Hírolvasó

Blocking in the kernel's random-number generator (RNG)—causing a process to wait for "enough" entropy to generate strong random numbers—has always been controversial. It has also led to various kinds of problems over the years, from timeouts and delays caused by misuse in user-space programs to deadlocks and other problems in the boot process. That behavior has undergone a number of changes over the last few years and it looks possible that the last vestige of the difference between merely "good" and "cryptographic-strength" random numbers may go away in some upcoming kernel version.

Longtime Unix developer Lorinda Cherry passed away recently; among other things, she was the creator of the dc and bc utilities still in use today. See this posting from Douglas McIlroy for many more details on her life.

Both Firefox and Chrome are racing toward releasing version 100 in the near future, and developers for both browsers are worried that web sites with naive code to parse the version number out of the user-agent string will break.

Every strategy that adds complexity to the User-Agent string has a strong impact on the ecosystem. Let’s work together to avoid yet another quirky behavior. In Chrome and Firefox Nightly, you can configure the browser to report the version as 100 right now and report any issues you come across.

The 5.16.10, 5.15.24, 5.10.101, 5.4.180, 4.19.230, 4.14.267, and 4.9.302 stable kernel updates are available. As usual, each contains another set of important fixes.

Security updates have been issued by CentOS (firefox and thunderbird), Debian (librecad, libxstream-java, and zsh), Fedora (expat, util-linux, varnish-modules, xterm, and zsh), Mageia (Intel-nonfree, kernel, kernel-linus, and microcode), openSUSE (zabbix), Red Hat (kernel, kpatch-patch, Red Hat Virtualization Host, and thunderbird), Scientific Linux (thunderbird), and Ubuntu (cryptsetup).

Over on the Bootlin blog, Michael Opdenacker has an introduction to using device tree overlays to support changes to the standard device tree definition for a particular system-on-chip (SoC). This allows users to add new hardware or modify the hardware configuration for their system relatively easily—and without recompiling the kernel or the full device tree source files. For a given CPU architecture (ARM, PowerPC, etc), such a description allows to have a unique kernel supporting many different systems with distinct Systems on a Chip. The compiled Device Tree (DTB: Device Tree Binary), passed to the kernel by the bootloader at boot time, lets the kernel know which SoC and devices to initialize. Therefore, when you create a new board, and want to use a standard GNU/Linux distribution on it, all you have to do is create a new Device Tree describing your new hardware, compile it, and boot the distribution’s kernel with it. You don’t need to recompile that kernel, at least when it supports your SoC and the devices on your board.

[...] However, this is still an inconvenient solution. Any time you plug in a new device or an expansion board, or want to tweak other settings, you have to rebuild and update the full Device Tree for your board. What if you could prepare Device Tree fragments for each change to make, compile them once for all, and then, when you boot your device, load the main Device Tree and only the fragments you need, without having anything else to recompile?

Neil McGovern announces his departure from the helm of the GNOME Foundation.

GNOME has changed a lot in the last 5 years, and a lot has happened in that time. As a Foundation, we’ve gone from a small team of 3, to employing people to work on marketing, investment in technical frameworks, conference organisation and much more beyond. We’ve become the default desktop on all major Linux distributions. We’ve launched Flathub to help connect application developers directly to their users. We’ve dealt with patent suits, trademarks, and bylaw changes. We’ve moved our entire development platform to GitLab. We released 10 new GNOME releases, GTK 4 and GNOME 40.

Sometimes, a kernel-patch series comes with an exciting, sexy title. Other times, the mailing lists are full of patches with titles like "remote per-cpu lists drain support". For many, the patches associated with that title will be just as dry as the title itself. But, for those who are interested in such things — a group that includes many LWN readers — this short patch series from Nicolas Saenz Julienne gives some insight into just what is required to make the kernel's page allocator as fast — and as robust — as developers can make it.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (h2database), Fedora (dotnet-build-reference-packages, dotnet3.1, and firefox), Oracle (.NET 5.0, firefox, kernel, and kernel-container), Red Hat (firefox), Scientific Linux (firefox), SUSE (unbound), and Ubuntu (firefox).

Like most components in the computing landscape, networking hardware has grown steadily faster over time. Indeed, today's high-end network interfaces can often move data more quickly than the systems they are attached to can handle. The networking developers have been working for years to increase the scalability of their subsystem; one of the current projects is the BIG TCP patch set from Eric Dumazet and Coco Li. BIG TCP isn't for everybody, but it has the potential to significantly improve networking performance in some settings.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (debian-edu-config, expat, minetest, pgbouncer, python2.7, samba, thunderbird, and varnish), Fedora (dotnet-build-reference-packages, dotnet3.1, dotnet6.0, hostapd, libdxfrw, librecad, mingw-expat, mingw-gdk-pixbuf, php-twig2, php-twig3, rust-afterburn, webkit2gtk3, and xstream), Mageia (bluez, firefox, libarchive, php-adodb, thunderbird, and webkit2), openSUSE (ghostscript, openexr, permissions, SDL2, and wireshark), Red Hat (firefox), Slackware (mariadb), and SUSE (busybox, ghostscript, openexr, permissions, SDL2, and wireshark).

Crystal Kolipe writes in, saying

We've just published the first part of a new ten-part series called, 'A reckless guide to OpenBSD'. The series covers all sorts of things from configuring dpb through hacking the framebuffer console code, compiling a custom kernel, and lots of other stuff in-between.

https://www.exoticsilicon.com/jay/reckless_guide_to_openbsd

The whole series was written by Jay Eptinxa here at Exotic Silicon, and we're publishing it in weekly installments.

We're already looking forward to the upcoming installments.

Thanks to Jay and Crystal for writing and publishing this!

The 5.17-rc4 kernel prepatch is out for testing. "Things continue to look pretty normal for 5.17. Both the diffstat and the number of commits looks pretty much average for an rc4 release." The code name for the release has been changed to "Superb Owl".

The Call for Refereed Presentation Proposals for the 2022 edition of the Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) is now open.  We plan to hold LPC in Dublin, Ireland on September 12-14 in conjunction with The Linux Foundation Open Source Summit. 

If an in-person conference should prove to be impossible due to the circumstances at that time, Linux Plumbers will switch to a virtual-only conference. Submitters should ideally be able to give their presentation in person if circumstances permit, although presenting remotely will be possible in either case. Please see our website or social media for regular updates.

Refereed Presentations are 45 minutes in length and should focus on a specific aspect of the “plumbing” in a Linux system. Examples of Linux plumbing include core kernel subsystems, init systems, core libraries, windowing systems, management tools, device support, media creation/playback, and so on. The best presentations are not about finished work, but rather problem statements, proposals, or proof-of-concept solutions that require face-to-face discussions and debate.

The Refereed Presentations track will be running throughout all three days of the conference. Note that the current Linux Plumbers Refereed track may overlap with the Open Source Summit.

Linux Plumbers Conference Program Committee members will be reviewing all submitted proposals.  High-quality submissions that cannot be accepted due to the limited number of slots will be forwarded to both the Open Source Summit and to organizers of suitable Linux Plumbers Microconferences for further consideration.

To submit a Refereed Track Presentation proposal follow the instructions here [1]

Submissions are due on or before 11:59PM UTC on Sunday, June 12, 2022.

[1] https://lpc.events/event/16/abstracts/

The Debian project is known for its commitment to free software, the effort that it puts into ensuring that its distribution is compliant with the licenses of the software it ships, and the energy it puts into discussions around that work. A recent (and ongoing) discussion started with a query about a relatively obscure aspect of the process by which new packages enter the distribution, but ended up questioning the project's approach toward licensing and copyright issues. While no real conclusions were reached, it seems likely that the themes heard in this discussion, which relate to Debian's role in the free-software community in general, will play a prominent part in future debates.

The Debian project is known for its commitment to free software, the effort that it puts into ensuring that its distribution is compliant with the licenses of the software it ships, and the energy it puts into discussions around that work. A recent (and ongoing) discussion started with a query about a relatively obscure aspect of the process by which new packages enter the distribution, but ended up questioning the project's approach toward licensing and copyright issues. While no real conclusions were reached, it seems likely that the themes heard in this discussion, which relate to Debian's role in the free-software community in general, will play a prominent part in future debates.

The 5.16.9, 5.15.23, 5.10.100, 5.4.179, 4.19.229, 4.14.266, and 4.9.301 stable kernel updates have been released; each contains a small number of important fixes.

The 5.16.9, 5.15.23, 5.10.100, 5.4.179, 4.19.229, 4.14.266, and 4.9.301 stable kernel updates have been released; each contains a small number of important fixes.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (cryptsetup), Fedora (firefox, java-1.8.0-openjdk, microcode_ctl, python-django, rlwrap, and vim), openSUSE (kernel), and SUSE (kernel and ldb, samba).