3.1 merge window part 2

Around 1400 non-merge changesets have been pulled into the mainline since last week's merge window article. That makes for 6844 changesets since the 3.0 release at the time of this writing. Linus Torvalds is still on vacation, and the merge numbers are a bit down compared to previous releases, so there may be more to come. Significant user-visible changes include:

• The LIO iSCSI target has been merged. This was somewhat controversial, first because the competing SCST target implementation was pushed aside in favor of LIO, but also because there were questions about whether the CHAP authentication should be done in the kernel or in user space. The version that got merged does that authentication in the kernel over the objections of James Bottomley.

• pNFS now supports IPv6.

• eCryptfs now has support for encrypted keys.

• md now has support for bad block management.

• tools/power/cpupower has been added with tools to monitor power management for multiple architectures, and is eventually slated to replace the Intel-specific tools in tools/power/x86.

• dm now supports separate metadata devices for better fault handling and array sanity checking.

• New hardware supported includes:

  • Audio/video: Cirrus Logic CS421x codecs, Xceive XC4000 silicon tuners, ATMEL Image Sensor Interface (ISI), Endpoints SE401 USB cameras, Marvell Armada 610 integrated camera controllers, NXP TDA18271c2 silicon tuners, TI DM644x video processing back-end (VPBE) displays, Samsung S5P family video devices, OmniVision OV5642 camera sensors, Micronas DRX-K DVB-C/T demodulators.

  • Miscellaneous: Freescale MMA8450 accelerometers, InvenSense MPU3050 tri-axial gyroscope sensors, Kionix KXTJ9 accelerometers, Xilinx watchdog timers, ADP1653 LED flash controllers, Digital Devices Octopus bridge devices, Maxim MAX1668 and compatible temperature sensors, NTC NCP15WB473, NCP18WB473, NCP21WB473, NCP03WB473, and NCP15WL333 temperature sensors, National Semiconductor LM95245 dual temperature sensors, National Semiconductor LM25066, LM5064, and LM5064 power management, monitoring, control, and protection sensors, Maxim MAX8998/LP3974 PMIC battery chargers, Maxim MAX8997/MAX8966 PMIC battery chargers, TI TPS95612 power management chips, TI TPS65912 power regulators, AnalogicTech AAT2870 backlights, AnalogicTech AAT2870 power regulators, Cirrus Logic EP93xx DMA controllers.

Changes visible to kernel developers include:

• Multiple ARM SoCs and device drivers have added device tree support.

• A watchdog timer driver core has been added.

• The SLUB slab allocator no longer requires locks on the fast path for architectures that support cmpxchg.

• EFI non-volatile storage can now be used as a pstore backend to persistently store log messages or other information.

One notable patch set that will not be merged this time around is the Native Linux KVM tool. Torvalds decided that he needed more convincing before merging it:

The normal two-week merge window would nominally expire on August 5, but Torvalds's vacation may alter that somewhat (in either direction). We'll pick up any significant merges in an update next week should it be warranted. Stay tuned ...