man-pages-4.09 is released

I've released man-pages-4.09. The release tarball is available on kernel.org. The browsable online pages can be found on man7.org. The Git repository for man-pages is available on kernel.org.

This release resulted from patches, bug reports, reviews, and comments from 44 contributors. This is one of the more substantial releases in recent times, with more than 500 commits changing around 190 pages. The changes include the addition of eight new pages and significant enhancements or rewrites to many existing pages.

Among the more significant changes in man-pages-4.09 are the following:

• A new pkey_alloc(2) page, written  by Dave Hansen, documents the pkey_alloc() and pkey_free() system calls added in Linux 4.9.
• Updates to the mprotect(2) page by Dave Hansen document the pkey_mprotect() system call added in Linux 4.9.
• A new pkeys(7) page, written  by Dave Hansen, provides an overview of the Memory Protection Keys feature added in Linux 4.9.
• A new pthread_getattr_default_np(3) page, written by me, documents the pthread_getattr_default_np(3) and pthread_setattr_default_np(3) library functions.
• A new strfromd(3) page, written by Wainer dos Santos Moschetta, documents the strfromd(3), strfromf(3), and strfroml(3) library functions added in the upcoming GNU C Library 2.25 release.
• A new fuse(4) page, written by Keno Fischer, partially documents the /dev/fuse device.
• A new tmpfs(5) page, written by me, provides an overview of the tmpfs filesystem.
• A new random(7) page, written by me, with help from Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos, Laurent Georget, and Ted T'so, provides an overview of the interfaces for obtaining randomness.
• A new sock_diag(7) page, written by Pavel Emelyanov and Dmitry V. Levin, documents the NETLINK_SOCK_DIAG interface.
• Updates to the namespaces(7) page, written by me, document the NS_GET_USERNS and NS_GET_PARENT ioctl() operations (added In Linux 4.9) that can be used for introspecting namespace relationships (discovering hierarchical relationships of user and PID namespaces, and the relationships of non-user namespaces with their associated user namespaces).
• Updates to the sched(7) page, written by me, document the autogroup feature added to the CFS scheduler in Linux 2.6.38 and describe how it renders the nice value ineffective in many use cases.
• Substantial updates to the elf(5) page, by Mike Frysinger, document ELF notes.
• Yet another slew of updates to the perf_event_open(2) page were provided by Vince Weaver.

In addition to the above, substantial changes were also made to the close(2), getpriority(2), nice(2), timer_create(2), timerfd_create(2), random(4), and proc(5) pages.

man-pages-4.08 is released

I've released man-pages-4.08. The release tarball is available on kernel.org. The browsable online pages can be found on man7.org. The Git repository for man-pages is available on kernel.org.

This release resulted from patches, bug reports, reviews, and comments from around 40 contributors. The release includes changes to nearly 200 man pages. Among the more significant changes in man-pages-4.08 are the following:

• Eugene Syromyatnikov made substantial updates to the quotactl(2) page, including adding information about project quotas and a number of XFS-specific subcommands.
• I made substantial rewrites, additions, and corrections in the cgroups(7) page.
• I added a new bswap(3) page documenting the bswap_16(), bswap_32(), and bswap_64() library functions.
• A large number of updates to the proc(5) added documentation for several files and for additional fields in already documented files.
• I updated the discussion of capability requirements in many pages to clarify cases where a capability is required in the user namespace where the process resides (rather than in the initial user namespace).

man-pages-4.07 is released

I've released man-pages-4.07. The release tarball is available on kernel.org. The browsable online pages can be found on man7.org. The Git repository for man-pages is available on kernel.org.

This release resulted from patches, bug reports, reviews, and comments from around 50 contributors. The release includes changes to over 140 man pages. Among the more significant changes in man-pages-4.07 are the following:

• Two new pages by Darrick Wong document ioctl() operations that he added to the kernel: ioctl_ficlonerange(2) documents the FICLONE and FICLONERANGE ioctls, and ioctl_fideduperange(2) documents the FIDEDUPERANGE ioctl.
• I've written a new page, mount_namespaces(7), which documents mount namespaces and the shared subtrees feature.
• I've written a new page, nextup(3), which documents the new nextup() and nextdown() functions that will appear in the upcoming glibc 2.24 release.
• I've added documentation for the MS_SHARED, MS_PRIVATE, MS_SLAVE, MS_UNBINDABLE, and MS_REC flags to the mount(2) page. In addition, I've substantially restructured, clarified, and tweaked the existing text in this manual page.
• I (with help from Kees Cook, Jann Horn, Eric W. Biederman, and Stephen Smalley) have added documentation of so-called "ptrace access mode checks" to the ptrace(2) page. These kinds of checks are performed in a number of system calls and other interfaces (e.g., accesses to various /proc files), and many other manual pages have been updated in this release to note the kind of check performed and add a reference to the ptrace(2) page.
• I've made various changes in the proc(5), most notably documenting various ptrace access mode checks, and also describing various new fields that have been added to the /proc/PID/status file in recent kernel releases.
• I added a description of the effect of capabilities within a user namespace to the user_namespaces(7) page.
• I substantially rewrote the getitimer(2) page, and in the process changed the license to one that is unambiguously free.

man-pages-4.06 is released

I've released man-pages-4.06. The release tarball is available on kernel.org. The browsable online pages can be found on man7.org. The Git repository for man-pages is available on kernel.org.

This release resulted from patches, bug reports, reviews, and comments from around 20 contributors. The release includes changes to just over 40 man pages. Among the more significant changes in man-pages-4.06 are the following:

• A new cgroups(7) page documents container groups, and includes some information about cgroups version 2, which was officially released in Linux 4.5.
• A new cgroups_namespaces(7) page documents cgroup namespaces, which will shortly be released with Linux 4.6. Corresponding changes have also been made in the clone(2), setns(2), and unshare(2) pages.
• The readv(2) page adds documentation of the preadv2() and pwritev2() system calls added in Linux 4.6.

man-pages-4.05 is released

I've released man-pages-4.05. The release tarball is available on kernel.org. The browsable online pages can be found on man7.org. The Git repository for man-pages is available on kernel.org.

This release resulted from patches, bug reports, reviews, and comments from more than 70 contributors. The release includes changes to more than 400 man pages. Among the more significant changes in man-pages-4.05 are the following:

• A new copy_file_range(2) page, contributed by kernel developer Anna Schumaker, documents the copy_file_range() system call added in Linux 4.5.
• The personality(2) page has been greatly expanded, to add descriptions of personality domains.
• The fmemopen(3) page has been split into two, with a new open_memstream(3) page documenting just the latter function. At the same time, the description of fmemopen(3) (which was completely rewritten in glibc 2.22) was substantially revised and enhanced. 
• A new ntp_gettime(3) page documents ntp_gettime(3) and ntp_gettimex(3).
• A new posix_spawn(3) page, cowritten long ago by Bill O Gallmeister and me, documents posix_spawn(3) and posix_spawnp(3).
• A new lirc(4) page by Alec Leamas documents the lirc device driver.
• The adjtimex(2) manual page has been substantially revised and adds documentation of the ntp_adjtime(3) library function.
• The feature test macro (FTM) requirements in all manual pages have been updated, corrected, and in some cases simplified:
• Where appropriate, requirements for the use of _DEFAULT_SOURCE (new in glibc 2.19) have been added.
• The feature test macros _BSD_SOURCE and _SVID_SOURCE are now obsolete, and the man pages now indicate that these macros are only used with glibc 2.19 and earlier.
• Since certain FTM values automatically imply that other FTMs will be set to certain values, the FTM descriptions in many pages have been simplified.
• Mention of some obsolete FTMs (e.g., _POSIX_SOURCE and _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED) has been removed from the man pages.
• The feature_test_macros(7) page has been updated in line with the above changes.