Linux 2.1 Required Utility Program Upgrades

It is assumed that you will be upgrading from Linux v2.0.x. If you are upgrading from Linux 1.2.x, please see the Linux 2.0 Upgrade Pages.

Loadable Modules - modutils-2.1.85.tar.gz (15-Feb-98)

Since 2.1.71:

• Handling of local symbols revamped, so that ld -r objects work properly when they have "conflicting" symbols.
• Modules may have .*.init sections which are freed after init_module runs. Note that the module must have _very_ large initial data for this to have any effect at all. Modules with large firmware blocks to download are good candidates though.
• Aliases are now matched through globbing (for devfs), and aliases of aliases resolve properly.

Since 2.1.55:

• Build process now uses an autoconf-generated configure script.
• New program modinfo to display information embedded in the object files of 2.1.x-style modules (by Tom Dyas, still in development).
• Recognize quoted parameter strings for 2.0.x modules.
• Kerneld zombie bug fixed.

libc-5.4.44 - libc-5.4.44.bin.tar.gz (or use glibc/libc6 instead)

The Linux C library 5.4.44 is a bug-fixing release for libc 5.4.38.
There are no new features in this release.

Changes from libc 5.4.38:

1. Fix some stdio bugs. Pine should work fine now.
2. Fix a glob bug.
3. Fix a recursive bug in exit.
4. Fix an overflow bug in malloc.

   Please consult ChangeLog* in libc-5.4.44.tar.gz for futher information.

   Note: you may want to upgrade "make" first before installing this, as I've had one report of it breaking make (thus making it difficult to install anything else).

Procinfo 0.12 - procinfo-0.12.tar.gz

Version 12 of procinfo has just been released.

Procinfo is a small program that gathers some system information from diverse files under /proc and prints it to the screen. It duplicates some of the functionality of free(1) and uptime(1). It should work with any kernel release close to 1.0 or later up to the latest development kernel. (Well, I haven't actually tried 1.0 for years, but you get the idea.)

This version fixes some bugs and makes things work again with Linux 2.1.80.

Get it from:

ftp.cistron.nl:/pub/people/svm

or from the usual places at sunsite or tsx-11.

Cheers, Sander

Procps 1.2.5 - procps-1.2.5.tar.gz

NEWS for version 1.2.5 of procps

Potential security hole fixed: if there was no /etc/psdevtab on a system, a user could put a link from /tmp/psdevtab to a file owned by another user, and when that other user ran ps, the file it pointed to would be killed. This wouldn't work for root because root would be able to create /etc/psdevtab first, so arbitrary system files would not be killable. This was fixed by avoiding psdevtab files that are symlinks or have link counts higher than 1, and by not looking for /tmp/psdevtab anymore, as the reason for it to exist is really obsolete.

w -s output has been fixed. Scripts that depend on w -s output should be examined. The output was broken enough to warrant this change; it was extremely buggy.

NEWS for version 1.2.4 of procps

I_WANT_A_BROKEN_PS environment variable turns off usage warning.

"w " sense corrected.

argument order problem fixed.

XConsole doesn't dump core on exit any more (only fclose if the file is open...)

NEWS for version 1.2.3 of procps

psupdate moved to /usr/sbin, since it is no longer necessary.

Added wmconfig for Red Hat systems (others can use it if they want; if/when wmconfig becomes standard, I'll move it into the install target of the makefile).

Ugly hack to get around a problem some people were getting with a too-small variable.

The usage message no longer recommends a deprecated syntax. :-)

NEWS for version 1.2.2 of procps

Made procps report its version number correctly.
Fixed typo in w.1 man page.

NEWS for version 1.2.1 of procps

New address for bug reports against procps: procps-bugs@redhat.com
(That's not an official service of Red Hat Software, just an alias for me so that bugs get filed properly where I don't lose them...)

Better memory checks.
Fixed a file descriptor leak.
In top, the space key updates immediately.
Fixed broken signal code in top.
Fixed broken screen size calculations in top.
Fixed broken user count calculations in top.
Fixed broken time difference calculations in w.
Link libproc against libc explicitly for better co-existance with libc.

NEWS for version 1.2 of procps

Original author/maintainer, Michael K. Johnson , has taken over maintenance again.

psmisc removed, as it is better maintained separately. xload removed, as it is better maintained as part of XFree86. mknewpty removed, as it duplicates /dev/MAKEDEV and MAKEDEV is maintained.

PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) - ppp-2.3.3.tar.gz

You need ppp-2.3.3 in order to work with Linux 2.1.69 or greater. If you are still using ppp-2.2.0f (because you don't want to upgrade) - you can try this patch instead.

ld.so - ld.so-1.9.6.tar.gz

ld.so-1.8.5 or greater is required if you upgrade your libc to v5.4.23 or above.

Version 1.9.6:

Changed ldd to not use the glibc dynamic linker when run on a libc5-based shared library.

Added a -q option to ldconfig which causes warnings not to be printed (Bob Tinsley).

Dropped support for the Debian libdl1-dev package.

Changed ld-linux.so to be compilable with gcc 2.8.0 (Sven Verdoolaege)

Version 1.9.5:

Fixed a bug in ldd where ld-linux.so.2 was not called correctly when run on shared libraries.

Fixed a problem in the previous version where some Makefiles were not architecture independent.

Version 1.9.4:

This version fixes some serious buffer overflow bugs. At least one of the bugs fixed in this version is not handled by any of the unofficial patches that I have seen floating around. Everyone should upgrade to this version as soon as possible.

Changes in version 1.9.3:

• Fixed buffer overflow bugs in ld-linux.so and ld.so.

• Changed the README file a little to clarify a couple of things.

• Changed ldconfig to chroot to the specified directory when the new -r option is used (Bob Tinsley).

Net Tools for IPv6 - net-tools-1.432.tar.gz

I have made net-tools 1.40 available. Compared to the old 1.3x net-tools, this release adds support for IPv6 and cosmetic improvements, and fixes some problems to do with 64-bit machines.

Philip Blundell - pjb27@cam.ac.uk

• Get linux-nfs-0.4.21.tar.gz from ftp.mathematik.th-darmstadt.de/pub/linux/okir or linux.nrao.edu/pub/people/okir It contains all the utilities you need. It also contains a copy of the code that's now in the kernel; just remove the kernel target from Makefile.

• To use the NFS client fully, you need at least the patched mount program. If you don't want to use file locking, mount all your NFS volumes using -o no_lock.

• If you do want to test the file locking code, you must create /var/lib/nfs/sm and install and run rpc.statd.

• To run nfsd, include nfsd in your kernel and run the and rpc.mountd and rpc.nfsd included in the package.
  

  rpc.kmountd
  rpc.knfsd 4
  kexports -va
  

  will start four server threads. (By default, these will will be installed with a leading `k' in order not to overwrite existing programs--yet :).

• If something does not work, please send me bug reports. The utils package contains a tool called rpcdebug, by which you can enable and disable various logging features. Use
  

  rpcdebug -m <module> <flags>
  

  where module can be one of rpc, nfs, nfsd, and nlm (for lockd). Each module supports a different set of flags; the easiest way is to use `all'. If you provide me with debug logs of how things go wrong, this will help me a lot.

• Also, volunteers are welcome to participate in maintaining the user utilities, write manpages etc. Of course, kernel patches are also welcome.

Olaf Kirch - okir@monad.swb.de

Binutils - binutils-2.8.1.0.15.bin.tar.gz

Changes from binutils 2.8.1.0.1:

1. Update from the binutils gas-970731.
2. More ELF versioning bugs are fixed.
3. Added x86-coff support in the binary release.
4. An ELF/m68k PC relative bug fix.
5. Use "objdump --dynamic-syms" to get the ELF versioning information.
6. Now you can create debuggable shared libraries again.
7. The generated files are back to ${objdir}.
8. The .set bug fix.
9. Some 64-bit clean patches.
10. An MMX opcode fix.
11. Add Linux/ARM support.

IMPORTANT:
The .plt format that the Alpha was using was not thread safe.  So I
changed it.  The new format is *not* binary compatible with the old,
thus you must use glibc 2.0.4 to get an ld.so that can understand it.

Note that the new ld.so knows how to deal with the old .plt format, so
old libraries will still work, but they should be relinked eventually
for performance reasons.

Please do remember to remove /usr/bin/encaps first. Please also
remove /usr/bin/nm first, which may be a symbolic link in some
Linux distributions.

Mount 2.7l -

You will need mount v2.6a or above with Linux 2.1.x

If you upgrade your libc to v5.4.38, you must upgrade your libg++ if you are planning on doing development using c++.