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Updated: 2 hours 52 min ago
[$] Running code within another process's address space
One of the key resources that defines a process is its address space — the
set of mappings that determines what any specific memory address means
within that process. An address space is normally private
to the process it belongs to, but there are situations where one process
needs to make changes to another process's memory; an interactive debugger
would be one case in point. The ptrace()
system call makes such changes possible, but it is slow and not always easy
to use, so there has been a longstanding quest for better alternatives.
One possibility, process_vm_exec()
from Andrei Vagin, was recently posted for review.
Security updates for Friday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (smarty3), Fedora (libpano13, python3.8, and seamonkey), Mageia (chromium-browser-stable, gstreamer1.0, thunderbird, and x11-server), Oracle (libldb and thunderbird), SUSE (grafana and system-user-grafana, kernel, and openldap2), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gke-5.3, linux-gke-5.4, linux-gkeop, linux-gkeop-5.4, linux-hwe, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-hwe-5.8, linux-kvm, linux-oem-5.10, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux-raspi2-5.3, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-dell300x, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-oracle, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon, and linux-oem-5.6).
Kicking off the GNU Assembly
A new organization for maintainers and contributors to GNU tools, the GNU Assembly, has announced its existence.
"We’re excited to kick off the GNU Assembly and its web site! This place intends to be a collaboration platform for the developers of GNU packages who are all 'hacking for user freedom' and who share a vision for the umbrella project." It is an outgrowth of discussions on changes to GNU governance from a few years back, but its origins are even older than that. The organization is working on its governance model and invites those interested to its Assembly mailing list.
[$] Looking forward to Fedora 34
The Fedora project may have managed to shake off its reputation for delayed
releases in recent years, but that hasn't stopped the release date for
Fedora 34 from slipping
one week to April 27. Modulo a
handful of bugs, though, this release is in its final form, so a look
at what is coming is warranted. Distribution releases, especially those
for fast-moving community distributions, are a good point at which to catch
up with the state of many free-software projects and where Linux is headed
in general. Fedora 34 includes a lot of changes, including the GNOME 40 release but, for the most
part, it looks like an exercise in continuity.
Security updates for Thursday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (xorg-server), Fedora (kernel), openSUSE (clamav, fluidsynth, python-bleach, spamassassin, and xorg-x11-server), Red Hat (gnutls and nettle, libldb, and thunderbird), Scientific Linux (thunderbird), SUSE (clamav, util-linux, and xorg-x11-server), and Ubuntu (network-manager and underscore).
Rust in the Linux kernel (Google security blog)
The Google security blog has a
detailed article on what a device driver written in Rust looks like.
"That is, we use Rust's ownership discipline when interacting with C
code by handing the C portion ownership of a Rust object, allowing it to
call functions implemented in Rust, then eventually giving ownership
back. So as long as the C code is correct, the lifetime of Rust file
objects work seamlessly as well, with the compiler enforcing correct
lifetime management on the Rust side, for example: open cannot return
stack-allocated pointers or heap-allocated objects containing pointers to
the stack, ioctl/read/write cannot free (or
modify without synchronization)
the contents of the object stored in filp->private_data, etc."
[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for April 15, 2021
The LWN.net Weekly Edition for April 15, 2021 is available.
[$] Enabling debuginfod for Fedora by default
In early April, Fedora program manager Ben Cotton posted
a proposal to use the distribution's
debuginfod
servers by default in Fedora 35. This feature would help developers
who are trying to debug or trace their programs using various tools, but who are
lacking the source code and debugging symbols needed. The servers
can provide that data directly to the tools as needed, but there are some
security and privacy concerns to work through before turning the feature on
by default.
OpenStack Wallaby released
The OpenStack cloud-infrastructure project has made its 23rd release, Wallaby. "The Wallaby release strengthens open infrastructure for cloud native applications with enhanced security and integration with other open source technologies. More than 17,000 code changes authored by over 800 contributors from 140 different organizations and 45 countries were merged into the release.
In addition to delivering a wide range of improvements to the stable and reliable OpenStack core and its highly flexible project integration capabilities, Wallaby delivers security enhancements including fallback permissions and RBAC improvements in Ironic [bare-metal provisioning service], Glance [image service] and Manila [shared filesystems], and the community focused this cycle on migrating the RBAC policy format from JSON to YAML. Additionally, the Ironic project has extended functionality for UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), including secure erase for NVME."
Security updates for Wednesday
Security updates have been issued by CentOS (screen), Debian (clamav, courier-authlib, and tomcat9), Red Hat (thunderbird), SUSE (clamav, glibc, kernel, open-iscsi, opensc, spamassassin, thunderbird, wpa_supplicant, and xorg-x11-server), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gke-5.4, linux-gkeop, linux-gkeop-5.4, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-dell300x, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon, linux, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-hwe-5.8, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon, linux-oem-5.10, linux-oem-5.6, nettle, and xorg-server, xorg-server-hwe-16.04, xorg-server-hwe-18.04).
FreeBSD 13.0 released
The FreeBSD 13 release is out. It includes a lot of updated software, the
removal of a number of GNU tools (including the toolchain), and more, but
not WireGuard. See the release
notes for the details.
[$] Comparing SystemTap and bpftrace
There are times when developers and system administrators need to diagnose
problems in running code. The program to be examined can be a user-space
process, the kernel, or both. Two of the major tools available on Linux to
perform this sort of analysis are
SystemTap and
bpftrace. SystemTap has been available
since 2005, while bpftrace is a more recent contender that, to some,
may appear to
have made SystemTap obsolete. However, SystemTap is still the preferred
tool for
some real-world use cases.
Security updates for Tuesday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (libpano13), Fedora (mosquitto and perl-Net-CIDR-Lite), Mageia (curl, mongodb, pdfbox, python-jinja2, rygel, spamassassin, tor, velocity, webkit2, and wireshark), openSUSE (umoci), Oracle (389-ds:1.4, kernel, and virt:ol and virt-devel:rhel), Red Hat (kernel and kpatch-patch), Slackware (dnsmasq and irssi), and SUSE (cifs-utils, rubygem-actionpack-4_2, and spamassassin).
[$] NUMA-aware qspinlocks
While some parts of the core kernel reached a relatively stable "done"
state years ago, others never really seem to be finished. One of the
latter variety is undoubtedly the kernel's implementation of spinlocks,
which arbitrate access to data at the lowest levels of the kernel. Lock
performance can have a significant effect on the performance of the system
as a whole, so optimization work can pay back big dividends. Lest one
think that this work is finally done, the NUMA-aware
qspinlock patch set shows how some more performance can be squeezed out
of the kernel's spinlock implementation.
The FSF on Stallman's reinstatement
The Free Software Foundation has finally issued
a statement on why the decision to return Richard Stallman to the
organization's board of directors was taken.
We decided to bring RMS back because we missed his wisdom. His historical,
legal and technical acumen on free software is unrivaled. He has a deep
sensitivity to the ways that technologies can contribute to both the
enhancement and the diminution of basic human rights. His global network of
connections is invaluable. He remains the most articulate philosopher and
an unquestionably dedicated advocate of freedom in computing.
RMS acknowledges that he has made mistakes. He has sincere regrets, especially at how anger toward him personally has negatively impacted the reputation and mission of FSF. While his personal style remains troubling for some, a majority of the board feel his behavior has moderated and believe that his thinking strengthens the work of the FSF in pursuit of its mission.
There is also a separate statement from Stallman.
Security updates for Monday
Security updates have been issued by CentOS (kernel and libldb), Debian (mediawiki, qemu, ruby-kramdown, and xen), Fedora (grub2, libldb, libopenmpt, python-pikepdf, python39, samba, squid, and webkit2gtk3), openSUSE (bcc, ceph, gssproxy, hostapd, isync, kernel, openexr, openSUSE KMPs, and tpm2-tss-engine), SUSE (fwupdate and wpa_supplicant), and Ubuntu (spamassassin).
Kernel prepatch 5.12-rc7
The 5.12-rc7 kernel prepatch is out; it's
rather larger than Linus would have liked.
"End result: I'm still waffling about the final 5.12 release. The fact
that we have a big rc7 does make me think that I'll probably do an rc8
this time around. But it ends up depending a bit on how the upcoming
week goes, and if things are deathly quiet, I may end up deciding that
an rc8 doesn't really make sense."
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Kernel Leftovers
| Devuan 4.0 Alpha Builds Begin For Debian 11 Without Systemd
Debian 11 continues inching closer towards release and it looks like the developers maintaining the "Devuan" fork won't be far behind with their re-base of the distribution focused on init system freedom.
The Devuan fork of Debian remains focused on providing Debian GNU/Linux without systemd. Devuan Beowulf 3.1 is their latest release based on Debian 10 while Devuan Chimaera is in the works as their re-base for Debian 11.
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