Hello, Linux Gurus. I'm Cara Nolte and welcome to Linux This Month.
The show that brings you the latest events from the Linux community.
I'm really excited to dig into my two top stories for you.
The first release candidate milestone or Linux kernel 5.14,
and the important kernel security updates to RHEL7 and CentOS7.
But first let's jump into the Linux news highlights. So let's go.
Linux kernel 5.12 is now end of life.
As of July and Linux kernel 5.12 is no longer supported.
If you haven't moved to a newer kernel,
I recommend you do so quickly because upgrading now will prevent problems
getting vendor support for hardware and software issues on servers running an
unsupported kernel. Updated Linux kernels are available at www.kernel.org.
The Debian Bullseye release is now fully frozen. On July 17th,
Debian announced that the Bullseye release is fully frozen.
This means that in this phase of the project,
packages that are moved from unstable to testing need to be
manually unlocked by the release team.
It also means that Debian Bullseye is very close to a GA release date.
And the Debian team has estimated that this release will be in August of
2021. So hopefully right around the corner.
And Ubuntu is moving right along.
Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla is end of life.
As of July 22nd, Ubuntu 20.10, also known as Groovy Gorilla,
is no longer supported.
This release shipped with the Linux 5.8 kernel and the GNOME 3.38 desktop
environment. But since it wasn't a long-term support,
kernel it had a lifespan of only nine short months.
Ubuntu advises upgrading as soon as possible to version 21.04.
Linux Mint 20.2 "Uma" has been released with the 5.4 kernel.
Linux Mint 20.2 Xfce edition has been released and it ships with Linux kernel
5.4. This is a long-term support release,
supported until 2025.
Updates include a new feature to the update manager to show how long security
updates have been available,
as well as other metrics such as how long the computer was on while those
updates were available.
Another major update to note is the replacement of gnote with sticky notes as
the default note taking application. Also,
it's now possible to upgrade from Linux mint 20 and 20.1 up to
version 20.2. A ,complete list of updates as well as instructions to upgrade,
are available at linuxmint.com.
Now let's jump into the release of Linux kernel 5.14,
and the security updates released for RHEL7 and CentoOS7.
These are both stories you really need to know about.
Linus Torvalds announces the first release candidate milestone for Linux kernel
5.14.
Mr. Torvalds has announced that the Linux 5.14 kernel is now ready for public
testing.
This release features over 15,000 commits from over 1800 developers.
It ships with updated drivers for better hardware support,
which is almost 60% of the diff-stat,
or the total lines changed for each file referenced.
And there are updates to just about everything in this release.
Updates include architecture updates for arm, x86 and power PC,
as well as updates to file systems, process handling and VM and core networking.
There are even updates to tooling and translation work.
With 12,015 files changed and
631,309 insertions and
246,239 deletions,
Torvald says that this release candidate is a pretty regular release size-wise
and hopes that it translates to a nice and calm release cycle.
If you'd like to be a part of the testing yourself,
you can download the first release candidate from kernel.org.
But keep in mind that this is a pre-release version,
so it should not be used in a production environment. With that said,
this is a great opportunity to get involved in the Linux community and test the
latest kernel. So go grab the download and happy testing.
Important kernel security updates have been released for RHEL7 and CentoOS7.
Red Hat just released a new important kernel security update for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 7 and CentoOS7.
And you'll want to apply these to your systems as soon as possible.
The latest update patches CVE-2021-33909,
a privilege escalation flaw that allows a regular user to escalate to privileged
access, and then create, mount,
and delete large directories over one gigabyte in size.
This vulnerability was seven years old and was a major security flaw as we don't
want non privileged users performing these types of file system operations.
This security update also includes fixes for CVE-2021-33033
and 33034 in the Linux kernels network packet labeling
protocol and Bluetooth HCI driver that allows escalation of privileges
or possibly crashing the server.
Also included in this security release is CVE-2020-11668,
which could allow a local attacker to crash the system or leak kernel
information. The last CVE included is a patch for CVE-2019-20934,
which is a bug displaying NUMA statistics that could lead to a local user
causing a Denial of Service attack.
The latest kernel security update comes just about a month after the last
important kernel security update to fix vulnerabilities in Intel graphics
drivers,
and six other bugs allowing privileged local access and escalation of
privileges to allow Denial of Service as well as other types of attacks.
Those Red Hatters sure are great about fixing vulnerabilities in the code
quickly. And boy, do we appreciate it?
There are numerous bug fixes in addition to the CVE vulnerability fixes that
this last update includes,
and you can find details for all security advisories in the link in the
resources. So that's it for this month's Linux This Month.
What did you think about the latest news? Let me know in the comments.
If you liked this show, be sure to give this episode a big thumbs up.
May your source remain open and your code compile. See you next time.
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