2.4.20-xlife cumulative kernel patch

1. Disclaimer

I didn’t make these patches. I collected them taking my own needs into account and I went through the lengthy and tedious process of combining them in such manner that the resulting kernel is working and stable (so far as I can tell).

Should you choose to apply the patch and use the kernel resulted from it, you’re on your own. It worked for me, I can’t say the same for anybody. Data loss or hardware damage may occur. Be warned.

2. How to install

Go into the dir where you have the vanilla kernel source. Unpack the patch and apply it using patch -p1 < patch_file. Compile the kernel like you usually do.

Afterwards, don’t forget to install whatever third-party modules you may use.

3. Synopsis

I needed to patch the kernel in order to accomplish the following: improve my machine’s latency; have Win4Lin, ACPI, software suspend and supermount support; fix some ext3 related issues. Besides these, I also added some non-crucial improvements which impact CPU-usage during CD-audio rips and network packet filtering (iptables).

Here are the patches that I applied to the vanilla kernel. They were applied in the order given below.

  1. patch-o-matic 20030107, “pending” section (netfilter/iptables pending patches)
  2. acpi-20021212-2.4.20.diff (ACPI support enhancement)
  3. patch-acpi-acpi20021212-swsusp19 (software suspend support)
  4. Kernel-Win4Lin3-2.4.20.patch (Win4Lin 3.x support)
  5. mki-adapter.patch (Win4Lin 3.x support)
  6. 004_supermount_030226_ck_2.4.20.patch (removable media transparent [un]mounting)
  7. ext3-bugfix.patch (fixed the ext3 bug)
  8. ide-akpm.patch (lower CPU usage while ripping audio CD)
  9. 2.4.20-low-latency.patch (low latency support)
  10. preempt-kernel-rml-2.4.20-1.patch (preemptive kernel support)
  11. 003_readlatency2_021215_ck.2.4.20.patch (latency improvement)

4. Known problems

  1. This patch doesn’t include protection for the ptrace security hole! I tried applying whatever patches I could find but none of them applied cleanly. So I chose to compile and install the anti-ptrace.o third-party module instead and it works just as well. Look for it in the Bugtraq archive.
  2. This patch does not have the i387.h floating point exception bugfix applied to it! I strongly recommend against using it without getting the patch yourself and applying it.
  3. I haven’t tested the software suspend feature seriously enough. Reports are welcome.

5. Download

linux-2.4.20-xlife-rel1-20030418.patch.bz2
Downloaded 252 times. Size: 545.6 Kbytes.
MD5: da7b8787e95a68f105a4af7d2c927507

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