Linux Kernel 3.14.43 LTS Includes Dozens of ARM and ARM64 Improvements

All users of the 3.14 kernel series must update

On May 17, we announced that Linux kernel 4.0.4 and Linux kernel 3.10.79 LTS were available for download, but another important kernel was published on the same day - Linux kernel 3.14.43 LTS, which is currently used in various GNU/Linux distributions.

Greg Kroah-Hartman had the pleasure of announcing Linux kernel 3.14.43 LTS, a release that includes dozens of ARM and ARM64 (AArch64) improvements, fixes for that NILFS2 and OCFS2 filesystems, and an ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) fix.

Additionally, Linux kernel 3.14.43 LTS comes with improvements to KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) and OSS (Open Sound System), as well as numerous updated drivers, notably for ACPI, GPU (Intel i915 and Radeon), InfiniBand, MD, MMC, TTY, Xen, and the PINCTRL (PIN CONTROL) subsystem.

"I'm announcing the release of the 3.14.43 kernel. All users of the 3.14 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman in the mailinglist announcement. "The updated 3.14.y git tree can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git;a=summary."

All users of the 3.14 kernel series are urged to update as soon as possible

As usual, Greg Kroah-Hartman recommends all users of the 3.14 kernel series to upgrade to the Linux kernel 3.14.43 LTS release as soon as the packages become available in the main software repositories of their Linux kernel-based operating systems.

Distribution vendors and experienced users can download Linux kernel 3.14.43 LTS right now from the kernel.org website or via Softpedia, and compile the kernel themselves. For more details about the issues that have been patched in this release, as well as the new features implemented, we suggest reading the complete release notes.

Source:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Linux-Kernel-3-14-43-LTS-Includes-Dozens-of-ARM-and-ARM64-Improvements-481450.shtml

06.15 Questions from Kernel.org SysAdmin Konstantin Ryabitsev's Reddit AMA

Linux Foundation System Administrator Konstanin Ryabitsev works on the team that runs the systems behind Linux kernel development on kernel.org. As part of theCollaborative Projects team he's also responsible for providing IT hosting for projects including Yocto Project;Code Aurora Forum; OpenDaylight; AllSeen Alliance;OPNFV; and Iotivity.

This week Ryabitsev answered questions in a Reddit AMA that covered topics ranging from his favorite distro and tools to the inner workings of kernel.org infrastructure. Some of his more interesting answers included showing the trust paths from his PGP key to Linus's, explaining his love of a fermented Russian drink called Kvass, and confessing that not all of the systems he oversees run Linux.

Below is a sampling of some of the responses. Visit the r/linux subreddit for the full AMA. For previous Linux.com articles featuring Konstantin, see On the Job with a Linux Foundation Systems Administrator and Linux Foundation SysAdmin Konstantin Ryabitsev, an SELinux Expert.

On kernel.org infrastructure

Which distro do you guys run on production? Do you prefer a mono-culture or do you see different distros doing different jobs better? (See the full thread by minimim)

We're an RHEL shop for a number of both historical and pragmatical reasons. The only thing we have that's not RHEL is the Raspberry Pi that's doing auto-signing for sha256sums. That's running Raspbian.

Vi or e-macs? (minimim)

I've used both, but vi is the tool that's most likely to be installed on any given Linux system, so that's my preferred editor. If you do sysadmin work, you pretty much have to know VI, or the day cometh when you'll find yourself with a console terminal and no way to run "yum/apt-get install emacs/nano" (pity the fool). :)

What is the gear for the various services? Where is it hosted? (minimim)

More@

https://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/814542-15-reddit-ama-questions-for-kernelorg-sysadmin-konstantin-ryabitsev

04.No reboot patching comes to Linux 4.0

Summary:With the new Linux 4.0 kernel, you'll need to reboot Linux less often than ever.

With Linux 4.0, you may never need to reboot your operating system again.

Using Linux means never having to reboot. -- SUSE

One reason to love Linux on your servers or in your data-center is that you so seldom needed to reboot it. True, critical patches require a reboot, but you could go months without rebooting. Now, with the latest changes to the Linux kernel you may be able to go years between reboots.

This is actually a feature that was available in Linux in 2009 thanks to a program called Ksplice. This program compares the original and patched kernels and then uses a customized kernel module to patch the new code into the running kernel. Each Ksplice-enabled kernel comes with a special set of flags for each function that will be patched. The Ksplice process then watches for a moment when the code for the function being patched isn't in use, and ta-da, the patch is made and your server runs on.

Oracle acquired Ksplice in 2011, and kept it just for its own Oracle Linux, a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone, and as a RHEL subscription service. That left all the other enterprise and server Linux back where they started.

Then KernelCare released a service that could provide bootless patches for most enterprise Linux distros. This program use proprietary software and is only available as a service with a monthly fee. That was a long way from satisfying many Linux system administrators.

So, Red Hat and SUSE both started working on their own purely open-source means of giving Linux the ability to keep running even while critical patches were being installed. Red Hat's program was named kpatch, while SUSE' is named kGraft.

The two companies took different approaches. Kpatch issues a stop_machine() command. After that it looks at the stack of existing processes using ftrace and, if the patch can be made safely, it redirects the running code to the patched functions and then removes the now outdated code.

Source:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/no-reboot-patching-comes-to-linux-4-0/

08.Linux kernel turns over release odometer to 4.0

Summary:Linus Torvalds has decided to move the Linux kernel release from 3.19.x to 4.0 more from whimsy then from a serious need.

Usually, when a software release moves to a new single digit release, it's a big deal. When Linus Torvalds decided to shift the Linux kernel from 3.2x it was just to make developers happy.






As Torvalds, Linux's founder, said on his Google+ account: "So, I made noises some time ago about how I don't want another 2.6.39 where the numbers are big enough that you can't really distinguish them. We're slowly getting up there again, with 3.20 being imminent, and I'm once more close to running out of fingers and toes."
So Torvalds set up a survey where the choices were: "I like big versions and I cannot lie." and "v.4.0, 'cause I get confused easily." This "scientific" survey showed 56 percent of the respondents wanted version, so Torvalds decided to give it to them.

First though, over 6,000 people voted on a test poll , which Torvalds asked to be ignored, where the choices were "I like online pools" and "Hurr durr I'ma sheep". The winner was sheep with 64 percent of the vote.

As Torvalds remarked on the 4.0 git notification:

After extensive statistical analysis of my G+ polling, I've come to the inescapable conclusion that internet polls are bad.

Big surprise.

But "Hurr durr I'ma sheep" trounced "I like online polls" by a 62-to-38% margin, in a poll that people weren't even supposed to participate in. Who can argue with solid numbers like that? 5,796 votes from people who can't even follow the most basic directions?

In contrast, "v4.0" beat out "v3.20" by a slimmer margin of 56-to-44%, but with a total of 29,110 votes right now. Now, arguably, that vote spread is only about 3,200 votes, which is less than the almost six thousand votes that the "please ignore" poll got, so it could be considered noise.

But hey, I asked, so I'll honor the votes.

More@

http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-kernel-turns-over-release-odometer-to-4-0/

Linux version dilemma: Linus Torvalds is “running out of fingers and toes”

Do version numbers mean something, or are they just vestigial arbitrariness?

Linus Torvalds, creator and curator of the Linux kernel, has a quandary on his hands: should he stick to Linux's long-time tradition of massive, multple-decimal-point version numbers, or should he abandon them in favor of shorter, more easily distinguishable major versions?

The problem at hand is the imminent arrival of Linux 3.20. Unlike most major pieces of software, a new version of the Linux kernel is released every 10 weeks or so. In some cases, developers simply bump the major version number every time there's a big release, which is why we're now up to Chrome 40 and Firefox 35. The Linux kernel, however, has historically opted for a "conventional" scheme, which resulted in some incredibly long-winded version numbers such as 2.6.39.4.

Back in 2011, with the release of Linux 3.0, Torvalds said those "2.6." days were over—and now here we are, a few weeks away from the release of Linux 3.20, and it seems we're on the cusp of the Linux kernel assuming a much simpler version scheme. "I'm once more close to running out of fingers and toes," muses Torvalds, before going on to suggest that it might be time to skip 3.20 and jump straight to 4.0. In a poll attached to Torvalds' Google+ post, which had more than 24,000 votes at the time of publishing, 54% were in favor of numbering the next version of the kernel Linux 4.0.

The question is why Linux (or indeed any software package) should have major and minor version numbers at all. There are no major new features in Linux 3.20 that really warrant a "jump" to 4.0—it's a completely arbitrary distinction based on Torvalds (and perhaps other members of the community) not being overly fond of large version numbers. If the version number is completely arbitrary, though, why shouldn't Linux just use the same numbering scheme as Firefox or Chrome, with the version number being incremented with every 10-week release cycle?

Of course, the other option, if Linus wanted to be truly trendy, is to just call the next version Linux 10—and then perhaps thereafter give each new version the name of a large animal or an interesting location from Torvalds' home country of Finland.


Source:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/linux-version-dilemma-linus-torvalds-is-running-out-of-fingers-and-toes/

Linux systemd dev says open source is 'SICK', kernel community 'awful'

What's more, he said, the kernel development community is insular and the overall tone of its discourse is likely to keep it that way.

Lennart Poettering, creator of the systemd system management software for Linux, says the open-source world is "quite a sick place to be in."
He also said the Linux development community is "awful" – and he pins the blame for that on Linux supremo Linus Torvalds.

"A fish rots from the head down," Poettering said in apost to his Google+ feed on Sunday.

Poettering said Torvalds' confrontational and often foul-mouthed management style is "not an efficient way to run a community" and that it sets an example that is followed by other kernel developers, creating a hostile environment for newcomers.
"The Linux community is dominated by western, white, straight, males in their 30s and 40s these days," Poettering wrote. "I perfectly fit in that pattern, and the rubbish they pour over me is awful. I can only imagine that it is much worse for members of minorities, or people from different cultural backgrounds, in particular ones where losing face is a major issue."

Torvalds is indeed well known for his acerbic posts to Linux kernel mailing lists. Poettering cited one particular missive in which Torvalds said some kernel developers should be "retroactively aborted" for their stupidity, and in another post he said he hoped ARM system-on-chip (SoC) developers would "all die in some incredibly painful accident."



Source:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/06/poettering_says_linux_kernel_community_is_hostil/

P.S. - I LIKE LINUS STYLE.

Netrunner 15 'Prometheus' is here -- the best KDE-based Linux distro gets better

I'm a GNOME 3 man through and through, but I love KDE too. Quite frankly, you can't go wrong with either desktop environment, but if you are new to Linux, KDE may seem a bit more familiar. Why? It more resembles the traditional "Windows" user interface.

What makes Netrunner the best KDE-based Linux distribution, and one of the best distros overall, is the polish. The team behind it pays close attention to detail, making it a cohesive and positive user experience. It comes pre-loaded with plenty of software and it is drop-dead gorgeous. Today, you can download version 15, codenamed "Prometheus". The most exciting aspect? It has been redesigned and comes with KDE Plasma Desktop 5.2 -- yeah, you want this.

Clemens Tönnies lists just some of the major changes below.

Kernel 3.16.0.30~40
KDE Plasma 5.2
KDE Frameworks 5.7
Qt5.4
Firefox 35.0.1
Thunderbird 31.4.0
VLC 2.2.0
LibreOffice 4.4
Krita ; Karbon 2.8.5
Gimp 2.8.10
Pidgin 2.10.9
and much more…





Source:
http://betanews.com/2015/02/16/netrunner-15-prometheus-is-here-the-best-kde-based-linux-distro-gets-better/

Linux kernel set to get live patching in release 3.20

Come and get this Git pull, Linus!






A collaboration between SUSE and Red Hat is going to bring relief to Linux users the world over: they'll be able to patch their systems without reboots.

The live patching infrastructure looks set to become available in version 3.20 of the Linux kernel.

The two organisations introduced their distribution-specific live patching solutions a month apart in 2013 – SUSE's kGraft hit in February, and Red Hat's Kpatch arrived in March.

As SUSE developer Jiri Kosina explains on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, an early shot at live patching called kSplice was acquired and turned into a proprietary service.

He says the SUSE and Red Hat approaches were different: “kPatch is issuing stop_machine()”, inspecting processes and deciding whether the system is safe to patch; “kGraft provides a per-thread consistency during one single pass of a process through the kernel and performs a lazy contiguous migration of threads from 'unpatched' universe to the 'patched' one at safe checkpoints.”

After a discussion at the Linux Plumbers' Conference in Dusseldorf in 2014, the different parties worked out the basis of the new approach.


Source:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/11/linux_to_get_live_patching_in_320/

Linux 3.19 released for your computing pleasure

3.20 is next and 4.0 is nowhere in sight

Version 3.19 of the Linux kernel has been signed off by Linus Torvalds.

News of the release emerged in a typically economical Sunday evening post to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, in which Torvalds noted there are still a couple of bugs in this release but they were pretty obscure so “... while I was tempted a couple of times to do an rc8, there really wasn't any reason for it.”

New in this release is improved support for Intel and AMD graphics, plus support for LZ4 compression in the SquasFS which should make for better Linux performance on Live CDs.

Owners of Lenovo, Dell, Acer and Toshiba will now find Linux plays better with some of their unqiue hardware features, especially keyboard backlights.
The KVM Hypervisor has dropped support for the IA64 chip, a milestone in that architecture's demise.
Torvalds' post says the next version of the kernel will be known as 3.20. That's not something he was keen on in late 2013, when he said “... I would actually prefer to not go into the twenties, so I can see it happening in a year or so, and we'll have 4.0 follow 3.19 or something like that.”
Torvalds' musings at the time imagined release 4.0 might be dedicated to “just stability and bug-fixes”. Little or nothing's been heard of that idea in the months since, so release 3.20 looks like more of the same. ®

Tips and corrections

Source:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/09/linux_319_released_for_your_computing_pleasure/

diff -u: What's New in Kernel Development

David Drysdale wanted to add Capsicum security features to Linux after he noticed that FreeBSD already had Capsicum support. Capsicum defines fine-grained security privileges, not unlike filesystem capabilities. But as David discovered, Capsicum also has some controversy surrounding it.

Capsicum has been around for a while and was described in a USENIX paper in 2010:http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/capsicum/papers/2010usenix-security-capsicum-website.pdf.

Part of the controversy is just because of the similarity with capabilities. As Eric Biderman pointed out during the discussion, it would be possible to implement features approaching Capsicum's as an extension of capabilities, but implementing Capsicum directly would involve creating a whole new (and extensive) abstraction layer in the kernel. Although David argued that capabilities couldn't actually be extended far enough to match Capsicum's fine-grained security controls.

Source:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/diff-u-whats-new-kernel-development-6