Linus Torvalds, the creator and lead developer of Linux Kernel, announced the fourth release candidate (rc4) of the Linux kernel version 6.11. This version includes significant updates to filesystems, drivers, and core networking.
While this release candidate sees a larger diffstat than rc2 and rc3, Torvalds assures that this is a normal pattern and nothing seems unusual.
As mentioned in a separate report by Geert Uytterhoeven, there are 11 new build errors and 2 new build warnings in the 6.11-rc4 kernel compared to the previous version. However, there are also 21 fewer errors and 19 fewer warnings overall.
Uytterhoeven provided a detailed breakdown of these changes and encourages their resolution. He further noted that two specific errors, related to the Sparc architecture and Intel Xe graphics, were already known and have patches available.
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Changes in Linux Kernel 6.11 RC4
Linus Torvalds noted that the number of changes in rc4 is larger than in rc2 or rc3, which is typical because it takes time for developers to identify and address issues.
The most significant changes in Linux kernel version 6.11-rc4 are:
- A large number of updates to the file system, most notably to bcachefs.
- Updates to drivers, especially for the GPU, network, and miscellaneous drivers.
- Updates to memory management (MM), architecture, core networking, and documentation.
- A considerable number of build error improvements (-21) and warning improvements (-19), compared to version 6.10.
- A smaller number of build error regressions (+11) and warning regressions (+2), compared to version 6.10.
- Compared to version 6.11-rc3, there were fewer build error regressions (+6) and improvements (-4). There were no warning regressions or improvements.
Bug Fixes and Improvements in Kernel 6.11 RC4
Linux kernel 6.11-rc4 includes a number of bug fixes and improvements. Here are some of the primary ones:
- File systems
- Bcachefs saw significant updates, including fixes for faulty fast paths, disk accounting, race conditions, and memory leaks.
- Btrfs had fixes for extent map shrinking, data cloning during send, and incorrect inode state usage.
- XFS saw fixes related to attribute forks and the realtime flag.
- Netfs had improvements for Ceph integration, writeback flag handling, and DIO reads.
- Drivers
- Many graphics driver updates, particularly for AMD GPUs, including fixes for MES ring buffer overflows, JPEG command submission, and cursor display.
- Networking drivers received updates, including those for Intel, Mellanox, and Realtek devices.
- A fix for memory leaks in the Thunderbolt driver.
- Support for the shutdown function in the MLXBF3 GPIO driver.
- A fix for a potential NULL pointer access issue in the MT7921 Wi-Fi driver.
- A fix for a deadlock issue that could occur when configuring traffic classes during a reset in the HNS3 network driver.
- The introduction of a generic notification chain for the ideapad-laptop platform driver.
- Other driver fixes addressed issues in areas such as USB, I2C, and SPI.
- Kernel subsystems
- KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) had fixes for SEV, SVM, and ARM64 virtualization.
- Improvements to memory management, including fixes for hugetlb locking, migration deadlocks, and memory accounting.
- Networking core updates, including those for TCP, UDP, and network namespaces.
- Tools
- A significant portion of the changes involved synchronizing header files in the tools directory, especially for x86 architecture.
Build Regressions and Improvements
The update also addressed a number of build regressions and improvements across various architectures, including Sparc, PowerPC, MIPS, and x86.
When transitioning to Linux kernel 6.11-rc4, there were a total of 11 build error regressions and 21 build error improvements observed. There were also 2 build warning regressions and 19 build warning improvements.
It is worth noting that these figures are based on a comparison between v6.11-rc4 and v6.10. When comparing v6.11-rc4 to the previous release candidate, v6.11-rc3, there were 6 build error regressions and 4 build error improvements, with no changes in build warnings.
Test Linux Kernel 6.11 RC4
With RC4 now available, the kernel community will continue testing and refining the code.
Developers and users alike are encouraged to test the fourth release candidate of 6.11 by downloading it from the Kernel.org website or the Linus Torvalds's git tree and report any issues they encounter.
Oh, I forgot to mention. Linus Torvalds said that he has some upcoming travel plans. He expressed a hope that things will calm down in the development process, presumably so he can focus on his travels.
For more details, refer the Linux Kernel 6.11 RC4 release notes.
