what is dirty kernel version

linux_newbie79 · 03-25-2010, 01:16 AM

Hi,

I downloaded linux 2.6.26.3 and cross compiled for PXA. In this process I also updated the device specific drivers.

I booted my hardware and things are working fine.

But the boot message shows "dirty" next to kernel version. Why it says so?

Before I was using 2.6.11.7 kernel version and I did the same procedure as mentioned above but there is no "dirty".

Can anyone let me know the reason?
Below is part of kernel boot message.

Linux version 2.6.26.3-svn357-dirty16 (newbie@newbierhel4vm) (gcc version 4.0.2) #56 Thu Mar 11 00:11:12 EST 2010
CPU: XScale-PXA255 [69052d06] revision 6 (ARMv5TE), cr=0000397f
Machine: RTS G5
Got g5 info
102168 C 1 3
00:1A:EA:10:21:68
Memory policy: ECC disabled, Data cache writeback
Memory clock: 99.53MHz (*27)
Run Mode clock: 199.07MHz (*2)
Turbo Mode clock: 199.07MHz (*1.0, inactive)
Msc0: 97787ff8 (f6000008)
Msc1: 23c7f8c (f600000c)
Msc2: 7ff07ff0 (f6000010)
mdcnfg: 1cb, mdrefr: 1802f
cccr: 141
CPLD Version: a02
CPU0: D VIVT undefined 5 cache
CPU0: I cache: 32768 bytes, associativity 32, 32 byte lines, 32 sets
CPU0: D cache: 32768 bytes, associativity 32, 32 byte lines, 32 sets
Built 1 zonelists in Zone order, mobility grouping on. Total pages: 32512
Kernel command line: root=/dev/mtdblock2 rootfstype=jffs2 console=ttyS1,115200
PID hash table entries: 512 (order: 9, 2048 bytes)
Console: colour dummy device 80x30
Dentry cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Memory: 64MB 64MB = 128MB total
Memory: 125568KB available (3708K code, 420K data, 124K init)
SLUB: Genslabs=12, HWalign=32, Order=0-3, MinObjects=0, CPUs=1, Nodes=1
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512

Thanks

GrapefruiTgirl · 03-25-2010, 01:31 AM

http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/s...html#def_dirty

From what I gather from reading the Git manual at the above link, the -dirty tag means:

Quote:

dirty:
A working tree is said to be "dirty" if it contains modifications which have not been
committed to the current branch.

So, to me that means you started with a particular branch of the kernel (or some part of it) and then made some modifications to some code in there, but did not commit those changes to the branch. The result is that the build (or some part of it) is tagged as "dirty".

IF you Google for "dirty kernel tag" you can read some more about this in the LKML mailing list threads.

Sasha

linux_newbie79 · 03-25-2010, 03:22 AM

thanks very much