Today seems a good day to release a new kernel package. It’s Friday, it’s almost weekend and why not have some fun with a new kernel release. The kernel was release a couple of days ago, but to be honest, I couldn’t build it due to not having a machine working on some older Ubuntu. Now, if you do not remember what I am talking about, I will give you a small hint, if you have a newer version of Ubuntu or Debian and you do build a kernel and then of course you wanna use that build kernel on some older Ubuntu or Debian, it wont be possible due to libc libraries incompatibility, so because of this you need to build the kernel or kernel package on older system and the you can use it on newer systems too.

Because the changes done or lets say the add-ons in this kernel are the same as in every kernel package that I release, I wont mention them here over and over again, but one thing you need to remember, I wont add the kernel source archive with the config file as there is already in a package which contains the archive and the config file will be in the linux-image package. At least I will save about 65MB of space on my web servers :) .

Lets see whats new in this kernel:

NET: fix oops at bootime in sysctl code
powerpc: TIF_ABI_PENDING bit removal
ath9k: fix beacon slot/buffer leak
ath9k: fix eeprom INI values override for 2GHz-only cards
pktcdvd: removing device does not remove its sysfs dir
uartlite: fix crash when using as console
kernel/cred.c: use kmem_cache_free
starfire: clean up properly if firmware loading fails
mx3fb: some debug and initialisation fixes
imxfb: correct location of callbacks in suspend and resume
mac80211: fix NULL pointer dereference when ftrace is enabled
mm: flush dcache before writing into page to avoid alias
be2net: Fix memset() arg ordering.
be2net: Bug fix to support newer generation of BE ASIC
connector: Delete buggy notification code.
usb: r8a66597-hdc disable interrupts fix
block: fix bugs in bio-integrity mempool usage
random: Remove unused inode variable
random: drop weird m_time/a_time manipulation
Fix ‘flush_old_exec()/setup_new_exec()’ split
block: fix bio_add_page for non trivial merge_bvec_fn case
mm: purge fragmented percpu vmap blocks
mm: percpu-vmap fix RCU list walking
libata: retry link resume if necessary
oprofile/x86: fix crash when profiling more than 28 events
oprofile/x86: add Xeon 7500 series support
KVM: allow userspace to adjust kvmclock offset
ax25: netrom: rose: Fix timer oopses
af_packet: Don’t use skb after dev_queue_xmit()
net: restore ip source validation
sky2: Fix oops in sky2_xmit_frame() after TX timeout
tcp: update the netstamp_needed counter when cloning sockets
clocksource: fix compilation if no GENERIC_TIME
x86/amd-iommu: Fix possible integer overflow
x86: Add quirk for Intel DG45FC board to avoid low memory corruption
x86: Add Dell OptiPlex 760 reboot quirk
regulator: Specify REGULATOR_CHANGE_STATUS for WM835x LED constraints
SECURITY: selinux, fix update_rlimit_cpu parameter
firewire: core: add_descriptor size check
drm/i915: only enable hotplug for detected outputs
iwlwifi: set default aggregation frame count limit to 31
x86: Disable HPET MSI on ATI SB700/SB800
Input: winbond-cir – remove dmesg spam
x86: get rid of the insane TIF_ABI_PENDING bit
sparc: TIF_ABI_PENDING bit removal
Split ‘flush_old_exec’ into two functions
FDPIC: Respect PT_GNU_STACK exec protection markings when creating NOMMU stack
mm: fix migratetype bug which slowed swapping
Fix failure exit in ipathfs
fix affs parse_options()
Fix remount races with symlink handling in affs
fix leak in romfs_fill_super()
fix oops in fs/9p late mount failure
Fix failure exits in bfs_fill_super()
Fix a leak in affs_fill_super()
drm/i915: Reload hangcheck timer too for Ironlake
e1000/e1000e: don’t use small hardware rx buffers
e1000e: enhance frame fragment detection
e1000: enhance frame fragment detection
UBI: fix volume creation input checking
ACPI: Advertise to BIOS in _OSC: _OST on _PPC changes
ACPI: fix OSC regression that caused aer and pciehp not to load
ACPI: Add platform-wide _OSC support.
ACPI: Add a generic API for _OSC -v2
dasd: fix possible NULL pointer errors
zcrypt: Do not remove coprocessor for error 8/72
libata: retry FS IOs even if it has failed with AC_ERR_INVALID
x86: Remove “x86 CPU features in debugfs” (CONFIG_X86_CPU_DEBUG)
x86: Set hotpluggable nodes in nodes_possible_map
S390: fix single stepped svcs with TRACE_IRQFLAGS=y
firewire: ohci: fix crashes with TSB43AB23 on 64bit systems
drm/i915: Selectively enable self-reclaim
mm: add new ‘read_cache_page_gfp()’ helper function
mptsas: Fix issue with chain pools allocation on katmai

As you can see from the small snapshot take from ChangeLog there are fixes done to DRM, i915 module, ACPI and even the kernel. If this actually do something or at least give the impression of some kind of improvement, I don’t know, well not yet, because I will be just like you guys, testing it out.

OK! I’ll stop beating around the bush and go directly to the installation and download part, which will be the same like before, just different package name. So you will need root access or sudo access, plus dpkg and the will to try it out. Download the packages from http://dl.robertalks.com/kernel/2.6.32.8-pharox/ (US/CA mirror) or from http://mirror.visualserver.org/kernel/2.6.32.8-pharox/ (EU/CZ mirror) and remember that to use this kernel you will need at least linux-image-2.6.32.8-pharox_2.6.32.8.1_i386.deb package.

A little help for beginners who wanna use this kernel. After you download the package use dpkg to install it, like this:

sudo dpkg -i –force-all linux-image-2.6.32.8-pharox_2.6.32.8.1_i386.deb (you do the same with the rest of the packages)

For those of you who want or need to rebuild the kernel, you can download the source code with the config file from the links above, as I wrote before there wont be anymore included kernel source archive, but you will have a package call linux-source-2.6.32.8-pharox_2.6.32.8.1_all.deb which contains the kernel source code.

Cheers and good luck!