'This release includes support for AMD Navi GPUs; support for the umwait x86 instructions that let processes wait for short amounts of time without spinning loops; a 'utilization clamping' mechanism that is used to boost interactivity on power-asymmetric CPUs used in phones; a new pidfd_open(2) system call that completes the work done to let users deal with the PID reuse problem; 16 millions of new IPv4 addresses in the 0.0.0.0/8 range are made available; support for Zhaoxin x86 CPUs; support Intel Speed Select for easier power selection in Xeon servers; and support for the lightweight hypervisor ACRN, built for embedded IoT devices. As always, many other new drivers and improvements can be found in the changelog.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/09/15/2319220 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
On Mon, 16 Sep 2019 11:57:30 +1200, Peter Reutemann quoted:
'... a new pidfd_open(2) system call that completes the work done to let users deal with the PID reuse problem ...'
That’s a fun one. There has always been the possibility on Unix/POSIX systems of confusing one process for another, if the first one exits, and then so many process creations happen in the meantime that the entire PID space goes through a full cycle and so the PID for that one gets reused for another one. I thought it would be hard to do, but clearly it’s not impossible. So now Linux has added a set of calls to extend the good old “everything is a file” concept to processes as well.
By the way, given that the last Debian Unstable upgrade gave me Linux 5.2, I went through the release notes for that, and found this new “Optional support for case-insensitive names in ext4” feature <https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_5.2#Optional_support_for_case-insensitive_names_in_ext4>. Linus has (understandably) expressed great skepticism about the need for this feature in native Linux filesystems. It has been very messy and troublesome to support on other platforms <https://lwn.net/Articles/784041/>.
participants (2)
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro -
Peter Reutemann