All users of the Linux 4.4 LTS branch must update

Nov 1, 2016 23:30 GMT  ·  By

After informing the Linux community about the release and immediate availability of the Linux 4.8.6 kernel, renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the Linux 4.4.29 LTS kernel.

Linux kernel 4.4.29 LTS was a fairly normal maintenance update that brought changes to a total of 82 files, with 657 insertions and 358 deletions, according to the appended shortlog and the diff from Linux kernel 4.4.28 LTS announced a week ago. However, later that day Greg Kroah-Hartman bumped the version to 4.4.30, removing two patches that shouldn't have been applied in the first place.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.4.30 kernel. This fixes a bug in 4.4.29 and older kernels by reverting two patches that should not have been applied. All users of the 4.4 kernel series must upgrade," said Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.4.y git tree 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."

Here's what was changed in Linux kernel 4.4.30 LTS and 4.4.29 LTS

Just in case you're wondering, the two patches reverted in Linux kernel 4.4.30 LTS are "x86/mm: Expand the exception table logic to allow new handling options" and "fix minor infoleak in get_user_ex()" which appears to have affected the x86 architecture. However, Linux kernel 4.4.30 LTS contains all the changes implemented in the Linux kernel 4.4.29 LTS release.

These include an updated networking stack with several IPv4 improvements, minor changes to the Btrfs, Ceph, EXT4, F2FS, GFS2, HFS+, JFFS2, JFS, OCFS2, ReiserFS, 9p, and XFS filesystems, better support for ARM, x86, and PowerPC (PPC) hardware architectures, and lots of updated drivers, this time for things like AMDGPU, Intel i915, Radeon, vmwgfx, s390, SCSI, SPI, UIO, and Xen.

As usual, if you're running a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the long-term supported Linux 4.4 series, you are urged to update as soon as possible to version 4.4.30 and skip the 4.4.29 release. We're also urging OS vendors to download the Linux kernel 4.4.30 LTS sources from kernel.org or our website and compile it for their supported architectures, then distribute the updated kernel to their users.