Livepatching With Linux 4.12 Will Be Faster For Some Modules

For those making use of the Linux kernel's integrated livepatch functionality, the time to load patched modules will be faster in some instances with the in-development Linux 4.12 kernel.

Jiri Kosina of SUSE sent in the livepatching updates today for the Linux 4.12 kernel. Aside from a per-task consistency model and other changes, what caught our attention is that the patch module load time is reduced for some modules.

Zhou Chengming of Huawei was looking to reduce the load time for one of their out-of-tree modules. It was originally taking 23 seconds but he dropped that down to one second by reducing the time of finding module symbols. For kernel modules with a lot of symbols, this patch should speed things up.

The other livepatching changes for Linux 4.12 can be found via this pull request.