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

Thomas Bächler thomas at archlinux.org
Tue Apr 1 18:20:05 EDT 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.

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