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What's new in the Linux kernel
and what's missing in Debian
Ben Hutchings
+
+
Ben Hutchings
+
+
+ Professional software engineer by day, Debian developer by night
+
+
+ Regular Linux contributor in both roles since 2008
+
+
+ Maintaining a net driver in my day job, plus core networking
+ and PCI code as necessary
+
+
+ Debian kernel team member, now doing most of the unstable
+ maintenance aside from ports
+
+
+ Maintaining Linux 3.2.y stable update series on
+ kernel.org
+
+
+
+
Linux releases early and often
+
+
+ Linux is released about 5 times a year (plus stable updates
+ every week or two)
+
+
+ ...though some features aren't ready to use when they firat
+ appear in a release
+
+
+
+
+ For 'wheezy' we chose to freeze with Linux 3.2, which was
+ getting pretty old by the time of release
+
+
+ Good news: we have lots of new kernel features in testing/unstable
+
+
+ Bad news: some of them won't really work without new userland
+
+
+
+
Team device driver [3.3]
+
+
+ Alternative to the bonding driver - simpler, modular, high-level
+ control deferred to userland
+
+
+ Basic configuration can be done with ip , but it really
+ needs new tools - teamd , teamnl , etc.
+
+
+ Make it work: see
+ http://bugs.debian.org/695850
+
+
+
+
Transcendent memory [3.0-3.5]
+
+
+ Abstract storage for memory pages, expected to be slower than
+ regular memory but faster than disk
+
+
+ Can provide a second layer of page cache (cleancache and frontswap)
+
+
+ Pages stored by hypervisor (Xen), compressed local memory
+ (zcache) or cluster of machines (RAMster)
+
+
+ Not yet enabled in Debian kernels, and needs some thought about
+ configuration
+
+
+ Make it work: see
+ https://lwn.net/Articles/454795/
+ and send proposal to debian-kernel
+
+
+
+
New KMS drivers [3.3-3.10]
+
+
+ DRM/KMS drivers added for old, new and virtual hardware -
+ AST, DisplayLink, Hyper-V, Matrox G200, QEMU Cirrus
+
+
+ Should be more robust than purely user-mode drivers, and
+ compatible with Secure Boot
+
+
+ Current X drivers don't work with these, so the kernel drivers
+ are disabled for now
+
+
+ Make it work: join the X Strike Force and package the new X
+ drivers
+
+
+
+
Module signing [3.7]
+
+
+ Kernel modules can be signed at build time, and the kernel
+ configured to refuse loading unsigned modules
+
+
+ Necessary but not sufficient to implement Secure Boot -
+ we would also need signed kernel images and some other
+ restrictions when booted in this mode
+
+
+ Make Secure Boot work: come to the meeting on Tuesday
+
+
+
+
More support for discard
+
+
+ Flash devices (and thin-provisioned SANs) can be more efficient
+ if the filesystem 'discards' unused disk space
+
+
+ Requires support in hardware, driver, filesystem and any layered
+ device drivers - e.g. LVM, RAID (added in 3.7)
+
+
+ Must be explicitly enabled, but d-i doesn't do this by default
+
+
+ Make it work: fix http://bugs.debian.org/690977
+
+
+
+
More support for containers
+
+
+ Containers are lightweight VMs - run on the same kernel as host,
+ but with limited privileges and resources
+
+
+ Previously done by OpenVZ and Linux-VServer; gradually being
+ reimplemented upstream
+
+
+ User namespaces (added in 3.7) support the existence of a
+ root user inside the container that is unprivileged
+ outside the container
+
+
+ Currently somewhat experimental, and requires filesystem
+ changes which haven't been done for XFS
+
+
+ Make user namespaces work: send patches to upstream XFS
+ developers (this one's hard)
+
+
+
+
bcache [3.10]
+
+
+ Turns a fast block device into a cache for a larger, slower
+ device (see also: dm-cache, EnhanceIO)
+
+
+ Needs its own set of userland tools
+
+
+ Make it work:
+ see http://bugs.debian.org/708132
+ (maybe just needs a sponsor)
+
+
+
+
ARMv7 multiplatform
+
+
+ Until recently, each ARM kernel image could support only a small
+ set of different chips
+
+
+ Debian 'armmp' kernel now supports ARMv7 SoCs from Calxeda,
+ Freescale and Marvell, and others should be supported soon
+
+
+ Debian could run on a much larger range of ARM hardware - but we
+ need installer and boot loader support to make this easy
+
+
+ Make it work: join the ARM porters and d-i team
+
+
+ Make the GPUs work: join a reverse-engineering project
+
+
+
Questions?