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Director of Linux Foundation IT. Currently in charge of kernel.org infra.

This account is for Linux/Kernel/FOSS topics in general: #linux, #kernel, #foss, #git, #sysadmin, #infrastructure.

For my personal account, please follow @monsieuricon@castoranxieux.ca.

MontrΓ©al, QuΓ©bec, Canada πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦

K. Ryabitsev 🍁

Here's my _personal_ view on the Baikal Elektroniks situation. This is not any kind of official statement by LF.

First of all, everyone must understand that Baikal Elektroniks is a company that produces equipment for pretty much a single client -- the Russian state. You can nominally buy a computer with a BE chip as a private citizen, but in reality you'd never do so because a) it's almost impossible to get, b) you'd buy a much slower chip and pay 4-5 times more than you would for any other chip available on the market. So, it's accurate to say that BE produces equipment pretty much exclusively for the Russian military and its state run businesses (who are mandated to buy BE equipment by law).

Second of all, and most importantly -- getting your patches accepted into mainline means receiving a lot of very expensive labour and computing resources gratis: you not only get free code reviews from maintainers, but you also benefit from a bunch of behind-the-scenes CI infrastructure that runs checks on your code -- both at the patch stage, and later as part of regular integration/CI/fuzzing runs. Any treewide changes, such as security improvements by efforts like KSPP, will also be automatically applied to any in-kernel drivers and architectures.

So, in reality, accepting code for any hardware into the Linux kernel means helping to test, maintain, and debug that code for years to come. The resources for that are pooled from many device manufacturers with the understanding that these efforts will be part of the tide that "lifts all boats," including their own. However, in the case of Baikal Elektroniks the situation becomes tricky. Yes, Linux is free software (free as in libre), but maintainers and CI infrastructure require funding. BE is placed under strict sanctions in many countries due to its direct affiliation with the Russian military, so companies funding CI and maintainer efforts have to consider if their money is directly benefiting a sanctioned company (and, indirectly, the Russian military).

So, it may be true that the rising tide lifts all boats, but if that boat is a Russian military warship, you have to decide what kind of message you send them.
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

Hmm... Looks like I may need to resize the database backend for Akkoma, as I'm starting to see db query load spiking.
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

Humans: I shouldn't have to remember your preferred pronouns
Same humans: this table is a "he" if you're German, a "she" if you're French, and "it" if you're English.
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

Yes, @torvalds is the real Linus. You should follow him.
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Random first trial post: today, March 14th, is the 29th anniversary of the Linux 1.0 announcement.

Of course, there are other arguably more important dates in Linux history, but this is one of them.

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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

Oh, apparently my inability to boot newer kernels on my Nitropad had nothing to do with the actual kernels. Somehow either Fedora or HEADS kept repeating the same two flags over and over in the kernel boot line (intel_iommu=igfx_off intel_iommu=on), so that at some point I think it overflowed some kind of sane limit. Trimming that down solved the issue.
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

Join me for LSS NA 2023! See me talk on a boring non-controversial topic. Enjoy Vancouver in May!

https://lssna2023.sched.com/event/1K7ao/how-to-backdoor-the-linux-kernel-and-fail-konstantin-ryabitsev-the-linux-foundation
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Linux Security Summit 🐧

πŸ“’ The schedule for the 2023 Linux Security Summit North America is published! πŸ“’

See https://lssna2023.sched.com/

LSS-NA 2023 will be held in Vancouver, BC, Canada 🍁 from May 10-12.

πŸ–‹ Register to attend here: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/linux-security-summit-north-america/register/
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

Is there one of those German words for feeling glad that your conference talk got accepted, but experiencing a growing sense of dread as the slides submission due date creeps closer every day?

Asking for a friend.
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

Me: we have 50TB on our backend storage system that stores kernel tarballs, so this should be plenty for the next 5+ years.
@gregkh: challenge accepted!
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

My kid's scout truck entry vehicle is shaping up well, but may require an explanation to fellow scouters who are probably not familiar with Fallout lore.
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

Thoughts on renaming b4 as b4k (as a play on bifurquΓ©), to make it more clear in speech and in search results?
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

I post my artwork on my personal account, but I do have an album here:

https://flickr.com/photos/mricon/albums/52272

I'm self-taught and mostly I draw from photos as a zen thing to do while listening to audiobooks.
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

I just released b4 0.12.2:

  • prep: add ability to use markdown in the cover content (requires escaping the leading β€œ#” as β€œ>#” that is stripped on cover letter rendering)
  • send: don’t require vN to –resend (will resend the latest version)
  • test: don’t require running from git
  • plus several bugfixes mostly dealing with corner-case conditions

https://lore.kernel.org/tools/20230310205933.yumi2udfqrfubccg@meerkat.local/

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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

When you see someone using an old version of your tool that you know has a bad bug that they somehow keep avoiding.
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

"The code stack is extremely brittle for no good reason" literally describes 98% of the world's entire IT infrastructure.
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Edited 2 years ago
Me, entering room: Mornin'.
My wife: Wait a minute, that accent. Have you been playing RDR2 again?
Me: I ain't got no idea whatcha mean.
My wife: you're not even from this part of the world!
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

This was a productive Friday, even if I didn't get to all outstanding b4 patches. B4 0.13-dev gained a `b4 prep --cleanup` feature that will be handy for people sending many series and it allows archiving and cleaning up git objects used for series tracking.
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

We had our heat pump replaced and a new central thermostat put in. We were supposed to get a wifi enabled one, but looks like they installed a cheaper version that isn't wifi-capable.

I ain't even mad.
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K. Ryabitsev 🍁

Pretty sure I'm on LWN entirely due to my skillful use of dadjoke titles.
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