For those who have QLogic 10Gb PCIe Ethernet adapters, the mainline Linux kernel plans to remove the QLGE driver from the kernel source tree unless active users come forward to maintain it. QLogic was acquired by Cavium in 2016, and then Marvell acquired Cavium in 2018. Despite these acquisitions, there are still QLogic 10Gb Ethernet adapters on the market and in various servers.

The QLogic 10Gb Ethernet adapter can still be found on platforms like Amazon for around $75 USD. It has also been used in some Dell adapters. However, the QLGE driver is not being maintained, and it is currently planned for removal from the Linux kernel source tree.

The QLGE driver has been residing in the Linux kernel’s staging area, but there has been no activity since January 2021. Without anyone stepping up to maintain the driver and improve the code for integration into the networking subsystem, it is now scheduled for removal in Linux 6.7.

A patch to “retire” the QLGE driver has been queued in staging-next. If there are users of the QLogic 10Gb Ethernet hardware supported by this driver who are still using the latest upstream Linux kernel versions, they can make it known and the driver can be restored. However, if this does not happen, the driver removal will take place in the upcoming Linux 6.7 cycle.

Source: Phoronix.

Linus Torvalds has released Linux 6.6-rc6 and plans to release the stable version of Linux 6.6 in two weeks, barring any unexpected issues. In the announcement, Torvalds mentioned that the previous week had been calm, with discussions focusing on future changes. He also mentioned a music video documentary that was made about the release. The changes in this release include a fix for a kernel crash when unplugging Logitech USB receivers and a fix for hung systems during shutdowns or reboots, which specifically affects Lenovo, Sony, and Dell systems, particularly recent Intel Alder Lake and Raptor Lake systems. Other fixes include support for the PXN V900 racing steering wheel and a fix for a Zen 4 CPU bug when running with “mitigations=off” or disabling IBRS. The stable release of Linux 6.6 is expected to debut on October 29th, followed by the start of the v6.7 kernel cycle.

Source: Phoronix.

Phoronix reports that the latest Linux kernel patches have been released for the Milk-V Pioneer board, a 64-core RISC-V micro-ATX board with impressive features such as two PCIe x16 slots. The board is built around the Sophon SG2042 SoC, which boasts 64 RISC-V CPU cores clocked at up to 2.0GHz, shared 64MB L3 cache, and support for quad-channel DDR4-3200 memory. The Sophon SG2042 has a TDP of 120W.

In addition to its 64-core CPU, the Milk-V Pioneer board offers four DDR4 memory slots, dual M.2 slots, three PCIe x16 slots using x8 lanes, five SATA ports, eight USB 3.2 ports, and dual 2.5Gb Ethernet ports. It is designed for micro-ATX enclosures and works with a conventional 24-pin ATX power supply. Overall, the Milk-V Pioneer is an incredibly interesting RISC-V development board that is currently in the process of being released to the market.

The Milk-V team has been working on upstreaming the Linux kernel support for the Milk-V Pioneer, and the recently published v4 patches enable basic driver support, allowing the kernel to boot to a basic console.

The board, along with a heatsink, is currently priced at $1499 USD and is available for pre-order. Shipping is expected to begin in December.

Source: Phoronix.

Phoronix reports that Linux will now indicate via /proc/cpuinfo if AMD virtualization (SVM) is disabled. This is a quality of life improvement for home lab virtualization when using AMD CPUs. Previously, checking for the presence of Intel virtualization support and its status could easily be done by looking at the flags in /proc/cpuinfo. However, SVM was always shown in /proc/cpuinfo regardless of whether it was disabled in the BIOS. This oversight is finally being corrected in the upcoming Linux 6.7 kernel cycle, with the possibility of back-porting the fix to existing kernel series.

The patch, developed by Red Hat’s Paolo Bonzini, has been queued into TIP’s x86/cpu branch. This patch will now read the appropriate MSR to verify if SVM has been disabled on AMD and Hygon processors. If SVM is disabled, the CPU capability will be cleared, and it will no longer show in /proc/cpuinfo. Previously, the only indication of AMD SVM being disabled was appearing in the kernel log or KVM virtualization failing to work. This small but useful change makes it much easier to check if virtualization is available via the widely-used /proc/cpuinfo interface.

Source: Phoronix.

Patches have been submitted to the Linux kernel mailing list to add support for the Milk-V Duo RISC-V development platform, reports Phoronix.

The Milk-V Duo features a CV1800B chip with two C906 processor cores. One core runs at 1GHz, while the second core runs at 700MHz. This dual RISC-V 64-bit chip is paired with 64MB of RAM. There is also an optional 10/100Mbps Ethernet via an add-on board. The board is targeted for use with Linux or RTOS. Interested individuals can learn more about this low-cost RISC-V embedded board on the milkv.io website. The patches for mainline Linux kernel support for the Milk-V Duo are currently under review on the LKML.

Source: Phoronix.

Phoronix reports that the first part of MSG_ZEROCOPY preparations for the VirtIO-Vsock driver has been queued into net-next, with plans for introduction in the Linux 6.7 kernel. This feature aims to improve performance within virtual machines by enabling message zero-copy support for the VirtIO/Vsock code. By allowing for more zero-copy of buffers, rather than creating extra copies on transmissions, this feature can lead to significant efficiency gains. Benchmarks on the patch series have shown impressive gains, particularly for buffer sizes at 32KB and larger. This development is of particular interest for home labs and virtual machine environments, as it has the potential to enhance virtual machine performance.

Source: Phoronix.