[Nottingham] Testing 2.6

[Robert Davies]

There's been some publicity about running 2.6-test kernels, and it's actually 
not a long job, with an up to date distro.  The kernel seems in a lot better 
state than early 2.4 was to me, though I haven't torture tested it, my SMP 
system has re-compiled glibc, gcc, mozilla, runs games fine etc and I am 
still in business, and not noticed any instabilities :

Feature: HowTo Upgrade To 2.6 Kernel  -  http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/799
Dave Jones's 2.5/6 info -  http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/post-halloween-2.5.txt

On Gentoo, I only had to 'mkdir /sys', emerge module-init-tools (replacement 
for modutils), and go over the kernel config file with make oldconfig.  devfs 
users also need to enable the /dev/pts pseudo filesystem now, for Unix 98 
pty's.

Gentoo - http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=68068

One thing to watch is re-compiling gcc with 2.6 headers to be able to take 
advantage (test?) new kernel features like NPTL and enhance Posix AIO.  
Contrary to glibc FAQ item, which tells you glibc will run with older kernel, 
you actually get 'Kernel too Old' message if you try to go back to 2.4.

So far various programs like chronyd and k3b, needed re-emerging with 
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" to pick up current (or -rc versions), but KDE-3.1.3 
seems to run fine, so I'm not sure why it's not marked stable.

Also it's best during kernel config to eliminate uncessary drivers, many of 
the SCSI ones in 2.6 do not compile. 

My only issue currently with 2.6, is that it's not sharing the interrupts with 
the APIC on both CPUs, /proc/interrupts looks same as if you use noapic 
option.

Rob