Re: On links and things

[poon@cs.wisc.edu (Ka-Cheong Poon)]

Included message from Ian A Murdock <imurdock@shell.portal.com>:

>----
>
>Public opinion time.  I've decided to go back to patchlevel 14.  I've
>heard complaints that networking isn't quite stable; I know that people
>were very happy with the networking in 0.81 (which contained patchlevel
>14), and I personally have had frequent EXT2 filesystem panics simply
>moving large files around.  Perhaps including an ALPHA kernel wasn't
>the wisest decision.  Thoughts?
>
>----

I am one of the people who complained.  Then someone sent me mail saying
that networking should work in pl14w.  I re-compiled the pl14w kernel
according to my own setup, that is, no SCSI, no CD-ROM, no sound card, no
everything )-:  but with SLIP, CSLIP.  After a reboot, the SLIP works again,
quite reliably.  At least I can transfer file larger than 1 M and I can ping
a machine whole night.

I haven't checked that whether it is because of my own silly mistakes so
that the SLIP does not work with the bundled kernel.  I will check that when
I have the time.

But I think it is always a good idea not to include an ALPHA kernel, unless
there are some "obvious" bugs in the BETA.  Just my $0.02.

BTW, I think Peter McDonald (?, the SLS maintainer) has patched the kernel
source so that nearly every device drivers is a loadable module.  Should we
try that in Debian?

							Poon.
							poon@cs.wisc.edu