Linux Weekly News

[$] Automatic buffer selection for io_uring

5 év 3 hónap óta
The io_uring subsystem has, in the last year, redefined how asynchronous I/O is done on Linux systems. As this subsystem grows in both capability and users, though, it starts to run into limitations in the types of operations that can be expressed. That is driving a number of changes in how operations are programmed for io_uring. One example is the mechanisms considered for carrying a file descriptor between operations that was covered here in early March. Another has to do with how I/O buffers are chosen for operations.
corbet

LMDE 4 “Debbie” released

5 év 3 hónap óta
The Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) 4 has been released. "LMDE is a Linux Mint project which stands for 'Linux Mint Debian Edition'. Its goal is to ensure Linux Mint would be able to continue to deliver the same user experience, and how much work would be involved, if Ubuntu was ever to disappear. LMDE is also one of our development targets, to guarantee the software we develop is compatible outside of Ubuntu. LMDE aims to be as similar as possible to Linux Mint, but without using Ubuntu. The package base is provided by Debian instead." It is based on Debian 10 ("Buster") with lots of new features, including many improvements from Linux Mint 19.3. More information can be found in the release notes.
jake

Security updates for Friday

5 év 3 hónap óta
Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (bluez and chromium), Debian (icu, rails, thunderbird, and twisted), Fedora (chromium and webkit2gtk3), Gentoo (bsdiff, cacti, clamav, fribidi, libgit2, pecl-imagick, phpmyadmin, pyyaml, and tomcat), openSUSE (wireshark), Oracle (firefox, icu, python-imaging, thunderbird, and zsh), Scientific Linux (thunderbird), SUSE (firefox, nghttp2, thunderbird, and tomcat), and Ubuntu (twisted).
jake

Hacking the planet with Notcurses

5 év 3 hónap óta
Author Nick Black has written an extensive book on the creation of textual user interfaces using the notcurses library; it's available under the Apache license [PDF]. "Many people asked how such a thing was useful. My usual response was that numerous devices don’t present a bitmap interface, that X11 GUIs run remotely over SSH are effectively unusable, that plenty of machines don’t have a GUI environment installed, that there are obvious applications for large outdoor displays, and that Sixel isn’t well-supported across different terminal emulators. It seems impossible in an age of gigatransistor graphics cards, but the text environment still presents perceivably less latency than most GUI toolkits."
corbet

[$] Working-set protection for anonymous pages

5 év 3 hónap óta
The kernel's memory-management subsystem goes to great lengths to keep the pages that are actually in use in memory. But sometimes it gets things wrong, leading to reduced performance or, in the worst cases, flat-out thrashing. We may be about to see a significant improvement, though, thanks to a patch set from Joonsoo Kim changing how anonymous pages (those containing data not backed by files on disk) are managed. As it turns out, all that had to be done was to make use of some work that already exists in related parts of the memory-management code.
corbet

Qubes Architecture Next Steps: The GUI Domain

5 év 3 hónap óta
Here's a detailed blog post on how the Qubes distribution is working to isolate the graphical interface from the rest of the system. "The upcoming 4.1 release changes this protocol to a more flexible form. It will no longer use direct memory addresses, but an abstract mechanism in which the qube has to explicitly allow access to a particular memory page. In our current implementation — under Xen — we use the grant tables mechanism, which provides a separate memory allocation API and allows working on grants and not directly on memory pages. Other implementations will also be possible: whether for another hypervisor (e.g. KVM) or for a completely different architecture not based on shared memory (e.g. directly sending frames to another machine)."
corbet

Security updates for Thursday

5 év 3 hónap óta
Security updates have been issued by Debian (gdal), Fedora (nethack), Mageia (okular, sleuthkit, and webkit2), openSUSE (salt), Oracle (icu, kernel, python-pip, python-virtualenv, and zsh), Red Hat (icu, python-imaging, thunderbird, and zsh), Scientific Linux (icu, python-imaging, and zsh), SUSE (postgresql10), and Ubuntu (apache2).
jake

[$] Improving pretty-printing in Python

5 év 3 hónap óta
The python-ideas mailing list is typically used to discuss new features or enhancements for the language; ideas that gain traction will get turned into Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs) and eventually make their way to python-dev for wider consideration. Steve Jorgensen recently started a discussion of just that sort; he was looking for a way to add customization to the "pretty-print" module (pprint) so that objects could change the way they are displayed. The subsequent thread went in a few different directions that reflect the nature of the mailing list—and the idea itself.
jake

Ryabitsev: Introducing b4 and patch attestation

5 év 3 hónap óta
Konstantin Ryabitsev introduces the "b4" tool for kernel development. Developers and LWN readers will be familiar with b4 under its previous name: get-lore-mbox. "On top of that, b4 also introduces support for cryptographic patch attestation, which makes it possible to verify that patches (and their metadata) weren't modified in transit between developers. This is still an experimental feature, but initial tests have been pretty encouraging." See this article for early coverage of the attestation feature.
corbet

DeVault: The reckless, infinite scope of web browsers

5 év 3 hónap óta
Drew DeVault complains about the complexity of the web and the browsers that work with it. "The major projects are open source, and usually when an open-source project misbehaves, we’re able to to fork them to offer an alternative. But even this is an impossible task where web browsers are concerned. The number of W3C specifications grows at an average rate of 200 new specs per year, or about 4 million words, or about one POSIX every 4 to 6 months. How can a new team possibly keep up with this on top of implementing the outrageous scope web browsers already have now?"
corbet

[$] Bringing encryption restrictions in through the back door

5 év 3 hónap óta
Legislation recently proposed in the US Senate is ostensibly meant to combat "child sexual abuse material" (CSAM), but it does not actually do much to combat that horrible problem. Its target, instead, is the encryption of user communications, which the legislation—tellingly—never mentions. The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2020, EARN IT for short, is an attempt to force online service providers (e.g. Facebook, Google, etc.) to follow a set of "best practices" determined by a commission, to combat the scourge of CSAM; the composition of that commission makes it clear that end-to-end encryption will not be one of those practices, but companies that do not follow the best practices will lose liability protection for their users' actions. It is, in brief, an attempt to force providers to either abandon true end-to-end encryption or face ruinous lawsuits—all without "seeming" to be about encryption at all.
jake

Security updates for Wednesday

5 év 3 hónap óta
Security updates have been issued by Debian (libvncserver and twisted), Fedora (libxslt), Red Hat (kernel, kernel-rt, python-flask, python-pip, python-virtualenv, slirp4netns, tomcat, and zsh), Scientific Linux (kernel, python-pip, python-virtualenv, tomcat, and zsh), SUSE (apache2-mod_auth_openidc and skopeo), and Ubuntu (apport and dino-im).
ris

Security updates for Tuesday

5 év 3 hónap óta
Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (okular, thunderbird, and webkit2gtk), Debian (webkit2gtk), Fedora (php-horde-Horde-Form), Gentoo (libvorbis, nss, and proftpd), Oracle (firefox and kernel), Red Hat (kernel), Scientific Linux (firefox), SUSE (cni, cni-plugins, conmon, fuse-overlayfs, podman, librsvg, and ovmf), and Ubuntu (ceph, icu, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-aws-5.0, linux-gcp, linux-gke-5.0, linux-oracle-5.0, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi2, linux-raspi2-5.3, linux-kvm, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon, and linux-lts-xenial, linux-aws).
ris

[$] Filesystem-oriented flags: sad, messy and not going away

5 év 3 hónap óta
Over the last decade, the addition of a "flags" argument to all new system calls, even if no flags are actually needed at the outset, has been widely adopted as a best practice. The result has certainly been greater API extensibility, but we have also seen a proliferation of various types of flags for related system calls. For calls related to files and filesystems, in particular, the available flags have reached a point where some calls will need as many as three arguments for them rather than just one.
corbet

FSF: 2019 Free Software Awards

5 év 3 hónap óta
The Free Software Foundation has announced the recipients of the 2019 Free Software Awards. A new category was added this year; the Award for Outstanding New Free Software Contributor went to Clarissa Lima Borges, "a talented young Brazilian software engineering student whose Outreachy internship work focused on usability testing for various GNOME applications". The Project of social benefit award went to Let's Encrypt, and the Award for the Advancement of Free Software was given to Jim Meyering, "a prolific free software programmer, maintainer, and writer".
ris

Stable kernel 4.19.110

5 év 3 hónap óta
Stable kernel 4.19.110 has been released. "This fixes a problem in 4.19.109 in the KVM subsystem. If you use KVM, you are strongly encouraged to upgrade. If not, no big deal, you can ignore this release."
ris

Security updates for Monday

5 év 3 hónap óta
Security updates have been issued by Debian (graphicsmagick, qemu, and slurm-llnl), Fedora (ansible, couchdb, mediawiki, and python3-typed_ast), Gentoo (atftp, curl, file, gdb, git, gst-plugins-base, icu, libarchive, libgcrypt, libjpeg-turbo, libssh, libvirt, musl, nfdump, ppp, python, ruby-openid, runc, sqlite, squid, sudo, SVG Salamander, systemd, thunderbird, tiff, and webkit-gtk), Mageia (firefox, kernel, and thunderbird), openSUSE (firefox, librsvg, php7, and tomcat), Red Hat (firefox), Slackware (thunderbird), and SUSE (firefox, kernel, salt, and wireshark).
ris
Ellenőrizve
17 perc 56 másodperc ago
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