[arch-dev-public] Linux 3.14 in [testing]

2 Apr 2014

      It may be another short while until I run db-update, but I started
pushing the 3.14 stuff to [testing]. This release brings some changes to
the configuration.

* Disabled LSMs

There was a long discussion about it, but in the end there were some
concerns and I do not see the point in supporting a feature in the
kernel that we do not provide userspace support for.

I also disabled audit, since it is enabled by default and there is no
kernel switch to change that. I hate that it annoys users who don't use
it - and we don't support it in our base system either (our systemd has
no audit support, just as it has no SMACK or SELinux support).

I kept YAMA, since it's not actually a real LSM, but only provides the
very useful ptrace scope protection - which can be disabled easily if so
desired.

* Disabled x32

I disabled the x32 support - we are not providing any x32 userspace and
there is no point for Arch in doing so. Given that the x32 syscalls
already had one major security flaw, I don't see why this should be enabled.

* Disabled userspace firmware helper support

The fallback firmware helper is now disabled. This forced me to disable
the "Dell BIOS uprgade via sysfs" support, but as far as I can see, that
was broken anyway and nobody used it.

* Made some drivers modular

Some more drivers that were built-in are now modules. Nothing exciting,
just random stuff.

* Enabled infiniband modules

I added the (modular) support for infiniband, as it was requested in a
bug report and it's only modules.

* Changed some kernel hacking options (not a lot)

I changed some things in the kernel hacking section, but can't remember
exactly what. I did not have the time to research why option XYZ was
needed or not, so I didn't feel like switching things around a lot.

* Removed some differences between 32 and 64 bit config

Some drivers were enabled in 32 and disabled in 64, or vice versa. I
think I fixed all those.

* Removed criu patch

I removed the patch that allows CONFIG_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE without
CONFIG_EXPERT. If this option is supposed to be used by end users, then
it should not be labelled CONFIG_EXPERT. As long as it is, I will assume
it is something evil.

* Added the 'simple' framebuffer driver

This driver tries to take over the firmware's framebuffer instead of
enabling the kernel's own generic vesa, uvesa of efi framebuffer. The
non-generic drivers obviously still take precedence and will disable
simplefb.

=====================================================================

We still apply the following patches:

* Change default log level from 7 to 4

Merging our patch to make that configurable upstream somehow lead to
nothing, since nobody cared.

* Bluetooth: allocate static minor for vhci

It's not yet in 3.14, but I won't have those stupid bug reports
complaining about a harmless message anymore. I'm keeping this patch
until 3.15 is here.

* module: allow multiple calls to MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE() per module
* module: remove MODULE_GENERIC_TABLE

Fixes to module alias setup needed for the i8042 controller aliases to
work right. This is needed since i8042 is now modular, but upstream is slow.

* Revert "syscalls.h: use gcc alias instead of assembler

i686 won't work without it. Still waiting for anything from upstream.
Got a messsage from the patch author to resend my original message, but
no reaction again since then. See https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/1/26/22 for
details.

=====================================================================

Bugs I've seen so far:

* The cirrus kms driver for qemu fails when booted with OVMF firmware.
Works with the standard qemu BIOS. No idea what's going on here.

Thomas Bächler

Thomas Bächler

Thomas Bächler

Dave Reisner

Thomas Bächler

Dave Reisner

Thomas Bächler

Dave Reisner

Massimiliano Torromeo

Thomas Bächler

Evangelos Foutras

Thomas Bächler

Evangelos Foutras

Jan Alexander Steffens

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