Linux Kernel: Uprobe Test Fix Lands Late in the RC Cycle
Linus Torvalds merged a single probes fix from Masami Hiramatsu correcting how a self-test calculates addresses for non-position-independent executables, closing out a late release-candidate fix ahead of the stable cycle.
Duration: PT2M7S
Episode overview
This episode is a short developer briefing from Linux Kernel.
It explains recent repository work in plain language.
- Show: Linux Kernel
- Published: 2026-08-12T13:15:47Z
- Audio duration: PT2M7S
Transcript excerpt
This excerpt keeps the crawler page concise. Listen to the episode or use the RSS feed for the full update.
Good day, and welcome to Linux Kernel briefing for August 12th, 2026.
Today's activity is narrow but worth flagging: a single merge commit from Linus, pulling in a fix to the ftrace self-test suite for uprobes.
The core issue was in how the add-remove-uprobe test calculated where to place a probe. The test was using the ELF entry point address directly, treating it as if it were already a file offset. That works fine for position-independent executables, but on non-PIE binaries, the virtual address can be larger than the…
This is a test-infrastructure fix, not a kernel behavior change, but it matters for anyone relying on the ftrace self-tests to validate uprobe functionality. Without this fix, the test suite would report false failures on certain binary types, which erodes confidence in continuous testing right at a sensitive point…
The lesson here is a familiar one for anyone maintaining self-tests: assumptions baked into test tooling, like assuming a PIE binary layout, can quietly break coverage for real-world non-PIE executables. It's a reminder to keep test assumptions honest, especially in tracing and instrumentation code where address…
What's next: expect this to ride along…
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