El Reg has noted:
Torvalds looses neatened number [release featuring] non-disruptive patches, Z13 support, and more.
[...] The new number isn't a sign of a major upgrade. As we've chronicled, Torvalds thinks that it looks a bit silly when version numbers go beyond x.19.
As the Benevolent Dictator for Life says in his post at the kernel mailing list:
since rc7 [...] It's mainly driver fixes (media, sound, pci, scsi target, drm, thermal..), misc arch updates (nios2 and x86), and scattered fixes elsewhere. Really not a lot during the last week.
After you folks hammered on the 7 release candidates and gave the kernel team bug reports, any drama seems to have been wrung out.
We previously discussed the never-need-to-reboot patching feature that has now been incorporated into the kernel.
Related Stories
Replacing parts of the OS kernel without requiring a reboot is a neat trick. First there was kexec, next came Ksplice, which Oracle bought in 2011 and pretty much turned into Oracle-only payware. kGraft (SuSE) and kpatch (RedHat) were released in February 2014.
Now, Phoronix reports:
The newest kernel live patching solution uses an ftrace-based mechanism and kernel interface for doing live patching of the kernel with kernel module functions. According to Seth Jennings who posted the patches, "it represents the greatest common functionality set between kpatch and kGraft." Seth Jennings is a Red Hat developer. This new kernel live patching can accept kernel patches built by both kGraft and Kpatch. This design came out of the live patching mini-conference at the Linux Plumbers' Conference last month.
This new approach is just over one thousand lines of code in the kernel.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 13 2015, @03:13PM
There has been talk for weeks - maybe even months - that Linus was getting tired of the three's. He stayed with the Terrible Twos for a long time, and now he's matured right through the three's. Can't wait to see how grown up he is now that he's four!
(Score: 2) by sigma on Tuesday April 14 2015, @02:47AM
There has been talk for weeks - maybe even months - that Linus was getting tired of the three's.
Actually he's tired of humanity and is iterating towards kernel version 4.1.15-1.1381_SKYN12nnmp as quickly as possible.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 14 2015, @01:52PM
In view of the reception that believers get around here, I'm tempted to toss a "Let it be so, Lord! Amen!" at you.
But, I don't really feel that way, and I can't quite stoop to that level of trolling. Oh well - I can sit here and chuckle at the heart attacks that it WOULD have caused!
(Score: 2) by infodragon on Monday April 13 2015, @03:32PM
Greater uptimes will be the coming of the anti-christ! Please stay with me because only us geeks can stop this!
If you take the alphabet and assign the number 6 to A, 12 to B, 18 to C... and add up computer you come to 666.
Each computer that now can extend it's uptime will eventually reach 666 days of up time, we already have too many seconds, minutes and hours that come to 666!
The more times and ways the beast of the computer is able to reach 666 the more evil will enter the world and the closer we get to the birth of the anti-christ and then Armageddon! We must stop this!
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 13 2015, @03:56PM
Whatever. I thought that Christians welcomed the thought of the end of the world. All evil will be stamped out after Armageddon. The battle to end all battles, right? Of course, WW2 was awarded a similar tag, wasn't it?
(Score: 3, Funny) by infodragon on Monday April 13 2015, @04:19PM
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Freeman on Monday April 13 2015, @06:49PM
The Battle was won at the Cross. The path to Heaven is still open and will remain so until the world becomes so corrupt that no one else wants to be saved. Then the end will come. It won't be some random Asteroid killing everything on Earth.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 13 2015, @07:40PM
If you say so, Buddy. The Revelation of St. John promises a great battle yet to come. The Saviour will return, but THIS TIME, he isn't going to be the meek and mild mannered reporter - he's supposed to carry a sword, and conquer the world, then establish a New Jerusalem.
Have you bothered to read the last book of the Bible?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Freeman on Monday April 13 2015, @08:44PM
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 tell us how he will come. "16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever." Revelations is full of information, but nothing in it contradicts the way he will come as lined out in 1st Thessalonians. There will be one final confrontation, but calling it a battle would be a bit much as God will end it by calling fire and brimstone down on them.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday April 13 2015, @11:31PM
Besides the dead rising and the living flying through the clouds, that does sound like the earth is doing battle with an astroid. As in, the earth flings itself against an hurling astroid and attempts to survive.
Maybe God throws rocks.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by GeminiDomino on Tuesday April 14 2015, @03:45AM
"Let those without sin cast the first sto-... Dammit, mom, I can't take you anywhere!" -- Jesus
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @02:29AM
JESUS HATES FIGS!
Mark 11:12-25
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @09:09AM
It doesn't matter. Its a coincidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @03:33PM
Firefox is already at version thirty-something! Clearly Linux kernel development is stagnating! ;-)
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday April 13 2015, @05:58PM
Nah, it's just that as a browser Firefox ages on internet time - it's already becoming a stubbornly decrepit curmudgeon and being abandoned in droves for sexier alternatives.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday April 13 2015, @06:51PM
Wow, internet years must go by even faster than dog years!
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday April 13 2015, @07:50PM
Dog years - pff. Those are so analog. Internet years go by even faster than computer years!
(Score: 3, Funny) by isostatic on Monday April 13 2015, @07:05PM
Windows used to be on v2000, it's now on v8. Stagnation is better than regression.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @08:50PM
V10 is in binary.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday April 13 2015, @10:49PM
And v11 will be in unary.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:53AM
Or uriney?
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Tuesday April 14 2015, @02:38PM
Or urinary.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday April 15 2015, @10:49AM
No need to take the piss out of my speeling
(Score: 3, Informative) by Nerdfest on Monday April 13 2015, @03:44PM
I'm really looking forward to live kernel patching. I used to use KSplice (before it was bought by Oracle) and it was fantastic, uptimes in years with all patches run immediately. There have been a lot of kernel patches lately ... it would have been really nice to have had it a few months ago. It should make an even more dramatic difference in the patch process between Linux and Windows; I dread using Windows partially because of the nightmare patching process and the slow shutdown and startup processes that seem to always occur when you're in a hurry.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 13 2015, @03:54PM
Ditto here. I was a KSplice fan, until they decided that private home users had to PAY for the privilege of using it. Corporations, I can understand, private users, not so much.
Yeah, you're right about recent patches. Rebooting every week sucks . . . and I don't even run a public server!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @06:47PM
What I find especially baffling is the not for private use one. Most of the new tech and what-not that has found its way into use here came by one of two routes: 1. a high-level executive forced it on the IT department, either because they already bought the contract or the tech wins buzzword bingo. 2. Someone used it at home and found it made their lives easier. Guess which source provides tech of any longevity.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gravis on Monday April 13 2015, @05:28PM
I'm really looking forward to live kernel patching.
As someone who is concerned about security, it's exciting but concerning. Without question it's useful and there is a good chance it will keep more people up to date with the most recent kernel. However, the other edge of the sword is that it's another vector for malware. Admittedly, loadable modules are just as much of a security risk (if not more so) and their exploitation seems to be quite limited. Given that they can be excluded during compilation, overall, i think this will be a positive change.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 13 2015, @09:36PM
I too worry about this being abused. I'd be willing to bet it will be abused within 5 years of its release.
With everyone running real-time live updating and auto patching the risk of a major hack, either world wide or "only" confined to one distro seems likely, and the result devastating.
The good part if that is because of the risk, lots of eyes would be upon it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday April 13 2015, @10:52PM
Isn't preventing that what digital signatures are for?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 13 2015, @11:16PM
But weren't all the recent Linux security problems using signed packages?
And wasn't kernal.org hacked at least once?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 14 2015, @06:55PM
Do you have any indication that those were malicious code, rather than ordinary bugs? And anyway, if you get your malicious code into the Linux kernel, then it is irrelevant whether you have to reboot to activate it; people installing new kernels will reboot for sure.
I trust the kernel developers to not be so stupid to store their private key on a publicly accessible server.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday April 14 2015, @10:00PM
I trust the kernel developers to not be so stupid to store their private key on a publicly accessible server.
From what I can tell, its a secret or a mystery even to this day.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/09/who-rooted-kernel-org-servers-two-years-ago-how-did-it-happen-and-why/ [arstechnica.com]
The self-injecting rootkit known as Phalanx had access to a wealth of sensitive data, possibly including private keys used to sign and decrypt e-mails and remotely log in to servers. A follow-up advisory a few weeks later opened the possibility that still other developers may have fallen prey to the attackers.
I haven't been following this real close.
I mention it only because signing code is not all that big of an insurance against dangerous code being discovered and used years later.
As an example, some of my Linux machines were vulnerable to shell shock, but others (older versions) were vulnerable. Had those older ones been on auto update they would have been vulnerable as well.
Take consumer routers. Most of these run some version of linux, and most of which never get an upgrade after they are installed, auto updating kernels could be good. But because nobody ever checks router logs who knows what might sneak into an update only to lie in wait for months.
Not trying to be alarmist, but auto updates might be exploited for evil.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday April 13 2015, @04:18PM
Kernel development should be about as exciting as chartered accountancy. Sure, adjust to new hardware features, make improvements to driver interfaces, expose new features that make sense, but the job of the kernel is to keep humming along quietly doing its job.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday April 13 2015, @04:26PM
"Works best when you don't notice it" is an extremely hard field to work in. Everything is good until it's terrible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @05:20PM
“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @05:31PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday April 13 2015, @06:54PM
Good thing it's open source.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @07:59PM
@Torvalds thinks that it looks a bit silly when version numbers go beyond x.19.
so, um, what happens at 19.19?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday April 13 2015, @08:12PM
It is followed by 20.0 of course. In 20.0 the 20 doesn't follow a dot.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by JNCF on Monday April 13 2015, @08:21PM
@Torvalds thinks that it looks a bit silly when version numbers go beyond x.19.
so, um, what happens at 19.19?
The major version number is actually written in base-9 to avoid that problem; this won't be explicitly clear until they go from version 8.19 to version 10.0, obviously. But rest assured that there will never be a version 19.19, and therefore nothing past it.
(Score: 1) by draconx on Monday April 13 2015, @08:55PM
Since 3.0 was ~4 years ago, we don't need to worry about that for another 60 years or so. Since Mr. Torvalds will most likely be dead by then it won't be an issue.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @09:07PM
SYSTEMD!!!! LOCKSTEP UPGRADE!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RedBear on Tuesday April 14 2015, @03:24AM
Soooo, we've finally arrived at Linux NT? Sweet. *fist pump*
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Thanks, I'll be here all decade. Try the Martian regolith.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ