util-linux v2.37

[Bruce Dubbs]

New minor version.

Util-linux 2.37 Release Notes

This project no more uses Groff to maintain man-pages. Since v2.37 all text is maintained in AsciiDoc and man-pages are generated by asciidoctor to man-pages during the package build process (see also --disable-asciidoc configure option).

The long-term goal is to maintain also man-page translations (via translationproject.org and po4a) in the util-linux project.

The old hardlink(1) implementation has been replaced by a new implementation. The new implementation does not support -f option to force hardlinks creation between filesystem.

lscpu(1) has been reimplemented. Now it analyzes /sys for all CPUs and provides information for all CPU types used by the system (for example heterogeneous big.LITTLE ARMs, etc.). This command reads also SMBIOS tables to get CPU identifiers. The default output on the terminal is more structured now to be more human-readable.

uclampset(1) is new util to manipulate the utilization clamping attributes of the system or a process.

hexdump(1) automatically uses -C when called as "hd".

dmesg(1) supports new command-line options --since and --until.

findmnt(8) supports new command-line options --shadowed to print only filesystems over-mounted by another filesystem.

mount(8) supports --read-only command-line option for non-root users too.

umount(8) can umount also all over-mounted filesystems (more filesystems on the the same mount point) when executed with --recursive.

libfdisk (and fdisk, sfdisk, cfdisk) supports partition type names on input, ignoring the case of the characters and all non-alphanumeric and non-digit characters in the name (e.g. type="Linux /usr x86" is the same as type="linux usr-x86" for sfdisk).

libmount no more contains a workaround to detect inconsistent /proc/self/mountinfo read. This problem is fixed by the Linux kernel (since v5.8, kernel commit 9f6c61f96f2d97cbb5f7fa85607bc398f843ff0f).

libblkid supports "probing hints" now. The hints are the optional way how to force probing functions to check for example another location -- for example specific session on multi-session UDF. The command blkid(8) supports this functionality with a new --hint option. The library has been also extended to support others ISO9660 and UDF identifiers.

blkzone(8) provides a new "capacity" command.

cfdisk(8) is possible to start in read-only mode by a new command-line option --read-only

lsblk(8) provides new columns FSROOTS, and MOUNTPOINTS. The column MOUNTPOINTS is used in the default output now and this new column prints all mount points where the device is used (btrfs subvolumes, bind mounts, etc).

losetup(8) uses LOOP_CONFIG ioctl now.

column(1) supports a new command-line option --table-columns-limit to specify a maximal number of the input columns. The last column will contain all remaining line data if the limit is smaller than the number of the columns in the input data.

It's possible to use meson to build util-linux. This feature is experimental and currently designed only for developers. No panic, the current primary autotools-based build process will be supported, maintained, and used as primary for next years.

[Bruce Dubbs]

Fixed at commit 7fe99c2ca7bd3c4ea21e4c17b3350dbec7f4a1b6

Package Updates.
    Update to iana-etc-20210611.
    Update to vim-8.2.3001.
    Update to util-linux-2.37.
    Update to meson-0.58.1.
    Update to linux-5.12.10.
    Update to m4-1.4.19.
    Update to grub-2.06.

Also moved man-db to be after systemd.