Virtio-net hardening and Binder Rust shift

Security work on virtio-net checksum validation advanced through further revisions, and the char/misc tree dropped the C Binder driver for the Rust implementation ahead of 7.4-rc1. Networking header invariants, BPF page_owner interfaces, MGLRU reclaim, forced bind taints, and virtualized swap also saw active patch and design traffic.

Virtio-net checksum hardening at v6

A v6 net series continues hardening virtio-net by validating csum_start and offset and completing early so untrusted hardware cannot rewrite packets after protocol processing. Earlier v5 revisions had already tightened the same checks after a publicized bug report, adding a per-netns switch plus GSO and tunnel fixes. The work matters for guests and hosts that trust virtio offloads against malicious or buggy devices.

Char/misc pull retires C Binder for Rust

Greg Kroah-Hartman sent a GIT pull of char, misc, and IIO driver updates for 7.4-rc1. The highlighted change removes the C Binder driver in favor of the stable Rust implementation. Binder users and Android-related stacks should treat the C path as gone from mainline once the pull lands.

Linear Ethernet headers before eth_type_trans

A v2 net series pulls short linear Ethernet headers before eth_type_trans so the skb linear-header invariant holds. The fixes target tc and OVS header-pop paths that previously could trigger a kernel BUG. Drivers and classifiers that rewrite headers early need the invariant restored to avoid hard failures on short packets.

BPF NACK on page_owner iterator and kfuncs

A v3 mm/page_owner series proposed a bpf_iter plus kfuncs for richer introspection. BPF maintainer Alexei Starovoitov NACKed the approach as overkill and preferred a single thin kfunc used with bpf_for. The dispute shapes how memory debugging features will be exposed to BPF programs going forward.

MGLRU swappiness RFC toward classic LRU behavior

An RFC v5 series for multi-gen LRU adjusts swappiness handling so reclaim matches classic LRU behavior and avoids premature OOM. The patches keep MGLRU aligned with expected pressure response when anonymous and file pages compete. Operators tuning reclaim on large systems have a clearer path if the behavior converges.

TAINT_FORCED_BIND for manual sysfs bind and unbind

Greg Kroah-Hartman proposed a v4 driver-core flag, TAINT_FORCED_BIND, set when userspace manually binds or unbinds devices and drivers through sysfs. The goal is to mark such kernels and cut unrelated syzbot noise. Maintainers triage reports more cleanly when forced binding is explicit in the taint state.

Virtualized swap design still open

A long thread on virtualized swap continues after roughly ten revisions and a maintainer sync meeting. The patchset aims to decouple zswap from disk swap slots so the two can evolve independently. Memory-management developers watching zswap scalability still lack a settled merge path.