The Life of a Packet in the #LinuxKernel

https://www.0xkato.xyz/life-of-a-packet-in-the-linux-kernel/

0xkato writes: ""A practical tour from write() to recv()

You run curl http://example.com and now you have some HTML in your terminal but what actually happened? Linux walks your bytes through a small set of well‑defined steps: pick a path, learn a neighbor’s MAC address, queue the packet, ask the NIC to send it, then reverse that on the other side.

This post tries to explain that path as simply as I can. If you’ve used #Linux, run curl, or poked at ip addr before, you’re qualified to read this. No deep #kernel background needed. […]""

If you had odd failures (like compilers or package manager aborting[1]) with #Linux 6.18-rc6 (and mainline snapshots a few days older and younger), then switch to latest mainline now, as it since about 12h contains a fix for the problem:

https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/c/5bebe8de19264946d398ead4e6c20c229454a552

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20251117082023.90176-1-00107082@163.com/

#kernel #LinuxKernel

The company that provides LWN's health insurance just sent me a helpful thing about how a very small number of employees, those with expensive chronic conditions, drive the bulk of insurance claim costs.

We are far too small to have such a plan, but bigger companies pay their claim costs. As these companies lay people off, surely they wouldn't target the few employees that, we are being told, are the reason their health-insurance costs are going through the ceiling. The ones who most need the insurance they would stand to lose.

Right?

https://www.anthem.com/employer/the-benefits-guide/the-high-cost-reality-what-2024-trends-mean-for-self-funded-employers

The recording from the conversation between @torvalds and @dirkhh last week at #OSSummit Korea is online now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWx769t1JKg

#Linux #LinuxKernel #kernel #OSSummitKorea

The recording from the "#Rust in the #Linux #Kernel, Why?" talk @gregkh gave last week at #OSSummit Korea is online now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX0GH-YJbGw

Slides:

https://git.sr.ht/~gregkh/presentation-rust/blob/main/rust.pdf

#Linux #LinuxKernel #kernel #OSSummitKorea #RustLang

The recording from the "#Kernel CVEs are Alive, but Do Not Panic!" talk @gregkh gave last week at #OSSummit Korea is online now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhu8HSOzxd8

Sides:

https://git.sr.ht/~gregkh/presentation-cve-is-dead/blob/master/cve-alive.pdf

#Linux #LinuxKernel #kernel #OSSummitKorea #CVE

Great post from Michał Wilczyński about their "journey into creating safe Rust abstractions for the kernel's PWM subsystem, demonstrated with a real world fan controller driver for the RISC-V TH1520 SoC"
https://mwilczynski.dev/posts/bringing-rust-to-the-pwm-subsystem/ #linuxkernel #linux #rust #rustforlinux #pwm #riscv

The monthly Portland Linux Kernel Meetup is this Thursday, November 13 6-9pm at Lucky Labrador Beer Hall, 1945 NW Quimby St, Portland, Oregon 97209. Look for a table with a Linux Tux🐧 plushie.
event page: https://ikluft.github.io/pdx-lkmu/november-2025-portland-linux-kernel-meetup.html
iCal import/subscribe: https://ikluft.github.io/pdx-lkmu/calendar.ics
Calagator entry: https://calagator.org/events/1250482307
organizers: @pdp7 @jstultz
#PDXLKMU #PDX #Portland #Oregon #Linux #Kernel #OpenSource #software #engineering #tech #PNW

I released korgalore 0.1 -- the tool to put lore mailing lists directly into your gmail inbox using gmail's api.

Announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/tools/20251105-mottled-bizarre-marmoset-b055ae@lemur/T/#u

Docs: https://korgalore.docs.kernel.org/

Linux 6.18-rc4 is out:

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=whWN96sqa17ZzmWWT2uomirTk08k9tmVySYMG80X+KDhw@mail.gmail.com/

""[…] Last week in fact felt *so* calm that I was surprised to notice that rc4 isn't really smaller than usual: all the stats look very normal, both in number of changes and where the changes are. The bulk is driver fixes, with - as is the norm - gpu, networking and sound driver leading the charge.

[…]

Talking about schedule: while 6.18 looks normal so far (knock wood), during the next release we will have not only the yearly kernel maintainer summit and associated travel during the merge window, we'll also have the whole holiday season thing going on later in the release. Right now I don't think it will affect things much - I suspect I'll do the by now usual "we'll drag out the 6.19 release by a week to make up for time lost to holidays", but that obviously depends on 6.18 all continuing as normal etc. So things can still change.

Linus""

#kernel #LinuxKernel

I'm always hyping perfetto, because it's *really really* cool! Lalit does amazing work and has been super helpful sharing his knowledge on both how to do things in perfetto and even how to add features to the code for things I found missing. So it's great to see his post about his presentation from the Tracing Summit.

One neat thing in the talk is the examples show how perfetto can also ingest and visualize perf and trace-cmd output if those tools for capturing data are more familiar then perfetto's own!

https://lalitm.com/perfetto-swiss-army-knife/

Wanna know what's in store for #Linux 6.18, which most likely is to be released on November the 30th?

Then checkout these two @lwn articles now freely available (and consider subscribing):

* 6.18 merge window, part 1 – https://lwn.net/Articles/1040203/

* The end of the 6.18 merge window – https://lwn.net/Articles/1041004/

#kernel #LinuxKernel

SoC maintainership in the Linux kernel (long time ago called arm-soc) is growing into a group of maintainers. Four new people joined @arnd for SoC: Alexandre Belloni, Linus Walleij and me (yay!) as co-maintainers, and @fustini as a reviewer:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b2a578f3127ab9ef80114cef9b20a2b42a8ee77a

Arnd, previously the sole SoC maintainer, handled pull requests and patches from several other sub-maintainers for each SoC sub-architecture (e.g. Qualcomm, NXP) and other driver trees. The SoC tree was one of the busiest, if not the busiest, trees in kernel - visible on @lwn.net graph: https://lwn.net/Articles/981742/

With this change the load will hopefully spread.

URGENT: Adopters Needed for Dogs 🐾🐾
Multnomah County Animal Services is asking for help after they say kennels are now at 90% capacity. Fostering is also needed too
https://www.kptv.com/video/2025/10/16/multnomah-county-animal-services-seeks-adopters-after-kennels-reach-90-capacity/ #Portland #PDX

And my Kernel Recipes talk is now available: https://youtu.be/qYPCL1KGdQA

A big "Thank you!" to everyone involved!

After letting them simmer for a few days, they’re finally ready! The #kr2025 videos are now online and waiting for you to watch. You’ll also find the presentation slides we’ve received so far.

Enjoy!

Slides and videos: https://kernel-recipes.org/en/2025/schedule/

Watch all the videos : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ8PmP_dnN7JIsjWbFPeRdze4MQHHkIm8

The next Portland Linux Kernel Meetup has been scheduled for Oct 16th!

Hope to see folks there!

https://ikluft.github.io/pdx-lkmu/october-2025-portland-linux-kernel-meetup.html

FYI the Portland Linux kernel meetup is still happening but we stopped paying for Meetup. Next one will be October 16th (Thu). Follow here https://groups.google.com/g/pdxkernel and https://ikluft.github.io/pdx-lkmu/

Curious about how the day is going to go? The first four hours of the livestream looks like this! Join us on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn0e7APWtnY

The next Open Hardware Summit will be in Berlin! Follow @oshwassociation for more!