All users of the Linux 3.15 kernel series are urged to upgrade

Jul 7, 2014 12:45 GMT  ·  By

Along with Linux kernels 3.10.47 LTS, 3.4.97 LTS, and 3.14.11 LTS, Greg Kroah-Hartman had the pleasure of announcing last evening, July 6, that the fourth maintenance release of Linux 3.15 kernel is also available for download and upgrade.

Linux kernel 3.15.4 is a pretty big release and brings fixes and improvements for various architectures, including x86, PowerPC, and MIPS, several updated drivers (iSCSI, PCI, Watchdog, InfiniBand), multiple sound fixes, as well as filesystem patches, mostly for NFS (Network File System), but also for XFS, UBIFS, and ReiserFS.

"I'm announcing the release of the 3.15.4 kernel. All users of the 3.15 kernel series must upgrade. The updated 3.15.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.15.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git;a=summary," Greg Kroah-Hartman said in the official release announcement for Linux kernel 3.15.4.

As there are way too many technical changes to mention here (74 files changed, 601 insertions, and 560 deletions), we’ll list only the most important ones. For example, the kempld-wdt function of Watchdog now uses the right value when configuring the prescaler, missing paddings have been added at the struct mlx5_ib_create_cq for InfiniBand MLX5 driver, and the watchdog_device->timeout can be set from ->set_timeout().

A new ID has been added for the "spurious interrupt" idiosyncrasy for Intel graphics processing units (GPUs), a module reference leak in svc_handle_xprt has been addressed for the SunRPC (Sun's Remote Procedure Call) component, and the cache_validity check has been repaired in nfs_write_pageuptodate() for the NFS filesystem.

Furthermore, it uses saner flags when creating legacy ports on the PowerPC architecture, fixes multiple bugs for the mtip32xx driver, and the ppc-corenet-cpu-freq function of cpufreq now uses quotient for do_div.

Additionally, the fourth maintenance release of Linux 3.15 kernel no longer skips ePAPR spin-table processors for the PowerPC architecture, fixes races at PCM closing and disconnection for the ALSA driver and LED support, and adjusts the speaker HPF for the HP Spectre 13 ultrabook.

Last but not least, Linux kernel 3.15.4 repairs bogus restarts on Atheros AR934x boards, fixes an error handling, an irregular crash that was triggered by cable pulling, as well as a use-after-free on close issue on InfiniBand umad (user MAD) library and SRP (SCSI RDMA Protocol).

At the moment, no Linux-based operating system includes the 3.15.4 kernel, but you can download the source archive right now from Softpedia, along with the brand new 3.14.11 LTS, 3.10.47 LTS, and 3.4.97 LTS kernels.