Linux Plumbers Conference 2022 is pleased to host the Rust MC

Rust is a systems programming language that is making great strides in becoming the next big one in the domain.

Rust for Linux aims to bring it into the kernel since it has a key property that makes it very interesting to consider as the second language in the kernel: it guarantees no undefined behavior takes place (as long as unsafe code is sound). This includes no use-after-free mistakes, no double frees, no data races, etc.

This microconference intends to cover talks and discussions on both Rust for Linux as well as other non-kernel Rust topics.

Possible Rust for Linux topics:

• Bringing Rust into the kernel (e.g. status update, next steps…).
• Use cases for Rust around the kernel (e.g. drivers, subsystems…).
• Integration with kernel systems and infrastructure (e.g. wrapping existing subsystems safely, build system, documentation, testing, maintenance…).

Possible Rust topics:

• Language and standard library (e.g. upcoming features, memory model…).
• Compilers and codegen (e.g. rustc improvements, LLVM and Rust, rustc_codegen_gcc, gccrs…).
• Other tooling and new ideas (Cargo, Miri, Clippy, Compiler Explorer, Coccinelle for Rust…).
• Educational material.
• Any other Rust topic within the Linux ecosystem.

Please come and join us in the discussion about Rust in the Linux ecosystem.

We hope to see you there!

Linux Plumbers Conference 2022 is pleased to host the System Boot and Security Microconference

In the fourth year in a row, System Boot and Security microconference is are going to bring together people interested in the firmware, bootloaders, system boot, security, etc., and discuss all these topics. This year we would particularly like to focus on better communication and closer cooperation between different Free Software and Open Source projects. In the past we have seen that the lack of cooperation’s between projects very often delays introduction of very interesting and important features with TrenchBoot being very prominent example.

The System Boot and Security MC is very important to improve such communication and cooperation, but it is not limited to this kind of problems. We would like to encourage all stakeholders to bring and discuss issues that they encounter in the broad sense of system boot and security.

Expected topics:

• 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
• UEFI, coreboot, U-Boot, LinuxBoot, hostboot
• Measured Boot, Verified Boot, UEFI Secure Boot, UEFI Secure Boot Advanced Targeting (SBAT)
• shim
• boot loaders: GRUB2, SeaBIOS, network boot, PXE, iPXE,
• u-root
• OpenBMC, u-bmc
• legal, organizational and other similar issues relevant for people interested in system boot and security.

Please come and join us in the discussion about how to keep your system secure from the very boot.

We hope to see you there!

Linux Plumbers Conference 2022 is pleased to host the Android Microconference

Continuing in the same direction as last year, this year’s Android microconference will be an opportunity to foster collaboration between the Android and Linux kernel communities. Discussions will be centered on the goal of ensuring that both the Android and Linux development moves in a lockstep fashion going forward.

Projected topics:

• io_uring in Android
• MGLRU results on Android
• Hermetic builds with Bazel
• Android kernel testing updates
• pKVM
• erofs as a replacement for f2fs and the deprecation of ext4
• eBPF-based FUSE
• stgdiff tools
• Technical debt
• Parallelized suspend/resume
• CPU DVFS for guest thread migrations

Please come and join us in the discussion of making Android a better partner with Linux.

We hope to see you there!

Linux Plumbers Conference 2022 is pleased to host the CPU Isolation Microconference

CPU Isolation is an ability to shield workloads with extreme latency or performance requirements from interruptions (also known as Operating System noise) provided by a close combination of several kernel and userspace components. An example of such workloads are DPDK use cases in Telco/5G where even the shortest interruption can cause packet losses, eventually leading to exceeding QoS requirements.

Despite considerable improvements in the last few years towards implementing full CPU Isolation (nohz_full, rcu_nocb, isolcpus, etc.), there are issues to be addressed, as it is still relatively simple to highlight sources of OS noise just by running synthetic workloads mimicking polling (always running) type of application similar to the ones mentioned above.

There were recent improvements and discussions about CPU isolation features on LKML, and tools such as osnoise tracer and rtla osnoise improved the CPU isolation analysis. Nevertheless, this is an ongoing process, and discussions are needed to speed up solutions for existing issues and to improve the existing tools and methods.

The purpose of CPU Isolation MC is to get together to discuss open problems, most notably: how to improve the identification of OS noise sources, how to track them publicly and how to tackle the sources of noise that have already been identified.

A non exhaustive list of potential topics is:

• OS noise profiling (format and public DB for the community)
• Tracing to detect OS noise: the rtla osnoise tracer and what it’s missing
• TLB/icache flush deferral
• Extend cpuset v2 CPU partition feature to replace isolcpus kernel command line
• rt-trace-bpf tool
• Task isolation
• smp_call_function API improvements

Please come and join us in the discussion about CPU isolation.

We hope to see you there!