OStatic

The Linux Foundation recently posted a video interview with Linus Torvalds that took place at September's Linux Kernel Summit. Torvalds, the man behind the Linux kernel, and the project's chief coordinator, is always interesting to hear and the ten minute video is well worth watching.

Torvalds' insights range from disarmingly truthful (email is a fine method for communicating, but the Summit is needed because it's good to see people) to keenly introspective (kernel and userland issues are rough, because no one sees things in quite the same terms).

This week, the Linux kernel and Intel developer teams announced they had discovered the probable cause of the e1000e bug. This bug was particularly destructive, as it would corrupt the EEPROM/NVM of some Intel ethernet adapter chipsets, completely disabling them. Though this issue was patched to prevent damage to these components prior to the 2.6.27 kernel's final release, the actual reason for the corruption was unclear.

On Friday, Linux kernel 2.6.27 was released, introducing a number of new features and enhancements. Most notably, this release incorporates fully the (now infamous) patched Intel e1000e driver.

However, there are several other interesting and welcome additions to this kernel release.

A bug surfaced recently in the pre-release versions of the 2.6.27 Linux kernel (up to 2.6.27rc7). The bug affected the e1000e driver module, which supports a number of onboard Intel ethernet adapters. The driver would corrupt the EEPROM/NVM of adapters with ICH8 and ICH9 chipsets, rendering them useless.

The silver lining was that since the kernel is a pre-release, only distributions with releases in the alpha or beta stages, or custom compiled testing kernels, were affected. The Intel team released a patch Wednesday to prevent further damage.