The System Boot and Security Microconference has been a critical platform for enthusiasts and professionals working on firmware, bootloaders, system boot, and security. This year, the conference focuses on the challenges of upstreaming boot process improvements to the Linux kernel. Cryptography, an ever-evolving field, poses unique demands on secure elements and TPMs as newer algorithms are introduced and older ones are deprecated. Additionally, new hardware architectures with DRTM capabilities, such as ARM’s D-RTM specification and the increased use of fTPMs in innovative applications, add to the complexity of the task. This is the fifth time the conference has been held in the last six years.
Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) for encrypting disks have become widespread across various distributions. This highlights the vital role that TPMs play in ensuring platform security. As the field of confidential computing continues to grow, virtual machine firmware must evolve to meet end-users’ demands, and Linux would have to leverage exposed capabilities to provide relevant security properties. Mechanisms like UEFI Secure Boot that were once limited to OEMs now empower end-users. The System Boot and Security Microconference aims to address these challenges collaboratively and transparently. We welcome talks on the following technologies that can help achieve this goal.
- TPMs, HSMs, secure elements
- Roots of Trust: SRTM and DRTM
- Intel TXT, SGX, TDX
- AMD SKINIT, SEV
- ARM DRTM
- Growing Attestation ecosystem
- IMA
- TrenchBoot, tboot
- TianoCore EDK II (UEFI), SeaBIOS, coreboot, U-Boot, LinuxBoot, hostboot
- Measured Boot, Verified Boot, UEFI Secure Boot, UEFI Secure Boot Advanced Targeting (SBAT)
- shim
- boot loaders: GRUB2, systemd-boot/sd-boot, network boot, PXE, iPXE
- UKI
- u-root
- OpenBMC, u-bmc
- legal, organizational, and other similar issues relevant to people interested in system boot and security.
If you want to participate in this microconference and have ideas to share, please use the Call for Proposals (CFP) process. Your submissions should focus on new advancements, innovations, and solutions related to firmware, bootloader, and operating system development. It’s essential to explain clearly what will be discussed, why, and what outcomes you expect from the discussion.
Edit: The submission deadline has been updated to July 14th!
sched_ext is a Linux kernel feature which enables implementing host-wide, safe kernel thread schedulers in BPF, and dynamically loading them at runtime. sched_ext enables safe and rapid iterations of scheduler implementations, thus radically widening the scope of scheduling strategies that can be experimented with and deployed, even in massive and complex production environments.
sched_ext was first sent to the upstream list as an RFC patch set back in November 2022. Since then, the project has evolved a great deal, both technically, as well as in the significant growth of the community of sched_ext users and contributors.
This MC is the space for the community to discuss the developments of sched_ext, its impact on the community, and to outline future strategies aimed at integrating this feature into the Linux kernel and mainstream Linux distributions.
Ideas of topics to be discussed include (but are not limited to):
- Challenges and plans to facilitate the upstream merge of sched_ext
- User-space scheduling (offload part / all of the scheduling from kernel to user-space)
- Scheduling for gaming and latency-sensitive workloads
- Scheduling & cpufreq integration
- Distro support
While we anticipate having a schedule with existing talk proposals at the MC, we invite you to submit proposals for any topic(s) you’d like to discuss. Time permitting, we are happy to readjust the schedule for additional topics that are of relevance to the sched_ext community.
Submissions are made via LPC submission system, selecting the track Sched-Ext: The BPF extensible scheduler class.
We will consider the submissions until July 12th.
This year it took us a bit more time, but we did run out of places and the conference is currently sold out for in-person registration.
We are setting up a waitlist for in-person registration (virtual attendee places are still available).
Please fill in this form and try to be clear about your reasons for wanting to attend.
We are giving waitlist priority to new attendees and people expected to contribute content.
The Rust Microconference returns this year again. It covers both Rust in the kernel and Rust in general.
The submission deadline is July 14th. Submissions are made via the LPC submission system, selecting Rust MC for Track. Please see The Ideal Microconference Topic Session as well.
Possible Rust for Linux topics:
- Rust in the kernel (e.g. status update, next steps).
- Use cases for Rust around the kernel (e.g. subsystems, drivers, other modules…).
- Discussions on how to abstract existing subsystems safely, on API design, on coding guidelines.
- Integration with kernel systems and other infrastructure (e.g. build system, documentation, testing and CIs, maintenance, unstable
features, architecture support, stable/LTS releases, Rust versioning, third-party crates).
- Updates on its subprojects (e.g. klint, pinned-init).
- Rust versioning requirements and using Linux distributions’ toolchains.
Possible Rust topics:
- Language and standard library (e.g. upcoming features, stabilization of the remaining features the kernel needs, memory model).
- Compilers and codegen (e.g. rustc improvements, LLVM and Rust, rustc_codegen_gcc, gccrs.
- Other tooling and new ideas (Coccinelle for Rust, bindgen, Compiler Explorer, Cargo, Clippy, Miri).
- Educational material.
- Any other Rust topic within the Linux ecosystem.
Hope to see you there!
It comes with great sadness that on June 24th, 2024 we lost a great contributor to the Linux Plumbers Conference and the whole of Linux generally. Daniel Bristot de Oliveira passed away unexpectedly at the age of 37. Daniel has been an active participant of Linux Plumbers since 2017. Not only has he given numerous talks, which were extremely educational, he also took leadership roles in running Microconferences. He was this year’s main Microconference runner for both the Scheduler Microconference as well as the Real-Time Microconference. This year’s conference will be greatly affected by his absence. Many have stated how Daniel made them feel welcomed at Linux Plumbers. He always had a smile, would make jokes and help developers come to a conclusion for those controversial topics. He perfectly embodied the essence of what Linux Plumbers was all about. He will be missed.
The Linux kernel has grown in complexity over the years. Complete understanding of how it works via code inspection has become virtually impossible. Today, tracing is used to follow the kernel as it performs its complex tasks. Tracing is used today for much more than simply debugging. Its framework has become the way for other parts of the Linux kernel to enhance and even make possible new features. Live kernel patching is based on the infrastructure of function tracing, as well as BPF. It is now even possible to model the behavior and correctness of the system via runtime verification which attaches to trace points. There is still much more that is happening in this space, and this microconference will be the forum to explore current and new ideas.
This year, focus will also be on perf events:
Perf events are a mechanism for presenting performance counters and Linux software events to users. There are kernel and userland components to perf events. The kernel supplies the APIs and the perf tooling presents the data to users.
Possible ideas for topics for this year’s conference:
- Feedback about the tracing/perf subsystems overall (e.g. how can people help the maintainers).
- Reboot persistent in-memory tracing buffers, this would make ftrace a very powerful debugging and performance analysis tool for kexec and could also be used for post crash debugging.
-
– Handling exposing enum names dynamically to user space to improve symbolic printing.
- Userspace instrumentation (libside), including discussion of its impacts on the User events ABI.
- Collect state dump events from kernel drivers (e.g. dump wifi interfaces configuration at a given point in time through trace buffers).
- Current work implementing performance monitoring in the kernel
- User land profiling and analysis tools using the perf event API
- Improving the kernel perf event and PMU APIs
- Interaction between perf events and subsystems like cgroups, kvm, drm, bpf, etc.
- Improving the perf tool and its interfaces in particular w.r.t. to scalability of the tool
- Implementation of new perf features and tools using eBPF, like the ones in tools/perf/util/bpf_skel/
- Further use of type information to augment the perf tools
- Novel uses of perf events for debugging and correctness
- New challenges in performance monitoring for the Linux kernel
- Regression testing/CI integration for the perf kernel infrastructure and tools
- Improving documentation
- Security aspects of using tracing/perf tools
The submission deadline has been updated to July 12th.
Come and join us in the discussion, we hope to see you there!
Please follow the suggestions from this BLOG post when submitting a CFP for this track.
Submissions are made via LPC submission system, selecting Track “Tracing / Perf events MC”
We are excited about the submissions that are coming in to Linux Plumbers 2024. If you want to discuss a topic at one of the Microconferences, you should start putting together a problem statement and submit. Each Microconference has its own defined deadline. To submit, go to the Call for Proposals page and select Submit new abstract. After filling out your problem statement in the Content section, make sure to select the proper Microconference in the Track pull down list. It is recommended to read this blog before writing up your submission.
And a reminder that the other tracks submissions are ending soon as well.
The deadline for submitting refereed track proposals for the 2024 Linux Plumbers Conference has been extended until 23 June.
If you have already submitted a proposal, thank you very much! For the rest of you, there is one additional week in which to get your proposal submitted. We very much look forward to seeing what you all come up with.
We’re happy to announce that registration for LPC 2024 is now open. To register please go to our attend page.
To try to prevent the instant sellout we had in previous years we are keeping our cancellation policy of no refunds, only transfers of registrations. You will find more details during the registration process. LPC 2024 follows the Linux Foundation’s health & safety policy.
As usual we expect to sell our rather quickly so don’t delay your registration for too long!
Unfortunately we still do not know the total cost of the 4th track yet. We are still in the process of looking at the costs of adding another room, but we do not want to delay the acceptance of topics to Microconferences any further. We have decided to accept all pending Microconferences with one caveat. That is, we are not accepting the rest as full Microconferences. The Microconferences being accepted now will become one of the following at Linux Plumbers 2024:
- A full 3 hour Microconference
- A 1 and a half hour Microconference (Nanoconference)
- A full 3 hour Microconference but without normal Audio/Video
That last one is another option we are looking at. The main cost to having a 4th track is the manned AV operations. But we could add the 4th track without normal AV. Instead, these would get a BBB room where an Owl video camera (or the like) and a Jabra speaker will be in place. The quality of the AV will not be as good as having a fully manned room, but this would be better than being rejected from the conference, or having half the time of a full microconference.
Even with a 4th track, two still need to become Nanoconferences.
In the mean time, we will be accepting the rest of the Microconferences so that they can start putting together content. How they are presented at Linux Plumbers is still to be determined.
Note that this also means we will likely be dropping the 3 free passes that a Microconference usually gets down to only 2 passes.
The accepted Microconferences (as full, half or no A/V) are:
- Sched_ext
- Containers and Checkpoint/Restore
- Confidential Computing
- Real-Time
- Build Systems
- RISC-V
- Compute Express Link
- X86
- VFIO/IOMMU/PCI
- System Boot and Security
- Zone Storage
- Internet of Things
- Embedded
- Complex Cameras
- Power Management and Thermal Control
- Kernel <-> Userspace/Init/System Management Boundaries and APIs
