The fourth candidate for Linux kernel 6.12 (RC4) is released

Linus Torvalds released the fourth candidate (RC4) for Linux kernel 6.12 on October 20, 2024. While not the largest RC4 version ever, it is the largest in the 6.x series in terms of the number of submissions. Torvalds expressed some concerns about the scale of the RC4 version and hopes to calm down next week. However, he assured the user that these submissions mainly included some minor fixes and that nothing "particularly terrible happened."

Catalog

• Driver
• File System
• Kernel Core
  But fixes and minor improvements
• Try Linux kernel 6.12 RC4

While the number of commits in Linux 6.12 RC4 is higher than expected, the overall nature of the changes is still mostly small, with the focus on fixing bugs and improving stability.

The following are some significant changes in different components:

1. Driver

About one-third of the changes are driver-related, focusing on GPU and networking. Other devices such as Bluetooth and RDMA (remote direct memory access) are also updated.

GPU
• : Changes to AMDGPU drivers include optimizations for energy-saving and virtual functions (VF) processing.
Network
• : The RDMA subsystem has been repaired several times to resolve errors related to the Queue Working Entry (CQ WQE) of the old adapter and to resolve specific event handling issues.
Bluetooth
• : The problem of uninstalling and debugging files of modules has been resolved to ensure that the system behaves correctly when the module or module cannot be initialized.
2. File system

This version has quite a bit of activity in the file system, especially for the fix of bcachefs, a new copy-on-write file system that has attracted much attention. SMB, XFS and Btrfs have also been improved.

bcachefs
• : As the main focus in the file system, this copy-on-write (COW) file system has been repaired several times to improve transaction processing and resolve deadlock issues.
XFS
• : The XFS file system has been updated to improve its handling of certain fork allocations and to resolve issues in the write path.
Btrfs
• : Several minor fixes in Btrfs related to inode references and extension processing help improve stability and performance.
3. Kernel Core

Several core kernel subsystems such as scheduler, network, BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) and tracking have been updated. These changes range from small optimizations to fixes that resolve specific issues.

• Scheduler: A fix in the scheduler subsystem solves the wake-up preemption problem, ensuring that task switching is performed as expected when certain conditions occur.
• BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter): The BPF subsystem has been updated to correct problems related to incremental propagation between registers and to deal with extremes in task filters.

But fixes and minor improvements

Many changes in RC4 are small, single-line fixes that are used to resolve specific errors. These fixes cover a wide range of areas including:

• Document: Corrections to technical documents ensure that both developers and users can obtain accurate information.
• Architecture: Updates to RISC-V and other architectures, focusing on BPF and interrupt handling.
• I/O Subsystem: Several fixes for USB, IOMMU and block devices, including resolving race conditions and correcting buffer management issues.

Try Linux kernel 6.12 RC4

Although this candidate is large in scale, its focus is on small fixes, which suggests that it has stable and gradual improvements over previous versions.

Users and developers are encouraged to thoroughly test Linux 6.12-rc4 to ensure all subsystems work as expected. You can download it from the Kernel.org website or the git tree of Linus Torvalds.

• Linux Kernel 6.12 RC4 Release Notes

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