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Linux 4.14 Has Been Released (kernelnewbies.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the fearless-coyotes dept.

diegocg quotes Kernel Newbies: Linux 4.11 has been released. This release adds support for bigger memory limits in x86 hardware (128PiB of virtual address space, 4PiB of physical address space); support for AMD Secure Memory Encryption; a new unwinder that provides better kernel traces and a smaller kernel size; support for the zstd compression algorithm has been added to Btrfs and Squashfs; support for zero-copy of data from user memory to sockets; support for Heterogeneous Memory Management that will be needed in future GPUs; better cpufreq behaviour in some corner cases; faster TBL flushing by using the PCID instruction; asynchronous non-blocking buffered reads; and many new drivers and other improvements.
Phoronix has more on the changes in Linux 4.14 -- and notes that its codename is still "Fearless Coyote."

89 comments

  1. Which is it? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Informative

    4.14 or 4.11?

    (I expect the summary will eventually get fixed, followed by someone replying to me “WTF are you talking about?”)

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Which is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I expect the summary will eventually get fixed

      A summary actually getting fixed? WTF are you talking about?

    2. Re: Which is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (I expect the summary will eventually get fixed, followed by someone replying to me âoeWTF are you talking about?â)

      How can 4.14 be released without 4.11 being released?

      Are you a retard?

      if he uses linux, he's definitely retarded

    3. Re: Which is it? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Well, the title says "Linux 4.14 Has Been Released" while the summary begins with "Linux 4.11 has been released."

      Welcome to bizarro world!

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    4. Re:Which is it? by donaldm · · Score: 1
      I already have 4.13.10-200 which was from a Fedora 26 update on the 3rd November 2017 (Australian time zone).

      > uname -rv
      4.13.11-200.fc26.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Nov 2 18:28:35 UTC 2017

      It must be noted that I am running the stable version of Fedora 26 not the developer's version, however, I do have a tenancy to get a new incremental release of the kernel once a week as part of the normal update process.

      Of course like most Linux distribution updates I have the choice of a graphical update or command line update or a combination and except for initializing the update process (I could automate the process if I wish) I have full control as to when I reboot (kernel updates only) which only takes about a minute (SSD's are great).

      BTW. If you don't have the 4.13 kernel then you will have to wait for your distribution maintainer to make it available in the repository or you could download (not recommended unless you know what you are doing) it and install it.

      --
      There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
    5. Re:Which is it? by fisted · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's 4.11 for Workgroups.

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
    6. Re:Which is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, that's a Volkswagen.

  2. USB drivers still in kernel? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If so, Do Not Want. This is a gaping security whole the size of a Mack truck.

    1. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Does it matter? As long as the USB exploit of ME exists, there is a way in through USB. Only one way is required.

    2. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 1

      Yeah. Sounds holy inadequate.

    3. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      Is there another OS with USB drivers not loaded into kernel space?

    4. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by filesiteguy · · Score: 2

      windows nt 4 doesn't have it. i need to upgrade someday.

      --
      The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
    5. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      Windows 7 did, BSOD's were pretty annoying when using Prolific USB serial adapters - the dodgy 3rd party code Windows Update automatically installs and runs in the kernel (like every 3rd party driver) when you plug the USB device in.

    6. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by filesiteguy · · Score: 1

      Oh, I know.

      Oddly I can still remember first launching USB under SuSE 9.3 and having to troll my /var/log to see why various devices wouldn't load.

      I probably couldn't even remember how to do that these days.

      --
      The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
    7. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > Is there another OS with USB drivers not loaded into kernel space?

      Minix?

    8. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If so, Do Not Want. This is a gaping security whole the size of a Mack truck.

      I am pretty certain that your brain has a gaping hole the size of a Mack truck from which cr@p spews forth on a regular basis.

      magic word: openness

                                      hilarious!!!

    9. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Amusingly, NT4 is where they merged the Kernel and GDI memory spaces in pursuit of graphics performance. Well, they got it, but they also absolutely destroyed NT's reliablity. 3.51 was a rock. Granted, a rock with a 2GB filesystem limit...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    10. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Holy inadequate Batman!

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    11. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by barbariccow · · Score: 1

      Anything that controls hardware is going to be in the kernel at some point..

    12. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by fisted · · Score: 1

      Technically if you have your kernel offer PCI bus access to userspace you could drive the USB host controller completely from there. Not that it would necessary be a good idea, but it would reduce the attack surface to the PCI driver/bus logic (as well as introducing a new potential security problem from userspace)

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
    13. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by EETech1 · · Score: 1

      Mine uses the Win2000 drivers

    14. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by jhantin · · Score: 1

      I got into a situation last week doing a fresh install where the chipset's USB host support was built as a module but not included in initramfs. A startup problem (fumbled fstab) left it prompting for the root password without a working keyboard. Well, at least now the blasted driver's compiled in.

      --
      ...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
    15. Re:USB drivers still in kernel? by jhantin · · Score: 1

      DMA makes that approach a nonstarter unless you have a working and properly configured IOMMU between the controller and main memory. Even then, the most common use case is to give a virtual machine direct access to a device rather than to put an ordinary driver in user space.

      --
      ...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
    16. Re: USB drivers still in kernel? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Windows supports user mode drivers since XP. All printer and scanners should really be user mode only by now because they are always junk.

  3. Typo by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2

    That's TLB flushing, not TBL.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
    1. Re: Typo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yeah, TBL flushing causes the 4.14 to change to 4.11

      It's a bug, to fixed in 4.04

    2. Re: Typo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's TLB flushing, not TBL.

      The translation lookaside buffer's buffer lookaside flushing is now faster. What is wrong with the that?

    3. Re:Typo by Misagon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ... and PCID is not an instruction. The feature means that there is a "process ID" tag on each entry in the TLB to avoid having to flush them unnecessarily.
      The intended benefit is that all entries would not necessarily have to be reloaded from page tables in RAM (or cache) whenever there is a context switch.

      "Tagged TLB"s have been available on other CPU architectures for decades -- and have been used by the Linux kernels for those architectures. The feature is pretty recent on Intel x86 CPUs though.
      Correct me if I'm mistaken but I think AMD's x86 CPUs do not have PCID specifically but has support for "virtual machine ID" tags on the hypervisor's second-level TLB.

      --
      "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
    4. Re:Typo by cardpuncher · · Score: 1

      Yes, I thought Tim had a year or two left before the HRT...

    5. Re:Typo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      x86?
      What?

    6. Re:Typo by avgapon · · Score: 0

      You are correct. I think that AMD calls it ASID for Address Space IDentifier.

  4. Drunk again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do these editors need an intervention? It's not like they have a whole lot of work to do. What the hell are they getting paid for?

    1. Re:Drunk again? by dreamchaser · · Score: 1

      They are doing what they always do.

    2. Re:Drunk again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do these editors need an intervention? It's not like they have a whole lot of work to do. What the hell are they getting paid for?

      Don't interrupt the site moderators/editors while they are out rolling DICE!

  5. Hopefully, it won't ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... come back.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  6. Have they fixed btrfs raid 5/6 yet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Or do you still have a good chance of losing all your data when a drive fails after you've replaced one?

    1. Re: Have they fixed btrfs raid 5/6 yet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No but running btrfs on top of mdraid works fine. BTRFS development has stagnated horribly in any case. It will probably never have a solid release. Might be better to just use the new XFS with reflink support. The XFS developers are top notch.

    2. Re: Have they fixed btrfs raid 5/6 yet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I switched to zfs. You can actually have swap on that too.

    3. Re: Have they fixed btrfs raid 5/6 yet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ZFS sucks. No resizing, poor performance, and a limited functionality set compared to BTRFS. Like I said, you might as well use XFS.

    4. Re: Have they fixed btrfs raid 5/6 yet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BTRFS is the PHP of file systems. Limited functionality is a complement in this context. If ZFS is slow for you, maybe you're in the 1% of use cases that don't play to its strengths.

      Anyway, if you want performance and don't care about your data, aka not using ZFS, just read and write from /dev/null. It hear it's fast.

  7. Bigger memory limits by lobiusmoop · · Score: 2

    "Original x86-64 was limited by 4-level paging to 256 TiB of virtual address space and 64 TiB of physical address space. People are already bumping into this limit: some vendors offers servers with 64 TiB of memory today. "

    64TB RAM... fuck.

    --
    "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
    1. Re:Bigger memory limits by eSyr · · Score: 1

      HP's The Machine prototype has 160TB of globally addressable memory. And you can easily eat address space with MMIO and trying to encode some additional information in the address.

    2. Re:Bigger memory limits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      With that much ram, one could play a really kick-ass game of Pong.

    3. Re:Bigger memory limits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      64TB of RAM out to be enough for anybody.

    4. Re:Bigger memory limits by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Actually, that's probably true, though there might be corner cases...

      The thing is, when you've got that much addressable space you should probably be doing paging with an LRU cache flush to an intermediate level of memory, which should save itself to disk in idle moments. This would take about 64 bits/block. One bit for "changed since read from/written to disk" and a bunch for "time of last access".

      OTOH, I have my doubts that they actually have 64TB of RAM. I expect they just have a memory-mapped disk with an LRU cache, so you can address it as if there were 64TB or RAM, and in that case I can see cases where 64TB wouldn't be enough. As far as the OS was concerned, it would look like hardware with a HUGE RAM, even though it was actually a hardware paged disk. This would speed up both power up and power down, and would have other benefits. And for a system like that I can see that an addressable space of n*64TB might always end up being too small for certain classes of problems (for any fixed n).

      But for an actual RAM vs. disk split I think that 64TB RAM should be enough for anyone. Even that would slow down power up and power down tremendously unless you don't care about losing what currently in RAM, and don't care that you're initializing the system with lots of random garbage.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    5. Re:Bigger memory limits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      > OTOH, I have my doubts that they actually have 64TB of RAM.

      I don't. It seems that you can fit 12TB of RAM (128GB*96) into this fairly standard high-end server: http://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/povw/poweredge-r930 . I expect that there are niche vendors that sell absolutely _massive_ machines for people who absolutely _must_ work with huge datasets in memory.

    6. Re:Bigger memory limits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Or use Firefox.

    7. Re:Bigger memory limits by The+Cynical+Critic · · Score: 1

      Now let's not get ahead of ourselves here... We're still some way off being able to do non-trivial stuff with firefox.

      --
      "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
    8. Re:Bigger memory limits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's almost enough for Chrome.

    9. Re:Bigger memory limits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OTOH, I have my doubts that they actually have 64TB of RAM.

      Never assume. Always verify. You're wrong.

    10. Re:Bigger memory limits by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Perhaps I misunderstand the assertion. Perhaps you are measuring total RAM rather than directly addressable fast RAM. If that's so, then the rest of this response is inappropriate,

      But my first reaction was as follows:

      Well, if you amend that to "people who feel the must", I'll agree, but virtual memory means that this is a silly attitude. I don't believe that anybody is actively working with 64TB of data at once (i.e., within, say, the same second). If they think you need that then either they're wrong or the machine is improperly designed. I suppose there could be cases where you can't predict which bytes you'll need next, but 64TB is a big cache to have in high-speed storage at once, and should more than suffice for anything. What you need backing it is a huge intermediate speed storage between it and the disk, and I will agree that that intermediate speed storage might well be more sizable. Actually, I suppose that "intermediate" speed storage would be a third level of speed, with CPU registers being fast, followed by a larger fast RAM cache, followed by slower RAM, followed by more permanent storage, with each successive layer being larger but slower than the one before it, but I can see no reason for the fast RAM to be larger than 64TB for anything. In fact that seems overkill. There might be reasons for the lowest RAM level to be as large as the backing store (disks?), but I doubt it. It sounds like poor design. The backing disks should always be considerably larger than the RAM that they are backing, and the slow RAM should be considerably larger than the fast RAM that they are backing, and the fast RAM should be considerably larger than the CPU registers that they are backing. And if the disks are backed up to tape, the tape library should be considerably larger than the disks that they are backing.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    11. Re:Bigger memory limits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Specs of that box say only 6TB max.

  8. Re:my experience with linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Excellent! Do us a favor and don't even look at Linux, VB programmer. You deserve to work with Windows. You are comfortable with it and cannot think outside of the Windows box.

    For the rest of us who know how to handle computers and OSes, let's cheer the new kernel and wish it's going to get even better. After all, it runs on all the top 500 supercomputers in the world. A place where Windows does not even dare to look. Desktop market share will come with time. It is not on par with Windows, true but with people becoming more privacy conscious it will, if not directly via other side doors (think ChromeOS, et all).

    Peace

  9. Re: my experience with linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Did you tell the linux devs?

  10. Re: my experience with linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    VB!!!!!!

    The story was finished the minute it you said VB programmer setting up Linux servers....,

    Comedy just happens

  11. Linux 4? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    Guys, you need to pick up the pace a bit! Chrome is at already at 61.0.3163.100 !

    Eh, while trying to make this joke, Chrome told me an update was ready to install and it's now at 62.0.3202.89

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
    1. Re:Linux 4? by MerlinTheWizard · · Score: 1

      Yeah, in a world where adding a button in a frigging toolbar gets you a major version bump. :D

    2. Re:Linux 4? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      If found the incident of Chrome updating while I was in the middle of doing a joke related to Chrome's stupidly high version to be funnier than my original joke.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
  12. Systemd? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Have they deliberately disabled all Systemd compatibility yet?

    1. Re:Systemd? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or at least fix the logging and error messages. Made a typo to the ExecStart in the service file yesterday, and the only error logged as that it failed. It didn't say that the file wasn't found which would have really helped me find the problem.

    2. Re:Systemd? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Linus doesn't like it when you break userland.

    3. Re:Systemd? by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      systemd broke kernel land, who gives a shit any more after that?

    4. Re:Systemd? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Not a fan of systemd either, but when userland breaks "kernelland" then the problem is with kernel not userland.

  13. Re:my experience with linux by decaffeinated · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Nice troll. Were you using VB6, VBA, VBScript, or VB.Net?

  14. Umm... by EmeraldBot · · Score: 3, Informative

    Linux 4.11 was released last May. 4.14 is the version that's coming out today.

    --
    "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
  15. Oh good autistic names now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'll take OpenBSD thanks

  16. Re:my experience with linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Nice troll. Were you using VB6, VBA, VBScript, or VB.Net?

    Visual basic for DOS.

  17. How much $ is 4PiB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    $10,000?

    How many stick of RAM in today's highest density?

  18. Re: my experience with linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    " the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support..."

    I think my bullshit meter just broke. I guess if I knew VB, I could do some low level kernel hacking to fix it. I have proof!

  19. Re:my experience with linux by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    Are you stuck in 1999?

    Today more than 90% of the Fortune 500 rely on Linux in some aspect

    http://fortune.com/2013/05/06/...

    Linux 79%, Windows 39%
    http://www.zdnet.com/article/l...

    Even Microsoft has given in, SQL Server can now run on Linux.

  20. Re:Linux is communism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not when you get paid for it.

  21. Re: Linux is communism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Obvious bait, but FOSS is at most socialism.

    Communism means everything can be coded by AI/magic/whatever, eliminating all need for human labour.

  22. Re: Linux is communism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your mother wishes she could have had access to and afforded an abortion. Sadly her fall down the steps only left you developmentally retarded.

  23. Re:my experience with linux by kevingolding2001 · · Score: 1

    Not quite as far back as 1999, but close. This is from 2002.

    https://arstechnica.com/civis/...

  24. Re:my experience with linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You don't need to be a programmer to hate Linux, but it helps!

  25. Re:my experience with linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Haha. good story bro. Time for your nap.

    Dick.

  26. Kernel/User: Linux is mixed by DrYak · · Score: 2

    Actually it's both.

    You can write a .ko that will be loaded by the kernel to handle your device
    (used on most Linux for a few things where speed matters, like mass storage, network.
    or for booting simplicity like mouse/keyboard/bluetooth)

    Or you can write an user space device that communicates with the raw USB device using libusb.
    (used on the huge variant zoo of non critical USB devices, like scanners, firmware upgrader, etc.)

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  27. 128PiB of virtual address space, 4PiB of physical by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

    Turns out they've just added another level to the page tables, taking it to 5.

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/Doc...

    https://software.intel.com/sit...

      I.e. looking up a virtual address now needs a lookup in PML5, PML4, Page Directory, Page Table. Of course the TLB caches lookups but adding more layers increases the time taken to handle a TLB miss.

    I was hoping either Intel or AMD would introduce a more advanced page table - hashed inverted page tables like the ones used in PowerPC, the UltraSPARC and the IA-64 for example

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    Or maybe someone's invented a better way to do it now.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  28. Linux will be Linux by SurenEnfiajyan · · Score: 0

    128PiB of virtual address space, 4PiB of physical address space

    The sad truth about Linux.

    1. Re:Linux will be Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ironically, nobody does use that anymore...

  29. Re:Linux is communism by SurenEnfiajyan · · Score: 0

    Don't worry, Google already started.

  30. Re:my experience with linux by Goose+In+Orbit · · Score: 1

    Just out of curiosity... how long ago was this?

    (Given that GCC 3.1 dates from 2002 or thereabouts...)

  31. Re:my experience with linux by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    I should have noticed "gcc 3.1"

  32. Re: Linux is communism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In Soviet IT, Donald Knuth is sent to collective server farm, forced to do data entry.