Chrome/Chromium To Require Newer Version Of Linux Kernel

[newwen]

Well, this is bad news for me. I still run the older Fedora19 kernel (3.14 I believe) because the newer radeon kernel driver crashes my Xorg regularly.

I had been experiencing regular Xorg freezes due to the radeon driver until I upgraded to 3.18 kernel. 3.19 works fine too.

[asdfblah]

So, Kees Cook added a security feature to Linux 3.17, feature that was used by Google. Then, when people found the problem, he backported the patch to older kernels in ubuntu, and apparently didn't inform other distros... and then he moved to Google. Am I right?
Gotta love corporatism.

[nachoig]

I still don't understand what's happenning.

I'm using Chromium 41 with Linux 3.14.34 on Arch, which doesn't have this commit, but extensions and apps are working fine here.

The mail at Debian list claims kernel without TSYNC won't be supported by the next releases (but what releases?). Also it doesn't provide any links with this claim, just says someone from Google said this. What I found about TSYNC at Chromium is here and it says the bug is fixed at 42 (currently at beta):

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=308775&can=1&q=SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_TSYNC&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%20Week%20ReleaseBlock%20Cr%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20OS%20Modified

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=417888&can=1&q=TSYNC&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%20Week%20ReleaseBlock%20Cr%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20OS%20Modified

[strcat]

So, Kees Cook added a security feature to Linux 3.17, feature that was used by Google. Then, when people found the problem, he backported the patch to older kernels in ubuntu, and apparently didn't inform other distros... and then he moved to Google. Am I right?
Gotta love corporatism.

It's a new feature, not a bug fix... you don't what happened or understand the issue this addresses but yet you're using it to confirm your pre-existing bias, nice.

[asdfblah]

It's a new feature, not a bug fix... you don't what happened or understand the issue this addresses but yet you're using it to confirm your pre-existing bias, nice.

Sorry, but I don't remember saying that it's a bug fix. In fact, I said it's a new feature... I also said that it's a *security feature*.
From what I can find by googling, it was him who added this feature: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/k...4.2/01524.html (edit: this is the original sender: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/k...1.1/03356.html , it wasn't Cook...)
I wonder, did he know he was going to move to Google when he sent the set of patches for the new kernel feature? And does canonical share this kind of info (the fact that they had to backport kernel features to make chrome/chromium work) to other distros? If not, why other distros did have to find about this "the hard way"?
I gotta admit, though, that yeah, I'm far from technically knowledgeable... but that was not the point of my post.

[rgvivA]

I wont be surprised

I won't be surprised if one morning people wake up to find that chrome/chromium replaced their linux kernel entirely, and that it is now in charge of booting their machine! and for laughs it will load linux kernel as a JS plugin. Ok they might consider NaCl.

I once looked at chromium code, it is an order of magnitude more complex then the kernel itself. Damit!

[chrisb]

Sorry, but I don't remember saying that it's a bug fix. In fact, I said it's a new feature... I also said that it's a *security feature*.
From what I can find by googling, it was him who added this feature: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/k...4.2/01524.html (edit: this is the original sender: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/k...1.1/03356.html , it wasn't Cook...)
I wonder, did he know he was going to move to Google when he sent the set of patches for the new kernel feature?

Cook left Canonical for Google in 2011... you think he planned this 4 years ago?

[Drago]

Had random crashes upon Chromium startup on ubuntu 14.10. After the last system update they disappeared. I guess that was it.

[asdfblah]

Cook left Canonical for Google in 2011... you think he planned this 4 years ago?

Ah, I didn't know. Still, looks like he keeps contributing to canonical: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ke...er/049110.html
Well, my point still applies: neither Canonical nor Google seem to care about the Linux community... they only seem to care about their corporate interests. I'm still wondering about the back story regarding other distros, though.

[chrisb]

Ah, I didn't know. Still, looks like he keeps contributing to canonical: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ke...er/049110.html

It would make sense that the (arguably) largest Linux downstream of your software, and the distro that your employer builds Goobuntu from, has the patch. Cook is also a Debian Developer though.

Well, my point still applies: neither Canonical nor Google seem to care about the Linux community... they only seem to care about their corporate interests. I'm still wondering about the back story regarding other distros, though.

Are there any other distros which don't have the patch besides Debian? OpenSuse, Fedora 20 and 21, and Ubuntu all seem to have it.

The Debian kernel team are just hostile to supporting Google/Chromium - they call it "spyware" and point to Debian dropping support for Chromium on Debian 7 despite the fact that Debian 7 was released less than 2 years ago.