All posts by corbet

Security updates for Tuesday

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/995095/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (ffmpeg, ghostscript, libsepol, openjdk-11, openjdk-17, perl, and python-sql), Oracle (389-ds-base, buildah, containernetworking-plugins, edk2, httpd, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, kernel, python-setuptools, skopeo, and webkit2gtk3), Red Hat (buildah), Slackware (openssl), SUSE (apache2, firefox, libopenssl-3-devel, podman, and python310-starlette), and Ubuntu (cups-browsed, firefox, libgsf, and linux-gke).

A new kernel testing tree

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/994983/

Sasha Levin has announced a
new tree that is intended to perform continuous-integration tests of pull
requests aimed at the mainline. The plan is for this tree to hold more
finished work than sometimes ends up in linux-next; in a name that seems
destined to create typographical confusion, it is called “linus-next”.

The linus-next tree aims to provide a more stable and testable
integration point compared to linux-next, addressing the runtime
issues that make testing linux-next challenging and focusing on
code that’s about to be pulled by Linus.

[$] The long road to lazy preemption

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/994322/

The kernel’s CPU scheduler currently offers several preemption modes that
implement a range of tradeoffs between system throughput and response time.
Back in September 2023, a discussion
on scheduling led to the concept of “lazy preemption”, which could
simplify scheduling in the kernel while providing better results. Things
went quiet for a while, but lazy preemption has returned in the form of this patch series
from Peter Zijlstra. While the concept appears to work well, there is
still a fair amount of work to be done.

Rust 1.82.0 released

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/994654/

Version
1.82.0 of the Rust language has been released. There are a lot of new
features this time, including a cargo info command, tier-1 support
for 64-bit Apple Arm systems, a new native syntax (&raw) to create
raw pointers, changes to unsafe extern, unsafe attributes,
standardized rules around the handling of floating-point not-a-number
values, and more.

[$] Two pidfd tweaks: PIDFD_GET_INFO and PIDFD_SELF

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/992991/

The pidfd mechanism, which uses file descriptors to refer to processes in
an unambiguous and race-free way, was first
introduced in 2018. Since then, the interface has gained a number of new features, but
development has slowed over time as the interface has matured. There are,
however, a couple of patches in circulation that are meant to make working
with pidfds simpler in some situations.

Security updates for Tuesday

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/994268/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (container-tools:rhel8, firefox, OpenIPMI, podman, and thunderbird), Debian (libapache-mod-jk, php7.4, and webkit2gtk), Fedora (edk2, koji, libgsf, rust-hyper-rustls, rust-reqwest, rust-rustls-native-certs, rust-rustls-native-certs0.7, rust-tonic, rust-tonic-build, rust-tonic-types, rust-tower, rust-tower-http, rust-tower-http0.5, and rust-tower0.4), Mageia (packages and thunderbird), Oracle (bind, container-tools:ol8, kernel, kernel-container, OpenIPMI, podman, and thunderbird), Red Hat (container-tools:rhel8, containernetworking-plugins, podman, and skopeo), SUSE (argocd-cli, bsdtar, keepalived, kernel, kyverno, libmozjs-115-0, libmozjs-128-0, libmozjs-78-0, OpenIPMI, opensc, php8, thunderbird, and xen), and Ubuntu (configobj, haproxy, imagemagick, nginx, and postgresql-10, postgresql-9.3).

[$] On Rust in enterprise kernels

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/993337/

At the recently concluded Maintainers Summit, it was generally agreed that the Rust experiment would
continue, and that the path was clear for more Rust code to enter the
kernel. But the high-level view taken at such gatherings cannot always
account for the difficult details that will inevitably arise as the Rust
work proceeds. A recent discussion on the nouveau mailing list may have
escaped the notice of many, but it highlights some of the problems that
will have to be worked out as important functionality written in Rust heads
toward the mainline.

Security updates for Tuesday

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/993276/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (kernel), Fedora (webkitgtk), Mageia (cups), Oracle (e2fsprogs, kernel, and kernel-container), Red Hat (buildah, container-tools:rhel8, containernetworking-plugins, git-lfs, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, grafana-pcp, podman, and skopeo), SUSE (Mesa, mozjs115, podofo, and redis7), and Ubuntu (cups and cups-filters).

[$] In search of the AOSP community

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/992992/

The core of the Android operating system, as represented by the Android Open Source Project (AOSP),
can only be considered one of the most successful open-source initiatives
ever created; its user count is measured in the billions. But few would
consider it to be a truly community-oriented project. At the 2024 Linux Plumbers Conference, Chris Simmonds
asked why the AOSP community is so hard to find, and what might be done
about the situation.

Kernel prepatch 6.12-rc2

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/993107/

Linus has released 6.12-rc2 for testing.

Anyway, this isn’t one of the small rc2’s. But looking at
historical trends, being a bigger rc2 isn’t _that_ unusual, and
nothing in here looks all that odd. Yes, the diffstat may look a
bit unusual, in that we had a global header renaming
(asm/unaligned.h -> linux/unaligned.h) and we had a couple of
reverts that stand out as spikes in the stats, but everything else
looks nice and small.

[$] Coping with complex cameras

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/992411/

Cameras were never the simplest of devices for Linux to support; they have
a wide range of operating parameters and can generate high rates of data.
In recent years, though, they have become increasingly complex, stressing
the ability of the kernel’s media
subsystem to manage them. At the 2024 Linux Plumbers Conference, developers from
that subsystem and beyond gathered to discuss the state of affairs and how
complex camera devices should be supported in the future.