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wire 2026-05-29
stories 39
RSS Archive Reviews

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$ the-wire · showcase

KERNEL PATCHES PACKET LOOPS THAT CRASH NETWORK STACKS

By RepoJournal · Filed · About Linux · Composed from the cited sources · methodology

Linux is shipping a fundamental fix to how the kernel tracks packets bouncing through the network scheduler, closing a hole that let mirred and netem create infinite loops across CPUs.

The kernel team merged a critical patchset [1] that adds a 2-bit per-skb tc_depth field to track packet loops in the traffic control layer. The old per-CPU loop counters [2] broke in two scenarios: when packets queued through the backlog lost state, and when XPS/RPS moved packets between CPUs mid-processing. A per-skb field solves both. This lands alongside a fix to act_mirred [3] that was returning the wrong error code when redirect failed, preventing the kernel from properly accounting dropped packets. Separately, the keyring subsystem [4] picked up a critical RCU locking fix where find_key_to_update() was calling assoc_array_find() without holding the read lock, a lifetime bug that persistent key handling exposed. The nvme-tcp driver [5] also standardized its errno handling in the TLS handshake path, storing negative values consistently across all branches.

Action items

References

  1. [1] Merge branch 'net-sched-fix-packet-loops-in-mirred-and-netem' torvalds/linux ↗
  2. [2] net: Introduce skb tc depth field to track packet loops torvalds/linux ↗
  3. [3] net/sched: act_mirred: Fix return code in early mirred redirect error paths torvalds/linux ↗
  4. [4] security/keys: fix missed RCU read section on lookup torvalds/linux ↗
  5. [5] nvme-tcp: store negative errno in queue->tls_err torvalds/linux ↗

$ ls linux/reviews/ # the step-back reads

the week in review Omarchy polkit PAM stack skipped system-auth the month in review Linux 7.3 rc cycle fixes cgroup kill, SMB corruption
Full archive → Weekly reviews →

Quick answers

What shipped in Linux on May 29, 2026?
Linux is shipping a fundamental fix to how the kernel tracks packets bouncing through the network scheduler, closing a hole that let mirred and netem create infinite loops across CPUs. In total, 39 commits landed.
What were the notable Linux updates?
Merge branch 'net-sched-fix-packet-loops-in-mirred-and-netem', net: Introduce skb tc depth field to track packet loops, and net/sched: act_mirred: Fix return code in early mirred redirect error paths.
♥

$ log Linux --recent

drm-fixes backs out dma-buf debug, vfs closes pathwalk use-after-frees 29 shipped Netlink stops hashing the net pointer, stmmac clears a stuck RGMII interrupt 27 shipped Poly1305 carry fix lands, Omarchy locks down N1x laptops and idle fingerprint readers 23 shipped Omarchy copies agent logins over SSH, kernel queues 7.4 merges 106 shipped

$ log --all # elsewhere on the wire

Alignment & Post-training verl rejects conflicting vLLM engine_kwargs, open-instruct adds MILES OPD behind a Megatron learner Interpretability nnsight 0.8.0 cuts import time from 7.6s to 1.6s

$ ls showcases/

Safety Evals AI Red Teaming Agent Security Interpretability Alignment & Post-training

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