Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/985484/

Lix, the fork of Nix that LWN covered in July, has made its second release since forking. This one includes substantial changes to the backend code, including removing a dependency on Bison, and getting a change to the Nix language back upstream.

The general theme of Lix 2.91 is to perform another wave of
refactorings and design improvements in preparation for our evolution
plans.

Nevertheless, there are a few exciting user facing changes[.]

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/984984/

Researchers from Graz University of Technology have
published details of a new attack
on the Linux kernel called SLUBstick. The attack uses timing information to turn an ability to trigger use-after-free or double-free bugs into the ability to overwrite page tables, and thence into the ability to read and write arbitrary areas of memory. The good news is that this attack does require an existing bug to be usable; the bad news is that the kernel regularly sees bugs of this kind.

We assume that an unprivileged user has code execution.
Additionally, we consider the presence of a heap vulnerability
in the Linux kernel. We assume that the Linux kernel
incorporates all defense mechanisms available in version 6.4, the
most recent Linux kernel version when we started our work.
These mechanisms include features such as WˆX, KASLR,
SMAP, and kCFI. We do not assume any microarchitectural
vulnerabilities, e.g., transient execution, fault
injection, or hardware side channels.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/984966/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (httpd, kernel, kernel-rt, and libtiff), Debian (postgresql-13, postgresql-15, and thunderbird), Fedora (frr, thunderbird, vim, and xrdp), Gentoo (Librsvg, Nautilus, ncurses, Percona XtraBackup, QEMU, and re2c), Red Hat (httpd, kernel, kernel-rt, openssl, and python-setuptools), SUSE (bind, ffmpeg-4, kubernetes1.23, kubernetes1.24, python-Django, and python3-Twisted), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-iot, linux-kvm, linux-raspi, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-ibm, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-oem-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-oracle, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, and salt).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/984086/

Endless OS is a Linux distribution with a focus on improving access to
educational tools by providing a simple-to-manage, full-featured desktop for
educators and students — one that works offline, with minimal maintenance. The
distribution also aims to be suitable for older devices, in order to promote access to
computers by ensuring those systems remain usable.
In pursuit of those goals, it makes some unusual technical
choices. But what makes the distribution really shine is its curated collection
of software and educational resources.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/984733/

Mozilla has announced that Puppeteer, a browser automation and testing library, now has first-class support for Firefox using the
WebDriver BiDi protocol. Puppeteer can be used to drive headless browser instances, and is commonly used for automated end-to-end web-site tests.

Whilst the features offered by Puppeteer won’t be a surprise,
bringing support to multiple browsers has been a significant
undertaking. The Firefox support is not based on a Firefox-specific
automation protocol, but on WebDriver BiDi, a cross browser protocol
that’s undergoing standardization at the W3C, and currently has
implementation in both Gecko and Chromium. This use of a
cross-browser protocol should make it much easier to support many
different browsers going forward.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/983843/

There is ongoing discussion about the ethics and effectiveness of
telemetry following some recent LWN articles that touched on

Thunderbird’s use of opt-out
telemetry and planned metrics in Fedora. The

Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), the nonprofit behind

Let’s Encrypt, has a potential solution to the problem of how to collect and
aggregate telemetry without violating users’ privacy. The scheme is based on a
draft
protocol being standardized with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
and has an
open-source implementation
available.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/984370/

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (chromium), SUSE (docker and patch), and Ubuntu (bind9, gross, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.5, and tomcat8, tomcat9).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/983340/

A
bootstrappable build is one that builds existing
software from scratch — for example, building GCC without relying on an existing
copy of GCC. In 2023, the Guix project
announced that the project had reduced the size
of the binary bootstrap seed needed to build its operating system to just 357-bytes —
not counting the Linux kernel required to run the build process. Now, the
live-bootstrap project
has gone a step further and removed the need for an existing kernel at all.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/983816/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (java-11-openjdk), Debian (bind9), Fedora (darkhttpd, mod_http2, and python-scrapy), Red Hat (python3.11, rhc-worker-script, and thunderbird), SUSE (assimp, gh, opera, python-Django, and python-nltk), and Ubuntu (edk2, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-gkeop-5.15, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia, linux-oracle, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.15, linux-azure-fde, linux-azure-fde-5.15, linux-nvidia-6.5, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, and lua5.4).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/983523/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (linux-firmware and squid), Debian (bind9), Fedora (kubernetes, thunderbird, and tinyproxy), Oracle (containernetworking-plugins, cups, edk2, httpd, httpd:2.4, kernel, kernel-container, libreoffice, libuv, libvirt, python3, and runc), Red Hat (freeradius:3.0, httpd, and squid), and SUSE (giflib and python-dnspython).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/982398/

On July 12, Jocelyn Falempe

proposed a change to the configuration options that Fedora sets for its
kernels, in order to make kernel panics easier to report.
Falempe would like to enable the kernel’s recently added
DRM-panic feature, which adds
a graphical crash screen that is reminiscent of the infamous
Windows “blue screen of death” for kernel panics. The feature introduces a few
tradeoffs, including currently limited driver support, so the proposal spawned a
good deal of discussion.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/982965/

Let’s Encrypt has
announced
that it intends to end support “as soon as possible” for the

Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) over privacy concerns. OCSP was developed as a
lighter-weight alternative to

Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) that did not involve downloading
the entire CRL in order to check whether a certificate was valid. Let’s Encrypt will continue
supporting OCSP as long as it is a requirement for Microsoft’s

Trusted Root Program, but hopes to discontinue it soon:

We plan to end support for OCSP primarily because it represents a considerable risk to privacy on the Internet. When someone visits a website using a browser or other software that checks for certificate revocation via OCSP, the Certificate Authority (CA) operating the OCSP responder immediately becomes aware of which website is being visited from that visitor’s particular IP address. Even when a CA intentionally does not retain this information, as is the case with Let’s Encrypt, CAs could be legally compelled to collect it. CRLs do not have this issue.

People using Let’s Encrypt as their CA should, for the most part, not need to change their setups.
All modern browsers support CRLs, so end-users shouldn’t notice an impact either.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/982077/

LWN has covered BPF

since its initial introduction to Linux, usually through the lens of the newest
developments; this can make it hard to view the whole picture. BPF provides
a way to extend a running kernel, without having to recompile and reboot.
It does this in a safe way, so that malicious BPF
programs cannot crash a running kernel, thanks to the BPF verifier. So how does
the verifier actually work, what are its limits, and how has it changed since
the early days of BPF?

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/982585/

The Next Generation Internet
(NGI) project, an initiative of the EU’s European Commission (EC),
provides funding in the form of grants for a wide variety of
open-source software,
including
Redox,
Briar,
SourceHut, and many more.
But the NGI project is not among those that would be funded under the current draft budget for 2025,

as The Register reports. More than 60 organizations have signed on to an open letter asking the
EC to reconsider:

We find this transformation incomprehensible, moreover when NGI has proven efficient and economical to support free software as a whole, from the smallest to the most established initiatives. This ecosystem diversity backs the strength of European technological innovation, and maintaining the NGI initiative to provide structural support to software projects at the heart of worldwide innovation is key to enforce the sovereignty of a European infrastructure.
Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from European rather than North American programming communities, and are mostly initiated by small-scaled organizations.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/981663/

The
NumPy project
released version 2.0.0 on
June 16, the first major release of the widely
used Python-based numeric-computing library since 2006. The release has been planned for some
time, as an opportunity to clean up NumPy’s API. As with most NumPy updates,
there are performance improvements to several individual functions. There are only a few new
features, but several backward-incompatible changes, including a change to
NumPy’s numeric-promotion rules. Changes to the Python API require relatively minor changes to
Python code using the library, but the changes to the C API may be more
difficult to adapt to. In
both cases, the official

migration guide describes what needs to be adapted to the new version.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/982559/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, libndp, openssh, qt5-qtbase, ruby, skopeo, and thunderbird), Debian (thunderbird), Fedora (dotnet6.0, httpd, python-django, python-django4.2, qt6-qtbase, rapidjson, and ruby), Red Hat (389-ds-base, firefox, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, libndp, qt5-qtbase, and thunderbird), Slackware (httpd), SUSE (apache2, chromium, and kernel), and Ubuntu (apache2, linux-aws, linux-azure-fde, linux-azure-fde-5.15, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-aws-6.5, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.5, linux-oracle-6.5, linux-starfive-6.5, and linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/982186/

Redox has received a
grant to work on implementing POSIX-compatible signals. The

draft design calls for them to be implemented nearly completely in user space.

So far, the signals project has been going according to plan, and
hopefully, POSIX support for signals will be mostly complete by the
end of summer, with in-kernel improvements to process management.
After that, work on the userspace process manager will begin,
possibly including new kernel performance and/or functionality
improvements to facilitate this.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/972580/

On June 25, Matthew Wilcox posted

a second version of a patch set
introducing a new
data structure called rosebush, which
“is a resizing, scalable, cache-aware, RCU optimised hash
table.” The kernel already has generic hash tables, though, including
rhashtable. Wilcox believes that the design of
rhashtable is not the best choice for performance, and has written rosebush as
an alternative for use in the

directory-entry cache (dcache) — the filesystem cache used to speed up
file-name lookup.

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/981813/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (apache2), Fedora (mingw-python3 and python-urllib3), Oracle (dotnet6.0, dotnet8.0, fence-agents, openssh, pki-core, and virt:ol and virt-devel:rhel), SUSE (apache2, firefox, libvpx, oniguruma, python-zipp, python310, thunderbird, and tomcat10), and Ubuntu (apache2, apport, linux, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-ibm, linux-intel, linux-lowlatency, linux-oem-6.8, linux-raspi, linux, linux-gcp, linux-nvidia-6.5, linux-raspi, linux-gke, and python-django).

Post Syndicated from daroc original https://lwn.net/Articles/981124/

Since the

disagreements that led to Eelco Dolstra

stepping down from the NixOS
Foundation board, there have been a number of projects forked from or inspired
by

Nix that have stepped up to compete with it. Two months on, some of these
projects are now well-established enough to look at what they have to offer and
how they compare to each other. Overall, users have a number of good options to
choose from, whether they’re seeking a compatible replacement for Nix (the
configuration language and package manager) or NixOS (the Linux distribution),
or something that takes the same ideas in a different direction.