Vue normale
Setting up a Tor Relay at National Taiwan Normal University (Tor Blog)
The Tor Blog has an interesting article about the non-technical side of setting up a Tor Relay. It documents how a computer science student at National Taiwan Normal University worked with the university system to set up a relay and provides a template for future attempts:
In Taiwan, anonymous networks do not lack technical documentation or ideological support. The real scarcity is experience from actually working through the real institutional system once. Especially in an environment where academic networks are highly centralized and outbound connectivity is tightly controlled, distributed anonymous infrastructure like Tor Relays is inherently difficult to sustain.
This implementation at National Taiwan Normal University was not meant to provide a final answer for anonymous networks. It was a concrete attempt made within real-world institutions. It may not immediately improve the performance or security of anonymous networks, and it was not intended to become a directly reproducible standard process. What it did achieve was leaving behind a clearly visible path of practice—one that can be understood, referenced, and built upon.
LibreQoS v2.0 released
Version 2.0 of the LibreQoS traffic-management and network operations platform has been released.
This release makes LibreQoS easier to operate, easier to understand, and much more useful for day-to-day network work. Now users can see more of what is happening across the network, troubleshoot subscriber issues with better tools, and work from a much stronger local WebUI.
This release includes many capabilities that reflect ideas and direction long championed by our late colleague, Dave Täht.
Dave's work helped shape the understanding of bufferbloat and the importance of latency under load across the networking community. His influence continues to guide both LibreQoS and the broader effort to improve Internet quality.
The project has also announced
the release of the LibreQoS Bufferbloat Test
v2, also dedicated to Täht. It runs in a user's browser to look at
"latency under load, jitter, loss, and what those things mean for
the kinds of traffic people actually care about: browsing, streaming,
video calls, audio calls, backups, and gaming
".
[$] More efficient removal of pages from the direct map
Security updates for Wednesday
Firefox 149.0 released
Version 149.0 of the Firefox web browser has been released. Notable features in this release include a new split-view feature for viewing two web pages side-by-side, a built-in VPN for browser traffic only, and more.
[$] A PHP license change is imminent
PHP's licensing has been a source of confusion for some time. The project is, currently, using two licenses that cover different parts of the code base: PHP v3.01 for the bulk of the code and Zend v2.0 for code in the Zend directory. Much has changed since the project settled on those licenses in 2006, and the need for custom licensing seems to have passed. An effort to simplify PHP's licensing, led by Ben Ramsey, is underway; if successful, the existing licenses will be deprecated and replaced by the BSD three-clause license. The PHP community is now voting on the license update RFC through April 4, 2026.
LiteLLM on PyPI is compromised
Update: see this
futuresearch article for some more information. "The release
contains a malicious .pth file (litellm_init.pth) that executes
automatically on every Python process startup when litellm is installed in
the environment.
"
Down: Debunking zswap and zram myths
Most people think of zswap and zram simply as two different flavours of the same thing: compressed swap. At a surface level, that's correct – both compress pages that would otherwise end up on disk – but they make fundamentally different bets about how the kernel should handle memory pressure, and picking the wrong one for your situation can actively make things worse than having no swap at all
Krita 5.3.0 and 6.0.0 released
The Krita project has announced the release of Krita 5.3.0 and 6.0.0:
Krita 5.3/6.0 is the result of many years of work by the Krita developers. Some features have been rewritten from the ground up, others make their first appearance.
Enjoy the completely new text feature: on canvas editing, full opentype support, text flowing into shapes. It is now easier than ever to create vector-based panels for comic pages. Tools got extended: for instance, the fill tool now can close gaps. The liquify mode of the transform tool is much faster. There are new filters: a propagate colors filter and a reset transparent filter. Support for HDR painting has been improved. The recorder docker can now work in real time. There is improved support for file formats, like support for text objects in PSD files. And much, much, much more!
According to the announcement, the versions are almost functionally identical. However, the 6.0.0 release is the first based on Qt 6; it has more Wayland functionality but is considered experimental. It cautions that users should stick to 5.3.0 for real work. See the release notes for a full list of changes.
Security updates for Tuesday
[$] Tracking when BPF programs may sleep
BPF programs can run in both sleepable and non-sleepable (atomic) contexts. Currently, sleepable BPF programs are not allowed to enter an atomic context. Puranjay Mohan has a new patch set that changes that. The patch set would let BPF programs called in sleepable contexts temporarily acquire locks that cause the programs to transition to an atomic context. BPF maintainer Alexei Starovoitov objected to parts of the implementation, however, so acceptance of the patch depends on whether Mohan is willing and able to straighten it out.
Kernel prepatch 7.0-rc5
It looks like things are starting to calm down - rc5 is smaller than the previous rc's this merge window, although it still tracks a bit larger than rc5s historically do."
Security updates for Monday
b4 v0.15.0 released
Agama 19 released
Version 19 of the Agama installer for openSUSE and SUSE has been released. This release includes major changes in Agama's architectural design, organization of the web interface, and more.
We always wanted Agama to follow the schema [...] in which the core of the installer could be controlled through a consistent and simple programming interface (an API, in developers jargon). In that schema, the web-based user interface, the command-line tools and the unattended installation are built on top of that generic API.
But previous versions of Agama were full of quirks that didn't allow us to define an API that would match our quality standards as a solid foundation to build a simple but comprehensive installer. Agama 19 represents a quite significant architectural overhaul, needed to leave all those quirks behind and to define mechanisms that can be the cornerstone for any future development.
LWN last looked at Agama in September 2025.
[$] A truce in the Manjaro governance struggle
Members of the Manjaro Linux distribution's community have published
a "Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto"
that contains a list of complaints and a demand to restructure the project to provide
a clear separation between the community and Manjaro as a company. The manifesto
asserts that the project's leadership is not acting in the best interests of the
community, which has caused developers to leave and innovation to stagnate. It
also demands a handover of the Manjaro trademark and other assets to a
to-be-formed nonprofit association. The responses on the Manjaro forum showed widespread support
for the manifesto; Philip Müller, project lead and CEO of the Manjaro
company, largely stayed out of the discussion. However, he surfaced
on March 19 to say he was "open to serious discussions
", but only
after a nonprofit had actually been set up.
Security updates for Friday
Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps (Ars Technica)
Here are the steps:
- Enable developer options by tapping the software build number in About Phone seven times
- In Settings > System, open Developer Options and scroll down to "Allow Unverified Packages."
- Flip the toggle and tap to confirm you are not being coerced
- Enter device unlock code
- Restart your device
- Wait 24 hours
- Return to the unverified packages menu at the end of the security delay
- Scroll past additional warnings and select either "Allow temporarily" (seven days) or "Allow indefinitely."
- Check the box confirming you understand the risks.
- You can now install unverified packages on the device by tapping the "Install anyway" option in the package manager.