The Linux Kernel Archives - Frequently Asked Questions (F.A.Q.)

There are a number of reasons there are multiple kernels marked as 'stable'. The stable series kernels stem from a conversation that happened in 2004, and can be found here http://kerneltrap.org/node/4100, it has evolved into a number of kernels that are currently being maintained under the 'stable' moniker.

These kernels have patches that are backported to them, mainly in the form of driver updates and security fixes. Some of these trees have been declared to have longer life cycles than others. Kernel.org, currently, considers a 'stable' tree current given the following criteria:

• There has been a TAG in the associated GIT tree within the last 6 months
• The tree originates under the /stable/ directory for the Linux Kernel

After 6 months the tree will leave the main listings for kernel.org, though it is still available by going directly to its GIT tree, or its associated releases. This leads to trees like 2.6.27.y still being considered stable and recent due to the fact that it's had a TAG within the last 6 months.

No, kernel.org is not broken your browser however doesn't like large files. Browsers have to make assumptions about what is all going on when you're browsing the web. By and large those assumptions work fine, however 2GB files (in the case of the dvd iso's they can be up to 4GB or bigger) the browser's assumptions fail.

Clients that are known to work:

• wget - Command line http & ftp downloading utility (Version 1.10 or greater)
• gftp - GUI http & ftp multithreaded file transfer client

Operating system known NOT to work: (the file systems for these Operating systems do not support files greater than 2GB)

• MS-DOS
• Windows 3.1
• Windows 95
• Windows 98
• Windows ME
• Windows 2K/XP formatted using FAT16 (FAT32 provides 4GB file limits)

Clients that are known to NOT work:

• wget - Command line http & ftp downloading utility (Version 1.9 or less)
  Bug Notes: "Large files" unsupported
  Notes:
  
  • Upgrade to version 1.10 or greater
• Internet Explorer (any version) - Reasons unknown.
  Bug Notes: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q298618
  Notes:
  
  • Even if the download starts it won't finish
  • IMPORTANT: HTTP Keep-Alives apparently solve some of this on versions of Internet Explorer prior to version 7.
  • IMPORTANT: Internet Explorer 7 can handle up to 4GB (it apparently CANNOT download greater than 4GB)
  • IMPORTANT: Internet Explorer 8 can download beyond 4GB without issue.
  • NOTE: Kernel.org has not tested Internet Explorer beyond what was tested to write this FAQ entry, and used what was available at the time, Internet Explorer 6. Kernel.org has not tested with Internet Explorer 7, or with Internet Explorer 8 and has no interest in doing so at this time. We will take the Microsoft Knowledgebase article's statements at face value unless otherwise reported to be incorrect.
• Microsoft's command line ftp client - Reasons unknown.
  Bug Notes: None found.
  
• Mozilla, Firefox, Anything based on Gecko - it assumes a 2GB limit.
  Bug notes: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=184452
  NOTE: This seems to be fixed, generaly, as of about 2007 (see bug notes) Using recent version of Firefox (3.5.3) this does indeed seem to be fixed. Dated November 18th, 2009.

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Suggestions:

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• Use wget, lftp, ncftpget, or another download agent that supports large files greater than 2GB.
• Download the CD ISOs instead of the DVD ISOs
• File a bug report with your preferred download agent and let them know you would like them to support large file downloads

Several FTP clients have broken file date handling, and display the incorrect date. Please make sure you're using a more robust client, and this problem will disappear for you.

Technically, it is because FTP doesn't have a specified way to request a machine-readable directory listing. Instead, it transmits a human-readable listing; in order to bring some sanity to this, there is a de facto (but far from universally adhered to) standard to use traditional Unix "ls -l" format, which does not contain a year for recent files (within six months.) Unfortunately, this does not take time zones into account, and some clients have been known to get this wrong when the time stamp it reads from the FTP server looks like it's in the near future. Those clients tend to report the wrong year.

All timestamps on kernel.org are in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). If you live in the western hemisphere your local time lags behind UTC. Under Linux/Unix, type date -u to get the current time in UTC.

Yes, and you can find it at http://www.kernel.org/kdist/rss.xml.

Please note that kernel.org uses Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN), as defined in RFC 3168. Some broken firewalls or gateways may have problem connecting to ECN-enabled servers. Please contact your firewall or gateway vendor for necessary updates.

Kernel.org accounts are not given away very often, usually you need to be making some reasonable amount of contributions to the Linux kernel and have a good reason for wanting / needing an account. If you really feel that you should have an account please e-mail the following to keys@kernel.org

• full name
• email address
• desired username
• reason for account
• reference to work you've done
• PGP/GPG public key fingerprint (NOT an ssh key)
  • Key should be signed by as many kernel developers as you can get
  • Accounts will not issued until key is suffciently signed
  • Key must have been uploaded to public key servers

The Kernel.org admin team will then review your request and let you know what they decide. If your request does not have all of the information it will be ignored without response.

Please note that The Linux Kernel Organization, Inc. reserves the right to refuse service to anyone, for any reason.

Probably not. Kernel.org deals with the Linux kernel, various distributions of the kernel and larger repositories of packages. We do not mirror individual projects, software, etc as we feel there are better places providing mirrors for those kinds of repositories. If you feel that kernel.org should mirror your project, please contact ftpadmin (e-mail at the bottom of the page) with the following information (yes, it's all required missing information results in an unread e-mail):

• name
• project name
• project website
• detailed project description
• reason for wanting us to mirror

The Kernel.org admin team will then review your request and talk to you about it. As with any kind of account on kernel.org it's up to the discretion of the admin team.

The kernel.org admin team probably isn't going to be of much help. It's not that we don't know or don't care but we have limited resources and we see a lot of e-mail in a day. We end up just not having enough time to answer it all and we focus on the things concerning kernel.org, so it's possible you won't even get a reply from us if you do ask... sorry.

However we suggest that if you have questions concerning something hosted on kernel.org that you go ahead and contact the project / maintainers directly. They sometimes have forums, irc channels, e-mail addresses, etc where you can ask your questions. Doing a search on any number of search engines may also answer your question.

But, as for some quick information on settings, configurations:

• Filesystem: xfs, mounted with "rw,noatime,nodiratime,nobarrier,logbsize=256k".
• Web Server: Apache 2 (for the "sendfile" support), tweaked for available memory, long-running downloads, etc.
• FTP Server: vsftpd
• Gitweb: Custom gitweb w/ caching

We are using an access control system called gitolite, originally written and maintained by Sitaram Chamarty. We choose gitolite for a number of reasons:

• Limiting of ssh access to the system
• Fine grained control over repository access
• Well maintained and supported code base
• Responsive development
• Broad and diverse install base

As well at the time of deployment the code had undergone an external code review.

-rc kernel patches are generated from the base stable release.

For example: to create the 2.6.14-rc5 kernel, you must:

• download 2.6.13 (not 2.6.13.4)
• and then apply the 2.6.14-rc5 patch.

Yes, you want 2.6.13, not 2.6.14. Remember, that's an -rc kernel, as in, 2.6.14 doesn't exist yet. :)

Kernel version numbers of this form are distribution kernels, meaning they are modified kernels produced by distributions. Please contact the relevant distributor; or check out mirrors.kernel.org.

Please see the Kernel Newbies website.

There is also a wealth of knowledge on many topics involving Linux at The Linux Documentation Project (http://www.tldp.org)

For finding or reporting bugs, look through the archives for the various Linux mailing lists, and if no specific list seems appropriate, try the browsing the Linux Kernel Mailing List.

Please see the How to become a kernel.org official mirror page.

NOTE: Kernel.org is currently not accepting new, official, mirrors. When we get to the point of being able to accept them we'll let people know. If you want to be notified e-mail ftpadmin@kernel.org and have [NEW MIRROR] in the subject line.

You're looking for the bwgraph software. Have fun!

As a note, kernel.org itself no longer runs bwgraph

First, thank you very much! Unfortunately, at the moment, we don't have the ability to receive general donations. We usually only look for very specific services or equipment. At some point in the future, if appropriate, we may create a way to receive general donations. Watch this FAQ entry for updates! :)

At Kernel.org we pride ourselves on giving our users the highest quality responses to their e-mails (with the Copious Free Time we have to devote to the task) and your e-mail request will be deleted in the order it was received.

...

Please stay on the internet until the next available admin is available - your e-mails are important to us.

No, unless your newly forged ring of power actually works, in which case you wouldn't need to ask for our help.

Seriously speaking, accepting advertising on kernel.org is something we might do in the future if necessary to keep the site going. At the present time, we do not anticipate that that will ever happen.

We were using Google Analytics to help us try and understand what was going on with our servers, however due to a change in policy with Google (as seen here on the EFF's website) we have discontinued our usage of Google Analytics

No, no, isn't there something illegal about that, like a fish needs a bicycle, and no.

I mean it amazes at least me how many people around the world ask us these! In fact these are BY FAR the most frequently asked questions! While we appreciate your enthusiasm to help us in our everyday lives the kernel.org admin team has deemed it necessary to redirect all of these offers to our faithful mail sorting program: /dev/null.

We are sorry for any inconvenience that may cause to you.