Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News
This month in Kernel News: Debugging Production Systems; Patch Submission Guidelines; New Filesystem for SSD and Flash Drives; and Unlocking Memory Access.
Debugging Production Systems
In general, a developer might debug the Linux kernel by compiling a bunch of special debugging features, performance analysis features, and whatnot. Then they'll patch any kernel bugs they find. However, the actual users who benefit from those bug fixes would not run the debugging features themselves, because there would be too much overhead. Regular Linux users want fast, low-resource, secure systems that generally kick ass in all directions.
Recently however, Marco Elver of Google submitted a patch implementing Kernel Electric-Fence (KFENCE), a debugging tool that's intended to ship as a default feature of the standard Linux source tree. Why would he turn the world upside down in this way?
KFENCE's goal is to identify memory leaks and boundary violations. Other debugging tools such as KernelAddressSANitizer (KASAN) do this too, but they take a system-wide performance hit in order to find those problems.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
News
-
EndeavorOS 21.4 Has Arrived
Arch-based EndeavorOS 21.4 is finally available for download with plenty of new features and improvements.
-
NixOS 21.11 Now Available for Download
NixOS “Porcupine” has been made available for installation and includes numerous improvements.
-
KDE Plasma Developers Introduce a GNOME-Like Overview
A new overview effect makes it easier for users to interact with both Plasma Activities and Virtual Desktops.
-
Rocky Linux 8.5 Now Available with Secure Boot Support
The latest iteration of CentOS alternative, Rocky Linux has arrived and includes numerous updates as well as support for Secure Boot.
-
System76 Developing a New Desktop Environment
The makers of Pop!_OS are currently in the early stages of creating a brand new, non-GNOME, desktop environment.
-
Hetzner Opens New Location in the USA
The Hetzner cost-effective Cloud solution has arrived in the United States to offer cloud servers that offer solid performance without a high price.
-
KDE Plasma 5.24 Introduces Fingerprint Reader Support
The next release of the KDE Plasma desktop environment will include support for fingerprint readers for session authentication and more.
-
Ubuntu 21.10 Released and Finally Includes Gnome 40
The most anticipated update to Ubuntu is finally here and the workflow couldn't be better.
-
Linux Can Now Run on Apple’s M1 Chipset
Linux users looking to take advantage of Apple Silicon are about to get their wish with the M1 chipset.
-
MX Linux 21 RC Candidate Available For Testing
The MX Linux development team has released the RC images for MX Linux 21 for testing purposes.