Mandatory to upgrade to 7.0 for linux kernel 2.6.16?

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Sven Stauss <sven.stauss at gmx.ch> (from Thu, 29 Mar 2007  
10:14:33 +0900):

> Dear all
>
> I have a question concerning linux compatibility, in particular the
> kernel version. In order to upgrade the linux kernel to 2.6.16, is it
> absolutely required  to change the system to FreeBSD-CURRENT as
> mentioned in some messages posted here or is it in principle also
> possible to keep the system in a version which is not bleeding edge
> (e.g. FreeBSD -STABLE or -RELEASE) and only update the linux port to
> current? Has anybody tried this?

The changes in the FreeBSD kernel which allow to emulate (parts of)  
linux 2.6.16 are only in -current, not in 6.x or -stable. And even on  
-current not every system call from 2.6.16 is available. It is still  
in development and there are still (known and unknown) bugs.

My intend is to backport some bugfixes for 2.4.2 in -stable, but I  
don't have a timeframe for this. It's somewhere on my TODO list, and  
will do it when I get time to do it. I don't expect to do this in the  
near future. There's absolutely no intend to backport the 2.6.16 stuff  
to -stable so far (it's not even fully usable in -current).

The linuxulator on amd64 is not on the same level as the i386 version  
yet. If you want to use it on amd64 you either have to run with custom  
patches (you can get them from wiki.freebsd.org/linux-kernel) or you  
have to wait a little bit until TLS and futexes are merged. This is  
scheduled to be committet ASAP.

Using 2.6.16 on -current may or may not work. If you give it a try  
make sure you test it carefully before you make productive use of it.

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
If everything on the road of life seems to
be coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

http://www.Leidinger.net    Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7
http://www.FreeBSD.org       netchild @ FreeBSD.org  : PGP ID = 72077137