This was the first week of the merge window for the 4.7 kernel. This included the merges of at least 43 trees (probably a few more that I didn’t list as being relevant to Fedora). Highlights for this work:

  • The secure boot patches needed to be adjusted several times. Being a large out of tree patch set, this is bound to occur sometimes. It usually happens because someone tweaked a little bit of context or added a new #define. This merge window brought in some new work done by David Howells which had major conflicts with one of the secure boot patches. That series reworked most of the code paths the secure boot implementation was touching. Part of the series implemented a similar feature to what the secure boot patches was trying to do (see line about “could also be used to provide blacklisting”). For now, I left the secure boot patch out in favor of what’s in tree with a plan to follow up later.

  • The cpupower library got an soname bump The only package I could find that actually uses this was part of the mate desktop. Here’s hoping any other users are doing the right thing.

  • This merge has once again brough in the deletion of a binary file. I was curious how many other binary files are in the kernel. The answer is not that many. I also found out that file gets really confused on some kernel files:

    $ file arch/s390/boot/compressed/misc.c

    arch/s390/boot/compressed/misc.c: Minix filesystem, V3, 20302 zones

    $ file arch/alpha/include/asm/atomic.h

    arch/alpha/include/asm/atomic.h: Embedded OpenType (EOT)

    $ file drivers/gpu/drm/amd/amdgpu/amdgpu_powerplay.h

    drivers/gpu/drm/amd/amdgpu/amdgpu_powerplay.h: TI-XX Graphing Calculator (FLASH)

The merge window brought in the usual set of Kconfig changes. Highlights there:

  • LEDs can now be triggered to blink on MTD activity and on kernel panic.

  • Not actually part of the merge but the Intel power clamp driver was turned on per request on the mailing list.

  • Asus i2c keyboard support for EeeBook X205TA and VivoBook E200HA

  • ASoC supoort for Broxton platforms with RT298 audio codec driver

  • INT3406 display thermal driver

  • Support for the schedutil governor. This ties the cpu frequency to output from the scheduler.