Vue normale

Firefox 151.0 released

Par : corbet
19 mai 2026 à 16:10
Version 151.0 of the Firefox browser has been released. Significant changes include the ability to clear and restart a private-browsing session, better fingerprinting protection, control over the apparent location when using the Firefox VPN, and more.

[$] openSUSE "terms of site" raise complaints about age restrictions

Par : jzb
19 mai 2026 à 15:27

Many people in the Linux community began using the operating system—and contributing to open source—at a tender age, often well before their 16th birthday. Thus, a recent change in openSUSE's terms of site (ToS) that required users of the project's web site to be "at least 16 years of age or the age of majority" in their jurisdiction has raised objections. The terms have since been modified, though users must still have parental approval to create accounts if they are younger than 16.

[$] In search of faster this_cpu operations

Par : corbet
19 mai 2026 à 14:30
The kernel's this_cpu operations are meant to speed access to per-CPU variables. They are more optimal on some CPUs than others, though. During a memory-management-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Yang Shi proposed a fundamental, and somewhat controversial, change to how these operations work in order to provide better performance on a wider range of architectures.

[$] What's brewing in CXL

Par : corbet
19 mai 2026 à 14:15
Compute Express Link (CXL) is a technology intended to enable the provision of "memory nodes" in data centers that provide (possibly shared) memory to nearby CPUs. It has, Dan Williams said at the beginning of his memory-management-track session on the topic at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, "been making memory-management problems worse since 2021". He used the session to provide an overview of the ways in which CXL can be expected to extend that record into the future.

[$] Improving the per-CPU memory allocator

Par : corbet
19 mai 2026 à 13:27
There are many places in the kernel where performance can be improved by using per-CPU data. But, as it turns out, the kernel's allocator for per-CPU data has some performance problems of its own. Harry Yoo led a session in the memory-management track of the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit to explore ways to address those problems and accelerate the allocation and initialization of per-CPU data.

Security updates for Tuesday

Par : corbet
19 mai 2026 à 13:24
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (libpng and nginx), Debian (erlang, netatalk, and nginx), Fedora (mod_md and SDL2_image), Mageia (perl-libwww-perl, perl-HTTP-Message, perl-WWW-Mechanize-Cached, perl-File-XDG, perl-Path-Tiny, perl-YAML-Syck, postgresql15, and rclone), SUSE (agama, alloy, cacti, cloud-init, dnsmasq, emacs, firefox, glibc, go1.25, go1.26, google-cloud-sap-agent, google-guest-agent, ibus-rime, librime, imagemagick, kernel, libsndfile, nginx, ongres-scram, ongres-stringprep, plexus-testing,, openexr, openssh, PackageKit, perl-Text-CSV_XS, php-composer2, php8, postgresql16, postgresql18, python-lxml, python-python-multipart, python3, python311-urllib3, rmt-server, rsync, tiff, tree-sitter, util-linux, and xen), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-azure-fips, linux-bluefield, linux-fips, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gcp-fips, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-iot, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15, linux-raspi, and linux-xilinx-zynqmp).

pgBackRest will continue

Par : jzb
19 mai 2026 à 12:05

In April, David Steele, maintainer of the popular pgBackRest backup and restore project for PostgreSQL, announced that he had archived the project and it would no longer be maintained due to lack of sponsorship. On May 18, he announced that a number of sponsors have stepped forward to ensure its continued development:

Over the last few weeks, a coalition of sponsors has come together to fund ongoing development. Their support means the project is no longer reliant on a single sponsor, giving pgBackRest the stability it needs for the long term.

[...] I'm looking forward to getting back to work. There are features and optimizations in the pipeline that I'm excited to share in upcoming releases. Thank you to our sponsors for making this possible, and thank you to the community for your patience and support during this transition.

Thanks to Paul Wise for the tip.

[$] Swap tables, flash-friendly swap, swap_ops, and more

Par : corbet
18 mai 2026 à 13:16
The kernel's swap subsystem is charged with managing anonymous pages in secondary storage when those pages are (hopefully) not being used and the memory they occupy is needed elsewhere. This long-unloved subsystem has seen a resurgence of developer interest in recent times, so it is not surprising that it was the topic of three separate sessions in the memory-management track at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit. Two of those sessions were concerned with improving the performance and maintainability of the swap code, while one (shared with the storage track) was about how swapping could be friendlier to solid-state storage devices.

Security updates for Monday

Par : corbet
18 mai 2026 à 12:59
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (freerdp, gimp:2.8, jq, kernel, and rsync), Debian (chromium, ffmpeg, firewalld, kernel, nginx, openjpeg2, openssh, php7.4, and redis), Fedora (apptainer, chromium, coturn, dnsmasq, firefox, kernel, libgit2_1.8, libmetal, nginx, nginx-mod-brotli, nginx-mod-fancyindex, nginx-mod-headers-more, nginx-mod-js-challenge, nginx-mod-modsecurity, nginx-mod-naxsi, nginx-mod-vts, open-amp, perl-Net-CIDR-Lite, pgbouncer, pypy, python-jupytext, python-uv-build, rsync, rust-astral-tokio-tar, uriparser, uv, valkey, and yelp), Mageia (dpkg, firefox, thunderbird, golang, haproxy, and samba), Slackware (dnsmasq and kernel), and SUSE (apache-commons-configuration2, apache2, apptainer, chromedriver, cups-filters, curl, dnsmasq, expat, ffmpeg-4, ffmpeg-7, firebird, firewalld, flux2-cli, glibc, go1.25, go1.26, gosec, grub2, ImageMagick, java-11-openj9, java-17-openj9, java-1_8_0-openj9, java-1_8_0-openjdk, java-21-openj9, java-25-openj9, kdenlive, kernel, kernel-devel, keylime-config, krb5, libIex-3_4-33, mozjs115, mozjs78, nginx, openssh, openvswitch, ovmf, PackageKit, perl-Crypt-URandom, perl-CryptX, perl-libwww-perl, perl-Net-CIDR-Lite, perl-Text-CSV_XS, podman, postgresql17, postgresql18, python-pyOpenSSL, python310, rsync, sed, tekton-cli, valkey, xen, and zypper-docker).

Kernel prepatch 7.1-rc4

Par : corbet
17 mai 2026 à 21:39
The 7.1-rc4 kernel prepatch is out for testing.

Some of the documentation updates might be worth highlighting: the continued flood of AI reports has basically made the security list almost entirely unmanageable, with enormous duplication due to different people finding the same things with the same tools. People spend all their time just forwarding things to the right people or saying "that was already fixed a week/month ago" and pointing to the public discussion.

Which is all entirely pointless churn, and we're making it clear that AI detected bugs are pretty much by definition not secret, and treating them on some private list is a waste of time for everybody involved - and only makes that duplication worse because the reporters can't even see each other's reports.

(He is referring to this pull request with patches from Willy Tarreau defining what constitutes a security bug and responsible ways to use AI to find bugs).

[$] Controlling memory management with BPF

Par : corbet
15 mai 2026 à 14:54
Roman Gushchin began his session in the memory-management track of the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit by saying that the community has seen a lot of proposals adding BPF-based interfaces for memory management. None of them have made their way into the mainline, though. He wanted to explore the ways in which BPF might be helpful and the obstacles that have kept BPF-based solutions out so far. This session was followed by a discussion led by Shakeel Butt on what the requirements for a new, BPF-based interface for memory control groups might look like.

Seven new stable kernels with patches for CVE-2026-46333

Par : jzb
15 mai 2026 à 13:34

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the 7.0.8, 6.18.31, 6.12.89, 6.6.139, 6.1.173, 5.15.207, and 5.10.256 stable kernels. These kernels contain a patch for CVE-2026-46333 a vulnerability reported by the Qualys Security Advisory team, though Jann Horn proposed a patch in 2020. The vulnerability has a proof-of-concept exploit published already. Some of the kernels have additional patches for other bugs; as always, users are advised to upgrade.

[$] HugeTLB preservation over live update

Par : corbet
15 mai 2026 à 13:27
Recent times have seen a lot of effort put into the implementation of the kexec handover and live update orchestrator features in the Linux kernel. But that work is not yet complete. At the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Pratyush Yadav led a memory-management-track session on adding the ability to preserve hugetlbfs-provided memory during the live-update process.

Security updates for Friday

Par : jzb
15 mai 2026 à 13:16
Security updates have been issued by Debian (ffmpeg, gsasl, nodejs, postgresql-15, postgresql-17, python3.9, and thunderbird), Fedora (expat, firefox, freerdp, GitPython, kernel, php, rust-podman-sequoia, rust-rpm-sequoia, rust-sequoia-chameleon-gnupg, rust-sequoia-git, rust-sequoia-keystore-server, rust-sequoia-octopus-librnp, rust-sequoia-openpgp, rust-sequoia-sop, rust-sequoia-sq, and rust-sequoia-sqv), Mageia (awstats, libreoffice, perl-HTTP-Tiny, and tomcat), Oracle (corosync, freerdp, gimp, git-lfs, glib2, jq, kernel, krb5, libsoup3, libtiff, openexr, thunderbird, uek-kernel, and yggdrasil), Red Hat (podman and skopeo), SUSE (amazon-ssm-agent, avahi, c-ares, cairo, containerd, cpp-httplib, dnsmasq, dovecot24, ffmpeg-4, firefox, helm, ImageMagick, iproute2, kernel, krb5, libtpms, ongres-scram, ongres-stringprep, plexus-testing, maven, maven-doxia, mojo-parent, sisu, openCryptoki, openssh, perl-Text-CSV_XS, php8, python-lxml, python-Twisted-doc, python311-click, python311-GitPython, rclone, regclient, and syncthing), and Ubuntu (avahi).

[$] Policy groups for memory management

Par : corbet
14 mai 2026 à 19:02
The kernel's control-group subsystem works well for resource management, Chris Li said at the beginning of his memory-management-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit. Control groups work less well for other use cases, though. He was there to present his proposed enhancement, called "policy groups", that would address some of the shortcomings that he has encountered. A consensus on how this feature should look still seems distant, though.

[$] Buffered atomic writes, writethrough, and more

Par : jake
14 mai 2026 à 14:54
In back-to-back sessions at the start of the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit (which spilled over into a third slot), the atomic-buffered-writes feature was discussed. In the first session, Pankaj Raghav and Andres Freund set the stage with an introduction to the problem, along with a use case for its solution: the PostgreSQL database system. In the second, Ojaswin Mujoo described a potential way forward for the feature using an approach based on writethrough, which effectively means that the kernel immediately writes the data to disk instead of waiting for writeback from the page cache to occur. As might be expected, there was quite a bit of discussion among the assembled filesystems and storage developers during the combined sessions for those tracks.

[$] Keeping COWs in context (a.k.a. anonymous reverse mapping)

Par : corbet
14 mai 2026 à 13:14
The kernel's reverse-mapping machinery is charged with locating the page-table entries that refer to a given page in memory. The reverse mapping of anonymous pages is handled differently than for file-backed pages. The kernel's implementation of reverse mapping for anonymous pages is, according to Lorenzo Stoakes in his proposal for a memory-management-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, "a very broken abstraction", due to its complexity. It also has some performance problems. Stoakes was there to present, in raw form, a proposed replacement that he calls a "COW context".
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