Capability Analysis for the Kernel(lwn.net) One of the advantages of the Rust type system is its ability to encapsulate requirements about the state of the program in the type system; often, this state includes which locks must be held to be able to carry out specific operations.
Linux 6.14 with Rust: "We Are Almost at the 'Write a Real Driver in Rust Now"(phoronix.com) With the Linux 6.13 kernel, Greg Kroah-Hartman described the level of Rust support as a "tipping point" for Rust drivers with more of the Rust infrastructure having been merged. Now for the Linux 6.14 kernel, Greg describes the state of the Rust driver possibilities as "almost at the "write a real driver in rust" stage now, depending on what you want to do."
Running NetBSD 10.1 on a 1998 Toshiba laptop(idatum.net) Here are my notes on running NetBSD 10.1 on my first personal laptop that I still keep, a 1998 i586 Toshiba Satellite Pro with 81Mb of RAM and a 1Gb IBM 2.5" IDE HD. In summary, the latest NetBSD runs well on this old hardware using an IDE to CF adapter and several changes to the i386 GENERIC kernel.
Coccinelle(kernel.org) Coccinelle is a tool for pattern matching and text transformation that has many uses in kernel development, including the application of complex, tree-wide patches and detection of problematic programming patterns.
61 points by eventhelix 131 days ago | 36 comments
Bounded Flexible Arrays in C(kernel.org) Large projects written in C, especially those written close to the hardware layer like Linux, have long treated the language as a high-level assembler.
Fitting a Forth in 512 bytes (2021)(compilercrim.es) Software is full of circular dependencies if you look deep enough. Compilers written in the language they compile are the most obvious example, but not the only one. To compile a kernel, you need a running kernel. Linkers, build systems, shells. Even text editors, if you want to write the code instead of just downloading it.
92 points by whereistimbo 158 days ago | 22 comments
Rust in enterprise kernels(lwn.net) At the recently concluded Maintainers Summit, it was generally agreed that the Rust experiment would continue, and that the path was clear for more Rust code to enter the kernel.
62 points by bookstore-romeo 160 days ago | 10 comments
FFI type mismatches in Rust for Linux(lwn.net) At Kangrejos, Gary Guo wanted to discuss three problems with the way Rust and C code in the kernel interact: mismatched types, too many type casts, and the overhead of helper functions.
6 points by todsacerdoti 172 days ago | 0 comments
Linus Torvalds is fed up with bcachefs(kernel.org) Several more filesystems repaired, thank you to the users who have been providing testing. The snapshots + unlinked fixes on top of this are posted here:
Booting into Rust and deadlocking right away – a gnarly bug in my hobby kernel(jannestimm.com) After adding the few lines of code to parse the fdt and obtain amount of cores and memory, I reran the kernel and observed my kmain function getting stuck right at the point of locking the global KMEM (line 22), the physical page allocator (which needs to know the amount of memory to initialize the datastructure that records all the free pages).
Linux 6.12 Features Super Real-Time, Sched_ext, Intel Xe2 and Pi 5(phoronix.com) The Linux 6.12 merge window is wrapping up today with the release of Linux 6.12-rc1 in the coming hours. This is going to be a heck of an exciting kernel. There's real-time PREEMPT_RT finally in mainline, the much anticipated sched_ext code also was merged, QR codes for DRM panic messages, initial out-of-the-box support for Intel Xe2 graphics with Lunar Lake and Battlemage, initial Raspberry Pi 5 support, and a ton of other hardware support additions and new innovative kernel software features.
Committing to Rust in the Kernel(lwn.net) The project to enable the writing of kernel code in Rust has been underway for several years, and each kernel release includes more Rust code.