X.Org Server 21.1.2 Released With Security Fixes, Back To Pretending All Displays Are 96 DPI

Following yesterday's disclosure of four new X.Org Server security vulnerabilities that could lead to local privilege escalation, X.Org Server 21.1.2 is now available with those security fixes plus other changes.

Shortly after yesterday's security advisory for the xorg-server went public, XWayland 21.1.4 was issued with fixes to that component. Now X.Org Server 21.1.2 was prepped and introduced this morning.

The four vulnerabilities that could lead to privilege escalation when the xorg-server is running as a privileged process have been fixed. Plus there is adding of the new Intel "Crocus" Gallium3D i965 through Haswell driver to the DRI2 va_gl_users list, fixes for logind support, and other regression fixes.

One notable regression fix is that reporting of physical display dimensions from the DRM connector is no longer being reported. That change to enable the physical dimension reporting of the output was deemed "too disruptive" and as a result the X.Org Server is back to just reporting 96 DPI. The patch reverting the prior change went on to display:

Quite a lot of applications currently expect the screen DPI exposed by the X server to be 96 even when the real display DPI is different. Additionally, currently Xwayland completely ignores any hardware information and sets the DPI to 96. Accordingly the new behavior, even if it fixes a bug, should not be enabled automatically to all users.

A better solution would be to make the default DPI stay as is and enable the correct behavior with a command line option (maybe -dpi auto, or similar). For now let's just revert the bug fix.

See the release announcement for all the patches making up X.Org Server 21.1.2.

One of the comical entries from the former X.Org logo attempts.