Tux Machines

TCP_NODELAY and Linux kernel bug

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 11, 2024

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Marcel Kolaja ☛ It's always TCP_NODELAY. Every damn time.

=> ↺ It's always TCP_NODELAY. Every damn time.

The first thing I check when debugging latency issues in distributed systems is whether TCP_NODELAY is enabled. And it’s not just me. Every distributed system builder I know has lost hours to latency issues quickly fixed by enabling this simple socket option, suggesting that the default behavior is wrong, and perhaps that the whole concept is outmoded.

University of Toronto ☛ It's very difficult to tell if a Linux kernel bug is a security issue

=> ↺ It's very difficult to tell if a Linux kernel bug is a security issue

One of the controversial recent developments in the (Linux kernel) security world is that the Linux kernel developers have somewhat recently switched to a policy of aggressively issuing CVEs for kernel changes. It's simplest to quote straight from the official kernel.org documentation:

" Note, due to the layer at which the Linux kernel is in a system, almost any bug might be exploitable to compromise the security of the kernel, but the possibility of exploitation is often not evident when the bug is fixed. Because of this, the CVE assignment team is overly cautious and assign CVE numbers to any bugfix that they identify. [...] "

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