This message announces the availability of the second patch for version 1.2.13 of Linux/68k. It can be ftped from directory /pub/linux/680x0/v1.2 at tsx-11.mit.edu. A diff file can be found in linux-1.2.13pl2.diffs.gz, and the full source in linux-1.2.13pl2.tar.gz. I compiled a "superset" kernel which can be found in file vmlinux-1.2.13pl2.gz in the v1.2 directory. As you can probably guess, this version of Linux/68k is "compatible" with version 1.2.13 of the PC version of Linux. BEFORE RUNNING THIS KERNEL, CAREFULLY READ EVERY PART OF THIS ANNOUNCEMENT, AND PLAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE *EXT2FS* SECTION. ALSO ENSURE THAT YOU READ THE ANNOUNCE-* FILES FOR 1.2.13pl1, 1.2.13, 1.2.10pl1, 1.2.10, 0.9.8 and 0.9.9, 0.9.10 and 0.9.11. Notes: 1) This kernel *cannot* be used with existing 0.9 ext2fs filesystems without "fixing" them. See *EXT2FS* below. 2) Contains Andreas Schwab's ELF kernel patches; you can build a kernel in ELF format rather than a.out (i.e. you can get rid of a.out tools/compilers). 3) More fixes for 68040 support. It might actually work now. 4) Contains Atari sound driver from 0.9.11. See that ANNOUNCE file for details. 5) Contains Amiga Hydra ethernet driver. 6) A whole pile-o-bug-fixes from Andreas; one may help those who have had problems booting v1.2; it should help those who have had NFS problems also. 7) Amiga floppy driver supports MS-DOS format. It seems that somehow the floppy driver is writing (Amiga format) data incorrectly (even just using tar or dd). The problem has not yet been fixed. 8) Fixed "cache_clear" routine for '040 systems from 0.9.11 9) Atari ACSI and SCSI bug fixes. 2) Includes some more patches from Andreas Schwab which were missed before, plus some new stuff from Andreas (mostly to do with the serial ports). 3) *Some* fixes made for 68040 support. It doesn't work properly still, but it gets further, and progress is being made. One must use a new boot program in order to boot this kernel (for both platforms) . Binaries for these boot programs are available in the v1.2 directory on tsx-11. The programs are amiboot-2.0 and ataboot-1.2. These programs can boot a.out or ELF kernels. The Amiga Lilo version 0.4a provided by Geert for use with 0.9.11 may work with the 1.2.13pl1 kernel, but this has not been tested. Amiga Lilo cannot yet boot ELF-format kernels (note: ELF-format kernels means that the kernel binary is ELF, not that the kernel executes ELF programs; either a.out or ELF kernels can execute ELF programs, if so configured). I've created a new ramdisk image to be used with 1.2 kernels. It is in filesys-1.2.gz in the v1.2 directory. The most interesting programs in this filesystem from a v1.2 point of view are the /sbin/fsck.ext2, /sbin/mkfs.ext2 and /sbin/update programs. /sbin/fsck.ext2 and /sbin/mkfs.ext2 are versions of the e2fsprogs-0.5b which *must* be used with v1.2 of Linux/68k. See *EXT2FS* below. /sbin/update is the "bdflush" daemon some of you may have heard about. It gives better disk buffer writing performance than the existing /sbin/update program. Note that /sbin/update will only do the "bdflush" business on a 1.2 system, but can be used as a replacement for /sbin/update on older (v0.9) systems also. NOTE: If you are upgrading from 0.9, you *must* copy the fsck.ext2 and mkfs.ext2 programs from the ramdisk to your hard disk. You cannot use the older versions of these programs with v1.2 filesystems. A few people have not done this, with problems resulting when the file system checker runs. *EXTFS*: When I first created Linux/68k (and the ported the ext2fs filesystem) I made a bad decision about the implementation of the linux kernel bit operations for the m68k. I made them little-endian when they should really have been big-endian. I have rectified this mistake in v1.2. The bit-operations are big-endian, and the ext2fs filesystem uses these bit operations. This means that the inode and block bitmaps of existing ext2fs filesystems *cannot* be used by the v1.2 kernel. If you want to use existing filesystems, you must boot the 1.2 ramdisk filesystem, and run the /sbin/fsck.ext2 program on every ext2fs filesystem you intend to use with the v1.2 kernel. Note that after running the new fsck.ext2 on these filesystems, they cannot be used by v0.9 kernels unless you run the v0.9 fsck.ext2 on them. If you wish to create a *new* ext2fs partition to use with v1.2, use the mkfs.ext2 on the 1.2 ramdisk filesystem. The patches required to e2fsprogs-0.5b to support Linux/68k v1.2 are found in e2fsprogs-0.5b.diffs.gz in the v1.2 directory.