[User-mode-linux-user] user-mode port 0.24-2.3.99-pre9

[Jeff D. <jd...@ka...>]

The user-mode port of 2.3.99-pre9 is available.

There is now a real hardware interrupt mechanism, which I got by copying the 
i386 irq code, and wrapping user-mode stuff around it.  The consoles and 
network device now do their I/O off interrupts rather than the timer, which 
greatly reduces latency.  The interactive feel is much better, especially 
under X.

As a side-effect of this, 'cat /proc/interrupts' will no longer hang the 
kernel :-)

I fixed the stair-stepping problem with the console output.

I also fixed the problem that some people had running kernels that they had 
built themselves.  So, if you built a -pre8 kernel from source, and it did 
nothing but hang, that's fixed.

I've also got some caveats to go with this batch of good news.  Now that this 
port is much more interrupt-driven, it is more prone to races.  I've fixed a 
bunch of them, but I still see an occasional process segfault.

There is also a slight difficulty at times with the network.  Sometimes 
packets will stop flowing.  I have no idea why, but typing at a console will 
wake things up and get those packets flowing again.  This is most easy to 
reproduce under X (start an xterm and a window manager and wave the mouse in 
and out of the xterm, and after a while, the xterm will stop blinking and the 
mouse will stop changing shape), but I've also seen it affect ping.

The project's home page is http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net 
The project's download page is http://sourceforge.net/project/filelist.php?grou
p_id=429

				Jeff