# 2.6.8-rc2-nitro4 "The Cadillac of all kernels"

## seppe

Your new nitro engine is here!  :Wink: 

For those who don't know what this is. Well, nitro-sources is a fairly new kernel patchset which uses the latest CK patches (ck-sources in portage uses older CK patches) + other popular patches like lirc, win4lin, reiser4, supermount, vesafb-tng, bootsplash, ... to give you the most complete and fastest GNU/Linux desktop experience.

Please note that some things could be broken in nitro-sources due the fact that I always try to add the latest bleeding edge patches out there. 

Applied patches:

```

2.6.8-rc2-win4lin.patch.bz2 

from_2.6.8-rc2_to_staircase7.D

schedrange.diff 

schedbatch2.4.diff

schediso2.4.diff

autotune_swappiness01.diff

autotune_inactivation01.diff

supermount-ng204.diff.bz2

defaultcfq.diff

config_hz.diff

patch-i386-irq_enable_spinlocks2

patch-ool-spinlocks

9000_SuSE-117-writeback-lat.patch

BadRAM-2.6.8-rc2.patch.bz2

lufs-0.9.7-2.6.8-rc2.patch.bz2

akpm_latency_rollup.patch

preempt-timing-2.6.8-rc2

config-nr-tty-devices.patch.bz2

write-barriers.patch 

vesafb-tng-0.9-rc3-r3-2.6.8-rc1.patch.bz2

bootsplash-3.1.4-sp3-2.6.8-rc2.patch

lirc-2.6.5-20040404

menuconfig-NAME-v1.0.patch

squashfs2.0-patch

gcloop-2.6-20040527.patch

2.6.8-rc2-ck6-reiser4.diff.bz2

kernel-events-rml-2.6.8-rc2-6.patch

```

Ebuild at http://www.sepi.be/nitro/2.6.8-rc2-nitro4/nitro-sources-2.6.8_rc2-r4.ebuild

What's new?

```

# start of new CK patches

from_2.6.8-rc2_to_staircase7.D 

schedrange.diff

schedbatch2.4.diff

schediso2.4.diff 

# end of new CK patches

vesafb-tng-0.9-rc3-r3-2.6.8-rc1.patch.bz2

```

So most of the new patches in this release are from Con Kolivas. 

And I just see that he released even more new patches! Well, I guess that's for the next nitro release then  :Smile: 

Please note that bootsplash could be broken, I don't use it myself .. but I will in the future so I can test this kernel better. Vesafb-tng on the otherhand works perfectly, at least at my machine. 

Some AMD64 users had some problems with vesafb-tng in the previous nitro release .. I hope this new patch has fixed those problems

Feel free to suggest new patches or other advice. Any help is welcome  :Wink: 

swsusp will probably/hopefully in the next release

Have fun! A new nitro release (nitro5) will be up soon, because CK has updated even more patches today.  :Rolling Eyes: 

----------

## scaba

 *seppe wrote:*   

> Please note that some things could be broken in nitro-sources due the fact that I always try to add the latest bleeding edge patches out there.
> 
> Have fun! A new nitro release (nitro5) will be up soon, because CK has updated even more patches today. 

 

that's what i like. thanks for this patchset. compiling now   :Very Happy: 

----------

## juppe22

Kernel works nice, but I can't get nvidia drivers working...

I get only "no screens found" message and xorg wont start...I search old messages and many people have same problem...I try solve it but with no success...

nvidia-kernel-1.0.6106-r1

nvidia-glx-1.0.6106-r3

any ideas to get nvidia working...??

----------

## scaba

 *juppe22 wrote:*   

> Kernel works nice, but I can't get nvidia drivers working...
> 
> I get only "no screens found" message and xorg wont start...I search old messages and many people have same problem...I try solve it but with no success...
> 
> nvidia-kernel-1.0.6106-r1
> ...

 

i've got the some problems with the latest love-/nitro-sources.

@seppe: works like a charm here (apart from nvidia). great work!

----------

## seppe

I got something similar yesterday, but I don't think it's due to your kernel because I rebooted a few times with older and more stable kernels.

I know I upgraded xorg-x11 and added this new nitro-sources to my bootloader. After that, I rebooted my system with this new nitro-sources release .. and gdm was loaded, my screen went really dark and I couldn't read anything anymore. So I booted with the Gentoo livecd and changed the 'nvidia' driver to 'nv' and rebooted .. now I could see something again  :Smile: 

So I did an 'emerge -puDv world' and I saw that 'opengl-update' needed an upgrade .. and I knew that I had upgraded xorg-x11 as well that day before I rebooted, so I thought xorg-x11 maybe needed that new opengl-update, and indeed ..

I did 

```
emerge opengl-update
```

```
opengl-update nvidia
```

and nvidia worked again (of course, you need to do 'emerge nvidia-kernel' as well when you get a new kernel, like nitro-sources or love-sources)

Try that, It worked for me  :Smile: 

Good luck!

----------

## WaVeX

I remember hearing about niceness or something and emerging it. Do I need to emerge niceness with this kernel? I've been running nitro without niceness with no problems. Will I recieve any benefit by Doing so?

----------

## seppe

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> Aims:
> 
>  - Making renicing processes actually matter for CPU distribution
> ...

 

More details at http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/2744

I use nice only when I need it.

----------

## cron0

Congrats on this new kernel patchset! 

It seems to be the most suitable for my system and what I need to do with it!

The only thing I'm trying to fix is the ati-drivers fglrx driver...

When I emerge it, I get a dozen of "invalid pointer type" and the driver won't compile...

Any ideas?

Also, I was wondering what was the best value to set as for the kernel Internal Timer Freq?

Thanks alot and keep up the good work!

----------

## seppe

Hey, nice to hear that it suits your needs.

I don't know about the ati driver, I have a nVidia myself .. but in a few weeks I have a laptop with an ATI card, so then I can test both drivers for you. I know there is a ati patch, but I don't know precisely what it does .. but I'll check it out for you.

About the Internal Timer Freq:

CPU > 1Ghz: set it to '1000'

CPU < 1Ghz: set it to '500'

CPU < 500Mhz: set it too '200'

Here's a quote from Con Kolivas himself:

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> config_hz?
> 
> Allows you to set the timer interrupt frequency. For most users I recommend leaving the default of 1000. For compute nodes / servers I would recommend 100 (lower overhead, less cache trashing). For desktop cpus 500-1000Mhz I'd recommend 500. For less than 500Mhz cpus I'd recommend 200.
> ...

 

More info at http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/

Have fun

----------

## hotplainrice

 *Quote:*   

> Feel free to suggest new patches or other advice. Any help is welcome
> 
> swsusp will probably/hopefully in the next release

 

seppe, you rock !  :Very Happy: 

----------

## scaba

 *WaVeX wrote:*   

> I remember hearing about niceness or something and emerging it. Do I need to emerge niceness with this kernel? I've been running nitro without niceness with no problems. Will I recieve any benefit by Doing so?

 

just in case you're talking about renicing X, you should check out these xorg instructions by steel300.

----------

## GaryMercer

Don't know what you've done with this patch set but it's nice and snappy.  KDE seemed to load in no time at all.

Thanks !

----------

## JinxterX

Noob question: how do I install the ebuild so I can do a emerge?

----------

## SysOP XXL

 *JinxterX wrote:*   

> Noob question: how do I install the ebuild so I can do a emerge?

 

Check this thread's first post out: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?=201498&start=0

BTW nitro2 was hot, and nitro4 has just finished compiling  Can't wait to try it out!  :Cool: 

----------

## scaba

 *JinxterX wrote:*   

> Noob question: how do I install the ebuild so I can do a emerge?

 

check out seppe's howto

----------

## scoobydu

Still can't get vesafb-tng to work on amd64 with the patch included, so perhaps I'll wait for nitro5 or reverse the troublesome patch.

----------

## JinxterX

 *scaba wrote:*   

>  *JinxterX wrote:*   Noob question: how do I install the ebuild so I can do a emerge? 
> 
> check out seppe's howto

 

Thankyou.

----------

## IainCE

I don't think it works with my network card.  I get a 'netmount' error or something at boot.  VIA Rhine

----------

## Robin79

i give this a try even that i am a big love fan  :Razz:  It dosent hurt to try!!

----------

## neonik

Giving it a shot. Although linux-2.6.7-ck5 seemed to be quite slow on my machine, I hope the new patches from Con solve some of the issues causing the slowdown. However, it might have been caused by PREEMPT... Let's see... Will post back what it looks like on my machine.

Thanks for the effort.

By the way, Robin79,  isn't 2.6.8-rc2-love4 in your signature supposed to be nitro4?

----------

## neonik

So far I see no performance difference compared to gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.7-r11. The only issue so far is not working bootsplash, rest looks fine.

----------

## JinxterX

No idea why, but with nitro4 my FAT32 drives won't mount now, boot with 2.6.7-r11 and there's no problem, hmm

----------

## neonik

Same .config and everything else?

----------

## luqas

 *JinxterX wrote:*   

> No idea why, but with nitro4 my FAT32 drives won't mount now, boot with 2.6.7-r11 and there's no problem, hmm

 

Check in your kernel config for:

File Systems -> DOS/FAT/NT Filesystems -> MSDOS fs support and FAT (Windows-95) fs support.

----------

## GentooBox

 *JinxterX wrote:*   

> No idea why, but with nitro4 my FAT32 drives won't mount now, boot with 2.6.7-r11 and there's no problem, hmm

 

I have the same problem.

My FAT32 windows partition wont boot.

----------

## juppe22

 *seppe wrote:*   

> I got something similar yesterday, but I don't think it's due to your kernel because I rebooted a few times with older and more stable kernels.
> 
> I know I upgraded xorg-x11 and added this new nitro-sources to my bootloader. After that, I rebooted my system with this new nitro-sources release .. and gdm was loaded, my screen went really dark and I couldn't read anything anymore. So I booted with the Gentoo livecd and changed the 'nvidia' driver to 'nv' and rebooted .. now I could see something again 
> 
> So I did an 'emerge -puDv world' and I saw that 'opengl-update' needed an upgrade .. and I knew that I had upgraded xorg-x11 as well that day before I rebooted, so I thought xorg-x11 maybe needed that new opengl-update, and indeed ..
> ...

 

This didn't help me...any other ideas...??

Scaba:

Do you get nvidia drivers working...??

----------

## neonik

Odd, it works here. Both NVIDIA and X.org.

----------

## gmichels

Please add the ACPI DSDT override patch, it's included in love-sources as acpi-dsdt-initrd-patch-v0.4-2.6.8-rc2-bk2.diff (latest).

----------

## JinxterX

 *Dryre wrote:*   

>  *JinxterX wrote:*   No idea why, but with nitro4 my FAT32 drives won't mount now, boot with 2.6.7-r11 and there's no problem, hmm 
> 
> Check in your kernel config for:
> 
> File Systems -> DOS/FAT/NT Filesystems -> MSDOS fs support and FAT (Windows-95) fs support.

 

Yep, both enabled, even when compiled into kernel or as modules (and autoload.d) makes no difference, weird because everything else works.

----------

## JefPober

No problems with X/Nvidia here

----------

## Pink

nice one seppe   :Very Happy: 

Works prefectly here - ati up and running, fat partitions mounting fine.

Runs very smooth.

----------

## biN_basH

Hi there,

do you know if this kernel is compatible with Cedega? I remembered that 2.6.8 Kernels are not compatible with Cedega. Have you any experiences?

----------

## neonik

WineX is a binary package, so there's no build dependency. And it doesn't matter what kernel you're running, provided the architecture and other CFLAGS the package has been compiled with are right. I myself tried it out and it worked.

----------

## JinxterX

Nitro4 seems to have a negative impact on my Intel536ep modem, i.e. it works for a fews mins then dies totally (doesn't happen in dev-sources-2.6.7-r11), still can't solve the FAT32 mounting problem either

----------

## teutzz

i´ve also read that many had problems with cedega and kernel 2.6.7 (me included)

----------

## neonik

Do you mean kernel as in complete sources or kernel headers as in include headers?

What I could think of is something like kernel-own graphical drivers... Provided stack size is the same, there shouldn't actually be any difficulties. Unless I know too little.

----------

## scaba

 *juppe22 wrote:*   

> Scaba: Do you get nvidia drivers working...??

 

not properly. strange things happen. pushing the "system" button in gdm kills X and such. but i don't really need 2d/3d hardware acceleration, so i just leave nvidia-drivers off for now.

----------

## drescherjm

Any idea if lirc + ivtv + i2c is fixed now? I am stuck at 2.6.4 because it has been broken since then. Specifically my hauppage remote that uses an i2c interface does not work with kernels > 2.6.4 without a kludge.

----------

## drescherjm

Quick answer. Ivtv does not compile without a patch and lirc_i2c is broken.

----------

## Raku

Nitro works great, but I've got problems with emerging cdemu:

```

demon root # emerge cdemu

Calculating dependencies ...done!

>>> emerge (1 of 1) app-cdr/cdemu-0.6_beta to /

>>> md5 src_uri ;-) cdemu-0.6_beta.tar.bz2

>>> Unpacking source...

>>> Unpacking cdemu-0.6_beta.tar.bz2 to /var/tmp/portage/cdemu-0.6_beta/work

>>> Source unpacked.

make -C /usr/src/linux SUBDIRS=/var/tmp/portage/cdemu-0.6_beta/work/cdemu-0.6_beta modules

make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.8-rc2-nitro4'

make[1]: warning: jobserver unavailable: using -j1.  Add `+' to parent make rule.

  CC [M]  /var/tmp/portage/cdemu-0.6_beta/work/cdemu-0.6_beta/cdemu.o

/var/tmp/portage/cdemu-0.6_beta/work/cdemu-0.6_beta/cdemu.c: In function `cdemu_read_actor':

/var/tmp/portage/cdemu-0.6_beta/work/cdemu-0.6_beta/cdemu.c:160: error: structure has no member named `buf'

/var/tmp/portage/cdemu-0.6_beta/work/cdemu-0.6_beta/cdemu.c:160: error: structure has no member named `buf'

/var/tmp/portage/cdemu-0.6_beta/work/cdemu-0.6_beta/cdemu.c:165: error: structure has no member named `buf'

/var/tmp/portage/cdemu-0.6_beta/work/cdemu-0.6_beta/cdemu.c: In function `cdemu_transfer':

/var/tmp/portage/cdemu-0.6_beta/work/cdemu-0.6_beta/cdemu.c:212: error: structure has no member named `buf'

make[2]: *** [/var/tmp/portage/cdemu-0.6_beta/work/cdemu-0.6_beta/cdemu.o] B??d 1

make[1]: *** [_module_/var/tmp/portage/cdemu-0.6_beta/work/cdemu-0.6_beta] B³±d 2

make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.8-rc2-nitro4'

make: *** [all] B³±d 2

!!! ERROR: app-cdr/cdemu-0.6_beta failed.

!!! Function src_compile, Line 23, Exitcode 2

!!! (no error message)

demon root #

```

on xx-sources, which I've been using before it works.

----------

## Robin79

Works great  :Razz:  no i use this one and love they are both great  :Razz:  Thanx!!! Keep Up The Good Work!!

Cheers from Sweden

----------

## HecHacker1

Thanx for the kernel! It works great on my Nforce2 system. But I had to disable 4k stacks or else I would get Kernel Panics and Ooops, and X would freeze. But everything is working great now.

----------

## reaz82

so far i've been remotely working on my gentoo desktop.. got everything running remotely.. however, i know the nvidia drivers are giving me problems (from the error messages when i run startx)..

----------

## CountZero17

does this kernel really increase performance? and if it does, does it increase it noticably? 

i feel like installing this kernel, it sounds really nice, but i usually end up going through hell installing kernels, so would it be worth it?

----------

## AhronZombi

 *GentooBox wrote:*   

>  *JinxterX wrote:*   No idea why, but with nitro4 my FAT32 drives won't mount now, boot with 2.6.7-r11 and there's no problem, hmm 
> 
> I have the same problem.
> 
> My FAT32 windows partition wont boot.

 thats not the same problem

----------

## VisualPhoenix

 *JinxterX wrote:*   

> Nitro4 seems to have a negative impact on my Intel536ep modem, i.e. it works for a fews mins then dies totally (doesn't happen in dev-sources-2.6.7-r11), still can't solve the FAT32 mounting problem either

 

Yeah man, the FAT32 mounting problem is even in the stock 2.6.8-rc2 kernel. I don't think its Nitro4 related. I've been trying to figure out how to fix this for a day or two now but I can't seem to find any info on it other than people saying that recent versions of 2.6 have a problem detecting the # of cyl the hdd has and a fix is to repartition, reformat, etc... Nastiness. I don't think this is the answer -- duh -- cause they mount fine on earlier kernels.

If you figure something out PLEASE let me know.

----------

## JinxterX

Well there's no way I'm repartitioning/formatting my FAT32 drives...lol.

----------

## icefox13

Just booted the nitro4...

performance is AWESOME compared to my own patched 2.6.5-kernel!

But.. bootsplash isn't working atm (no problem - i don't boot too often) and i miss swsusp2  :Sad:  . Do you think swsusp2 can be patched on nitro-kernels?

Despite that, nice kernel!  :Wink: 

----------

## ScaredFreakyGuy

seppe, these sources ROCK!  I've used the love-sources, ck-sources and the gentoo-dev-sources, but the nitro-sources are giving the best performance BY FAR with my desktop apps.  I'd say for every 3 seconds it takes to launch an app, one second or more has been shaved off!!  Also, memory management ... i use the gimp2 frequently with very large files, yet this is the first time i've ever seen my memory not get totally hogged!

It seems to be siginificantly more stable than the love-sources, as I had to reboot occasionally with those.  I'm a very happy gentooer right now! THanks again and keep up the good work!

- ScaredFreakyGuy

----------

