Kernel release status
The 4.19 merge window is still open. The process of merging changes
into the mainline continues, with 10,650 changesets added as of this
writing.
Stable updates: it was a busy week for stable kernels:
- 4.18.1, 4.17.15, 4.14.63, 4.9.120, and 4.4.148 all showed up on August 16; they included the first set of patches for the L1TF vulnerability among other things.
- 4.18.2, 4.17.16, 4.14.64, 4.9.121, 4.4.149, and 3.18.119, followed immediately by the single-fix updates 4.18.3, 4.17.17, 4.14.65, 4.9.122, and 4.4.150, all came out on August 18.
- Finally, 4.18.4, 4.17.18, 4.14.66, 4.9.123, and 4.4.151 were released on August 22.
One cause for all of these updates was the need to fix residual problems
with the L1TF mitigations. There were complaints about a lack of testing,
but the real problem, according
to Linus Torvalds, is that "because this was all done under
embargo, we didn't get the kind of test robot coverage we usually
get
".