"[…] the last two weeks have been pretty quiet, so I feel there's no real reason to delay 6.8. […]
[…] This is not the historically big release that 6.7 was - we seem to be back to a fairly average release size […]
In a sea of normality, one thing that stands out is a bit of random git numerology. This is the last mainline kernel to have less than ten million git objects. In fact, we're at 9.996 million objects, […]"
"'"So we finally have a week where things have calmed down, and in fact 6.8-rc7 is smaller than usual at this point in time. So if that keeps up (but that's a fairly notable "if") I won't feel like I need to do an rc8 this release after all.
So no guarantees, but assuming no bad surprises, we'll have the final 6.8 next weekend.
[…]
It really is all pretty small. Let's hope it stays that way,
#Linux 6.8-rc7 is now available for public testing at https://kernel.org and Linus Torvalds says that “we finally have a week where things have calmed down”, so the final Linux 6.8 release should arrive on March 10th. Happy testing!
Expect thousands of #Linux#kernel#CVE entries for issues already fixed in the past few years, as filing those according to Greg was a requirement to become a CNA:
"'"bpftop provides a dynamic real-time view of running eBPF programs. It displays the average execution runtime, events per second, and estimated total CPU % for each program. This tool minimizes overhead by enabling performance statistics only while it is active."'"
"'"This RFC series proposes a new virtualization framework built upon the #KVM hypervisor that does not require hardware-assisted virtualization techniques.
So the over-arching goals of PVM are to 1) enable nested virtualization within any IaaS clouds […] 2) avoid costly exits to the host hypervisor […]"'"
Really glad that @gregkh refuses[1] to pick up changes for stable/longterm #Linux series (say 5.4.y), if they have not yet been applied to all newer series (e.g. 5.10.y, 5.15.y, …). This is crucial, as people otherwise would run into #regressions if they'd sooner or later update from the older to one of the newer series.
#Linux 6.8-rc6 is now available for public testing at kernel.org and Linus Torvalds says that "this may end up being one of those releases that get an rc8.” Happy testing!
10 of those were marked for backporting to stable/longterm
And that's why Greg backports a lot of #LinuxKernel mainline commits to stable/longterm that are not tagged for backporting -- and why "only backport changes mainline developers[1] tagged for backporting" is a bad idea.
[1] reminder, such tagging is optional, as participation in stable/longterm is optional
"'"Upstream [#Linux#kernel] deprecated the V4 format for #XFS with commit b96cb835[1]. […] #Fedora 40 will be the last release that supports these older XFS filesystems."'"
2/ …and another 17 new #Linux#Kernel CVEs went out about 30 minutes ago.
This is a fun ride. 😬
Side note: Some of those start with "CVE-2023-[…]"; from a brief look it seems those are issues where the fix is from 2023 (guess it's either the Git AuthorDate or CommitDate that matters here).
"'"[…] This article explores the live migration steps #QEMU performs and how it tracks the information it needs to make the process transparent. It explains how QEMU coordinates with vhost-kernel […]. I will also explain how the guest can switch device properties, such as MAC address or number of active queues, and resume the workload seamlessly in the destination."'"