[Openmosix-devel] Backport of 2.6.15 code to 2.6.12, 2.6.13 and 2.6.14

[Andreas <ge...@gm...>]

Hi!

Short Version:
--------------
I've backported the newer 2.6.15 patch to 2.6.14, 2.6.13 and
2.6.12. The curious ones can find the links to the patches below.

Long Version:
-------------
I was amazed by Tab's recent release of the 2.6.15 patch which can
actually do the migration from the home node away and back again w/o
interruption (@Tab: excellent work, really! ;-) ). As some of you know
I'm still toying around with this coLinux and openMosix stuff to
create heterogeneous clusters. My problem was that coLinux is still
stuck at 2.6.12, so originally I tried a update of their patch to
2.6.15. This, however proved to be a bit more tricky since coLinux
seems a bit touchy if you don't have real kernel coding skills (I
don't). 

So as they say "If the mountain will not come to Mohamet, Mohamet must
go to the mountain", I started a backport of the oM patch to
2.6.12. After some kernel panics and some sleepless nights the three
patches below turned out to work sufficiently (read: they are not well
tested, but a simple test-program of mine migrated back and forth w/o
crashing). The downside is that my boot splash screen stopped working
using the 2.6.14 and 2.6.13 patches (but this was harmless and didn't
cause any crashed) and started to cause kernel panics when using the
2.6.12 patch (which I fixed by turning the splash screen off). Porting
the patches was in essence not as difficult as I had been afraid which
gives me the impression, as it seems to be only loosely coupled to a
given kernel version, that this must be really good code (IMHO writing
truly decoupled code is very hard, especially for kernel coding).

I don't know if this is in deed interesting for anybody but I thought
I'd do no harm to let you guys know ;-) 


The Patches:
------------
Patch 1: [http://cluster.inf-ra.uni-jena.de/~gentryx/patch-openmosix-2.6.14.bz2]
  Patch against kernel 2.6.14
  Tested with 2.6.14, Gentoo patches version 8
Patch 2: [http://cluster.inf-ra.uni-jena.de/~gentryx/patch-openmosix-2.6.13.bz2]
  Patch against kernel 2.6.13
  Tested with 2.6.13, Gentoo patches version 7
Patch 3: [http://cluster.inf-ra.uni-jena.de/~gentryx/patch-openmosix-2.6.12.bz2]
  Patch against kernel 2.6.12
  Tested with 2.6.12, Gentoo patches version 14

Have fun!
-Andreas