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ThisLaravel News article digs into the many enhancements that have foundtheir way into the PHP language in the last couple of years or so.

Mara Bos has written a lengthyblog post on whether the Rust language needs to be standardized.The answer is "no" — but she draws a distinction between a "standard"(maintained by some distant standards body) and a "specification".

Security updates have been issued by CentOS (389-ds-base, bind, expat, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, libksba, and squid), Debian (chromium, libdatetime-timezone-perl, tzdata, and wordpress), Fedora (dbus, dhcp, dotnet3.1, jhead, samba, and strongswan), Mageia (virtualbox), Oracle (device-mapper-multipath), Scientific Linux (device-mapper-multipath and thunderbird), Slackware (curl), SUSE (container-suseconnect, curl, kernel, libmad, libtasn1, libtirpc, qemu, rubygem-puppet, SUSE Manager Client Tools, and telnet), and Ubuntu (curl, linux-intel-iotg, and mysql-5.7).

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 27, 2022 is available.

Python has lots of different options for mutable data structures, bothdirectly in the language and in the standard library. Lists, dictionaries (or "dicts"), andsets are the foundation, but two of those maintain an order based on howthe elements are added, while sets do not. A recent discussion on the Python Discourse forum raised theidea of adding an ordered variant of sets; while it does not look likethere is a big push to add the feature, the discussion did show some ofwhat is generally needed to get new things into the language—and could welllead to its inclusion.

Arturo Borrero González has posted a detailedsummary of the Netfilter workshop that was recently held in Seville."This year, the number of participants was just eight people, and thisallowed the setup to be a bit more informal. We had kind of anun-conference style meeting, in which whoever had something prepared justwent ahead and opened a topic for debate."(Thanks to Paul Wise).

The6.0.4,5.15.75,5.10.150,5.4.220,4.19.262,4.14.296, and4.9.331stable kernel updates have all been released; each contains a relativelylarge set of important fixes. The 6.0.5update followed about 90 seconds later with a couple of additionalsmall fixes.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (tomcat9), Oracle (389-ds-base, device-mapper-multipath, firefox, git-lfs, gnutls, kernel, kernel-container, libksba, pki-core, samba, sqlite, and zlib), Red Hat (device-mapper-multipath, kernel, kpatch-patch, libksba, and thunderbird), Slackware (expat and samba), SUSE (bind, buildah, curl, firefox, golang-github-prometheus-node_exporter, grafana, icinga2, python-paramiko, python-waitress, SUSE Manager Client Tools, telnet, and xen), and Ubuntu (glibc, jinja2, libksba, linux, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, and openvswitch).

Lennart Poettering has posted adetailed specification for a new approach to "trusted computing"systems.

The QEMU emulator has a sizable set ofstorage features, including disk-image file formats like qcow2, snapshots, incremental backup, and storage migration, which are available to virtualmachines. This software-defined storage functionality that is availableinside QEMU has not been easily accessible outside of it, however. Kevin Wolf and Stefano Garzarellapresented at KVM Forum 2022 on the new qemu-storage-daemon program and the libblkiolibrary that make QEMU's storage functionality available even when the goalis not to run a virtual machine (VM).

Security updates have been issued by Debian (libbluray and wkhtmltopdf), Fedora (firefox, libksba, libmodsecurity, libxml2, qemu, and xmlsec1), Red Hat (389-ds-base, 389-ds:1.4, git-lfs, gnutls, java-1.8.0-ibm, kernel, kernel-rt, kpatch-patch, libksba, mysql:8.0, pki-core, postgresql:12, samba, sqlite, and zlib), Scientific Linux (389-ds-base, libksba, and pki-core), SUSE (bluez, firefox, jdom, kernel, libosip2, libxml2, multipath-tools, and python-Mako), and Ubuntu (barbican, mysql-5.7, mysql-8.0, openvswitch, and pillow).

Version3.11.0 of the Python language has been released."In the CPython release team, we have put a lot of effort into making3.11 the best version of Python possible. Better tracebacks, faster Python,exception groups and except*, typing improvements and much more."Among other things, this release claims a 1.22x speedup on the standardbenchmark suite thanks to the FasterCPython work.

Among the many quirks that make the C language so charming is the set ofbehaviors thatit does not define; these include whether a char variable is asigned quantity or not. The distinction often does not make a difference,but there are exceptions. Kernel code, which runs on many differentarchitectures, is where exceptions can certainly be found. A recentattempt to eliminate the uncertain signedness of char variablesdid not get far — at least not in the direction it originally attempted togo.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 5.19.17 stable kernel. "Note this is theLAST 5.19.y kernel to be released. This branch is now end-of-life. You should move to the 6.0.y branch at this point in time."

Alex Gaynor examines theawkwardness that comes when trying to interface Python and Rust code.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (bluez, kernel, and lava), Fedora (ckeditor, drupal7, moby-engine, php-Smarty, and wavpack), Mageia (bind, e2fsprogs, epiphany, freerdp, kernel, kernel-linus, libconfuse, libosip2, ntfs-3g, perl-Image-ExifTool, and poppler), Oracle (firefox, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, kernel, kernel-container, and thunderbird), Scientific Linux (firefox, java-1.8.0-openjdk, and java-11-openjdk), SUSE (bluez, firefox, kernel, libxml2, and tiff), and Ubuntu (linux-gcp).

The second 6.1 kernel prepatch is out fortesting. "Usually rc2 is a pretty quiet week, and it mostly started outthat way too, but then things took a turn for the strange. End result:6.1-rc2 ended up being unusually large."

The U-Boot list carriesthe sad news that Wolfgang Denk, the founder of the U-Boot project, haspassed away.

All memory accesses in a BPF program arestatically checked for safety using the verifier, which analyzes the program in itsentirety before allowing it to run. While this allows BPF programs tosafely run in kernel space, it restricts how that program is able to usepointers. Until recently, one such constraint was that the size of a memoryregion referenced by a pointer in a BPF program must be statically knownwhen a BPF program is loaded. A recentpatch set by Joanne Koong enhances BPF to support loading programs withpointers to dynamically sized memory regions.

The 6.0.3 stable kernel update has beenreleased; it contains over 800 important fixes.

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (poppler), Oracle (firefox and thunderbird), Red Hat (firefox, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, and java-17-openjdk), SUSE (bind, clone-master-clean-up, grafana, libksba, python3, tiff, and v4l2loopback), and Ubuntu (libreoffice).

Part of the early appeal of the World Wide Web was the promise that anybodycould create a site and publish interesting content to the world. A fewdecades later, that promise seems to have been transformed into the ability toprovide content for a small number of proprietary platforms run by hugecorporations.But, arguably, the dream of widespread independent publishing is enjoying aresurgence. The Ghost publishing platformis built around the goal of making publishing technology — and the abilityto make money from it — available with free software.

Ubuntu22.10 has been released. "Codenamed 'Kinetic Kudu', this interimrelease improves the experience of enterprise developers and ITadministrators. It also includes the latest toolchains and applicationswith a particular focus on the IoT ecosystem." See therelease notes for details.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr), Red Hat (java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, OpenShift Container Platform 4.9.50 bug fix and, and rh-nodejs14-nodejs), SUSE (buildah, clone-master-clean-up, go1.18, go1.19, helm, jasper, libostree, nodejs16, php8, qemu, and xen), and Ubuntu (libxdmcp, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gke, linux-gke-5.15, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-oem-5.14, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-bluefield, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux-oem-5.17, and perl).

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 20, 2022 is available.

Unlike many other architectures, x86 systems support atomic operations thataffect more than one cache line. This support comes at a cost, though, interms of overall system performance and, even, security. Over the last fewyears, kernel developers have worked to discourage the use of this sort of"split-lock" operation. Now, though, one group of users is feelinga little too discouraged, leading to a discussion of how much misery canappropriately be inflicted upon users who use problematic butarchitecturally legal operations.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (bcel, kernel, node-xmldom, and squid), Mageia (chromium-browser-stable, dhcp, dokuwiki, firefox, golang, python-joblib, sos, and unzip), Oracle (nodejs and nodejs:16), Red Hat (firefox, kernel, kernel-rt, nodejs, nodejs:14, and thunderbird), Scientific Linux (firefox and thunderbird), Slackware (git and mozilla), SUSE (amazon-ssm-agent, caasp-release, cri-o, patchinfo, release-notes-caasp, skuba, enlightenment, libreoffice, netty, nodejs12, nodejs14, nodejs16, pngcheck, postgresql-jdbc, python-waitress, rubygem-activesupport-5_1, and tcl), and Ubuntu (frr, git, libksba, and linux-azure-4.15).

Since its inclusion in the Linux kernel, the WireGuard VPN tunnel has becomeincreasingly popular. In general, WireGuard is simpler to configure thanother VPNs, but the approach that it takes to authentication can presentsome challenges. Each node in a WireGuard network has a cryptographic keythat serves as the node's identity; nodes that do not know each other's keys cannot directly communicate.Keepingtrack of these keys and distributing them to the other nodesin a mesh network quickly becomes a chore as the network grows.Fortunately, there are now several open-source tools that can automate the management of these keys and make usingWireGuard easier for both administrators and end users.

Version106.0 of the Firefox browser has been released. There are several newfeatures, including PDF editing, FirefoxView (an overview of recently closed tabs), and a set of new colorschemes.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (glibc and libksba), Fedora (dhcp and kernel), Red Hat (.NET 6.0, .NET Core 3.1, compat-expat1, kpatch-patch, and nodejs:16), Slackware (xorg), SUSE (exiv2, expat, kernel, libreoffice, python, python-numpy, squid, and virtualbox), and Ubuntu (linux-azure and zlib).

Version5.5 of the Tor-centered Tails distribution is out. The biggest changeappears to be a significant update to the Thunderbird email client.

The5.10.149 and5.4.219stable kernel updates have been released. These small updates contain only afew more WiFi fixes and one revert.

Linus Torvalds released6.1-rc1 and closed the 6.1 merge window on October 16; at that point, 11,537 non-merge changesets had been pulledinto the mainline repository. That is considerably less than the 13,543changesets pulled during the 6.0 merge window, but quantity is noteverything: there were quite a few significant changes brought in this timearound. Many of those were part of the nearly 5,800 changesets pulledsince our first 6.1 merge window summary;read on for a look at some of the work done in the latter part of thismerge window.

Version 2.3.8 of the GNU Privacy Guard is out. It contains a few newfeatures but the real purpose is to fix CVE-2022-3515,an integer overflow vulnerability that can be exploited remotely for codeexecution via a, for example, malicious S/MIME attachment. Note that theactual vulnerability is in the libksba library, which isnormally packaged separately on Linux systems.

Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (kernel, linux-hardened, linux-lts, and linux-zen), Debian (python-django), Fedora (apptainer, kernel, python3.6, and vim), Gentoo (assimp, deluge, libvirt, libxml2, openssl, rust, tcpreplay, virglrenderer, and wireshark), Slackware (zlib), SUSE (chromium, python3, qemu, roundcubemail, and seamonkey), and Ubuntu (linux-aws-5.4 and linux-ibm).

Linus has released 6.1-rc1 and closed themerge window for this development cycle.

Google has announcedthe existence of yet another new operating system, called KataOS, aimed atthe creation of secure embedded systems.

The6.0.2,5.19.16,5.15.74,5.10.148, and5.4.218stable kernel updates have all been released. Among other things, theseupdates contain the fixes for the recently disclosed WiFi vulnerabilities.

Software patents affect our systems in many ways, but perhaps moststrongly in the area of codecs — code that creates or plays back audioor video that has been compressed using covered algorithms. For thisreason, certain formats have simply been unplayable on many Linuxdistributions — especially those backed by companies that are bigenough to be worth suing — without installing add-on software fromthird-party repositories. One might think that this problem could beworked around by purchasing hardware that implements the patented algorithms,but recent activity in the Fedora and openSUSE communities shows that lifeis not so simple.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium), Fedora (dbus, dhcp, expat, kernel, thunderbird, vim, and weechat), Mageia (libofx, lighttpd, mediawiki, and python), Oracle (.NET 6.0 and .NET Core 3.1), Slackware (python3), SUSE (chromium, kernel, libosip2, python-Babel, and python-waitress), and Ubuntu (gThumb, heimdal, linux-aws, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-aws-hwe, linux-gcp, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, postgresql-9.5, and xmlsec1).

It would appear that there is a set ofmemory-related vulnerabilities in the kernel's WiFi stack that can beexploited over the air via malicious packets; five CVE numbers have beenassigned to the set. Fixes are headed toward themainline and should show up in stable updates before too long; anybody whouses WiFi on untrusted networks should probably keep an eye out for therelevant updates.

There have been a lot of significant changes merged into the mainline forthe 6.1 release, but one of the changes that has received the mostattention will also have the least short-term effect for users of thekernel: the introduction of support for the Rust programming language. Nosystem with a production 6.1 kernel will be running any Rust code, but thischange does give kernel developers a chance to play with the language inthe kernel context and get a sense for how Rust development feels. Perhapsthe most likely conclusion for most developers, though, will be that thereisn't yet enough Rust in the kernel to do much of anything interesting.

Version 15 of the PostgreSQL database management system is out.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (libreoffice, rexical, ruby-nokogiri, and squid), Fedora (wavpack), Red Hat (expat), SUSE (gdcm, orthanc, orthanc-gdcm, orthanc-webviewer and rubygem-puma), and Ubuntu (GMP and unzip).

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 13, 2022 is available.

At the end of September, Victor Stinner reportedon a security bugfix he had been working on for a script from the CPythonTools/scripts directory. As part of that work, he realizedthat there were 74 scripts in that directory that were potentiallyoutdated, unused, unmaintained, trivial, buggy, or some combination of allof those. It is not uncommon for projects to have code that accretes in overlookedcorners of the source tree, but it makes sense to periodically take a lookto see if changes are needed. Stinner seems to have kicked that off for Python with his message.

The6.0.1,5.19.15, and5.15.73stable kernels have been released; each contains a relatively small set ofimportant fixes.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (mediawiki and twig), Oracle (expat, gnutls and nettle, and kernel), Red Hat (expat, kernel, and kpatch-patch), and Ubuntu (advancecomp and dotnet6).

The kernel's Bugzillainstance is largely unloved and ignored, at least as a bug-reportingtool for the bulk of the upstream kernel. At the recent Maintainers Summit,Bugzilla was discussed during the regression-handling session led by ThorstenLeemhuis. In a followup to that discussion, Leemhuis postedsome ideas for improving the state of bugzilla.kernel.org to theksummit-discuss mailing list recently; the resulting discussion helpedclarify a number of problem areas for it—and for the Bugzilla tool itself.

The Opus codec is an audio codec thatwas designed from the beginning to avoid existing patents in the field andbe royalty-free for all users. It was standardized by the IETF in 2012 asRFC 6716.Now a company called Vectis ("a premierfull-suite IP licensing and consultancy boutique") is collectingpatents that are claimed to read on Opus as a way of demandingroyalties on its use. "The planned Opus program will focus on hardware devices and will not bedirected towards open-source software, applications, services, orcontent". (Thanks to Paul Wise).