Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "A recent internet-draft pointed out a number of security flaws in the design of the ICMP protocol. Most open source projects and vendors have addressed the flaws to some level, but this interesting article on KernelTrap examines the true extent of the problem, and how so far only OpenBSD has implemented all possible counter-measures. Theo de Raadt is quoted saying, "here we have a 20 year old protocol, a part of the Internet infrastructure that hasn't been touched in 10 years and we were all sure was right, and now is cast in doubt.""

NewsFiend writes "In May, Slashdot discussed Kerneltrap's interesting feature about the Linux Kernel Archives, which had recently upgraded to multiple 4-way dual-core Opterons with 24 gigabytes of RAM and 10 terabytes of disk space. KernelTrap has now followed up with kernel.org to learn how the new hardware has been working. Evidently the new servers have been performing flawlessly, but the addition of Linus Torvalds' new source control system, git, is causing some heartache by having increased the number of files being archived sevenfold."

NewsFiend writes "In May, Slashdot discussed Kerneltrap's interesting feature about the Linux Kernel Archives, which had recently upgraded to multiple 4-way dual-core Opterons with 24 gigabytes of RAM and 10 terabytes of disk space. KernelTrap has now followed up with kernel.org to learn how the new hardware has been working. Evidently the new servers have been performing flawlessly, but the addition of Linus Torvalds' new source control system, git, is causing some heartache by having increased the number of files being archived sevenfold."

NewsFiend writes "In May, Slashdot discussed Kerneltrap's interesting feature about the Linux Kernel Archives, which had recently upgraded to multiple 4-way dual-core Opterons with 24 gigabytes of RAM and 10 terabytes of disk space. KernelTrap has now followed up with kernel.org to learn how the new hardware has been working. Evidently the new servers have been performing flawlessly, but the addition of Linus Torvalds' new source control system, git, is causing some heartache by having increased the number of files being archived sevenfold."

Mad Merlin writes "Linux kernel 2.6.12 has been released! Kerneltrap has a brief summary on it. The changelog is only partial however: 'The full ChangeLog ended up missing, because I only have the history from 2.6.12-rc2 in my git archives, but if you want to, you can puzzle it together by taking the 2.6.12 changelog and merging it with the -rc1 and -rc2 logs in the testing directory. The file that says ChangeLog-2.6.12 only contains the stuff from -rc2 onward.' As always you can find the changelog and the source at kernel.org"

OutsideIn writes "The recent Hyper-Threading vulnerability announcement has generated a fair amount of discussion since it was released. KernelTrap has an interesting article quoting Linux creator Linus Torvalds who recently compared the vulnerability to similar issues with early SMP and direct-mapped caches suggesting, "it doesn't seem all that worrying in real life." Colin Percival, who published a recent paper on the vulnerability, strongly disagreed with Linus' assessment saying, "it is at times like this that Linux really suffers from having a single dictator in charge; when Linus doesn't understand a problem, he won't fix it, even if all the cryptographers in the world are standing against him.""

OutsideIn writes "The recent Hyper-Threading vulnerability announcement has generated a fair amount of discussion since it was released. KernelTrap has an interesting article quoting Linux creator Linus Torvalds who recently compared the vulnerability to similar issues with early SMP and direct-mapped caches suggesting, "it doesn't seem all that worrying in real life." Colin Percival, who published a recent paper on the vulnerability, strongly disagreed with Linus' assessment saying, "it is at times like this that Linux really suffers from having a single dictator in charge; when Linus doesn't understand a problem, he won't fix it, even if all the cryptographers in the world are standing against him.""

BsdFreakZoid writes "OpenBSD developers from all over the world get together once a year at their annual 'hackathon'. This year's hackathon is about to start with around 60 developers, taking place in Calgary, Alberta in Canada from May 21st through May 28th. KernelTrap has spoken with a number of OpenBSD developers about this year's and past hackathons. OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt is quoted saying, "a few hackathons ago we had a slogan of 'shut up and hack', this is because hackathons are not conferences. People don't come to chit-chat, but to do what projects do. Some other projects hold discussion meetings, I would call those talkathons. We don't discuss, we do." Past OpenBSD hackathons have seen the introduction of SMP support, support for the amd64 architecture, and many other significant advances. What big advance will come out of the 2005 hackathon is yet to be seen."

FreeFooOpenFighter writes "KernelTrap has an interesting article about Oregon State University's Open Source Lab. They currently provide hosting for an impressive list of projects including, among many others, the Mozilla Foundation, Debian GNU/Linux, and Gentoo Linux. According to the informative article, they plan to continue to donate hosting with their two OC48s to FOSS projects meeting their criteria."

elambrecht asks: "We've got a _lot_ of data we'd like to archive and make sure it is accessible via the web 24/7. We've been using a NetApp for this, but that solution is just waaaay to expensive to scale. We want to move to using a cluster of Linux boxes that redundantly store and serve up the data. What are the best packages out there for this? GFS? MogileFS?"

An anonymous reader writes "The Open Graphics Project was formed last year to create a free and open source friendly graphics card. According to this article on KernelTrap, the project lost their company backing a couple of months ago, but has decided to go forward with the effort with money from the developer's own pockets. The team plans to release a prototype card to the public in November, at which time they'll need to find $1 million dollars for the effort to continue." I continue to wonder about the Open Hardware projects but call me skeptical- people contribute to Open Source because it typically costs little more than time.

Jeremy Andrews writes "KernelTrap offers an interesting look at the history behind the Linux Kernel Archives, home of the Linux kernel. They start from the beginning in 1997, when kernel.org ran on a generic "white box PC" using a shared T1, to the present where it runs on multiple quad Opterons each with 24 gigabytes of RAM, 10 terabytes of disk space, and a gigabit link to the internet. Much of the article is based on an interview with Peter Anvin, also including quotes from Linus Torvalds, Paul Vixie of Internet Systems Consortium, Inc who donates the bandwidth, and Matt Taggart of Hewlett-Packard who donated the hardware."

Jeremy Andrews writes "KernelTrap offers an interesting look at the history behind the Linux Kernel Archives, home of the Linux kernel. They start from the beginning in 1997, when kernel.org ran on a generic "white box PC" using a shared T1, to the present where it runs on multiple quad Opterons each with 24 gigabytes of RAM, 10 terabytes of disk space, and a gigabit link to the internet. Much of the article is based on an interview with Peter Anvin, also including quotes from Linus Torvalds, Paul Vixie of Internet Systems Consortium, Inc who donates the bandwidth, and Matt Taggart of Hewlett-Packard who donated the hardware."

dvl writes "It is possible but inconvenient to manually clone a hard disk drive remotely, using dd and netcat. der Mouse, a Montreal-based NetBSD developer, has developed tools that allow for automated, remote partition-level cloning to occur automatically on an opportunistic basis. A high-level description of the system has been posted at KernelTrap. This facility can be used to maintain complete duplicates of remote client laptop drives to a server system. This network mirroring facility will be presented at BSDCAN 2005 in Ottawa, ON on May 13-15."

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has a lengthy article detailing BitMover's recent decision to drop support for its free version of BitKeeper. Linus Torvalds began using BitKeeper back in February of 2002, a decision that has resulted in frequent flamefests, but also in increased kernel development productivity. Evidently the recent decision was due to OSDL's decision to keep paying a developer who was working on reverse engineering BitKeeper... What tool Linus will move to is still being determined."

kernel_dan writes "Following on the heels of a prior discussion about a kernel numbering scheme, KernelTrap has the conclusion. From summary: "Linus Torvalds decided against trying to add meaning to the odd/even least significant number. Instead, the new plan is to go from the current 2.6.x numbering to a finer-grained 2.6.x.y. Linus will continue to maintain only the 2.6.x releases, and the -rc releases in between. Others will add trivial patches to create the 2.6.x.y releases. Linus cautions that the task of maintaining a 2.6.x.y tree is not going to be enjoyable.'" Torvalds suggested specific guidelines to alleviate burn-out of the .y maintainer and Greg KH volunteered to begin maintainership."

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has a summary of a lengthy discussion on the Linux kernel mailing list, in which Linus Torvalds has suggested using an alternative numbering scheme for kernel development. The current 2.6 kernel has been different than older development trees, as active development has been happening at a rapid rate in the officially "stable" kernel, instead of forking the expected 2.7 "development branch" for this effort. In Linus' latest proposal, he suggests using the same odd and even arrangement where an odd number signifies a development release, and an even number signifies a stable release. The difference being that this will all happen under 2.6 and thus at a much more rapid rate. For example, the upcoming 2.6.12 release would focus on fixing bugs and thus be more stable, while the following 2.6.13 release would include new functionality and thus could be less stable."

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has a summary of a lengthy discussion on the Linux kernel mailing list, in which Linus Torvalds has suggested using an alternative numbering scheme for kernel development. The current 2.6 kernel has been different than older development trees, as active development has been happening at a rapid rate in the officially "stable" kernel, instead of forking the expected 2.7 "development branch" for this effort. In Linus' latest proposal, he suggests using the same odd and even arrangement where an odd number signifies a development release, and an even number signifies a stable release. The difference being that this will all happen under 2.6 and thus at a much more rapid rate. For example, the upcoming 2.6.12 release would focus on fixing bugs and thus be more stable, while the following 2.6.13 release would include new functionality and thus could be less stable."

NetBSD Fan writes "KernelTrap offers a fascinating summary of the recent 2004 Annual NetBSD Group Meeting. Included is an introduction by NetBSD foundation president Christos Zoulas discussing NetBSD's relevance in light of competition from well known operating systems such as Linux and Windows which he acknowledges 'both offer more features than we do, and they have behind them the resources of very large commercial organizations.' He also talks about FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris and Darwin, ultimately concluding that they all are facing their own serious challenges, and that plenty of opportunities remain for NetBSD. The NetBSD project recently released NetBSD 2.0."

Omniscientist writes "A recent post on KernelTrap details the lkml post by Chris Wright talking about a centralized place to report security issues pertaining to the Linux Kernel and the discussion that was generated by it, including Chris's followup. It would appear that they now have created a security team to privately handle the bugs, who act as the alternative to reporting the flaw to the public immediately."

Omniscientist writes "A recent post on KernelTrap details the lkml post by Chris Wright talking about a centralized place to report security issues pertaining to the Linux Kernel and the discussion that was generated by it, including Chris's followup. It would appear that they now have created a security team to privately handle the bugs, who act as the alternative to reporting the flaw to the public immediately."

Omniscientist writes "A recent post on KernelTrap details the lkml post by Chris Wright talking about a centralized place to report security issues pertaining to the Linux Kernel and the discussion that was generated by it, including Chris's followup. It would appear that they now have created a security team to privately handle the bugs, who act as the alternative to reporting the flaw to the public immediately."

barryman_5000 writes "Timothy Miller has written plenty of drivers for the open source effort and now kerneltrap has an interview with him on his newest effort for an open graphic card. He talks about his background, struggle with secretive 3D vendors and more."

fsck! writes "Jake Moilanen provided a series of four patches against the 2.6.9 Linux kernel that introduce a simple genetic algorithm used for automatic tuning. The patches update the anticipatory IO scheduler and the zaphod CPU scheduler to both use the new in-kernel library, theoretically allowing them to automatically tune themselves for the best possible performance for any given workload. Jake says, 'using these patches, there are small gains (1-3%) in Unixbench & SpecJBB. I am hoping a scheduler guru will able to rework them to give higher gains.'"

brunotorres writes "I've interviewed Martin Michlmayr, Debian project leader. In this interview we talked about the upcoming Debian release, Sarge. An excerpt: 'We heard for years that Debian is hard to install and the old installer wasn't very easy to maintain or advance, so we we decided to throw the installer away and start from scratch. The new installer is much more modular, which makes it easier to maintain and extend.'" Reader ron_ivi points out that new Debian/Hurd CDs are available. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has a fascinating and lengthy interview with Richard Stallman who founded the GNU Project in 1984, and the Free Software Foundation in 1985. He also originally authored a number of well known and highly used development tools, including the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), the GNU symbolic debugger (GDB) and GNU Emacs. The interview covers a wide range of topics, from rms's early years, to his current role in the Free Software Foundation. He discusses the current state of GNU/Hurd, the problems with non-free software, and much more."

An anonymous reader writes "Offering it as 'something to play with over the holidays,' Linus Torvalds released the official 2.6.10 Linux kernel, which he named the 'Woozy Numbat.' KernelTrap offers the full details, noting that there have been minimal changes since the last release candidate, 2.6.10-rc3. Linus commented that with 2.6.10 released, now he could 'get into the Glögg for real' (a hot mulled wine with spices, red wine, port and brandy). As always, the latest Linux kernel can be downloaded from a kernel.org mirror." (Here are some recipes, too.)

Paul Kucher writes "On December 17th, 2003, Linux 2.6 was released by Linus Torvalds, saying 'The beaver is out of detox.' This was a reference to the last pre-release of the 2.6 kernel, which was called Beaver in Detox. Although a stable release, the 2.6 kernel has added many new features in the past year due to the new development model. It will be interesting to see what else is in store for this kernel, and I imagine it will be years before it is in maintenance mode."

HishamMuhammad writes "The rumors reported earlier at /. are confirmed. The latest offerings in the Pentium 4 family now support AMD's x86-64 architecture, even though Intel is not willing to admit it very openly, by using cryptic names like EM64T and (gasp) IA-32e. (The naming issue was discussed on lkml, and the consensus there was to use 'x86-64,' even though sometimes AMD refers to it as 'AMD64'). Intel's FAQ admits their implementation is basically compatible with x86-64, except for the minor differences that have always set Athlons and P4s apart. It's about time Intel jumped on AMD's bandwagon, since its homegrown 64-bit architecture seems not to be doing very well."

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has an insightful interview with OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt, discussing their recent activism to try and open up wireless chipsets. In the interview, Theo discusses what has been accomplished so far, the difficulties involved, and why such efforts are important to all free and open source operating systems."

An anonymous reader writes "There's an interesting discussion on KernelTrap with a hardware company that is talking about developing a 'free software friendly' graphics card. The idea is to fully disclose and document all register interfaces including the BIOS, providing Linux and BSD users with a fully supported video card. The hardware engineer proposing the idea summarizes his viewpoint saying, 'the whole issue comes down to this: This is technically feasible. Should we do it?'"

An anonymous reader writes "At the fourth annual Linux Kernel Developers Summit, it was decided that there won't be a 2.7 Linux kernel development branch any time soon. Instead, Linux creator Linus Torvalds and the official 2.6 maintainer Andrew Morton have decided to continue working as a team, further enhancing the 2.6 kernel. Up to this point, kernels ending in an odd number (2.1, 2.3, 2.5, etc) were considered development kernels, and kernels ending in an even number (2.2, 2.4, 2.6, etc) were considered stable kernels. However, according to this KernelTrap article, active development will now continue in the mainline 2.6 tree, and the final stabilization will be left up to the companies that provide Linux distributions."

PSUdaemon writes "Over at Kernel Trap they have an announcment that Red Hat has released GFS under the GPL and offer it through RHN. This could potentially be a very substantial offering from Red Hat."

PSUdaemon writes "Over at Kernel Trap they have an announcment that Red Hat has released GFS under the GPL and offer it through RHN. This could potentially be a very substantial offering from Red Hat."

johnnyb writes "Kernel Trap has a great conversation on swap, whether it's necessary, why swapless systems might seem faster, and an overall discussion of swap issues in modern computing. This is often an issue for system administrators, and this is a great set of posts about the issue."

An anonymous reader writes "Andrea Arcangeli completely rewrote the 2.4 Linux kernel virtual memory subsystem several years ago, a surprising event during the evolution of a stable kernel series. A very intelligent 27-year-old from Italy, Andrea spoke with KernelTrap in great detail about the past, present and future of his Linux kernel efforts. An interesting interview ."

An anonymous reader writes "Following the recent excitement over a potential vulnerability in TCP, Cisco's "Worldwide Patent Counsel", Robert Barr, has let it be known that they have pending patent applications for one or more of the IETF recommendations for improving TCP's security. KernelTrap has the full details."

An anonymous reader writes "Following the recent excitement over a potential vulnerability in TCP, Cisco's "Worldwide Patent Counsel", Robert Barr, has let it be known that they have pending patent applications for one or more of the IETF recommendations for improving TCP's security. KernelTrap has the full details."

Jeremy Andrews writes "A vulnerability in TCP, the transmission control protocol, recently received some exposure in the media. Paul Watson released a white paper titled Slipping In The window: TCP Reset Attacks at the 2004 CanSecWest conference, providing a much better understanding of the real-world risks of TCP reset attacks. The resulting articles in the major media painted a doom and gloom picture of the threat. To better understand the reality of this threat and how it affects all operating systems, KernelTrap spoke with Theo de Raadt, the creator of OpenBSD, an operating system which among other goals proactively focuses on security. In this article, we aim to provide some background into the workings of TCP, and then to build upon this foundation to understand how resets attacks work. This is the first article in a two part series. The second article will look into how TCP stacks can be hardened to defend against such attacks. Toward this goal, we spoke with members of the OpenBSD team to learn what they have done so far, and what further plans they have to minimize the impact of reset attacks."

Jeremy Andrews writes "A vulnerability in TCP, the transmission control protocol, recently received some exposure in the media. Paul Watson released a white paper titled Slipping In The window: TCP Reset Attacks at the 2004 CanSecWest conference, providing a much better understanding of the real-world risks of TCP reset attacks. The resulting articles in the major media painted a doom and gloom picture of the threat. To better understand the reality of this threat and how it affects all operating systems, KernelTrap spoke with Theo de Raadt, the creator of OpenBSD, an operating system which among other goals proactively focuses on security. In this article, we aim to provide some background into the workings of TCP, and then to build upon this foundation to understand how resets attacks work. This is the first article in a two part series. The second article will look into how TCP stacks can be hardened to defend against such attacks. Toward this goal, we spoke with members of the OpenBSD team to learn what they have done so far, and what further plans they have to minimize the impact of reset attacks."

Lank writes "Kernel developers started discussing the pros and cons of swapping to disk on the Linux Kernel mailing list. KernelTrap has coverage of the story on their homepage. Andrew Morton comments, 'My point is that decreasing the tendency of the kernel to swap stuff out is wrong. You really don't want hundreds of megabytes of BloatyApp's untouched memory floating about in the machine. Get it out on the disk, use the memory for something useful.' Personally, I just try to keep my memory usage below the physical memory in my machine, but I guess that's not always possible..."

midianus writes "Marc-Christian Petersen released Linux Kernel version 2.2.26. The release includes several security fixes. After Alan Cox released the previous 2.2 kernel, 2.2.25 in March of 2003, he began a one year sabbatical to study for an MBA in August of the same year and handed over the Maintainership of 2.2 to Marc-Christian."

midianus writes "Marc-Christian Petersen released Linux Kernel version 2.2.26. The release includes several security fixes. After Alan Cox released the previous 2.2 kernel, 2.2.25 in March of 2003, he began a one year sabbatical to study for an MBA in August of the same year and handed over the Maintainership of 2.2 to Marc-Christian."

midianus writes "Marc-Christian Petersen released Linux Kernel version 2.2.26. The release includes several security fixes. After Alan Cox released the previous 2.2 kernel, 2.2.25 in March of 2003, he began a one year sabbatical to study for an MBA in August of the same year and handed over the Maintainership of 2.2 to Marc-Christian."

ceswiedler writes "KernelTrap is running a thread on the Linux-Kernel mailing list about Intel's new IA-32e 64-bit chip. Linus complains 'what I found so irritating is that _hours_ after the Intel announcement, people were _still_ confused about whether the new intel chip was actually compatible with AMD's chips.' It is, of course, but you have to do a thorough comparison of Intel's reference manuals to discover that-- they don't mention the fact that their new chip is instruction-set compatible with AMD's x86-64 chip." See the previous story for background. So it looks like the reason Intel was vague about their announcement is that they didn't want the WORLD TO KNOW THAT THEY WERE COPYING AND FOLLOWING AMD rather than developing some new thing on their own. Slashdot is proud to help Intel in this quest; wouldn't want the public to know that INTEL WAS SIMPLY FOLLOWING IN AMD'S FOOTSTEPS. Hope this helps.

ceswiedler writes "KernelTrap is running a thread on the Linux-Kernel mailing list about Intel's new IA-32e 64-bit chip. Linus complains 'what I found so irritating is that _hours_ after the Intel announcement, people were _still_ confused about whether the new intel chip was actually compatible with AMD's chips.' It is, of course, but you have to do a thorough comparison of Intel's reference manuals to discover that-- they don't mention the fact that their new chip is instruction-set compatible with AMD's x86-64 chip." See the previous story for background. So it looks like the reason Intel was vague about their announcement is that they didn't want the WORLD TO KNOW THAT THEY WERE COPYING AND FOLLOWING AMD rather than developing some new thing on their own. Slashdot is proud to help Intel in this quest; wouldn't want the public to know that INTEL WAS SIMPLY FOLLOWING IN AMD'S FOOTSTEPS. Hope this helps.

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap reports that David Weinehall has released the 2.0.40 stable Linux kernel, calling it the "Moss-covered Tortoise". It earned this name by being released over 3 years after its predecessor, 2.0.39. Those still using the 2.0 kernel are recommended to upgrade for numerous reasons, including fixes to local exploits and remote information leaks. View the changelog and download the new kernel from a kernel.org mirror."

Jeremy Andrews writes "While the recently released 2.6 Linux kernel is all the rage these days, the much older 2.0 kernel is still alive and kicking. KernelTrap has interviewed David Weinehall, the maintainer of the 2.0 Linux kernel. David became the 2.0 maintainer in December of 1999, after Alan Cox moved on to work full time on the 2.2 kernel. In this interview David talks about what's involved in maintaining the 2.0 kernel, who uses it, when we can expect the impending release of 2.0.40, why you should upgrade (if you're still running 2.0.39), and more."

Jeremy Andrews writes "While the recently released 2.6 Linux kernel is all the rage these days, the much older 2.0 kernel is still alive and kicking. KernelTrap has interviewed David Weinehall, the maintainer of the 2.0 Linux kernel. David became the 2.0 maintainer in December of 1999, after Alan Cox moved on to work full time on the 2.2 kernel. In this interview David talks about what's involved in maintaining the 2.0 kernel, who uses it, when we can expect the impending release of 2.0.40, why you should upgrade (if you're still running 2.0.39), and more."

fmileto writes "Kerneltrap.org is reporting that Nvidia has released drivers for the 2.6 series kernel. The driver and install directions can be found on Nvidia's website."