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On January 14, Nick Tait announced the discovery of six vulnerabilities in rsync, the popular file-synchronization tool. While software vulnerabilities are not uncommon, the most serious one he announced allows for remote code execution on servers that run rsyncd — and possibly other configurations. The bug itself is fairly simple, but this event provides a nice opportunity to dig into it, show why it is...

The series of singleton stable kernel updates continues with 6.6.73, which reverts three changes that were causing problems for users of the overlayfs filesystem.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (grafana), Debian (libebml, poco, redis, sympa, tiff, and ucf), Fedora (rsync), Mageia (dcmtk, git, proftpd, and raptor2), Red Hat (grafana, iperf3, kernel, microcode_ctl, and redis), SUSE (chromium, dhcp, git, libqt5-qtwebkit, and pam_u2f), and Ubuntu (python3.10, python3.8 and python3.12).

The 6.13 development cycle ended on January 19 with the release of the 6.13 kernel. This cycle was, on its surface, one of the slowest we have seen in some time; the LWN merge-window summaries (part 1, part 2) and the KernelNewbies 6.13 page can be consulted for a refresher on all it contains. Here, instead, we will take our usual look at where all of those...

Version 3.2.0 of the Dillo web browser has been released about a month after its 25th anniversary. Notable new features in 3.2.0 include SVG support for math formulas, optional support for WebP images, and more.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (.NET 8.0, .NET 9.0, ipa, and NetworkManager), Debian (389-ds-base, busybox, libreoffice, rsync, ruby2.7, tomcat10, and tryton-server), Fedora (chromium and stb), Mageia (openafs and vim), Oracle (.NET 8.0 and .NET 9.0), SUSE (amazon-ssm-agent, chromedriver, git, golang-github-prometheus-prometheus, govulncheck-vulndb, grafana, hplip, pam_u2f, perl-Compress-Raw-Zlib, perl-IO-Compress, redis, redis7, rsync, and velociraptor), and Ubuntu (libpodofo and linux-xilinx-zynqmp).

Version 16.1 of the GDB debugger is out. There are a lot of changes, including watchpoints for tagged data pointers, a new script to print the stack trace of a running process, better Intel Processor Trace support, and more.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the 6.1.126 stable kernel to fix build failures with the 6.1.125 stable release. Only upgrade if 6.1.125 did not build properly for you. If it did build properly, no need to upgrade. Thanks to Ron Economos for the fix for this issue.

A reminder has gone out that the deadline for proposals for the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management and BPF Summit is February 1; anybody wanting to attend will need to make themselves known before then. The reminder also says that there will be no remote participation option (or live streams) this year.

The idea of adding None-aware operators to Python has sprung up once again. These would make traversing structures with None values in them easier, by short-circuiting lookups when a None is encountered. Almost exactly a year ago, LWN covered the previous attempt to bring the operators to Python, but there have been periodic discussions stretching back to 2015 and possibly before. This time Noah...

Security updates have been issued by Debian (rsync and tomcat9), Fedora (chromium, mingw-python-jinja2, redict, and valkey), Gentoo (GIMP and pip), Oracle (.NET, fence-agents, ipa, kernel, python-virtualenv, raptor2, and rsync), Red Hat (.NET 8.0 and .NET 9.0), SUSE (apache2-mod_jk, git, git-lfs, kernel, python-Django, thunderbird, and xen), and Ubuntu (audacity, bcel, dotnet8, dotnet9, gimp-dds, harfbuzz, libxml2, poppler, rsync, and tqdm).

The kernel is, on its face, a single large development project, but internally it is better viewed as 100 or so semi-independent projects all crammed into one big tent. Within those projects, there is a fair amount of latitude about how changes are managed, and some subsystems are using that freedom in the search for more efficient ways of working. In the end, though,...

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (fence-agents, raptor2, and rsync), Debian (chromium), Fedora (rsync and seamonkey), Mageia (openjpeg2), Red Hat (tuned), Slackware (git), SUSE (dcmtk, dnsmasq, govulncheck-vulndb, libQtWebKit4, libraptor-devel, opera, python311-Pillow, python311-translate-toolkit, rsync, and SDL2_sound-devel), and Ubuntu (linux-raspi-5.4, neomutt, and python2.7).

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition: Front: Chimera Linux; Vim; Page-table hardening; Modifying system calls; Ghostty 1.0; TuxFamily. Briefs: rsync vulnerabilities; Linux Mint 22.1; Git v2.48.0; Libvirt v11.0.0; Rust 1.84.0; RIP Helen Borrie, Paolo Mantegazza, and Bill Gianopoulos; SFC lawsuit; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

The Ghostty terminal emulator project has generated a surprising amount of interest, even before code was released to the public. This is in part due to the high profile of its creator, HashiCorp founder Mitchell Hashimoto. Its development was conducted behind closed doors for beta testing, until version 1.0 was released on December 26 under the MIT license. While far from finished, Ghostty is ready...

Version 11.0.0 of the libvirt virtualization API has been released. Notable changes in this release include the ability to export virtiofs filesystems in read-only mode, the addition of support for vlan tagging and trunking of network interfaces with the network, qemu, and lxc drivers, as well as a number of bug fixes.

We have just now received word of the passing of Helen Borrie, a longtime contributor to the Firebird relational database project. Helen's quiet leadership and dedication left a lasting impact on Firebird and its users. Her efforts helped build not just a powerful database but also a strong, collaborative community. She will be deeply missed by all who knew her and benefited from her...

Linux Mint version 22.1, a long-term-support (LTS) release with support until 2029, is now available. Notable changes in this release include a transition to Aptkit for background package management tasks, Captain to install Debian packages, and a new default theme with improved Wayland compatibility. See the release notes for known issues.

Nick Tait announced on the oss-security mailing list that rsync, the widely used file transfer program, had a number of serious vulnerabilities. Users can mitigate all six vulnerabilities by upgrading to version 3.4.0, which was released on January 14. While all users should upgrade, servers that use rsyncd are especially impacted: In the most severe CVE, an attacker only requires anonymous read access to...

Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (rsync), Debian (rsync), Fedora (perl-Net-OAuth and redis), Red Hat (ipa, raptor2, rsync, and tuned), Slackware (rsync), SUSE (apache2-mod_jk, git, kernel, rclone, rsync, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (git, linux-azure-5.4, pdns, pdns-recursor, python-django, rlottie, and rsync).

The Mastodon project has announced that founder Eugen Rochko will be transferring "key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components (including name and copyrights, among other assets)" to a new non-profit organization: Practically Mastodon will remain headquartered in and operate from Europe primarily. We will continue day-to-day operations through the Mastodon GmbH for-profit entity, which will become wholly owned by the new European not-for-profit entity. The...

TuxFamily is a French free-software-hosting service that has been in operation since 1999. It is a non-profit that accepts "any project released under a free license", whether that is a software license or a free-content license, such as CC-BY-SA. It is also, unfortunately, slowly dying due to hardware failures and lack of interest. For example, the site's download servers are currently offline with no...

The ptrace() system call allows a suitably privileged process to modify another in a large number of ways. Among other things, ptrace() can intercept system calls and make changes to them, but such operations can be fiddly and architecture-dependent. This patch series from Dmitry Levin seeks to improve that situation by adding a new ptrace() operation to make changes to another process's system calls...