Linux 2.6.30 was released on the 9th of June, 2009.

Summary: This version adds the log-structured NILFS2 filesystem, a filesystem for object-based storage devices, a caching layer for local caching of NFS data, the RDS protocol which delivers high-performance reliable connections between the servers of a cluster, a distributed networking filesystem (POHMELFS), automatic flushing of files on renames/truncates in ext3, ext4 and btrfs, preliminary support for the 802.11w drafts, support for the Microblaze architecture, the Tomoyo security module, DRM support for the Radeon R6xx/R7xx graphic cards, asynchronous scanning of devices and partitions for faster bootup, MD support for switching between raid5/6 modes, the preadv/pwritev syscalls, several new drivers and many other small improvements.

1. Prominent features (the cool stuff)

1.1. NILFS2, a log-structured filesystem

Contributor: NTT Labs (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation)

NILFS2 is a new filesystem which uses a log-structured design. What makes log-structured filesystems different is that they treat the whole disk as a consecutive list of blocks (called log). All the operations append data at the end of the log, they never rewrite blocks (except when there's no space left - in that case, new blocks are reclaimed from the start of the log). The advantage of this approach is that all modifications an creations are converted into sequential operations, which are faster. Crashes can't corrupt the filesystem. On mount, the filesystem detects the real end of the log, and continues working from that point.

Another advantage of this approach is that the log offers a coherent historical view of all the operations done in the disk in the past. This is called "continuous snapshotting" - snapshots of modifications done in all the filesystem at any time are created automatically due to the log-structure design, with no requirement of intervention from an admin, and with the filesystem size as the only limit. NILFS2 allows to access those snapshots and even mount them (on read-only mode).

NILFS2 is under development. Code: fs/nilfs2/. Filesystem web page: www.nilfs.org

1.2. POHMELFS and DST

Contributor: Evgeniy Polyakov

Recommended LWN articles: Distributed storage and CRFS and POHMELFS

• POHMELFS stands for Parallel Optimized Host Message Exchange Layered File System. It is a high performance and network distributed filesystem with ability to balance reading from multiple hosts and simultaneously write data to different remote nodes, with a local writeback cache of data and metadata, which greatly speeds up every IO operation. It beats NFS by a big margin in most, if not all, operations. You can find more details and benchmarks about it in its home page. POHMELFS is hosted in the "staging" section of the kernel code, although it's already quite mature. Code: drivers/staging/pohmelfs/

• DST stands for Distributed (network) STorage. DST allows the creation of high-performance storage networks in a reliable and easy manner. DST allows to form a storage on top of local and remote nodes and combine them into linear or mirroring setup, which in turn can be exported to remote nodes, an equivalent of much of the functionality offered by the device mapper, iSCSI, and network block device (NBD) layers. It works on top of any network media and protocol. DST may fully encrypt the data channel in case of untrusted channel and implement strong checksum of the transferred data. DST is hosted in the "staging" section of the kernel code. Code: drivers/staging/dst/

1.3. Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol support

Contributor: www.openfabrics.org (Particularly, Oracle)

RDS provides a high bandwidth, low latency, reliable inter-process communication protocol and transport system between the servers in a cluster. It provides a reliable connection between any two nodes in the cluster. This allows applications to use a single socket to talk to any other process in the cluster - so in a cluster with N processes you need N sockets, in contrast to N*N if you use a connection-oriented socket transport like TCP. In beta testing, RDS over infiniBand provided up to 60 percent performance improvement over Gigabit Ethernet for interconnect-intensive applications. RDS is already used by some products like Oracle and in Silverstorm's Quicksilver.

Code: net/rds/

1.4. Fastboot

Recommended LWN article: An asynchronous function call infrastructure

Contributor: Intel

Some parts of the kernel boot process can delay the whole process too many time (by kernel's standards): scanning in search of storage devices for a given controller, and searching for partitions, for example, can be slow, because the scanning is synchronous, only one device is scanned at a time, and the kernel has to wait for the devices. With this feature, those steps are done asynchronously, so the kernel can keep booting the rest of the kernel while the storage devices are scanned in parallel. This feature speeds up the total kernel boot time significantly

Code: (commit)

1.5. IEEE 802.11w (wireless management frame protection support)

Contributor: Atheros

The IEEE 802.11w standard is a proposed (still not approved) amendment to the IEEE 802.11 standard (wifi) that increase the security of its management frames. In this version Linux adds a preliminary implementation for this future standard, developed according to the current drafts.

Code: (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)

1.6. preadv()/pwritev() system calls

Recommended LWN article: Some new system calls

Contributor: Red Hat

These syscalls are a pretty straightforward combination of pread/pwrite and readv/pwrite. BSD systems have such system calls too, for example NetBSD

Code: (commit 1, 2, 3)

1.7. EXOFS, a filesystem for Object-Based Storage Devices

Recommended LWN article: Linux and object storage devices

Contributor: Panasas

Traditional storage devices offer a block-based interface. However, there's a new generation of experimental storage devices that are trying to offload some work from the host, and offer a higher-level interface: an array of objects. The OS interfaces with the objects, and the drive hides all the storage details, removing most of the low-level details of the filesystem. A traditional filesystem can then be easily implemented on top of this interface. The OSD interface works on top of SCSI.

In this release Linux adds support for the OSD protocol on the SCSI stack, and exofs, an implementation of a traditional unix filesystem that works on top of OSD storage devices.

libosd: (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 16),

EXOFS: fs/exofs/

1.8. NFS 4.1 preliminary support

Contributors: Panasas, Netapp and IBM.

NFS 4.1 is being developed at the IETF. From the many new features in NFSv4.1, this Linux version adds the mandatory-to-implement NFSv4.1 Sessions. Other features, Parallel NFS in particular, are still under development out of tree and will be added in later releases.

To enable this experimental new protocol (which is disabled by default) you need an updated nfs-utils.

1.9. FS-Cache, a caching filesystem

Recommended LWN article: A general caching filesystem

Contributor: Red Hat

FS-Cache is the Linux implementation of a cache layer for networking filesystems, similar to the CacheFS of other Unixes. With FS-Cache, data from the networked filesystems can be cached on the disk, speeding up operations.

This version adds support for NFS and AFS, but it's a generic layer that could be used by other networking filesystems or even non-networking (such as ISO9660).

Code: Slow-work related changes: (commit 1, 2, 3, 4), FS-cache (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 16, 17 18, 19); AFS and NFS changes: (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 16, 17 18), Documentation: Documentation/filesystems/caching/fscache.txt.

1.10. Tomoyo, an alternative Mandatory Access Control

Recommended LWN article: TOMOYO Linux and pathname-based security

Contributor: NTT DATA CORPORATION

There're currently two security subsystems: Selinux and Smack. Tomoyo is a new pathname-based access control.

(commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

Tomoyo Web Site: http://tomoyo.sourceforge.jp/wiki-e/

1.11. Filesystems performance improvements

Shortly after the 2.6.29 release, lots of discussions occurred on LKML about disk I/O (summary available at LWN), how (and why) a fsync () call can take minutes, and the effect of getting a file zeroed rebooting just after a rename or a truncate. Some changes have been done to fix those problems: implicit internal fsync of a file after a rename or truncate in ext3, ext4 and btrfs, faster fsync() in ext3, default to data=writeback mode in Ext3, and improvements to CFQ. The flame has also brought the topic of atimes updates, and which has resulted into merging relatime and making it a default.

1.12. LZMA/BZIP2 kernel image compression

Contributor: Alain Knaff

The kernel compresses the kernel with GZIP, but this version adds support to compress the kernel image with the LZMA or BZIP2 compression algorithms. The kernel size is about 10 per cent smaller with bzip2 in comparison to gzip, and about 33 per cent smaller with lzma.

Code: (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

1.13. Microblaze CPU architecture

Contributor: Michal Simek, with donations from PetaLogix and Xilinx

This release adds support for the MMU-less Microblaze CPU architecture. It has been

Code: arch/microblaze/

1.14. Integrity Management Architecture

Contributor: IBM

Recommended LWN article: Integrity management in the kernel

The Trusted Computing Group(TCG) runtime Integrity Measurement Architecture(IMA) maintains a list of hash values of executables and other sensitive system files, as they are read or executed. If an attacker manages to change the contents of an important system file being measured, we can tell. If your system has a TPM chip, then IMA also maintains an aggregate integrity value over this list inside the TPM hardware, so that the TPM can prove to a third party whether or not critical system files have been modified.

Code: (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

2. Various core changes

• Implement adaptive spinning (commit)

• eventfd: improve support for semaphore-like behavior (commit)

• genirq: add threaded interrupt handler support (commit), (commit)

• Memory management

  • percpu: implement new dynamic percpu allocator (commit)

  • kmemtrace, a kernel memory tracer. kmemtrace provides tracing for slab allocator functions, such as kmalloc, kfree, kmem_cache_alloc, kmem_cache_free etc.. Collected data is then fed to the userspace application in order to analyze allocation hotspots, internal fragmentation and so on, making it possible to see how well an allocator performs, as well as debug and profile kernel code (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

  • DMA-API debugging. Recommended LWN article: Driver API: sleeping poll(), exclusive I/O memory, and DMA API debugging (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 16)

  • shmem: writepage directly to swap (commit)

  • slub: add min_partial sysfs tunable (commit)

  • generic debug pagealloc (commit)

  • Add /proc controls for pdflush threads (commit)

• Filesystems

  • Make relatime default (commit), (commit), (commit)

  • blktrace: add ftrace plugin (commit), binary tracing, synthesizing old format (commit)

  • Allow SysRq emergency thaw to thaw frozen filesystems (commit)

  • quota: Add quota reservation support (commit), (commit)

  • loop: support barrier writes (commit), add ioctl to resize a loop device (commit)

  • ramfs: add support for "mode=" mount option (commit)

  • udf: implement mode and dmode mounting options (commit)

• ipc namespaces: Implement multiple mounts of the mqueue file system, and link it to usage of CLONE_NEWIPC. Each ipc ns has a corresponding mqueuefs superblock. When a user does clone(CLONE_NEWIPC) or unshare(CLONE_NEWIPC), the unshare will cause an internal mount of a new mqueuefs sb linked to the new ipc ns. When a user does 'mount -t mqueue mqueue /dev/mqueue', he mounts the mqueuefs superblock (commit), (commit)

• cpuacct: add per-cgroup utime/stime statistics (commit)

• cgroups: use css id in swap cgroup for saving memory v5 (commit)

• CPUFREQ: Introduce /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/cpuinfo_transition_latency (commit)

• Allow rwlocks to re-enable interrupts if implemented for that architecture.(commit)

• intel-iommu: Snooping control support (commit), Suspend/Resume Support - (commit), (commit), (commit)

• vsprintf: add binary printf (commit)

• dynamic debug: combine dprintk and dynamic printk (commit)

• NOMMU: Make it possible for RomFS to use MTD devices directly (commit)

3. PCI

• Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) support. SR-IOV is a PCI Express Extended capability which makes one physical device appear as multiple virtual devices. The physical device is referred to as Physical Function (PF) while the virtual devices are referred to as Virtual Functions (VF) (commit 1, 2, 3, 4)

• MSI: Add support for multiple MSI (commit)

• Allow assignment of memory resources with a specified alignment (commit)

• Introduce /sys/bus/pci/devices/.../remove (commit)

• Introduce /sys/bus/pci/devices/.../rescan (commit)

• Introduce /sys/bus/pci/rescan (commit)

• Add AMD8111 PCI Bridge PCI Device ID (commit)

4. Wi-Fi

• cfg80211/nl80211: add basic scan capability to and change mac80211 to use it (commit)

• Add 802.11h CSA support (commit)

• mac80211_hwsim: add support for 5 GHz (commit)

• nl80211: Event notifications for MLME events (commit), add MLME primitives to support external SME (commit)

5. Security

• SELinux

  • Add new security mount option to indicate security label support. (commit)

  • New permission between tty audit and audit socket (commit)

• smack: Add a new '-CIPSO' option to the network address label configuration (commit)

6. Networking

• Allowing more than 64k connections and heavily optimize bind(0) time. (commit)

• New user space API for time stamping of incoming and outgoing packets: User space can request hardware and/or software time stamping (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, (commit)

• Network Network packet drop alerting service: This feature provides an alerting service to userspace in the event that packets are discarded in the network stack. Alerts are broadcast via netlink socket to any listening user space process (commit 1, 2, 3, 4)

• sctp: Allow to disable SCTP checksums via module parameter (commit)

• netfilter

  • Combine ipt_TTL and ip6t_HL source (commit)

  • Combine ipt_ttl and ip6t_hl source (commit)

  • iptables: lock free counters (commit)

  • sysctl support of logger choice (commit)

  • xtables: add cluster match (commit), add LED trigger target (commit)

7. Ftrace

• ia64 port of ftrace (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

• powerpc32 port of ftrace(commit), (commit)

• powerpc64 port of ftrace (commit), (commit)

• Add event trace infrastructure (commit), (commit), (commit), (commit), (commit), (commit)

• Add raw fast tracing interface for trace events (commit)

• Add raw trace point recording infrastructure (commit)

• Add binary buffer files for use with splice (commit)

• Add stack trace to function tracer (commit)

• add traceon traceoff commands to enable/disable the buffers (commit)

• Show selected functions in set_ftrace_filter (commit)

• Add a new workqueue tracer (commit)

• Infrastructure for supporting binary record (commit)

• Text Edit Lock, an architecture independant synchronization around kernel text modifications through use of a global mutex (commit), (commit), (commit)

• tracepoints for softirq entry/exit (commit), (commit)

• Syscall tracing infrastructure (commit), (commit), (commit), (commit)

• Add per-event filtering (commit), add per-subsystem filtering (commit)

• kmemtrace: normalize the raw tracer event to the unified tracing API (commit)

8. Filesystems

• OCFS2

  • Add a name indexed b-tree to directory inodes (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

  • Optimize inode allocation by remembering last group (commit)

  • Optimize inode group allocation by recording last used group. (commit)

  • Expose the file system state via debugfs (commit)

• GFS2

  • Support generation of discard requests (commit)

  • Support quota/noquota mount arguments (commit)

  • Add a "demote a glock" interface to sysfs (commit)

  • Expose UUID via sysfs/uevent (commit)

  • Merge lock_dlm module into GFS2 (removes 1400 LoC) (commit)

• Ext4

  • New inode/block allocation algorithms for flex_bg filesystems (commit)

  • Automatically allocate delay allocated blocks on close (commit)

  • Automatically allocate delay allocated blocks on rename (commit)

  • Add auto_da_alloc mount option (commit)

  • Add EXT4_IOC_ALLOC_DA_BLKS ioctl (commit)

  • Add sysfs support - /sys/fs/ext4/<dev>/ (commit)

  • Remove /proc tuning knobs (commit)

  • Quota reservation for delayed allocation (commit)

• Ext3

  • Add replace-on-rename heuristics for data=writeback mode (commit)

  • Add replace-on-truncate heuristics for data=writeback mode (commit)

  • Use WRITE_SYNC for commits which are caused by fsync() (commit)

• reiserfs

  • Use generic xattr handlers (commit)

  • Journaled xattrs (commit)

  • Use generic readdir for operations across all xattrs (commit)

  • Add atomic addition of selinux attributes during inode creation (commit)

• Btrfs

  • Add flushoncommit mount option (commit)

  • notreelog mount option (commit)

  • Performance improvements
• CIFS

  • Add new nostrictsync cifs mount option to avoid slow SMB flush (commit)

  • Send SMB flush in cifs_fsync (commit)

• XFS: pagecache usage optimization (commit)

• knfsd: add file to export stats about nfsd pools (commit)

9. Crypto

• Add support to Intel AES-NI instructions for x86_64 platform (commit)

• cryptd: Per-CPU thread implementation. Speeds up dm-crypt on an Intel Core 2 E6400 (two cores) machine by 19.2% (commit), (commit)

• amcc: Add crypt4xx driver (commit)

• compress: pcomp, partial decompression internal support (commit),(commit), (commit)

10. DM/MD

• MD

  • Add takeover support of RAID6 over RAID5 (commit)

  • Add takeover support of RAID5 over RAID1 (commit)

  • raid5: allow layout/chunksize to be changed on an active 2-drive raid5 (commit)

  • Add takeover support for RAID4 over RAID5 (commit)

  • Add takeover support for converting raid6 back into raid5 (commit)

  • data integrity support (commit)

• DM

  • Implement basic barrier support (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

  • Add integrity support (commit)

11. Virtualization

• virtio_net: Allow setting the MAC address of the NIC (commit)

• lguest: use KVM hypercalls (commit)

• KVM

  • New guest debug interface (commit), (commit)

  • Userspace controlled irq routing (commit),

  • SVM: Support nested SVM VMs (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

  • VMX

    • Support for injecting software exceptions (commit)

    • Allow single-stepping when uninterruptible (commit)

  • ia64: vTLB change for enabling windows 2008 boot (commit), stack get/restore ioctls, neccesary for live migration (commit)

  • ppc: E500 core-specific code (commit)

  • Add FFXSR support (commit)

12. Architecture-specific changes

• X86

  • Optimise x86's do_page_fault (C entry point for the page fault path) (commit)

  • Convert to the new dynamic percpu allocator (commit)

  • Add support for saving/restoring Intel-AVX state properly between tasks. Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) introduce 256-bit vector processing capability (commit)

  • Implement x86_32 stack protector (commit)

  • kexec: add kexec jump support for x86_64 (commit)

  • mce: add CMCI support. CMCI (Corrected Machine Check Interrupt) is a new feature on Nehalem CPUs. It allows the CPU to trigger interrupts on corrected events, which allows faster reaction to them instead of with the traditional polling timer (commit), (commit)

  • mce: implement dynamic machine check banks support (commit)

  • Cpu architecture debug code (commit)

  • Add brk allocation for very, very early allocations (commit)

  • Remove zImage support (commit)

  • Remove subarchitecture support code (commit), remove subarchitecture support (commit), remove the Voyager 32-bit subarch (commit)

  • UV, SGI RTC: add UV RTC clocksource/clockevents (commit)

• ARM

  • HIGHMEM support (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

  • Add support for Marvell's PXA168/PXA910 processors (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

  • Support for the Nokia RX-51 Internet Tablet.Initial (commit)

  • Adding support for the HTC Himalaya and its framebuffer (commit)

  • Add Gemini architecture (commit)

  • Gemini: Add support for Teltonika RUT100 (commit)

  • Basic support for Dave/DENX QongEVB-LITE board (commit)

  • ACS5K: Core board support for the ACS-5000 (commit)

  • Add support for the Faraday ARM FA526 architecture (commit)

  • Add Synertronixx scb9328 board support (commit)

  • fbdev: add E-Ink Broadsheet controller support v3 (commit)

  • Add gpiolib support to AT91 (commit)

  • The w90p910 uart0 driver patch (commit)

  • Add support for stack unwinding (commit), (commit)

  • Add ptrace VFP support (commit)

  • Add W90p910 EVB NOR flash driver (commit)

  • Realview: Add support for the DS1338 RTC chip (commit), add support for the ISP1761 USB chip (commit)

  • XSCALE: add ice dcc support (commit)

  • ep93xx m2p dma (commit), (commit)

  • MX35: add clock support (commit), add devices support (commit)

  • MXC: add pwm driver for i.MX Socs (commit)

  • Add SMSC911X support to Overo platform (commit)

  • i.MX21: clock support (commit), add framebuffer support for i.MX21 (commit)

  • mx31: add dma and fb devices (commit), framebuffer driver (commit), add sdhc resources/platform devices (commit), initial support for Wolfson Microelectronics 1133-EV1 module (commit), clkdev support (commit), initial support for various baseboards (commit)

  • Kirkwood: Add support for QNAP TS-119/TS-219 Turbo NAS (commit), Marvell Sheevaplug support (commit), add NAND support to the DB88F6281 board (commit)

  • mv78xx0: Add Marvell RD-78x00-mASA Reference Design support (commit)

  • mx1ads: add I2C support (commit)

  • OMAP3: Add support for 3430 SDP (commit), add ADS7846 touchscreen support to Overo platform, v3 (commit)

  • OMAP mailbox: add initial omap3 support (commit)

  • Add base support for omap850 cpu (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

  • orion5x: TS-78xx support for 'hotplug' of FPGA devices (commit)

  • PCM037: Add I2C support (commit)

  • pcm038: Add framebuffer support (commit), add I2C support (commit)

  • Add SDHC support for pcm037 (commit) and pcm970 (commit)

  • pxa

    • PalmLD initial support (commit)

    • Palm T5 initial support (commit)

    • PalmTE2 support for battery, UDC, IrDA and backlight (commit)

    • Palm Tungsten E2 basic support (commit)

    • em-x270: Added DA9030 support (commit)

    • Add eXeda platform support (commit)

    • Add AM300 platform driver v3 (commit)

    • Add initial support for Cogent CSB726 board (commit),

    • Add support for CSB701 baseboard (commit)

    • Mioa701: add gpio_vbus driver (commit)

    • Add basic support for Colibri PXA300 module (commit), add USB support for Colibri PXA300 (commit), add MMC support for Colibri PXA300 (commit)

• PPC

  • Ensure random space between stack and mmaps (commit)

  • Increase stack gap on 64bit binaries (commit)

  • More stack randomisation for 64bit binaries (commit)

  • Randomise lower bits of stack address (commit)

  • Randomise mmap start address (commit)

  • Randomise PIEs (commit)

  • Randomise the brk region (commit)

  • 5200: add Phytec phyCORE-MPC5200B-IO board (pcm032) (commit), add support for the digsy MTC board. (commit), add support for the Media5200 board from Freescale (commit)

  • 83xx: add PCI-E support for all MPC83xx boards with PCI-E (commit), add power management support for MPC837x boards (commit)

  • 86xx: board support for GE Fanuc SBC310 (commit), board support for GE Fanuc's PPC9A (commit)

  • 44x: Support for 256KB PAGE_SIZE (commit)

  • amigaone: add platform support for Amigaone (commit), bootwrapper and serial console support for Amigaone (commit)

  • 85xx: add support for the "socrates" board (MPC8544). (commit)

  • Hook up rtc-generic, and kill rtc-ppc (commit)

  • oprofile: Enable support for ppc750 processors (commit)

  • ps3: Add rtc-ps3 (commit)

  • AMCC PPC 460SX redwood SoC platform initial framework (commit)

• SH

  • Hibernation support (commit), (commit), (commit), (commit)

  • Add kexec jump support (commit)

  • Add support for SH7786 CPUs (commit)

  • CMT clockevent platform driver (commit)

  • espt-giga board support (commit)

  • Urquell board support. (commit), (commit)

  • Add support for SMSC Polaris platform (commit)

  • Add ap325 lcd power off support (commit)

  • Add OHCI USB support for SH7786 (commit)

  • video: sh_mobile_lcdcfb suspend/resume support (commit)

• Xtensa

  • Support for the stretch S6000 Xtensa core (commit), (commit)

  • Support for the S6105 IP Camera Reference Design Kit (commit)

  • Add flat support (commit)

  • Ccount clocksource (commit)

  • nommu support (commit)

• S390

  • dasd: add High Performance FICON support (commit), add large volume support (commit)

  • qeth: remove EDDP (commit)

• IA64

  • Implement interrupt-enabling rwlocks (commit)

  • Implement binary patching optimization (commit), (commit), (commit)

• AVR32

  • Add support for Merisc boards (commit)

  • Add RTC support for Merisc boards (commit)

• PARISC

  • Allow to build with 16k default kernel page size (commit)

  • Add ftrace (function and graph tracer) functionality (commit)

  • Add LATENCYTOP_SUPPORT and CONFIG_STACKTRACE_SUPPORT (commit)

• m68k

  • Hook up rtc-generic (commit)

  • mac: Add SWIM floppy support (commit)

• Blackfin: BF538/9 serial uart support (commit)

13. Drivers

13.1. Storage

• SATA:

  • sata_mv: implement IRQ coalescing (commit), introduce support for ATAPI devices (commit)

• IDE
• SCSI

  • Add libfcoe: Add support for FIP, the new standard way to discover Fibre-Channel Forwarders (FCFs) (commit), (commit)

  • Add new fnic driver for Cisco PCI-Express FCoE HBA devices (commit)

  • 3w-9xxx: add power management support (commit)

  • ipr: add MSI support (commit)

  • libfc: add support of large receive offload by ddp in fc_fcp (commit)

  • qla2xxx: Add EDC-update support. (commit), add Flash-Access-Control support for recent ISPs. (commit), add reset capabilities for application support. (commit)

  • scsi_debug: DIF/DIX support (commit)

  • stex: add new 6G controller support (commit), add MSI support (commit)

13.2. Graphics

• drm: Convert proc files to seq_file and introduce debugfs (commit)

• i915: add VGA hotplug support for 945+ (commit)

• radeon: Add support for R6xx/R7xx GPUs (commit), (commit), (commit), (commit), (commit), (commit)

• radeonfb: suspend/resume for ATI Mobility Radeon RV350 (commit)

• intelfb: support i854 (commit)

• agp/intel: Add support for new intel IGD chipset. (commit)

• Add s3c-fb driver for newer Samsung SoC framebuffer devices (commit)

• imxfb: add mx27 support (commit)

• fbdev: remove cyblafb driver (commit)

13.3. Network

• New driver for Atheros AR9170 based devices (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

• New at76c50x-usb driver for Atmel at76c503/at76c505/at76c505a USB cards (commit)

• New mwl8k driver for Marvell 88W8xxx TOPDOG PCI/PCIe Wireless devices (commit)

• New neterion driver for Neterion X3100 Series 10GbE PCIe Adapters (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

• New p54spi driver for Prism54 SPI devices (stlc4550 or stlc4560 based wireless chips), found in Nokia's N800/N810 Portable Internet Tablet (commit)

• New igbvf driver to support Intel 82576 Virtual Function Ethernet (commit)

• New ethoc driver to support the Opencores 10/100 Mbps Ethernet MAC (commit)

• ath9k: Add mesh point functionality (commit), support for AR9100 (commit), dynamic power save (commit), introduce platform driver for AHB bus support (commit), add module parameter to disable hardware crypto (commit), enable Bluetooth Coexistence support (commit), multiple virtual radios (wiphys). The goal of virtual radios is to allow the same radio to be shared for multiple virtual interfaces that may operate on different channels (commit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ,6, 7, 8, 9)

• qlge: add support for GRO (commit), add tx multiqueue support (commit), add support for device ID 8000 (commit), add support for firmware mailbox commands (commit), add support for getting/setting port config (commit)

• p54: enable power save support (commit), enable proper frame injection (commit), initial SoftLED support (commit), longbow frontend support (commit), power save management (commit)

• bnx2x: MSI support (commit), multi-queue (commit), supporting BCM8481 PHY (commit), supporting BCM8726 PHY (commit), register dump (commit)

• igb: add support for enabling VFs to PF driver. (commit), add pf side of VMDq support (commit), add support for 82576 quad copper adapter (commit), add support for another dual port 82576 non-security nic (commit)

• rt2x00: Implement Powersaving (commit), add mesh support (commit), add RFKILL support to rt2500usb and rt73usb (commit), add WDS support (commit), add LED_MODE_ASUS support (commit), add various new USB IDs (commit), (commit)

• e1000e: add aer support (commit), add support for 82574 device ID 0x10F6 (commit), add support for 82583 device id (commit)

• ixgbe: Add support KX/KX4 device (commit), add 82598 support for BX mezzanine devices (commit), add 82599 support (commit), (commit), (commit)

• netxen: Add receive side scaling (rss) support (commit), add suspend resume support (commit), advertise wake-on-lan support (commit)

• sfc: Add support for QT2025C PHY (commit), add support for SFN4112F SFP+ reference design (commit)

• iwlwifi: add recognition of Intel Wifi Link 100 Series (commit), add recognition of Intel WiFi Link 6000 and 6050 Series (commit)

• mv643xx_eth: implement Large Receive Offload (commit), allow enabling/disabling tx checksumming via ethtool (commit)

• e100: add support for 82552 10/100 adapter (commit)

• wimax/i2400m: implement RX reorder support (commit), support extended data RX protocol (no need to reallocate skbs) (commit)

• fec: Add support for Freescale MX27 (commit)

• mlx4_core: Add device IDs for MT25458 10GigE devices (commit), add link type autosensing (commit)

• veth: Allow setting the L3 MTU (commit)

• forcedeth: recover error support (commit)

• tg3: Add GRO support. (commit)

• niu: Add GRO support. (commit)

• dsa: add support for the Marvell 88E6095/6095F switch chips (commit), add switch chip cascading support (commit)

• ath5k: Add tx power calibration support (commit)

• b43: Add BCM4307 PCI-ID (commit)

• hso: add Vendor/Product ID's for new devices (commit)

• phy: add new LAN8710 and LAN8720 device ids to smsc phy driver (commit)

• Merge UCC and gianfar MDIO bus drivers (commit)

13.4. Input

• Add AD7877 touchscreen driver (commit)

• Add AD7879 Touchscreen driver (commit)

• Add driver for S1 button of rb532 (commit)

• Generic driver for rotary encoders on GPIOs (commit)

• Add support for the Maple mouse on the SEGA Dreamcast (commit)

• Add accelerated touchscreen support for Marvell Zylonite (commit)

13.5. Sound

• Add driver for Atmel AC97 controller (commit)

• Add driver for Atmel Audio Bitstream DAC (commit)

• Turtle Beach Multisound Classic/Pinnacle driver (commit)

• Add support for video out to the jack reporting API (commit)

• cmi8330: add MPU-401 support (commit), add OPL3 support (commit)

• hda: Add 4 channel mode for 3stack-hp model (ALC888) (commit),add another HP model with IDT92HD71bx codec (commit), added HP HDX16/HDX18 notebook support for HDA codecs (82HD71) (commit), add support for "Maxdata Favorit 100XS" (Intel HDA/ALC260) (commit), add the Device IDs for MCP89 and remove IDs of MCP7B (commit), add tyan model for Realtek ALC262 (commit)

• Preliminary support for Toshiba SB-0500 (commit)

• ac97 - Add patch entry for Conexant CX20468-31 chip (commit)

• Drop outdated and broken sa11xx-uda1341 driver (commit)

• virtuoso: add Xonar Essence STX support (commit)

• ASoC

  • Add initial driver for the WM8400 CODEC (commit)

  • Add initial support of Mitac mioa701 device SoC. (commit)

  • machine driver for Toshiba e750 (commit)

  • machine driver for Toshiba e800 (commit)

  • machine support for Toshiba e740 PDA (commit)

  • Driver for the WM9705 AC97 codec. (commit)

  • Add jack reporting interface (commit)

  • Add JIVE audio support (commit)

  • Add Magician machine support (commit)

  • Add s3c64xx-i2s support (commit)

  • Implement WM8350 headphone jack detection (commit)

13.6. V4L/DVB

• Add driver for the ST STV0900 dual demodulator. (commit 1, 2, 3, 4)

• Add driver for Zarlink ZL10036 DVB-S tuner. (commit)

• Add driver for the ST STV6110 silicon tuner. (commit)

• Add driver for the LG Electronics LGDT3305 ATSC/QAM-B Demodulator (commit)

• Add driver for the Freescale MC44S803 tuner (commit)

• Add "Sony PlayTV" to dibcom driver (commit)

• Add cx231xx USB driver (commit)

• Add driver for Intel CE6230 DVB-T USB2.0 (commit)

• Add camera (CSI) driver for MX1 (commit)

• zr364xx: add support for Aiptek DV T300 (commit)

• af9015: add MC44S803 support (commit), add new USB ID for KWorld DVB-T 395U (commit), add new USB ID for KWorld USB DVB-T TV Stick II (VS-DVB-T 395U) (commit), add support for Trekstor DVB-T USB Stick (commit), add support for Avermedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850) (commit)

• bttv: Add support for IVCE-8784 support for V4l2 bttv driver (commit), add support for Provideo PV-183 (commit), conceptronic CTVFMI2 PCI Id (commit), add support for Geovision GV-800(S) (commit)

• gspca: Add new mr97310a subdriver. (commit), add new sq905 subdriver (commit), add new sq905c subdriver (commit), add QCIF resolution support to m5602-ov9650 (commit)

• sms1xxx: add missing usb id 2040:2011 (commit)

• em28xx: Add support for Kaiomy TVnPC U2 stick (commit), add support for Easy Cap Capture DC-60 (commit), add DVC 101 model to Pinnacle Dazzle description (commit), add Pinnacle Dazzle Video Creator Plus DVC107 description (commit), add Kaiser Baas Video to DVD maker support (commit), add SIIG AVTuner-PVR board (commit)

• Add support for AVerMedia Cardbus Hybrid remote control (commit)

• soc-camera: camera host driver for i.MX3x Socs (commit)

• mxl5007t: update driver for MxL 5007T V4 (commit)

• lnbp21: Add support for ST LNBH24 LNB power controller. (commit)

• cx23885: add support for NetUP Dual DVB-S2 CI card (commit), add support for DVBWorld DVBS2 PCI-e 2005. (commit), add support for Turbosight TBS6920 DVB-S2 PCI-e card. (commit)

• saa7134: add DVB support for Avermedia A700 cards (commit), enable digital tv support for Hauppauge WinTV-HVR1120 (commit), add RDS support. (commit)

• dib0700: add support for Hauppauge ATSC Minicard (commit), support Yuan MC770 DVB-T (1164:0871) (commit), add Elgato EyeTV DTT to dibcom driver (commit), add ids for Yuan PD378S DVB adapter (commit)

• cx88: add support for Terratec Cinergy HT PCI MKII (commit)

• zl10353: add support for Intel CE6230 and Intel CE6231 (commit)

• tvaudio: add tda9875 support. (commit)

• uvcvideo: Add support for Syntek cameras found in JAOtech Smart Terminals (commit), add support for the Alcor Micro AU3820 chipset. (commit)

• ce6230: Add AVerMedia A310 USB IDs to CE6230 driver. (commit)

• lgs8gxx: Support for Legend Silicon LGS8913/LGS8GL5/LGS8GXX China DMB-TH digital demodulator (commit)

13.7. USB

• serial: add qualcomm wireless modem driver (commit), add symbol serial driver (commit)

• usbmon: Add binary API v1 (commit)

• Add platform device support for the ISP1760 USB chip (commit)

• Allow libusb to talk to unauthenticated WUSB devices (commit)

• musb: partial DaVinci dm355 support (commit)

• otg: adding nop usb transceiver (commit)

• qcserial: add device id for HP devices (commit)

• r8a66597-hcd: suspend/resume support (commit)

• remove phidget drivers from kernel tree. (commit)

• serial: opticon: add write support (commit)

• serial: opticon: add serial line ioctls (commit)

• usb-storage: subdriver separation (commit)

13.8. HWMON

• LM95241 driver (commit)

• Add LTC4215 driver (commit)

• lis3: SPI transport layer (commit)

• sht15 humidity sensor driver (commit)

• Add Asus ATK0110 support (commit)

• Add support for GMT G760A fan speed PWM controller (commit)

• fschmd: Add support for the FSC Hades IC (commit), add support for the FSC Syleus IC (commit)

• w83627ehf: Add support for W83667HG (commit)

13.9. Bluetooth

• Add enhanced security model for Simple Pairing (commit)

• Add global deferred socket parameter (commit)

• Add support for deferring L2CAP connection setup (commit)

• Add support for deferring RFCOMM connection setup (commit)

• Disconnect L2CAP connections without encryption (commit)

• Fix SCO state handling for incoming connections (commit)

• Pause RFCOMM TX when encryption drops (commit)

• Preparation for usage of SOL_BLUETOOTH (commit)

• Reject incoming SCO connections without listeners (commit)

• Replace L2CAP link mode with security level (commit)

• Replace RFCOMM link mode with security level (commit)

• Restrict application of socket options (commit)

13.10. Staging drivers

Warning: The staging drivers are in a alpha development stage, and they can't even considered experimental, but they're included in the source tree in the hope of encouraging its development and stabilization

• New aten2011 usb-to-serial-converter driver (commit)

• New b3dfg driver for the Brontes 3d Framegrabber PCI card (commit), (commit)

• New heci driver to support the Intel Management Engine Interface (MEI)(commit)

• New line6 usb driver for the guitar amp, cab, and effects modeller PODxt Pro by Line6 (commit)

• New p9auth driver, which implements Plan 9 style capability device implementation (commit), (commit)

• New phison ATA driver for the PCIE ATA PS5000 IDE support (commit), (commit)

• New rt3070 driver for the wireless Ralink 3070 devices (commit)

• New stlc45xx, wi-fi driver for stlc4550/4560 devices (commit)

• New USB serial driver for the Quatech ESU-100 8 port usb (commit)

• comedi: add addi-data drivers (commit), add 8253.h header (commit), add 8255 driver (commit), add acl7225b driver (commit), add adl_pci6208 driver (commit), add rti800 driver (commit), add plx9052 header file (commit), add amplc_pc236 driver (commit), add cb_pcimdas driver (commit), add National Instruments infrastructure (commit), add amcc_s5933 header file (commit), add adl_pci9118 driver (commit), add adv_pci1710 driver (commit), add cb_pcidas driver (commit), add ni_labpc drivers (commit), add nt_atmio driver (commit), add nt_mio_cs driver (commit), add nt_pcimio driver (commit), add jr3_pci driver (commit), add das08 drivers (commit), add comedi_rt_timer virtual driver (commit), add adl_pci7432 driver (commit), add adl_pci8164 driver (commit), add adl_pci9111 driver (commit), add adq12b driver (commit), add unioxx5 driver (commit), add ssv_dnp driver (commit), add skeleton driver (commit), add serial2002 driver (commit), add adl_pci7296 driver (commit), add pcl724 driver (commit), add pcl821 driver (commit), add pcl818 driver (commit), add s526 driver (commit), add rti802 driver (commit), add quatech_daqp_cs driver (commit), add poc driver (commit), add multiq3 driver (commit), add fl212 driver (commit), add gsc_hpdi driver (commit), add ii_pci20kc driver (commit), add ke_counter driver (commit), add mpc624 driver (commit), add mpc8260 driver (commit), add contec_pci_dio driver (commit), add ni_mio_common code (commit), add pcmda12 driver (commit), add pcmad driver (commit), add pcl711 driver (commit), add daqboard2000 driver (commit), add adv_pci1723 driver (commit), add adv_pci_dio driver (commit), add aio_aio12_8 driver (commit), add aio_iiro_16 driver (commit), add ampl_dio200 driver (commit), add amplc_pc263 driver (commit), add amplc_pci224 driver (commit), add amplc_pci230 driver (commit), add cb_das16_cs driver (commit), add das16m1 driver (commit), add dmm32at driver (commit), add pcmmio and pcmuio drivers (commit), add pcl725 driver (commit), add pcl726 driver (commit), add pcl730 driver (commit), add pcl816 driver (commit), add cb_pcidas64 driver (commit), add cb_pcidda driver (commit), add cb_pcimdda driver (commit), add pcm3724 driver (commit), add ni_6527 driver (commit), add ni_65xx driver (commit), add ni_660x driver (commit), add ni_670x driver (commit), add ni_at_ao driver (commit), add ni_pcidio driver (commit), add das1800 driver (commit), add das6402 driver (commit), add das800 driver (commit), add das16 driver (commit), add ni_at_a2150 driver (commit), add ni_at_atmio16d driver (commit), add ni_daq_700 driver (commit), add ni_daq_dio24 driver (commit), add dt2601 driver (commit), add dt2811 driver (commit), add dt2814 driver (commit), add dt2815 driver (commit), add dt2817 driver (commit), add dt282x driver (commit), add dt3000 driver (commit), add c6xdigio driver (commit), add cb_pcidio driver (commit), add pcm3730 driver (commit), add new drivers to the kernel build (commit)

• sxg: Add checksum control option through ethtool interface (commit), add Checksum Offload support for Sahara SXG driver (commit), add Jumbo frames support to Sahara SXG Driver (commit), add multicast support for Sahara SXG driver (commit), add NAPI feature to Sahara SXG Driver (commit), add Rev B support in the Sahara SXG driver (commit)

• rt2860: Ported v1.7.1.1 changes into v1.8.0.0, becoming v1.8.1.1 (commit)

• rt2870: add Linksys WUSB600N device id (commit)

13.11. I2C

• xtensa s6000 i2c driver (commit)

• i2c-algo-pca: Add PCA9665 support (commit)

• iMX/MXC support (commit)

• i2c-nforce2: Add support for MCP67, MCP73, MCP78S and MCP79 (commit)

• i2c-piix4: Add support for the Broadcom HT1100 chipset (commit)

13.12. RTC

• Add platform driver for EFI (commit)

• Add m41t62 support to rtc-m41t80 driver (commit)

• Add EPSON RX8025 support to DS1307 RTC driver (commit)

13.13. HID

• Add support for another version of 0e8f:0003 device in hid-pl (commit)

• Add support for Kye/Genius Ergo 525V (commit)

• Autosuspend support for USB HID (commit)

• Dragonrise game controller force feedback driver (commit)

• Support Apple mini aluminum keyboard (commit)

• support for Kensington slimblade device (commit)

13.14. MTD

• RBTX4939 map driver (commit)

• TXx9 SoC NAND Flash Memory Controller driver (commit)

• OneNAND: Add write-while-program support (commit)

• RBTX4939: add MTD support (commit)

• UBI: add fsync capability (commit)

• Flash mapping support for Dreamcast VMU. (commit)

• NAND

  • davinci_nand driver (commit)

  • Add support for 4KiB pages. (commit)

  • Add support for NAND on the Socrates board (commit)

  • FSL-UPM: add multi chip support (commit)

  • TXx9: add NDFMC support (commit)

13.15. FireWire

• cdev: add ioctls for isochronous resource management (commit), add ioctls for manual iso resource management (commit), add ioctl to query maximum transmission speed (commit), add ioctl for broadcast write requests (commit)

• Implement asynchronous stream transmission (commit)

• Broadcast channel support (commit)

See also FireWire release notes at kernel.org.

13.16. EDAC

• New ppc4xx driver module (commit)

• AMD8111 driver (commit), (commit), (commit)

• AMD8131 driver (commit), (commit), (commit)

13.17. Serial

• 8250_pci: add support for National Instruments 843x RS232 devices (commit), add support for National Instruments legacy 8420 RS232 boards (commit)

• 8250_pnp: add another Wacom tablet (commit)

• Add support for the MAX3100 SPI UART. (commit), (commit)

• The serial driver for the Cris platform has been modified to use the new general RS485 Linux data structure (introduced by Alan Cox) (commit)

13.18. LEDs

• Add BD2802GU LED driver (commit)

• Add dac124s085 driver (commit)

• Add rb532 LED driver for the User LED (commit)

• Introduce lp5521 led driver (commit)

• Simple driver for pwm driven LEDs (commit)

• Add gpio-led trigger (commit)

• Add openfirmware platform device support (commit)

13.19. ACPI

• sony-laptop: Add rfkill support on new models (commit), add support for extended hotkeys (commit), add support for extra keyboard events (commit), add support for new Sony platform API (commit), VGN-A317M hotkey support (commit)

• dell-wmi: new driver for hotkey control (commit)

• Add support for x2apic ACPI extensions (commit)

13.20. Various

• WATCHDOG: hpwdt.c: Add new HP BMC controller. (commit)

• ssb: Add PMU support (commit)

• sdhci: Add support for bus-specific IO memory accessors (commit), add support for card-detection polling (commit), add support for hosts reporting inverted write-protect state (commit)

• mmc: SDIO driver for Marvell SoCs (commit), add OpenFirmware bindings for SDHCI driver (commit),

• isl29003.c: Driver for the ISL29003 ambient light sensor (commit)

• regulator: enumerate voltages (commit), twl4030 regulators (commit)

• mflash: driver for mGine mFlash(gFlash) devices (commit)

• uio: add the uio_aec driver (commit)

• sgi-gru: support multiple pagesizes in GRU (commit)

• hwrng: new timeriomem driver (commit)

• brd: support barriers (commit)

• backlight

  • Add HP Jornada 700 series LCD driver (commit)

  • Add HP Jornada 700 series backlight driver (commit)

  • Add support for MacBook 5, MacBook Air 2, and MacBook Pro 5 (commit)

14. Other sources about 2.6.30 kernel

• Heise Online's Kernel Log :

  • Linux 2.6.30 is taking shape

  • Development of 2.6.30 is under way

  • Drivers: New drivers for audio, video, USB hardware, netbooks and notebooks

  • Storage: RAID improvements, optimised CFQ Scheduler, SAS drivers

  • File systems: New and revamped file systems

  • Network: New Wi-Fi drivers and other network novelties

  • Kernel Log: What's coming in 2.6.30 - Architecture and infrastructure

• Linux Weekly news :

  • 2.6.30 merge window, part I

  • 2.6.30 merge window, part II

• NILFS: A File System to Make SSDs Scream

• Linux RAID tool mdadm updated

• Kernel space: timerfd() and system call review

• The Ext4 Linux file system

• Cluster file system GlusterFS 2.0 released

• Kernel developers squabble over Ext3 and Ext4

• Linux 2.6.30 Kernel Benchmarks

• Linux Unified Kernel Aims to Combine Linux, NT Kernel

• When is it a good idea to use a reader-writer lock?

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