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[$] Debian's /tmpest in a teapot
Debian had a major discussion
about mounting /tmp as a RAM-based tmpfs in 2012 but inertia
won out in the end. Debian systems have continued to
store temporary files on disk by default. Until now. A mere
12 years later, the project will be switching to a RAM-based /tmp in the Debian
13 ("Trixie") release. Additionally, starting with Trixie, the
default will be to periodically clean up temporary files automatically in
[$] One more pidfdfs surprise
The "pidfdfs" virtual filesystem was added to the 6.9 kernel release as a way to export better information about running processes to user space. It replaced a previous implementation in a way that was, on its surface, fully compatible while adding a number of new capabilities. This transition, which was intended to be entirely invisible to existing applications, already ran into trouble in March, when a misunderstanding with SELinux caused systems with pidfdfs to fail to boot properly. That problem was quickly fixed, but it turns out that there was one more surprise in store, showing just how hard ABI compatibility can be at times.
[$] Standardizing the BPF ISA
While BPF may be most famous for its use in the Linux kernel, there is actually a growing effort to standardize BPF for use on other systems. These include eBPF for Windows, but also uBPF, rBPF, hBPF, bpftime, and others. Some hardware manufacturers are even considering integrating BPF directly into networking hardware. Dave Thaler led two sessions about all of the problems that cross-platform use inevitably brings and the current status of the standardization work at the 2024 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit.
[$] New APIs for filesystems
A discussion of extensions to the statx() system call comes up frequently at the Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit; this year's edition was no exception. Kent Overstreet led the first filesystem-only session at the summit on querying information about filesystems that have subvolumes and snapshots. While it was billed as a discussion on statx() additions, it ranged more widely over new APIs needed for modern filesystems.
[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 30, 2024
Posted May 30, 2024 2:28 UTC (Thu)The LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 30, 2024 is available.
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition
- Front: DNF5 for Fedora 41; Fedora macOS binaries; 6.10 Merge window; Lots of LSFMM+BPF coverage.
- Briefs: DNSSEC; Linux 6.10-rc1; BitKeeper licensing; FreeBSD Community Survey; KDE Gear 24.05.0; Quotes; ...
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
[$] Fedora approves shipping pre-built macOS binaries
The Asahi Linux project works to support Linux on Apple Silicon hardware. The project's flagship distribution is the Fedora Asahi Remix, which has its own installer (rather than Anaconda) to accommodate the unique requirements of installing on Apple's hardware. Previously the installer was built by the Asahi project, but it has asked for (and received) an exception from the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) to include two binaries from upstream open-source projects so that the installer can be built on Fedora infrastructure.
A plea for more thoughtful comments
When redesigning the LWN site in 2002, we thought long and hard about whether the ability to post comments should be part of it; LWN had not offered that feature for the first four years of its existence. There were already plenty of examples of how comments can go bad by then, but we decided to trust our readers to keep things under control. Much of the time, that trust has proved justified, but there have been times where things have not gone so well. This time is quickly becoming one of those others.
[$] Supporting BPF in GCC
The GCC project has been working to support compiling to BPF for some time. José Marchesi and David Faust spoke in an extended session at the 2024 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit about how that work has been going, and what is left for GCC to be on-par with LLVM with regard to BPF support. They also related tentative plans for how GCC BPF support would be maintained in the future.
[$] Filesystems and iomap
The iomap block-mapping abstraction is being used by more filesystems, in part because of its support for large folios. But there are some challenges in adopting iomap, which was the topic of a discussion led by Ritesh Harjani in a combined storage and filesystem session at the 2024 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit. One of the main trouble spots is how to handle metadata, which is not an area that iomap has been aimed at.
[$] Measuring memory fragmentation
In the final session in the memory-management track of the 2024 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory-Management and BPF Summit, the exhausted group of developers looked one more time at the use of huge pages and the associated problem of memory fragmentation. At its worst, this problem can make huge pages harder (and more expensive) to allocate. Luis Chamberlain, who ran the session, felt that people were worried about this problem, but that there was little data on how severe it truly is.
LyX 2.4.0 Released
Version 2.4.0 of the LyX document processor has been released. LyX is a "What You See Is What You Mean" (WYSIWYM) application that offers GUI editing of LaTeX documents with import and export to PDF, HTML, OpenDocument, Word, and other formats. LyX 2.4.0 is the first major release in six years, and brings support for EPUB, DocBook 5, improved table styles, and now uses Unicode (utf8) as its default encoding. See the full list of new features on the LyX wiki, and release notes for information on known issues and caveats for those upgrading from earlier versions of LyX.
Security updates for Monday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (python39:3.9 and python39-devel:3.9 and ruby:3.0), Debian (chromium, gst-plugins-base1.0, and kernel), Fedora (chromium, glances, glycin-loaders, gnome-tour, helix, helvum, kitty, libarchive, libipuz, librsvg2, loupe, maturin, ntpd-rs, plasma-workspace, and a huge list of Rust-based packages due to a "mini-mass-rebuild
" that updated the toolchain to Rust 1.78 and picked up fixes for various pieces), Mageia (gifsicle, netatalk, openssl, python-jinja2, and unbound), Red Hat (kernel and kernel-rt), SUSE (bind, glibc, gstreamer-plugins-base, squid, and tiff), and Ubuntu (glibc).
Kernel prepatch 6.10-rc2
The second 6.10 kernel prepatch is out for
testing. "Nothing feels particularly odd, but rc2 is usually fairly small and
people are only starting to find regressions.
So please go test some more.
"
Fedora Linux 40 election results
The Fedora Project has announced the results of the Fedora Linux 40 election cycle. Four seats were open on the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo), and the winners are Stephen Gallagher, Neal Gompa, Michel Lind, and Fabio Valentini. The Fedora Council had two seats open, and the winners are Aleksandra Fedorova and Adam Samalik. One seat was open on the Fedora Mindshare Committee, and the winner is Sumantro Mukherjee. Four seats were open for the first election to select members of the EPEL Steering Committee, which went to Troy Dawson, Kevin Fenzi, Carl George, and Jonathan Wright.
Opt Green: KDE Eco's New Sustainable Software Project
KDE Eco, a KDE project focused on reducing software's environmental impact, has announced its Opt Green campaign to reduce e-waste:
Over the next two years, the "Opt Green" initiative will bring what KDE Eco has been doing for sustainable software directly to end users. A particular target group for the project is those whose consumer behavior is driven by principles related to the environment, and not just price or convenience: the "eco-consumers".
Through online and offline campaigns as well as installation workshops, we will demonstrate the power of Free Software to drive down resource and energy consumption, and keep devices in use for the lifespan of the hardware, not the software.
Our motto: The most environmentally-friendly device is the one you already own.
See the KDE Eco Get Involved page for more information on how to participate.
CFP: the 2024 Kernel Maintainers Summit
The 2024 Kernel Maintainers Summit will happen on September 17 in Vienna, Austria; it is an invitation-only event for a small group to discuss important kernel-development problems. The call for proposals for this gathering has now been posted. One of the best ways to be invited to the event is to propose a topic that needs discussion in that forum. The deadline for proposals is June 18.
25 Years of Krita
The developers of the Krita painting application are celebrating 25 years of development with a detailed history of the project.
A quarter century. That's how long we've been working on Krita. Well, what would become Krita. It started out as KImageShop, but that name was nuked by a now long-dead German lawyer. Then it was renamed to Krayon, and that name was also nuked. Then it was renamed to Krita, and that name stuck.
Security updates for Friday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (.NET 7.0, .NET 8.0, 389-ds:1.4, ansible-core bug fix, enhancement, and, bind and dhcp, container-tools:rhel8, edk2, exempi, fence-agents, freeglut, frr, gdk-pixbuf2, ghostscript, git-lfs, glibc, gmp, go-toolset:rhel8, grafana, grub2, gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, gstreamer1-plugins-base, gstreamer1-plugins-good, harfbuzz, httpd:2.4, Image builder components bug fix, enhancement and, kernel, kernel-rt, krb5, less, LibRaw, libsndfile, libssh, libtiff, libX11, libXpm, linux-firmware, motif, mutt, nghttp2, openssh, pam, pcp, pcs, perl-Convert-ASN1, perl-CPAN, perl:5.32, pki-core:10.6 and pki-deps:10.6, pmix, poppler, python-dns, python-jinja2, python-pillow, python27:2.7, python3, python3.11, python3.11-cryptography, python3.11-urllib3, python39:3.9 and python39-devel:3.9, qt5-qtbase, resource-agents, squashfs-tools, sssd, systemd, tigervnc, traceroute, vorbis-tools, webkit2gtk3, xorg-x11-server, xorg-x11-server-Xwayland, and zziplib), Debian (gst-plugins-base1.0), Fedora (cacti, cacti-spine, roundcubemail, and wireshark), Oracle (.NET 7.0, .NET 8.0, bind and dhcp, gdk-pixbuf2, git-lfs, glibc, grafana, krb5, pcp, python-dns, python3, sssd, tigervnc, xorg-x11-server, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Red Hat (edk2, less, nghttp2, and ruby:3.0), SUSE (gstreamer-plugins-base, Java, kernel, and python-requests), and Ubuntu (ffmpeg, node-browserify-sign, postgresql-14, postgresql-15, postgresql-16, and python-pymysql).
Stable kernels 6.9.3 and 6.8.12
Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.9.3 and 6.8.12 stable kernels. As usual, they contain lots of important fixes throughout the tree. Note that 6.8.12 is the end of the line for the 6.8.x stable kernel series.
Security updates for Thursday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (python-pymysql), Fedora (chromium, mingw-python-requests, and thunderbird), Mageia (perl-Email-MIME and qtnetworkauth5 & qtnetworkauth6), Red Hat (gdisk and python39:3.9 and python39-devel:3.9 modules), SUSE (freerdp, gdk-pixbuf, gifsicle, glib2, java-1_8_0-ibm, kernel, libfastjson, libredwg, nodejs16, python, python3, python36, rpm, warewulf4, and xdg-desktop-portal), and Ubuntu (gst-plugins-base1.0, python-werkzeug, and tpm2-tss).