To: Linux-Activists@BLOOM-PICAYUNE.MIT.EDU
From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
Subject: Second 0.95a alpha-patch, part 1/2
Date: 4 Apr 92 14:42:10 GMT

This is the promised patch to 0.95a, which hopefully corrects some of
the problems encountered. This is /not/ an offical new release: it's
just a set of patches to get the same kernel I am currently running.

Bugfixes:

- extended partitions should finally work correctly (this release also
contains code for the hd-ioctl call, needed for fdisk). Code mostly
by hedrick.

- I corrected my original ptrace-fix (writing a long word to another
process' data space could fail with my original patches)

- 387-emulation bug with the instructions "fcom[p] %st(x)" which
resulted in bad results on non-387 machines with newer versions of
gcc. The emulation is still ugly, but it seems to work.

- the cooked mode deletion/linekill bugs should be fixed.

- various error-returns were wrong: I correted some of them (thanks to
bruce evans who pointed them out). The bad error-values resulted in
incorrect or spurious error-messages from 'rm' etc.

- various minor fixes (including some in the hd-driver: this might help
persons with unexpected-interrupt and/or timeout errors)

Additionally this version contains VFS-code from entropy, and a
readdir() system call needed for the VFS. The latter was inspired by
patches sent by Remy Card, who did it with a getdirents sys-call. My
version is slightly simpler, but is probably slower. Things might yet
change.

The installation has also changed slightly: the keyboard type and
math-emulation are specified in the main Makefile. That one also
contains the -fcombine-regs flag needed for 1.40. The other makefiles
should no longer need editing.

I've also incorporated the ps095 kernel patches: to get the actual
user-level stuff you still have to get the ps-distribution. Printer
ports /still/ aren't in there, but this time I positively /promise/ to
put it in next week. Really.

People who have been patching their kernel might have problems getting
this patch to work: it was made against a clean 0.95a kernel. I'll
consider a patched-up kernel version 0.95c - and I'd appreciate if
future patches to me would be sent against this version. I'll still
accept older patches, or course.

Linus