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<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head><title>Welcome to LWN.net [LWN.net]</title> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <meta HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noai, noimageai"> <link rel="icon" href="https://static.lwn.net/images/favicon.png" type="image/png"> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="LWN.net headlines" href="https://lwn.net/headlines/rss"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/CSS/lwn"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/CSS/nosub"> <script type="text/javascript">var p="http",d="static";if(document.location.protocol=="https:"){p+="s";d="engine";}var z=document.createElement("script");z.type="text/javascript";z.async=true;z.src=p+"://"+d+".adzerk.net/ados.js";var s=document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(z,s);</script> <script type="text/javascript"> var ados_keywords = ados_keywords || []; if( location.protocol=='https:' ) { ados_keywords.push('T:SSL'); } else { ados_keywords.push('T:HTTP'); } var ados = ados || {}; ados.run = ados.run || []; ados.run.push(function() { ados_add_placement(4669, 20979, "azk13321_leaderboard", 4).setZone(16026); ados_add_placement(4669, 20979, "azk93271_right_zone", [5,10,6]).setZone(16027); ados_add_placement(4669, 20979, "azk31017_tracking", 20).setZone(20995); ados_keywords.push('S:Homepage'); ados_setKeywords(ados_keywords.join(', ')); ados_load(); });</script> </head> <body> <a name="t"></a> <div id="menu"><a href="/"><img src="https://static.lwn.net/images/logo/barepenguin-70.png" class="logo" border="0" alt="LWN.net Logo"> <span class="logo">LWN<br>.net</span> <span class="logobl">News from the source</span></a> <a href="/"><img src="https://static.lwn.net/images/lcorner-ss.png" class="sslogo" border="0" alt="LWN"></a><div class="navmenu-container"> <ul class="navmenu"> <li><a class="navmenu" href="#t"><b>Content</b></a><ul><li><a href="/current/">Weekly Edition</a></li><li><a href="/Archives/">Archives</a></li><li><a href="/Search/">Search</a></li><li><a href="/Kernel/">Kernel</a></li><li><a href="/Security/">Security</a></li><li><a href="/Calendar/">Events calendar</a></li><li><a href="/Comments/unread">Unread comments</a></li><li><hr></li><li><a href="/op/FAQ.lwn">LWN FAQ</a></li><li><a href="/op/AuthorGuide.lwn">Write for us</a></li></ul></li> </ul></div> </div>  <div class="not-handset" style="margin-left: 10.5em; display: block;"> <div class="not-print"> <div id="azk13321_leaderboard"></div> </div> </div> <div class="topnav-container"> <div class="not-handset"><form action="https://lwn.net/Login/" method="post" name="loginform" class="loginform"> <label><b>User:</b> <input type="text" name="uname" value="" size="8" id="uc" /></label> <label><b>Password:</b> <input type="password" name="pword" size="8" id="pc" /></label> <input type="hidden" name="target" value="/" /> <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Log in" /></form> | <form action="https://lwn.net/subscribe/" method="post" class="loginform"> <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Subscribe" /> </form> | <form action="https://lwn.net/Login/newaccount" method="post" class="loginform"> <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Register" /> </form> </div> <div class="handset-only"> <a href="/subscribe/"><b>Subscribe</b></a> / <a href="/Login/"><b>Log in</b></a> / <a href="/Login/newaccount"><b>New account</b></a> </div> </div><div class="maincolumn flexcol"> <div class="middlecolumn"> <div class="PageHeadline"> <h1>Welcome to LWN.net</h1> </div> <div class="ArticleText"> <blockquote style="margin-top: 0"> LWN.net is a reader-supported news site dedicated to producing the best coverage from within the Linux and free software development communities. See <a href="/op/FAQ.lwn">the LWN FAQ</a> for more information, and please consider <a href="/subscribe/Info">subscribing</a> to gain full access and support our activities. </blockquote> <p> <div class="FPBox"><div class="FPLeft"> <h2 class="Headline">[<span class="Subscription">$</span>] Filesystem support block sizes larger than the page size</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Kernel] Posted Feb 20, 2025 15:33 UTC (Thu) by pankyraghv</span> <p> The maximum filesystem block size that the kernel can support has always been limited by the host page size for Linux, even if the filesystems could handle larger block sizes. The <a href="/ml/all/20240822135018.1931258-1-kernel@pankajraghav.com/">large-block-size (LBS) patches</a> that were <a href="https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=171754c3808214d4fd8843eab584599a429deb52">merged</a> for the 6.12 kernel removed this limitation in XFS, thereby decoupling the page size from the filesystem block size. XFS is the first filesystem to gain this support, with other filesystems likely to add LBS support in the future. In addition, the LBS patches have been used to get the <a href="/Articles/974578/">initial atomic-write support</a> into XFS. <p> <a href="/Articles/1009548/">Full Story</a> (<a href="/Articles/1009548/#Comments">comments: 8</a>) <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">[<span class="Subscription">$</span>] Support for atomic block writes in 6.13</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Kernel] Posted Feb 20, 2025 14:43 UTC (Thu) by rharjani</span> <p> Atomic block writes, which <a href="/Kernel/Index/#Atomic_IO_operations">have been discussed here</a> a few times in the past, are block operations that either complete fully or do not occur at all, ensuring data consistency and preventing partial (or "torn") writes. This means the disk will, at all times, contain either the complete new data from the atomic write operation or the complete old data from a previous write. It will never have a mix of both the old and the new data, even if a power failure occurs during an ongoing atomic write operation. Atomic writes have been of interest to many Linux users, particularly database developers, as this feature can provide significant performance improvements. <p> <a href="/Articles/1009298/">Full Story</a> (<a href="/Articles/1009298/#Comments">comments: 9</a>) <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">[<span class="Subscription">$</span>] LWN.net Weekly Edition for February 20, 2025</h2> <span class="Smaller">Posted Feb 20, 2025 1:57 UTC (Thu)</span><p> The LWN.net Weekly Edition for February 20, 2025 is available. <p> <b>Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition</b> <ul> <li> <a href="/Articles/1009456/">Front</a>: Systemd; AI scraperbots; Time-slice extension; FUSE regression; Multi-size THPs; Memcached; Meshtastic. <li> <a href="/Articles/1009458/">Briefs</a>: Asahi leadership; Debian images; RISC-V Fedora; OpenSUSE; Mesa 25.0.0; Pi-hole v6; Quotes; ... <li> <a href="/Articles/1009459/">Announcements</a>: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more. </ul> <a href="/Articles/1009456/">Read more</a> <p> <h2 class="Headline">[<span class="Subscription">$</span>] Extending time slices for user-space locks</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Kernel] Posted Feb 19, 2025 20:17 UTC (Wed) by daroc</span> <p> <p> Steven Rostedt recently posted <a href="https://lwn.net/ml/all/20250131225837.972218232@goodmis.org/"> a patch set</a> that could help improve the performance of certain user-space applications by giving the scheduler more context about when they are safe to interrupt. The patch set lets programs request a small grace window before they can be interrupted so that they can relinquish any locks, decreasing the amount of time that other threads have to spend waiting. Rostedt shared performance numbers suggesting that the patch might cut the amount of time spent acquiring locks in half for some programs — although, since his test was specifically tuned for this case, real-world projects should expect a somewhat less dramatic improvement. The change received some pushback from scheduler maintainer Peter Zijlstra, who objected to the patch set's approach. </p> <p> <a href="/Articles/1009509/">Full Story</a> (<a href="/Articles/1009509/#Comments">comments: 8</a>) <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">[<span class="Subscription">$</span>] Meshtastic: decentralized communication with low-power devices</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Development] Posted Feb 19, 2025 16:25 UTC (Wed) by koenvervloesem</span> <p> Many of us enjoy uninterrupted access to mobile networks. However, in remote areas or during emergencies, that connectivity may not always be available. For such scenarios, <a href="https://meshtastic.org">Meshtastic</a> offers a decentralized wireless mesh network with open-source firmware that runs on affordable, low-power devices. At <a href="https://fosdem.org/2025/">FOSDEM 2025</a>, the Meshtastic project was represented by one of its core developers, Thomas Göttgens, who gave a talk, "<a href="https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4375-meshtastic-off-grid-communication-for-everyone/">Meshtastic - off-grid communication for everyone</a>", in the <a href="https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/track/radio/">Radio</a> developer room (devroom). <p> <a href="/Articles/1009782/">Full Story</a> (<a href="/Articles/1009782/#Comments">comments: 3</a>) <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">[<span class="Subscription">$</span>] FUSE folio conversion confusion</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Kernel] Posted Feb 18, 2025 14:44 UTC (Tue) by daroc</span> <p> <p> Kernel developers have been working to convert various internal interfaces to use <a href="/Articles/849538/"> folios</a>; while this process has been progressing, there is still the occasional regression introduced by the change. In December 2024, it was discovered that installing a <a href="https://flatpak.org/"> Flatpak</a> application could trigger a filesystem bug in the kernel that would cause the software to read incorrect data from the disk. The problem was quickly fixed — only for an another problem caused by the folio rewrite to pop up in the same kernel subsystem. This was discovered by an Arch Linux user, who noticed that selecting files in a Flatpak application was causing kernel crashes. Now both bugs are fixed, but there may be more bugs to find. </p> <p> <a href="/Articles/1008714/">Full Story</a> (<a href="/Articles/1008714/#Comments">comments: 16</a>) <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">[<span class="Subscription">$</span>] 14 years of systemd</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Development] Posted Feb 17, 2025 15:25 UTC (Mon) by jzb</span> <p> <p>It is a standard practice to use milestones to reflect on the achievements of a project, such as the anniversary of its first release or first commit. Usually, these are observed at five and ten‑year increments; the tenth anniversary of the 1.0 release, or 25 years since from the first public announcement, etc. Lennart Poettering, however, took a different approach at <a href="https://fosdem.org/2025/">FOSDEM 2025</a> with a keynote commemorating 14 years of <a href="https://systemd.io/">systemd</a>, and a brief look ahead at his goals and systemd's challenges for the future.</p> <p> <a href="/Articles/1008721/">Full Story</a> (<a href="/Articles/1008721/#Comments">comments: 182</a>) <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">[<span class="Subscription">$</span>] Fighting the AI scraperbot scourge</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Security] Posted Feb 14, 2025 16:32 UTC (Fri) by corbet</span> <p> There are many challenges involved with running a web site like LWN. Some of them, such as finding the courage to write for people who know more about the subject matter than we do, simply come with the territory we have chosen. But others show up as an unwelcome surprise; the ongoing task of fending off bots determined to scrape the entire Internet to (seemingly) feed into the insatiable meat grinder of AI training is certainly one of those. Readers have, at times, expressed curiosity about that fight and how we are handling it; read on for a description of a modern-day plague. <p> <a href="/Articles/1008897/">Full Story</a> (<a href="/Articles/1008897/#Comments">comments: 111</a>) <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">[<span class="Subscription">$</span>] The evolution of Memcached</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Development] Posted Feb 14, 2025 15:47 UTC (Fri) by jmac</span> <p> <p><a href="https://www.memcached.org">Memcached</a> is a memory-based data-caching daemon that has a long history. More than twenty years after <a href="https://lj-dev.livejournal.com/539656.html">its first public release</a>, Memcached strives to remain relevant in a vastly changed computing landscape, balancing new features with a commitment to the <a href="https://docs.memcached.org/#design-philosophy">original principles</a> that separate it from newer alternatives like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redis">Redis</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelcast">Hazelcast</a>.</p> <p> <a href="/Articles/1007303/">Full Story</a> (<a href="/Articles/1007303/#Comments">comments: 3</a>) <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">[<span class="Subscription">$</span>] Multi-size THP creation, two different ways</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Kernel] Posted Feb 13, 2025 15:17 UTC (Thu) by corbet</span> <p> Huge pages can increase the performance of many programs, but they can also have unfortunate performance impacts of their own. Over the last few years, multi-size transparent huge pages (mTHPs) have increasingly been seen as a happy medium that bring the benefits of huge pages at a lower cost. The system cannot benefit from mTHPs, though, if it does not create them; two developers have independently posted patches to enable the creation of mTHPs in the background. <p> <a href="/Articles/1009039/">Full Story</a> (<a href="/Articles/1009039/#Comments">comments: none</a>) <p> </div> </div> <div class="FPRight"> <h2 class="Headline">Four Friday stable kernels</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Kernel] Posted Feb 21, 2025 14:13 UTC (Fri) by daroc</span> <p> <p> Greg Kroah-Hartman has released another four stable kernels: <a href="/Articles/1011264/">6.13.4</a>, <a href="/Articles/1011265/">6.12.16</a>, <a href="/Articles/1011266/">6.6.79</a>, and <a href="/Articles/1011267/">6.1.129</a>. As usual, all users are advised to upgrade. </p> <p> <a href="/Articles/1011263/">Comments (none posted)</a> <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">Security updates for Friday</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Security] Posted Feb 21, 2025 14:07 UTC (Fri) by daroc</span> <p> Security updates have been issued by <b>AlmaLinux</b> (bind, bind9.16, and mysql:8.0), <b>Debian</b> (chromium, djoser, libtasn1-6, and postgresql-13), <b>Fedora</b> (python3.12 and vim), <b>Red Hat</b> (libpq, postgresql, postgresql:13, postgresql:15, and postgresql:16), <b>Slackware</b> (ark), <b>SUSE</b> (brise, chromium, emacs, google-osconfig-agent, grafana, grub2, helm, kernel, openssh, openssl-1_1, ovmf, postgresql13, postgresql14, postgresql15, and postgresql17), and <b>Ubuntu</b> (gnutls28, libtasn1-6, openssl, python3.10, python3.12, python3.8, and webkit2gtk). <p> <a href="/Articles/1011262/">Full Story</a> (<a href="/Articles/1011262/#Comments">comments: none</a>) <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">Linus on Rust and the kernel's DMA layer</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Kernel] Posted Feb 21, 2025 13:43 UTC (Fri) by corbet</span> <p> At the end of January we ran <a href="/Articles/1006805/">this article</a> on the discussions around a set of Rust bindings for the kernel's DMA-mapping layer. Many pixels have been expended on the topic since across the net, most recently in <a href="/ml/all/CANiq72m-R0tOakf=j7BZ78jDHdy=9-fvZbAT8j91Je2Bxy0sFg@mail.gmail.com">this sprawling email thread</a>. Linus Torvalds has now <a href="/ml/all/CAHk-=wgLbz1Bm8QhmJ4dJGSmTuV5w_R0Gwvg5kHrYr4Ko9dUHQ@mail.gmail.com">made his feelings known</a> on the topic: <p> <blockquote class="bq"> You are not forced to take any Rust code, or care about any Rust code in the DMA code. You can ignore it. <p> But "ignore the Rust side" automatically also means that you don't have any *say* on the Rust side. <p> You can't have it both ways. You can't say "I want to have nothing to do with Rust", and then in the very next sentence say "And that means that the Rust code that I will ignore cannot use the C interfaces I maintain". </blockquote> <p> The code in question seems highly likely to be merged for the 6.15 release. <p> <a href="/Articles/1011197/#Comments">Comments (14 posted)</a> <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">Rust 1.85.0 released</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Development] Posted Feb 20, 2025 17:46 UTC (Thu) by corbet</span> <p> <a href="https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/20/Rust-1.85.0.html">Version 1.85.0</a> of the Rust language has been released. Changes in the release include support for async closures, some convenience iterators for tuples, and a number of stabilized APIs. The headline feature, though, is that this release stabilizes the <a href="/Articles/1002456/">Rust 2024 edition</a>, described as "<q>the largest edition we have released</q>". The <a href="https://doc.rust-lang.org/edition-guide/rust-2024/index.html">2024 edition guide</a> has a detailed listing of all the changes that were incorporated this time around. <p> <a href="/Articles/1011122/">Comments (8 posted)</a> <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">Security updates for Thursday</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Security] Posted Feb 20, 2025 14:17 UTC (Thu) by corbet</span> <p> Security updates have been issued by <b>Debian</b> (mosquitto), <b>Fedora</b> (gnutls, kernel, libtasn1, microcode_ctl, openssh, python3.10, python3.11, and python3.9), <b>Red Hat</b> (bind, bind9.16, buildah, container-tools:rhel8, podman, and redis:6), <b>Slackware</b> (libxml2), <b>SUSE</b> (dcmtk, google-osconfig-agent, java-17-openj9, kubernetes1.30-apiserver, kubernetes1.31-apiserver, openssh, and ruby3.4-rubygem-grpc), and <b>Ubuntu</b> (linux, linux-lowlatency and linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux-realtime). <p> <a href="/Articles/1011056/">Full Story</a> (<a href="/Articles/1011056/#Comments">comments: none</a>) <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">Mozilla announces leadership updates and next chapter</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Development] Posted Feb 19, 2025 21:43 UTC (Wed) by jzb</span> <p> <p>Mark Surman, president of the <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla Corporation</a>, has <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growth-planning-updates/">announced</a> leadership updates for Mozilla. This includes a Mozilla Leadership Council made up of executives from each Mozilla organization, and new board chairs for the not-for-profit <a href="https://foundation.mozilla.org/">Mozilla Foundation</a>, the Mozilla Corporation, and <a href="https://www.mozilla.ai/">Mozilla.ai</a>. The announcement also indicates a desire to further "<q>diversify</q>" Mozilla's focus:</p> <blockquote class="bq"> We've recognized that Mozilla faces major headwinds in terms of both financial growth and mission impact. While Firefox remains the core of what we do, we also need to take steps to diversify: investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term; developing trustworthy, open source AI to ensure technical and product relevance in the mid term; and creating online fundraising campaigns that will draw a bigger circle of supporters over the long run. Mozilla's impact and survival depend on us simultaneously strengthening Firefox AND finding new sources of revenue AND manifesting our mission in fresh ways. That is why we're working hard on all of these fronts. </blockquote> <p></p> <p> <a href="/Articles/1010922/#Comments">Comments (35 posted)</a> <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">Mesa 25.0.0 released</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Development] Posted Feb 19, 2025 17:57 UTC (Wed) by corbet</span> <p> <a href="https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2025-February/226464.html">Version 25.0.0</a> of the Mesa graphics library has been released. "<q>The flashiest addition is probably the support for Vulkan 1.4 by Anv (Intel), Asahi (Apple), Lavapipe (software), NVK (NVIDIA), PanVK (Mali), RADV (AMD), and Turnip (Qualcomm). Users can expect the usual flurry of improvements across all drivers and components.</q>" <p> <a href="/Articles/1010898/">Comments (1 posted)</a> <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">RISC-V and Fedora: All Aboard! (Fedora Magazine)</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Distributions] Posted Feb 19, 2025 14:53 UTC (Wed) by jzb</span> <p> <p>The <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/">Fedora Project</a> has <a href="https://fedoramagazine.org/risc-v-and-fedora-all-aboard/">announced</a> two milestones in its journey to supporting the RISC-V architecture: a dedicated RISC-V Koji build system instance is live in the Fedora data center, and <a href="https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/risc-v/release/41/">Fedora 41-based images</a> are now available for RISC-V. It is also <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/RISC-V/QEMU">possible</a> to run Fedora RISC-V images using QEMU for those without supported hardware.</p> <p></p> <p> <a href="/Articles/1010857/">Comments (11 posted)</a> <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">Lange: The secret maze of Debian images</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Distributions] Posted Feb 19, 2025 14:38 UTC (Wed) by jzb</span> <p> <p>Debian Developer Thomas Lange has written a <a href="https://blog.fai-project.org/posts/cdimages-maze/">blog post</a> in the attempt to help users find the right Debian image for their systems.</p> <blockquote class="bq"> It's difficult to find the right Debian image. We have thousands of ISO files and cloud images and we support multiple CPU architectures and several download methods. The directory structure of our main image server is like a maze, and our web pages for downloading are also confusing. </blockquote> <p></p> <p> <a href="/Articles/1010855/">Comments (2 posted)</a> <p> </div> <h2 class="Headline">Security updates for Wednesday</h2> <div class="BlurbListing"> <span class="Smaller">[Security] Posted Feb 19, 2025 14:26 UTC (Wed) by jzb</span> <p> Security updates have been issued by <b>AlmaLinux</b> (gcc-toolset-14-gcc, nodejs:18, and nodejs:22), <b>Fedora</b> (bootc), <b>Gentoo</b> (OpenSSH), <b>Oracle</b> (doxygen, libxml2, mingw-glib2, and NetworkManager), <b>Red Hat</b> (bind, bind9.16, bind9.18, kernel, kernel-rt, mysql, and mysql:8.0), <b>Slackware</b> (openssh), <b>SUSE</b> (buildah, emacs, glibc, google-osconfig-agent, grub2, java-11-openj9, kernel, netty, netty-tcnative, openssh, openvswitch, podman, and ucode-intel), and <b>Ubuntu</b> (atril, libsndfile, libtasn1-6, openssh, python-virtualenv, and symfony). <p> <a href="/Articles/1010853/">Full Story</a> (<a href="/Articles/1010853/#Comments">comments: none</a>) <p> </div> </div> </div> <p><a href="/Articles/?offset=10">--> More news items</a> </div>  </div>  <div class="rightcol not-print"> <div id="azk93271_right_zone"></div> </div> </div>  <br clear="all"> <center> <P> <span class="ReallySmall"> Copyright © 2025, Eklektix, Inc.<BR> Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.<br> Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds<br> </span> </center> </body></html>