Archive of posts from 2023
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FOSS activity in November 2023
- Reviewed changes to Debian package building in upstream Linux.
- Attended the Debian LTS monthly meeting on IRC.
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Reviewed the following merge requests:
- linux: [ia64] Workaround an ICE when built with gcc-13 (proposed a less invasive fix)
- linux: Remove architectures not existing in Debian (ongoing discussion)
- linux: Build linux-libc-dev as arch-all package (proposed further changes: d/rules.real: Change linux-libc-dev installation again)
- linux: Merge lintian and piupart jobs (suggested further simplification)
- linux: Remove use of linux-compiler packages (queried)
- linux: [x86] Various drivers for ChromeOS devices (merged)
- linux: [arm64] Enable configs for MediaTek MT8173 and MT8183 Chromebooks (merged)
- linux: [arm64] Enable more hardware for RK3399 ChromeOS tablets (merged)
- linux: debian/salsa-ci.yml: Replace except: with rules: and Enable build arm64 on the default branch (changes requested; now merged)
- linux: d/changelog: Move changelog items before 5.10 to changelog.old (proposed alternate change)
- linux: [arm64] Increase max CPU count to 512 (queried)
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FOSS activity in October 2023
- Discussed several bug/issue reports in Debian:
- And for Linux stable branches:
- (LTS) Updated the linux-5.10 package in Debian 10 "buster" and issued DLA-3623-1.
- Updated the linux backport in bookworm-backports.
- Updated klibc in Debian, applying a patch from Peng Fan to support the loong64 architecture.
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FOSS activity in September 2023
- Discussed the ongoing difficulties in supporting the Debian "marvell" kernel flavour. Reviewed the related merge request to fix armel build regression in Debian 12 "bookworm".
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Wrote and recorded a talk for DebConf on
What's new in the Linux kernel
. Apologies for the poor audio quality; I will use a different microphone if I do this again. - Reviewed Bastian Blank's proposed changes to kernel package versioning and signing in Debian.
- Reported several bad backports to some Linux stable branches.
- Proposed a build fix for linux 6.5 on s390x.
- (LTS) Updated the linux package for Debian 10 "buster" to 4.19.295, but didn't make an upload.
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FOSS activity in August 2023
- (LTS) Updated the linux-5.10 package in buster and issued DLA-3512-1 for it.
- Together with Aurelien Jarno, I investigated boot failures of Linux 5.10 and later versions on Debian's MIPS buildds, but I didn't find the root cause or any solution.
- Reviewed and tested the kernel mitigations for the SRSO (CVE-2023-20569) issue in AMD CPUs, and added a critical missing patch to the backports.
- (LTS) Updated the linux (4.19) and linux-5.10 packages in buster, and the linux (5.10) package in bullseye, to include mitigations for GDS (CVE-2022-40982) on Intel processors and (5.10 only) SRSO on AMD. I issued DLA-3524-1 and DLA-3525-1 for buster.
- Nattie and I hosted a 30th birthday party for Debian in Leuven.
- Rebased and submitted my fixes for dahdi-linux.
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FOSS activity in July 2023
- I fixed native hppa builds of linux, which regressed due to my changes for cross-build support.
- I changed klibc's address layout for some architectures to work around a bug in QEMU user-space emulation. While investigating this I realised why klibc had started failing to link for MIPS R6, and fixed that too.
- I updated my branch fixing some reproducibility issues in linux.
- I packaged ktls-utils, which is needed to support use of TLS by the Linux kernel, in particular for NFS-over-TLS. I opened several upstream issues for problems I found.
- In order to test the NFS client with TLS, I needed Linux 6.5, so I updated the linux package to 6.5-rc3 (not yet uploaded).
- I cherry-picked mitigations for CVE-2023-20593 a.k.a. Zenbleed to various kernel branches, and uploaded linux version 6.1.38-2 to bookworm-security.
- (LTS) I updated the buster-security branch of linux to upstream stable version 4.19.289, uploaded and issued DLA-3508-1 for it.
- I uploaded linux backport versions 6.3.7-1~bpo12+1 (bookworm-backports), 6.1.28-2~bpo11+1 (bullseye-backports), and (LTS) 5.10.179-3~deb10u1 (buster-security).
- I made a minimal backport of the fix for CVE-2023-3610 for bullseye-security.
- I released klibc version 2.0.13 after nearly 6 months of development. (At the time of writing, the above link was broken due to an expired certificate.) Headline features are the LoongArch port and the use of 64-bit time_t and RT signals on all architectures. I also uploaded the new version to Debian.
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FOSS activity in June 2023
- I uploaded sgt-puzzles to unstable. This brought in the new upstream version previously in experimental. I incorporated an updated German translation from Helge Kreutzmann, and made translation updates less tricky to do.
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I made some changes to the nfs-utils package:
- Completed the transition from setting command-line options in /etc/default to /etc/nfs.conf.d.
- Made its shell scripts shellcheck-clean and added shellcheck to CI. (Thanks to наб who sent a patch for the init scripts.)
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FOSS activity in May 2023
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Several users reported problems in building and testing patched kernels using the instructions in the Debian Kernel Handbook and the test-patches script included in the source package for this purpose: #871216, #1022061, and #1023773.
The test-patches script hadn't been updated to follow the past few years' packaging changes, and produced somewhat broken packages. It was also not robust to being interrupted and restarted, and was needlessly slow due to running the whole build process under fakeroot. I fixed all these problems in the script.
I updated the Debian Kernel Handbook to cover the changes in test-paches and to note the problems in older versions. I revised the instructions for building without this script to correctly cover disabling debug info, to enable parallel builds, and to include building all required binary packages.
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Debian LTS work, March/April 2023
In March and April I worked a total of 28 hours for Freexian's Debian LTS initiative, out of a maximum of 48 hours.
I updated the linux (4.19) package to the latest stable and stable-rt updates, and uploaded it at the end of April. I merged the latest bullseye security update into the linux-5.10 package and uploaded that at the same time.
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Debian LTS work, January/February 2023
In January I was assigned 24 hours by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative and worked 8 hours. In February I was assigned another 8 hours and worked 8 hours.
I updated the linux (4.19) package to the latest stable update, but didn't upload it. I merged the latest bullseye security update into the linux-5.10 package and uploaded that.
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Debian LTS work, December 2022
In December I was assigned 15 hours by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative and carried over 9 hours from November. I worked all of those hours.
I merged the latest bullseye point release into the linux-5.10 package, uploaded that, and issued DLA-3244-1.
I also updated the linux (4.19) package to the latest stable and and stable-rt versions, uploaded it, and issued DLA-3245-1.