Oracle Brings KPTI Meltdown Mitigation To Linux 4.1

If for some reason you are still riding the Linux 4.1 kernel series, you really should think about upgrading to at least a newer LTS series in the near future. But if you still plan on riding it for a while longer, at least it's getting page table isolation support for Meltdown mitigation.

An Oracle kernel developer has posted patches bringing kernel page table isolation (KPTI, formerly known as KAISER) to the Linux 4.1 stable kernel series.

The Oracle work is based upon the patches posted for the Linux 4.4 kernel series, which the Oracle developers then ported to their Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel derived from Linux 4.1. After that, they ported the patches from their UEK4.1 kernel to the upstream/vanilla Linux 4.1 kernel.

65 patches in total at just under two thousand lines of code is now available for testing if you want PTI/KAISER for Linux 4.1.