# My experiences with 2.5.x

## Grammarian

Well, I've tried taking the plunge and installed Linux 2.5 several times, each time resulting in one error or another which would force me back to 2.4.  I think I finally have it the way I want it now, however.  I've seen in various threads on this forum about tips and things to make 2.5 work, but I've decided to codify my experiences into this one thread.

1. Module support.  You need to emerge the latest modutils and module-init-tools.  Or you could be like me and actually dig around kernel.org because you didn't know that it was already in Portage.  Whatever works for you, but the Gentoo e-build will automatically mask a lot of the redundant errors.  :Wink: 

The new 2.5 modutils are different from 2.4, as most of the module functionality seems to have been moved into the kernel.  You should probably expect to see some error messages on boot-up, because the modules.conf file is different (and now called modprobe.conf, I believe).  What I did this latest time was to simply not use any modules (I compiled everything into the kernel), but I'm pretty sure the modules would have worked had I used them.

2. Sound.  ALSA is now included into the kernel.  You may want to compile it as a module if you already use ALSA for 2.4 just to keep your startup scripts from complaining.  Also, it is a better idea to use modules if you have more than one sound card (including virtual ones, like the MIDI card).  I haven't found a way yet to prevent the Virtual MIDI card from loading before my actual sound card, which throws off many apps I use.  In addition, check your /dev/sound permissions.  You may want to create a startup script to reset them to correct values because of...

3. Devfs - This has changed, and been drastically reduced.  I can't seem to get it to remember permissions on devices, or symlinks (I have to change /dev/cdroms/* and the permissions on /dev/sound every time I boot).  Also, for those who use X Windows, you need to mount the /dev/pts file system manually now, or include it in /etc/fstab.  You can either include it in /etc/fstab, or add an entry in /etc/conf.d/local.start (which is what I did).  The entry was

```
mount -t devpts devpts /dev/pts
```

You may have other problems, but they're usually due to permissions.  It's probably not hard to figure out how to make it persistent, but I haven't had the time.   :Sad:  One more thing, some devices seems to have different names.  For example, the mouse seems to be at /dev/input/mice now, which is a simulated PS/2 IntelliMouse from what I understand.  CDs are no longer /dev/cdroms/cdrom0, for example, now they're /dev/cdroms/cdrom0/cd, unless you change that symlink.

4. CD Burning - It's a good thing that cdrecord now longer requires SCSI support, because I hear that the ide-scsi emulation module doesn't work in 2.5 anymore.  I'll update this post once I burn a CD sans ide-scsi.

5. Console framebuffer - It seems to work now, at least for Radeon, but it didn't seem to on earlier 2.5 revisions.  It also seems much quicker for Radeon.   :Smile: 

6. PCMCIA - Never could get it to work on the laptop, at least to the point where I could browse the Internet.   :Crying or Very sad: 

7. DRI for XFree86 - There are (old) modules included in the kernel tree for XFree 4.1.  Of course, they're obsolete by now, but that's what you'll have to make do with if you need DRI, because the CVS DRI doesn't support 2.5 yet.

If I remember anything else I'll be sure to update the post.  Oh, and don't mind the shameless plug for the Gentoo Linux Users Everywhere SETI@Home group!   :Wink: [/url]

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## David_Escott

Few additional comments:

Mouse wheels on some mice (Logitech Mouseman+) don't seem to work :( makes playing quake a little less fun.

As to the cd burning I haven't tried the ide on 2.5.67 but I have used scanbus and noticed that the drives were reported incorrectly. 'ADAPTEC ' 'ACB-5500        ' 'FAKE' NON CCS Disk so I am doubtful that this will work.Last edited by David_Escott on Fri May 02, 2003 12:12 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## taskara

I have an nforce2 mainboard.

thought I'd try 2.5.68

compile file, but no matter what I do, on boot it seems to crash on loading OHCI driver for the usb, OR if firewire is installed, it crashes on that.

that sort of cut me down real quick  :Sad: 

I hear good things about 2.5 but I haven't had much luck as of yet.

thanks for the pointers tho Grammarian.

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## eNTi

latest version i tried was 2.5.66 and i had major problems with i/o. couldn't copy any larger file (100+MB) from my cdrom drive to hard disc, without getting a corrupt file, or a file read error.

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## taskara

saw your post under gaming-sources too.

so you would stick with vanilla 2.4.20 ?

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## eNTi

you might have gotten me wrong in the 2.4.20-gaming post, you are relating to.

i checked the kernel mailing lists back then and there's so many bugs, that i'm glad if 2.6 will ever come out. 2.4.20-gaming seem to be pretty the best thing you can do right now, imho.

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## floam

2.5.x isnt that bad, ive used it since 2.5.55, and to be honest, ive only found *1* bug that i couldnt work fix myself for find a fix for, and then it was fixed a week later in the next version.

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## taskara

 *eNTi wrote:*   

> 2.4.20-gaming seem to be pretty the best thing you can do right now, imho.

 

yeah.. although I like the ck sources, which gaming is built upon anyway.

I hear ext3 access if MUCH faster on 2.5 kernels, but I use reiserfs anyhow  :Wink: 

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## petu

 *eNTi wrote:*   

> 2.4.20-gaming seem to be pretty the best thing you can do right now, imho.

 

Why? I use 2.4.20-gentoo-r2 and it includes low latency patch and supermount patch too. Is there some more cool patches in gaming sources that aren't to be found in gentoo sources? I know gentoo sources doesn't include bootsplash but it's easily patched manually.

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## MathFreak

 *David_Escott wrote:*   

> Few additional comments:
> 
> Mouse wheels on some mice no longer work  makes playing quake a little less fun.
> 
> 

 

What type of mouse are you using?  My Logitch Trackball with wheelmouse works like a charm (of course, I have other issues, but not with the wheelmouse).

 *David_Escott wrote:*   

> 
> 
> As to the cd burning I haven't tried the ide on 2.5.67 but I have used scanbus and noticed that the drives were reported incorrectly. 'ADAPTEC ' 'ACB-5500        ' 'FAKE' NON CCS Disk so I am doubtful that this will work.

 

Yeah, I got that, too.  Also, 

```
cdrecord dev=ATAP:/dev/hdc -checkdrive
```

 didn't work.  I had no problems, however, which SCSI emulation.

As a side note, I couldn't get net-rhythmbox to compile on my 2.5 system.  It gave all sorts of strange errors (I can't think of them off of the top of my head) from various kernel headers.  If I just linked my 2.4 sources to /usr/src/linux, it compiled just fine.

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## eNTi

@petu:

to be honest, i'm not sure what are the patches for and what they do exactly. i can only tell you from my experiences. though i'm a passionate gamer, you can believe me, i've tried a lot and i'm recompiling my kernenl every 2nd day or so, to test another thing.

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## Grammarian

Well, I've moved out of my college dorm, so my Linux box is now a glorified Seti number cruncher, although I can log into just fine via SSH.  Anyways, I tried using the Linux 2.5 DRI modules, but they didn't seem to work, because radeon.ko couldn't allocate something for AGP, although AGPGART was loaded.   :Crying or Very sad: 

Apache2, however, works very nicely so far.  Still haven't had time to play with persistent permissions.   :Sad: 

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## rb338

I have an Asus A7V8X board and I thought I'd give 2.5 a try...

First one I tried was 2.5.67, which wasn't very bad.. I had random crashes though (screen freezes). 2.5.68: same story.

But now, 2.5.69 seems to be rock-solid. I havent rebooted once since it has been released (not that it's that long, but you get my point  :Wink: ).

Anyway, 2.5 is _much_ faster than 2.4 on my machine. X responsiveness seems improved, as well as hdparm benchmark scores.

Can't wait till 2.6.0 is here  :Smile: 

Btw, the /etc/modules.autoload file can be separated, I have different files for 2.4 and 2.5:

/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.4

/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.5

Works like a charm  :Smile: 

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## taskara

 *rb338 wrote:*   

> Can't wait till 2.6.0 is here 

 

LOL

I remember when I couldn't wait til 2.4 was here!! HAHAHA ohhh.. I'm getting old..   :Cool: 

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## bushwakko

I just compiled 2.5.69 now, and suddenly my mouse wouldn't work unless I compiled usb as a module and the wheels doesn't work.

also my ALSA is acting up, the script is whining.though it seems more stable than 67. Never got 68 to work properly.

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## Reformist

Grammarian, you rock! I've been trying to run 2.5.9 for the ACPI support, and to fix another 100% process usage bug, but I've had a few show stoppers, like not being able to get my pcmcia card detected (it seems I'm always missing module ds), and also, I couldn't open a terminal window in X and have it give me a prompt. Mounting /dev/pts as you specified

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> mount -t devpts devpts /dev/pts
> 
> 

 

fixed that problem! Now, if I can only get my pcmcia card working...

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## Craigo

To add along with your reports on 2.5.xx. I was using the mm sources a while ago and wow. The response of the system was so stable and things were getting done. However, the big downside was IDE-SCSI. I do know from numerous reports that you don't need IDE-SCSI anymore in 2.5 if you want to burn cd. Fair enough but it didn't pick up my cdrw at all. However, transferring files from cd to hdd was no problem.

However, after experimenting with IDE-SCSI in 2.5 was well screwy. Burning cds and then finding it dies after 100mb got burnt onto cdr was annoying. Transferring files over broke so hard that I had to reboot.

I do recall that Alan Cox is going to fix IDE-SCSI some point in the future but cannot seem to find the requested article on the kernel mailing list!

-/Craigo/-

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## koala

I'm trying to get 2.5.69 to run, but I'm stuck trying to get my root working (which uses LVM).

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## Thetargos

I found quite annoying the fact that in 2.5.70 you would need Qt to make xconfig and for some bizzare reason was not recognizing my installed GTK+2 from Gnome2, so trying to make gconfig wasn't abailable either; but what I found to be more annoying was the fact that it would not even recognize my ncurses libaries! (well actually  would, but could not get it to open the menu complaining about something to do with lxdialog) so I ended up doing a make oldconfig and answering to the new questions. In the end the compiled kernel would not boot complaining about something to do with drivers/char/esd.o. So thus far, I stick to gaming-sources which btw include good power managment for Laptops, though you still need userland tools to get powersaving working.

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## Craigo

Just run 'make menuconfig'.. I prefer that than qt or any gui. Maybe I'm just old school  :Wink: 

-/Craigo/-

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