For members of the public test, Linus Torvalds yesterday released the Linux Kernel 5.4 development branch of the first release candidate, marking the formal entry into the next important branch of the Linux kernel development cycle.
Distance officially released Linux Kernel 5.3 kernel has been in the past two weeks, so the merge window of Linux Kernel 5.4 has been officially closed, the branch's development cycle has started, the next week will release an updated version of a candidate, and invite community members testing and collecting feedback.
Now users can Kernel.org website to download Linux Kernel 5.4 development branch of the first release candidate, but please note that this is an early development version, should not be installed on production machines. In the updated version 5.4 RC1, Linus Torvalds wrote in a mailing list: "not particularly important new features. The most notable may be the highly anticipated lockdown patch , although the improvement is not great, but not now finally EFI longer confined to safe start, so you can test it by other means. "
Linus Torvalds said that after locking module is enabled, all kinds of kernel functionality will be limited. Wherein the access restriction includes a kernel function; blocking read and write operations to / dev / mem is; limit access CPU MSR; and the like to prevent the system goes to sleep.
Lock function supports two different modes that can be used to activate different levels of restrictions. "Integrity" (integrity) mode prevents the user to modify the kernel functions are running. Another "confidentiality" (confidentiality) mode will prevent users from extracting confidential information from the kernel.
The final version of the Linux 5.4 kernel series is expected to be released sometime in November; if Linus Torvalds released only 7 RC version will be released on the 17th; if the development process takes longer, you need to eighth release candidate .
From: cnBeta