[Techtalk] Is Linux 2.4.18 Really That Unstable?

[jas at spamcop.net]

>I'm having near-constant crashes from 2.4.18.  I upgraded from 2.4.2-2
>so I could get ext3 support without all the hassle and I'm getting
>tired of the crashes, which don't seem resolved in 2.4.19 either.

>Does anyone have any suggestions for "ultra-stable" releases beyond
>2.4.18?  I see that Red Hat 7.3 is shipping with 2.4.8-3 or 2.4.8-10
>(I forget which), but before I upgrade kernels =again= I'd like to
>know that I'm going to some that's going to stay up for a while.

Could this be a compiler problem? On my RedHat box, you have to compile kernels
with "kgcc" as opposed to regular gcc, or you end up with a kernel that doesn't
work properly. RedHat's own kernel sources use kgcc automatically, but the
tarballs from kernel.org don't - you need to edit the Makefile to replace gcc
with kgcc, IIRC.

I've actually had similar problems on my RedHat system: the latest 2.4.x at the
time wouldn't even boot (Oops when mounting filesystems). Something strange there...


James.