 # depmod -V 29o e2fsprogs 1.41.4 # e2fsck -V 30o jfsutils 1.1.3 # fsck.jfs -V 31o reiserfsprogs 3.6.3 # reiserfsck -V 32o xfsprogs 2.6.0 # xfs_db -V 33o squashfs-tools 4.0 # mksquashfs -version 34o btrfs-progs 0.18 # btrfsck 35o pcmciautils 004 # pccardctl -V 36o quota-tools 3.09 # quota -V 37o PPP 2.4.0 # pppd --version 38o isdn4k-utils 3.1pre1 # isdnctrl 2>&1|grep version 39o nfs-utils 1.0.5 # showmount --version 40o procps 3.2.0 # ps --version 41o oprofile 0.9 # oprofiled --version 42o udev 081 # udevd --version 43o grub 0.93 # grub --version || grub-install --version 44o mcelog 0.6 # mcelog --version 45o iptables 1.4.2 # iptables -V 46 47 48Kernel compilation 49================== 50 51GCC 52--- 53 54The gcc version requirements may vary depending on the type of CPU in your 55computer. 56 57Make 58---- 59 60You will need Gnu make 3.80 or later to build the kernel. 61 62Binutils 63-------- 64 65Linux on IA-32 has recently switched from using as86 to using gas for 66assembling the 16-bit boot code, removing the need for as86 to compile 67your kernel. This change does, however, mean that you need a recent 68release of binutils. 69 70Perl 71---- 72 73You will need perl 5 and the following modules: Getopt::Long, Getopt::Std, 74File::Basename, and File::Find to build the kernel. 75 76 77System utilities 78================ 79 80Architectural changes 81--------------------- 82 83DevFS has been obsoleted in favour of udev 84(http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/) 85 8632-bit UID support is now in place. Have fun! 87 88Linux documentation for functions is transitioning to inline 89documentation via specially-formatted comments near their 90definitions in the source. These comments can be combined with the 91SGML templates in the Documentation/DocBook directory to make DocBook 92files, which can then be converted by DocBook stylesheets to PostScript, 93HTML, PDF files, and several other formats. In order to convert from 94DocBook format to a format of your choice, you'll need to install Jade as 95well as the desired DocBook stylesheets. 96 97Util-linux 98---------- 99 100New versions of util-linux provide *fdisk support for larger disks, 101support new options to mount, recognize more supported partition 102types, have a fdformat which works with 2.4 kernels, and similar goodies. 103You'll probably want to upgrade. 104 105Ksymoops 106-------- 107 108If the unthinkable happens and your kernel oopses, you may need the 109ksymoops tool to decode it, but in most cases you don't. 110It is generally preferred to build the kernel with CONFIG_KALLSYMS so 111that it produces readable dumps that can be used as-is (this also 112produces better output than ksymoops). If for some reason your kernel 113is not build with CONFIG_KALLSYMS and you have no way to rebuild and 114reproduce the Oops with that option, then you can still decode that Oops 115with ksymoops. 116 117Module-Init-Tools 118----------------- 119 120A new module loader is now in the kernel that requires module-init-tools 121to use. It is backward compatible with the 2.4.x series kernels. 122 123Mkinitrd 124-------- 125 126These changes to the /lib/modules file tree layout also require that 127mkinitrd be upgraded. 128 129E2fsprogs 130--------- 131 132The latest version of e2fsprogs fixes several bugs in fsck and 133debugfs. Obviously, it's a good idea to upgrade. 134 135JFSutils 136-------- 137 138The jfsutils package contains the utilities for the file system. 139The following utilities are available: 140o fsck.jfs - initiate replay of the transaction log, and check 141 and repair a JFS formatted partition. 142o mkfs.jfs - create a JFS formatted partition. 143o other file system utilities are also available in this package. 144 145Reiserfsprogs 146------------- 147 148The reiserfsprogs package should be used for reiserfs-3.6.x 149(Linux kernels 2.4.x). It is a combined package and contains working 150versions of mkreiserfs, resize_reiserfs, debugreiserfs and 151reiserfsck. These utils work on both i386 and alpha platforms. 152 153Xfsprogs 154-------- 155 156The latest version of xfsprogs contains mkfs.xfs, xfs_db, and the 157xfs_repair utilities, among others, for the XFS filesystem. It is 158architecture independent and any version from 2.0.0 onward should 159work correctly with this version of the XFS kernel code (2.6.0 or 160later is recommended, due to some significant improvements). 161 162PCMCIAutils 163----------- 164 165PCMCIAutils replaces pcmcia-cs (see below). It properly sets up 166PCMCIA sockets at system startup and loads the appropriate modules 167for 16-bit PCMCIA devices if the kernel is modularized and the hotplug 168subsystem is used. 169 170Pcmcia-cs 171--------- 172 173PCMCIA (PC Card) support is now partially implemented in the main 174kernel source. The "pcmciautils" package (see above) replaces pcmcia-cs 175for newest kernels. 176 177Quota-tools 178----------- 179 180Support for 32 bit uid's and gid's is required if you want to use 181the newer version 2 quota format. Quota-tools version 3.07 and 182newer has this support. Use the recommended version or newer 183from the table above. 184 185Intel IA32 microcode 186-------------------- 187 188A driver has been added to allow updating of Intel IA32 microcode, 189accessible as a normal (misc) character device. If you are not using 190udev you may need to: 191 192mkdir /dev/cpu 193mknod /dev/cpu/microcode c 10 184 194chmod 0644 /dev/cpu/microcode 195 196as root before you can use this. You'll probably also want to 197get the user-space microcode_ctl utility to use with this. 198 199udev 200---- 201udev is a userspace application for populating /dev dynamically with 202only entries for devices actually present. udev replaces the basic 203functionality of devfs, while allowing persistent device naming for 204devices. 205 206FUSE 207---- 208 209Needs libfuse 2.4.0 or later. Absolute minimum is 2.3.0 but mount 210options 'direct_io' and 'kernel_cache' won't work. 211 212Networking 213========== 214 215General changes 216--------------- 217 218If you have advanced network configuration needs, you should probably 219consider using the network tools from ip-route2. 220 221Packet Filter / NAT 222------------------- 223The packet filtering and NAT code uses the same tools like the previous 2.4.x 224kernel series (iptables). It still includes backwards-compatibility modules 225for 2.2.x-style ipchains and 2.0.x-style ipfwadm. 226 227PPP 228--- 229 230The PPP driver has been restructured to support multilink and to 231enable it to operate over diverse media layers. If you use PPP, 232upgrade pppd to at least 2.4.0. 233 234If you are not using udev, you must have the device file /dev/ppp 235which can be made by: 236 237mknod /dev/ppp c 108 0 238 239as root. 240 241Isdn4k-utils 242------------ 243 244Due to changes in the length of the phone number field, isdn4k-utils 245needs to be recompiled or (preferably) upgraded. 246 247NFS-utils 248--------- 249 250In ancient (2.4 and earlier) kernels, the nfs server needed to know 251about any client that expected to be able to access files via NFS. This 252information would be given to the kernel by "mountd" when the client 253mounted the filesystem, or by "exportfs" at system startup. exportfs 254would take information about active clients from /var/lib/nfs/rmtab. 255 256This approach is quite fragile as it depends on rmtab being correct 257which is not always easy, particularly when trying to implement 258fail-over. Even when the system is working well, rmtab suffers from 259getting lots of old entries that never get removed. 260 261With modern kernels we have the option of having the kernel tell mountd 262when it gets a request from an unknown host, and mountd can give 263appropriate export information to the kernel. This removes the 264dependency on rmtab and means that the kernel only needs to know about 265currently active clients. 266 267To enable this new functionality, you need to: 268 269 mount -t nfsd nfsd /proc/fs/nfsd 270 271before running exportfs or mountd. It is recommended that all NFS 272services be protected from the internet-at-large by a firewall where 273that is possible. 274 275mcelog 276------ 277 278In Linux 2.6.31+ the i386 kernel needs to run the mcelog utility 279as a regular cronjob similar to the x86-64 kernel to process and log 280machine check events when CONFIG_X86_NEW_MCE is enabled. Machine check 281events are errors reported by the CPU. Processing them is strongly encouraged. 282All x86-64 kernels since 2.6.4 require the mcelog utility to 283process machine checks. 284 285Getting updated software 286======================== 287 288Kernel compilation 289****************** 290 291gcc 292--- 293o <ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/> 294 295Make 296---- 297o <ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/> 298 299Binutils 300-------- 301o <ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/devel/binutils/> 302 303System utilities 304**************** 305 306Util-linux 307---------- 308o <ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/> 309 310Ksymoops 311-------- 312o <ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/ksymoops/v2.4/> 313 314Module-Init-Tools 315----------------- 316o <ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/modules/> 317 318Mkinitrd 319-------- 320o <https://code.launchpad.net/initrd-tools/main> 321 322E2fsprogs 323--------- 324o <http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/e2fsprogs/e2fsprogs-1.29.tar.gz> 325 326JFSutils 327-------- 328o <http://jfs.sourceforge.net/> 329 330Reiserfsprogs 331------------- 332o <http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/fs/reiserfs/> 333 334Xfsprogs 335-------- 336o <ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/> 337 338Pcmciautils 339----------- 340o <ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/> 341 342Pcmcia-cs 343--------- 344o <http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/> 345 346Quota-tools 347---------- 348o <http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxquota/> 349 350DocBook Stylesheets 351------------------- 352o <http://nwalsh.com/docbook/dsssl/> 353 354XMLTO XSLT Frontend 355------------------- 356o <http://cyberelk.net/tim/xmlto/> 357 358Intel P6 microcode 359------------------ 360o <http://www.urbanmyth.org/microcode/> 361 362udev 363---- 364o <http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev.html> 365 366FUSE 367---- 368o <http://sourceforge.net/projects/fuse> 369 370mcelog 371------ 372o <ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/cpu/mce/> 373 374Networking 375********** 376 377PPP 378--- 379o <ftp://ftp.samba.org/pub/ppp/> 380 381Isdn4k-utils 382------------ 383o <ftp://ftp.isdn4linux.de/pub/isdn4linux/utils/> 384 385NFS-utils 386--------- 387o <http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=14> 388 389Iptables 390-------- 391o <http://www.iptables.org/downloads.html> 392 393Ip-route2 394--------- 395o <ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/net/ip-routing/iproute2-2.2.4-now-ss991023.tar.gz> 396 397OProfile 398-------- 399o <http://oprofile.sf.net/download/> 400 401NFS-Utils 402--------- 403o <http://nfs.sourceforge.net/> 404 405