Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News

Zack discusses mysterious alignments in the kernel; and discovery and invention.
Mysterious Alignments in the Kernel
Sudip Mukherjee reported a build failure with the mainline kernel source tree. This is fairly unusual. Most patches get tested to see if they'll compile on a variety of different systems before the patch is accepted, but a build failure can happen.
After noticing the failure, Sudip did a git bisect
– a fast way to jump half the distance to the problem, then half the remaining distance, and so on. It's one of the most common techniques for identifying which patch actually caused a bug. Sudip used it to track the problem down to a small patch that compared the number of bytes used by two different variables that needed to be the same.
Linus Torvalds is often interested in build failures or crashes in the mainline tree because he maintains that tree himself. Linus responded right away to Sudip. He said he had looked at the data size comparison, and it seemed like a good patch to him. He said, "That BUILD_BUG_ON() looks entirely correct, and if that sizeof() doesn't work, then the code doesn't work." In other words, the check was appropriate. Linus added, "I'm not seeing what could go wrong in there."
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
News
-
Mageia 9 Beta 2 is Ready for Testing
The latest beta of the popular Mageia distribution now includes the latest kernel and plenty of updated applications.
-
KDE Plasma 6 Looks to Bring Basic HDR Support
The KWin piece of KDE Plasma now has HDR support and color management geared for the 6.0 release.
-
Bodhi Linux 7.0 Beta Ready for Testing
The latest iteration of the Bohdi Linux distribution is now available for those who want to experience what's in store and for testing purposes.
-
Changes Coming to Ubuntu PPA Usage
The way you manage Personal Package Archives will be changing with the release of Ubuntu 23.10.
-
AlmaLinux 9.2 Now Available for Download
AlmaLinux has been released and provides a free alternative to upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
-
An Immutable Version of Fedora Is Under Consideration
For anyone who's a fan of using immutable versions of Linux, the Fedora team is currently considering adding a new spin called Fedora Onyx.
-
New Release of Br OS Includes ChatGPT Integration
Br OS 23.04 is now available and is geared specifically toward web content creation.
-
Command-Line Only Peropesis 2.1 Available Now
The latest iteration of Peropesis has been released with plenty of updates and introduces new software development tools.
-
TUXEDO Computers Announces InfinityBook Pro 14
With the new generation of their popular InfinityBook Pro 14, TUXEDO upgrades its ultra-mobile, powerful business laptop with some impressive specs.
-
Linux Kernel 6.3 Release Includes Interesting Features
Although it's not a Long Term Release candidate, Linux 6.3 includes features that will benefit end users.