All users of the Linux 3.12 LTS series must update

Jul 28, 2016 22:07 GMT  ·  By

Linux kernel developer Jiri Slaby has announced the release of the sixty-second maintenance update for the long-term supported Linux 3.12 kernel series, which will receive support until 2017 because of SUSE Enterprise Linux.

Linux kernel 3.12.62 LTS is a modest update, and looking at the diff from the previous maintenance release, version 3.12.61, we can notice that it changes a total of 96 files, with 1,213 insertions and 1,053 deletions. Among the modifications, we can notice lots of fixes for the SPARC hardware architecture, but there are various other improvements to the ARM, MIPS, PA-RISC, and x86 instruction set architectures.

Additionally, there are multiple updated drivers implemented in the Linux 3.12.62 LTS kernel, in particular for crypto, EDAC, InfiniBand, Macintosh, HID, networking (Ethernet Atheros and QLogic, Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN), and mac80211), PCI, SCSI, and USB. The UBIFS (Unsorted Block Image File System), Network File System (NFS), and eCryptfs filesystems have also received some minor improvements.

"I'm announcing the release of the 3.12.62 kernel. All users of the 3.12 kernel series must upgrade," says Jiri Slaby in the announcement. "The updated 3.12.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.12.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."

Updated networking stack with better IPv6 and IPv4 support

Also new in Linux kernel 3.12.62 LTS is an updated networking stack with improvements to the IPv6 and IPv4 protocols, the mac80211 wireless framework, Netfilter framework, Netlink socket family, Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol, as well as wireless and bridge support. Last but not least, it looks like the sound stack has been enhanced as well.

If you're using a GNU/Linux operating system powered by a kernel from the long-term supported Linux 3.12 series, we recommend that you update to the 3.12.62 release as soon as possible, or more precisely as soon as the new version lands in the main software repositories of your distribution. OS vendors are also urged to download the Linux kernel 3.12.62 LTS sources right now via our website or from kernel.org.