12 Dec 2025
Fedora People
Rénich Bon Ćirić: The illusion of sovereignty: Why curl | bash destroy your investment in Cybersecurity
Your company just finished Series B. You have cash to spend. You have a great product with a Go stack that compiles to a single static binary.
Your engineering team spends 25% of their time securing that stack. You invest millions in infrastructure defense: Stateful firewalls, AI-augmented scanning, Red Teams, Blue Teams, and rigorous DevSecOps pipelines. You even partner with major cloud providers to ensure your supply chain is audited.
You are serious about security. You have built a fortress.
And then, to install your product, you tell enterprise customers to run this:
curl -fsSL https://my-really-cool-company.com/install.sh | sh
This single line undermines your entire security architecture.
Why is this so dangerous?
First, consider the distribution mechanism. Teams automate releases. They push to Git, CI runs tests, and the binary is pushed to an object store or CDN. The install.sh script is just a pointer to that location.
The problem is Mutability
When a sysadmin runs that command, they are piping an unverified, unsigned script directly into a shell; often as root.
If any point in that supply chain is compromised; if your CDN is hijacked, or your build server is breached (like the Codecov or SolarWinds attacks), or a rogue maintainer inserts a backdoor (like the recent XZ Utils / liblzma incident); your customer downloads the malware instantly.
There is no audit trail. There is no cryptographic signature verifying the author. There is just a script that can change content between the time you audit it and the time you run it.
The Trust Fallacy
We operate in good faith. You assume the vendor is secure. But supply chain security isn't about trusting the vendor; it's about verifying the artifact.
If you are selling to Government, Defense, or Finance, "trust" is not a strategy. Sovereignty is the strategy. These clients need:
- Immutability: A guarantee that the binary hasn't changed.
- Provenance: Cryptographic proof of origin (GPG).
- Sovereignty: The ability to mirror the software in an air-gapped environment without reaching out to the public internet during installation.
The Solution: Native Packaging
In the Enterprise Linux ecosystem (RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, etc), we solved this decades ago.
- RPMs allow for offline installation.
- GPG Signatures ensure the binary was built by you.
- Repositories allow clients to mirror and scan the software before it touches their production servers.
If you are asking enterprise clients to pipe shell scripts, you are asking them to surrender their sovereignty. It is time to treat your delivery mechanism with the same rigor as your source code.
12 Dec 2025 4:00pm GMT
Rénich Bon Ćirić: Certificados SSH: Una Guía Completa
Tengo rato pensando: "¿Qué más ahbrá en cunato a SSH y sus certificados, llaves y demás cosas?". El openssh tiene más que ofrecer, seguramente, que lo que usamos al día a día. Basta con echarte un clavado en los man pages del mismo y ver que así es.
La neta, son perros para manejar autenticación a escala, con expiración automática y políticas bien cabronas. En Fedora 43, con SELinux cuidándonos la espalda, es aún más seguro.
Esta guía completa es tu mapa (y el mío) para dominar los certificados SSH. Incluye comparaciones profundas, mejores prácticas de seguridad, tips de automatización y ejemplos extensos. Ya sea que estés asegurando un centro de datos o un laboratorio casero, esto te va a subir el nivel en cuanto a SSH se refiere.
Nota
Esta guía asume OpenSSH 7.0+ para soporte completo de certificados. Checa tu versión con ssh -V. Para producción, usa módulos de seguridad de hardware (HSM) para las llaves de CA.
Paralelos con SSH Estándar
SSH estándar con llaves de usuario:
- Flujo de trabajo: Los usuarios generan pares de llaves; los admins agregan manualmente las públicas a ~/.ssh/authorized_keys en cada servidor.
- Pros: Elimina contraseñas; criptografía fuerte; funciona offline.
- Contras: Pesadilla de escalabilidad; agregar/quitar usuarios requiere tocar cada servidor; no hay expiración automática ni restricciones; llaves comprometidas quedan hasta que se limpien manualmente; trazabilidad de auditoría limitada a logs.
SSH estándar con contraseñas:
- Flujo de trabajo: Los usuarios se autentican con contraseñas almacenadas en servidores (a menudo hasheadas).
- Pros: Configuración cero para usuarios; simple de implementar.
- Contras: Susceptible a ataques de fuerza bruta; las contraseñas débiles son comunes; no hay auditoría de logins exitosos; las contraseñas se pueden pezcar o reusar; los cambios de contraseña centralizados son propensos a errores.
Certificados SSH:
- Flujo de trabajo: CA firma llaves en credenciales portátiles y es rica en políticas.
- Mejor que llaves de usuario: Emisión/revocación centralizada; los certificados expiran automáticamente; opciones para restricciones de comando/IP; auditoría más fácil vía IDs de llaves y seriales.
- Mejor que contraseñas: Criptográficamente fuerte; sin secretos compartidos; soporta multi-factor (ej. con FIDO); amigable a la auditoría.
- Peor que ambos: Complejidad inicial de configuración de CA; llave privada de CA es un punto único de fallo (si se compromete, todos los certificados son inválidos; a rótarla inmediatamente); requiere soporte de OpenSSH; no es compatible con clientes/servidores SSH viejos.
En resumen, los certificados brillan para organizaciones que necesitan autenticación escalable y manejado con políticas. Para uso personal o despliegues pequeños, las llaves tradicionales suelen bastar.
Cómo Funcionan los Certificados SSH
Un certificado SSH es una extensión firmada por una llave pública, que contiene:
- Llave pública: La llave del usuario/host siendo certificada.
- ID de llave: Un identificador legible a humanos (ej. "juan@empresa").
- Principals: Usuarios permitidos (para certificados de usuario) o hostnames (para certificados de host).
- Opciones: Permisos/restricciones (por ejemplo. "no-port-forwarding").
- Período de validez: Fechas de inicio/fin para una expiración automática.
- Número serial: ID único para revocación.
- Firma de CA: Prueba autenticidad.
Los servidores checan la llave pública de la CA para verificar firmas, eliminando el almacenamiento por usuario de llaves. Los certificados son portátiles y auto-contenidos.
Prerrequisitos
- OpenSSH 7.0+ (los certificados fueron introducidos en la v5.4, pero lo acabaron hasta la v7.0). En Fedora 43, viene instalado por defecto (openssh-10.0p1-5.fc43.x86_64 al momento).
- Acceso a una máquina segura para operaciones de CA (idealmente offline).
- Conocimiento básico de generación de llaves SSH.
Consejo
En Fedora, SELinux puede prevenir el acceso de archivos de CA o certificados. Siempre checa contextos con ls -Z y ajústalo si es necesario.
Generando una llave de CA
La llave de CA es la base; su parte privada firma todos los certificados, así que protéjala fiéramente.
Elige un tipo de llave fuerte (ed25519 recomendado por velocidad/seguridad):
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ca_key -C "SSH CA para ejemplo.tld"
Esto crea ca_key (privada; nunca la compartas) y ca_key.pub (pública; distribúyela entre los servidores y clients).
Para RSA (si ed25519 no está soportado):
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 8192 -f ca_key -C "SSH CA para ejemplo.tld"
Importante
Respalda la llave privada de forma segura.
Creando Certificados de Usuario
Los certificados de usuario permiten a usuarios autenticarse en servidores sin agregar llaves individualmente. Vamos paso a paso, empezando con lo básico y agregando funcionalidad para hacerlo más seguro y flexible. Así es más fácil entender qué hace cada opción.
Paso 1: Certificado Básico
Primero, genera la llave del usuario si no tienes una:
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 -C "juan@ejemplo.tld"
Ahora, firma la llave pública con la CA para crear un certificado básico. La opción -s especifica la llave privada de la CA, -I es la identidad (un ID legible para identificar el cert), y -z es un número de serie único para evitar colisiones.
ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "juan@ejemplo.tld" -z 1 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
Esto crea ~/.ssh/id_ed25519-cert.pub, un certificado válido para cualquier usuario en cualquier host que confíe en la CA. Básico pero funcional.
Opciones adicionales
Limitar Principals
Para más seguridad, limita el certificado a usuarios específicos con -n (principals). Esto evita que el certificado se use para logins no autorizados.
ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "juan@ejemplo.tld" -n juan,respaldo -z 2 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
Ahora, solo "juan" o "respaldo" pueden usar este certificado para autenticarse. Útil para equipos compartidos.
Opción 2: Agregar Restricciones
Agrega opciones con -O para limitar qué puede hacer el usuario. Por ejemplo, no-port-forwarding bloquea túneles, no-agent-forwarding previene reenvío del agente SSH.
ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "juan@ejemplo.tld" -n juan,respaldo -O no-port-forwarding -O no-agent-forwarding -z 3 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
Esto hace el certificado más seguro, previniendo abusos como port forwarding no autorizado.
Determinar Validez
Determina un período de validez con -V para que el certificado expire automáticamente. Usa formatos como +30d (30 días desde ahora) o fechas absolutas.
ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "juan@ejemplo.tld" -n juan,respaldo -O no-port-forwarding -O no-agent-forwarding -V +30d -z 4 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
Ahora el certificado dura solo 30 días, forzando renovación periódica para mantener la seguridad.
Forzar un Comando
Para automatización (como backups), usa -O force-command para limitar el certificado a un comando específico. Ideal para scripts que no necesitan un shell completo.
ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "respaldo@ejemplo.tld" -n respaldo -O force-command="/usr/bin/rsync --server --daemon" -V +1d -z 5 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
Este certificado solo permite rsync, nada más. Cambié el ID a "respaldo" para diferenciarlo.
Llaves basadas en hardware
Para llaves basadas en hardware, usa tokens PKCS#11 con -D (ruta a la lib):
ssh-keygen -s ca_key.pub -D /usr/lib/opensc-pkcs11.so -I "juan@ejemplo.tld" -z 6 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
O, para poner la CA en memoria con un ssh-agent, agrega la llave y usa -U:
ssh-add ca_key
ssh-keygen -Us ca_key.pub -I "juan@ejemplo.tld" -z 7 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
Estos son para despliegues más avanzados; no siempre necesarios.
Creando Certificados de Host
Los certificados de host prueban identidad de servidor a clients, previniendo ataques MitM.
Pasos (corre en cada host):
-
Genera llaves de host (si no están presentes; especifica tipo para evitar clutter):
sudo ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key -N ""
Nota
Seguramente, esto lo hace tu distribución. En Fedora 43, lo hace un servicio llamado sshd-keygen, el cual corre siempre al iniciar y genera la llave de host si esta no existe. Te genera 3, de hecho.
-
Firma básica:
ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "web01.ejemplo.tld" -h -z 1001 /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub
Output: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key-cert.pub.
-
Limita a los principals (hostnames e IPs para que sea más robusto):
ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "web01.ejemplo.tld" -h -n web01.ejemplo.tld,web01,10.0.0.5 -z 1002 ~/.ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub
-
Determina la validez:
ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "web01.ejemplo.tld" -h -V 20240101:20241231 -z 1003 /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub
Revocando Certificados
Usa "Key Revocation Lists (KRLs)" para invalidar certificados comprometidos. Siempre usa seriales únicos (-z) para una revocación efectiva.
-
Crea KRL (por archivo de certificado):
ssh-keygen -k -f revoked.krl ~/.ssh/id_ed25519-cert.pub
-
Actualiza KRL (agrega otro con el certificado):
ssh-keygen -k -u -f revoked.krl another-cert.pub
-
Revoca por Serial (no necesitas el certificado):
ssh-keygen -k -u -f revoked.krl -s ca_key -z 10
-
Distribuye KRL a servidores (ej. via config):
En /etc/ssh/sshd_config:
RevokedKeys /path/to/revoked.krl
-
Checa la revocación:
# Exit != 0 si fue revocado ssh-keygen -Q -f revoked.krl ~/.ssh/id_ed25519-cert.pub
Configurando Confianza
La confianza se configura para que servidores y clientes reconozcan la CA y verifiquen certificados. Sin esto, los certificados son papel mojado; el servdor rechaza logins porque no confía en la firma de la CA. La neta, es como darle una carta de recomendación a alguien que no conoce al firmante. Vamos por partes, compa, para que quede clarito.
Certificados de usuario (de lado del servidor)
Aquí, lo que te conviene es usar el método centralizado. Ya tienes a tus usuarios considerados en el certificado y solo hay que repartir la llave pública de la CA en todos los nodos. Esto es ideal para empresas o clusters grandes, porque evitas tocar archivos de cada usuario.
Pongo los otros métodos para que estés enterado nomás, por si los necesitas en setups pequeños.
-
Método Centralizado: Usa TrustedUserCAKeys en /etc/ssh/sshd_config para manejo centralizado. Esta directiva le dice a SSH que confíe en la CA para firmar certificados de usuario, sin necesidad de authorized_keys individuales.
TrustedUserCAKeys /etc/ssh/ca.pub
Luego pon la pubkey de CA en /etc/ssh/ca.pub. Distribúyela a todos los servers (ej. con scp o Ansible). Esto evita tocar archivos de usuario y simplifica revocaciones.
-
Método por usuario: Agrega a ~/.ssh/authorized_keys (útil para servers personales, pero no escala). La línea "cert-authority" indica que cualquier cert firmado por esa CA es válido para ese usuario.
echo "cert-authority $(cat ca_key.pub)" >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
-
Identidades Desacopladas: Usa AuthorizedPrincipalsFile en sshd_config para mapear principals de certificado a usuarios locales (ej. mapea "juan@corp" a "centos"). Los principals son como IDs en el cert que dicen quién eres, sin depender del username del sistema.
AuthorizedPrincipalsFile /etc/ssh/principals/%u
Crea /etc/ssh/principals/centos con:
juan@empresa pancho@empresa
Nota
Asegúrate que el dueño del archivo sea root:root con permisos 600 para prevenir escalamiento de privilegios. En Fedora, SELinux puede requerir contextos correctos (ej. restorecon -Rv /etc/ssh/principals). Esto permite cuentas compartidas sin authorized_keys per-user, pero checa que los principals matchen exactamente.
Para Certificados de Host (de lado del servidor)
Los certificados del host prueban la identidad del server al cliente. Configúralos agregando el path del certificado a sshd_config. SSH lo presentará automáticamente durante conexiones para evitar ataques MitM.
-
Agrega el path del certificado a /etc/ssh/sshd_config:
HostCertificate /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key-cert.pub
De lado del cliente:
El cliente también necesita confiar en la CA para verificar certificados.
-
Para los certificados del host: Agrega la CA a ~/.ssh/known_hosts o /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts. El patrón "@cert-authority" con wildcard (*.ejemplo.tld) confía en cualquier host en ese dominio si está firmado por la CA, previniendo spoofing.
echo "@cert-authority *.ejemplo.tld $(cat ca_key.pub)" >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
-
Para certificados de usuario: SSH carga automáticamente los certificados si están nombrados de manera adecuada: id_ed25519-cert.pub al lado de la llave privada. Si usas ssh-agent, agrégalo con ssh-add para que esté disponible.
Reinicia servicios SSH después de hacer cambios: systemctl reload sshd. Prueba con ssh -v user@host para ver si la confianza funciona.
Ejemplos
Ejemplo 1: Certificado de Usuario Básico
-
Escenario: Acceso estándar de usuario.
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "pancho@empresa" -z 10 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub # Distribuye ca_key.pub a servidores # Login: ssh pancho@servidor
Ejemplo 2: Usuario de Backup Restringido
-
Escenario: Rsync automatizado con límites de IP/comando. (Nota: source-address puede ser frágil en entornos cloud dinámicos.)
ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "respaldo@servidor" -n respaldo -O force-command="/usr/bin/rsync --server" -O source-address="10.0.0.0/8" -V +1d -z 11 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
Ejemplo 3: Certificado de Host para Cluster
-
Escenario: Nodos de cluster seguros. (Flujo seguro: Trae llaves a máquina CA, firma localmente, despliega certificados.)
for host in node1 node2; do # Copia la llave de host a la máquina CA segura scp $host:/etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub /tmp/$host.pub # Firma localmente con CA ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "$host.cluster" -h -z 1004 /tmp/$host.pub # Despliega certificado de vuelta scp /tmp/$host-cert.pub $host:/etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key-cert.pub done # Los clientes agregan @cert-authority a known_hosts
Ejemplo 4: Certificado de Usuario FIDO
-
Escenario: Llaves por hardware.
ssh-keygen -t ecdsa-sk -f ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa_sk ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "juan@fido" -z 12 ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa_sk.pub
Ejemplo 5: Certificado con Extensiones
-
Escenario: Opciones custom.
ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "dev@team" -O critical:source-address="192.168.1.0/24" -O extension:permit-pty -z 13 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
Ejemplo 6: Inspeccionando Certificados
-
Ver detalles:
ssh-keygen -L -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519-cert.pub
Ejemplo 7: Revocando un Certificado
-
Agrega a KRL y despliega:
ssh-keygen -k -u -f revoked.krl ~/.ssh/id_ed25519-cert.pub scp revoked.krl server:/etc/ssh/
Mejores Prácticas y Consideraciones de Seguridad
-
Seguridad de la llave privada del CA: Guarda la llave privada del CA en algún lugar seguro. Nunca las uses en servidores de producción. Rota las CAs anualmente o en caso de compromiso; usa una CA dual: Agrega ambas partes públicas de las llaves de la CA vieja y nueva a TrustedUserCAKeys durante transición para evitar lockouts.
-
Períodos de Validez: Usa ciclos de vida cortos (días/semanas) para certificados de usuario y más largos para los hosts (meses/años). Automatiza la renovación.
-
Auditoría: Log uso de certificados via sshd; monitorea anomalías.
-
Integración: Automatiza con Ansible o Chafánsible la distribución de certificados. Un rol de ejemplo con Ansible:
- name: Despliega llave pública del CA copy: content: "{{ ca_pub_key }}" dest: /etc/ssh/ca.pub notify: reload sshd
-
Evita errores comunes: No firmes certificados con opciones débiles; prueba la revocación; usa ed25519.
Automatización y Escalado
Para despliegues grandes, evita exponer llaves privadas del CA. Usa herramientas seguras:
-
Firmado manual con script (solo en máquina CA segura):
#!/usr/bin/bash # ssh-signer.bash - Corre en la máquina con el CA user=$1 key=$2 serial=$( date +%s%N ) # Serial único basado en timestamp ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "$user" -V +7d -O no-port-forwarding -z "$serial" "$key"
-
Certificados de Host en bola: Para inicializar, usa OpenTofu para injectar la llave pública del CA. Para sconfigurarlo manualmente:
serial=$( date +%s%N ) # Serial único basado en timestamp for host in $(cat hosts.txt); do scp $host:/etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub /tmp/$host.pub ssh-keygen -s ca_key -I "$host" -h -z $serial /tmp/$host.pub scp /tmp/$host-cert.pub $host:/etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key-cert.pub done
-
Monitoreo: Usa ssh-audit o scripts custom para verificar certificados.
Conclusión
Los certificados SSH lo transforman de un protocolo simple en un sistema de autenticación robusto. Centralizando confianza y habilitando políticas, se ofrece escalabilidad y seguridad sin par. Empieza en chiquito, prueba con un usuario/host; luego escala. Recuerda, la CA es tu joya de la corona; protéjala.
RTFM!
- man ssh-keygen
- man sshd_config
- docs oficiales de OpenSSH: https://www.openssh.org/manual.html
- RFC 4251: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4251
Contribuye mejoras en:
https://github.com/openssh/openssh-portable
¡Chido, ahora ve y securiza tus despliegues!
12 Dec 2025 4:00pm GMT
Tomasz Torcz: Fedora 42→43, more eventful than usual
12 Dec 2025 10:39am GMT
Fedora Magazine: 4 cool new projects to try in Copr for December 2025

This article series takes a closer look at interesting projects that recently landed in Copr.
Copr is a build-system for anyone in the Fedora community. It hosts thousands of projects with a wide variety of purposes, targeting diverse groups of users. Some of them should never be installed by anyone, some are already transitioning into the official Fedora repositories, and others fall somewhere in between. Copr allows you to install third-party software not found in the standard Fedora repositories, try nightly versions of your dependencies, use patched builds of your favourite tools to support some non-standard use-cases, and experiment freely.
If you don't know how to enable a repository or if you are concerned about whether is it safe to use Copr, please consult the project documentation.
Vicinae
Vicinae is a fast application launcher written in C++/QT. Inspired by tool Raycast, it provides instant app and file search and clipboard history. It also includes built-in utilities such as a calculator and web search, along with support for extensions written in TypeScript. It is designed to be highly responsive and native for Wayland environment. Therefore, if you like keeping your hands on the keyboard or want a customizable, extensible launcher for your desktop, Vicinae may be worth trying.

Installation instructions
The repo currently provides vicinae for Fedora 42, 43, and Fedora Rawhide. To install it, use these commands:
sudo dnf copr enable scottames/vicinae
sudo dnf install vicinae
UZDoom
UZDoom is a modern DOOM source port that builds upon classic GZDoom engine, offering hardware-accelerated rendering, an updated scripting system, improved mod support, and high-quality audio playback. At the same time, it maintains compatibility with classic WAD files while making the experience smooth on current systems.
Whether you are playing the original episodes or diving into extensive mod packs, UZDoom offers a convenient way to enjoy them.
Installation instructions
The repo currently provides uzdoom for Fedora 42, 43, and Fedora Rawhide. To install it, use these commands:
sudo dnf copr enable nalika/uzdoom
sudo dnf install uzdoom
Plasma Panel Colorizer
Plasma Panel Colorizer is a widget for KDE Plasma that allows you to customize the panel's appearance. In addition, it offers options for background tinting, blur, custom opacity levels, shadows, floating panels, or themes that differ from the stock Plasma look. It also includes full blur support and is updated for Plasma 6, making it easy to adjust your panel exactly the way you want.

Installation instructions
The repo currently provides plasma-panel-colorizer for Fedora 42, 43, and Fedora Rawhide. To install it, use these commands:
sudo dnf copr enable peridot-augustus/plasma-panel-colorizer
sudo dnf install plasma-panel-colorizer
sfizz-ui
Sfizz-ui is the graphical interface for the sfizz sampler engine, which is an open-source player for SFZ instrument libraries. The UI provides an accessible way to load SFZ instruments, adjust parameters, and integrate the sampler into your workflow. It also includes plugin support such as LV2 and VST3, making it suitable for music creation in a Linux DAW environment.
For musicians, sound designers, or anyone using SFZ sample libraries, sfizz-ui offers a polished interface.
Installation instructions
The repo currently provides sfizz-ui for Fedora 41, 42, and 43. To install it, use these commands:
sudo dnf copr enable lexridge/sfizz-ui
sudo dnf install sfizz-ui
12 Dec 2025 8:00am GMT
11 Dec 2025
Fedora People
Peter Czanik: The syslog-ng Insider 2025-12: logrotation; release RPM; nightly RPM
11 Dec 2025 12:15pm GMT
10 Dec 2025
Fedora People
Fedora Infrastructure Status: matrix server upgrades
10 Dec 2025 12:30pm GMT
Ben Cotton: The do’s and don’ts of measuring contributions “outside of working hours”
LFX Insights is a handy platform from the Linux Foundation that provides a variety of data on open source projects. Among the statistics it reports is contributions outside of working hours. Some users reported errors with how this information is reported, which got me thinking about the value of this measure. The short version: there's very little value.
Why measure outside-of-working-hours contributions?
LFX Insights includes this measure as a signal of a project's sustainability. Projects that rely heavily on people making after hours contributions, the thinking goes, will have a harder time attracting and retaining contributors.
As a software consumer, you don't want your upstreams to suddenly disappear because that will present supply chain risks. It could mean vulnerabilities go unpatched. It could also mean that new features aren't added. Either way, this puts the onus on the project's users to carry the load.
As a project leader, you may be less concerned about whether or not a company downstream has to devote extra engineering time, but you probably do want your contributors to stick around anyway. Onboarding, mentoring, and growing contributors takes a lot of time and effort. You want to make sure people can stick around.
Why this measure fails
Despite the good intentions of measuring contributions outside working hours, the reality fails to deliver. There are some straightfoward reasons for this. Not everyone's working hours are the same. Not everyone's working hours are consistent. Some people use a different time zone on their computer. Not everyone's working days are the same. Holidays vary widely across countries and religions. People (hopefully) take time off.
Then there's the cultural mismatch. Linux Foundation projects are, to a first approximation, by companies for companies. The Linux Foundation is a 501(c)(6), not a charity, so it makes sense that it would view the world through a business lens. I don't fault them for that. LF project contributors are more likely to make contributions during the working day than contributors to a "hobbyist" project.
But that workday tendency doesn't necessarily mean people will stick around projects longer if the project is tied to their job. As the last few years have shown, tech sector layoffs can come for anyone at any time. If someone is only working on an open source project because it's part of their job, then when the job changes, they'll probably stop. People who work on an open source project for non-job reasons will likely stick around through job changes.
Thus one could argue that a project with a high degree of outside-working-hours contributions is more sustainable.
What to measure instead
If measuring contributions outside of working hours isn't helpful, what is? Focus on what you're worried about. Worried that everyone will disappear? Measure the activity over time. Worried that when a new vulnerability is discovered the lone maintainer will be backpacking through the Alps? Measure the spread of the contributions. Worried that the project doesn't have enough people to follow secure coding practices? Measure the security posture.
Of course, the best answer is to stop trying to measure sustainability and contribute to making the project more sustainable instead.
This post's featured photo by Joshua Olsen on Unsplash.
The post The do's and don'ts of measuring contributions "outside of working hours" appeared first on Duck Alignment Academy.
10 Dec 2025 12:00pm GMT
Fedora Magazine: Talk to your Fedora system with the linux-mcp-server!

Generative AI systems are changing the way people interact with computers. MCP (model context protocol) is a way that enables LLMs to run commands and use tools to enable live, conversational interaction with systems. Using the new linux-mcp-server, let's walk through how you can talk with your Fedora system for understanding your system and getting help troubleshooting it!
Introduction
Large language models (LLMs) can be an invaluable tool when investigating an issue on a Linux system. However, this can involve a lot of copy/pasting of information from the Linux terminal into a web based interface to an LLM model.
The model context protocol (MCP) acts as a bridge, enabling LLMs to interact with external tools and data sources. The linux-mcp-server utilizes this protocol to give LLMs the ability to interact with a Fedora Linux system. Instead of you manually copying and pasting terminal output, the linux-mcp-server enables the LLM to directly query system information and log entries.
By enabling an LLM direct access to system information and logs, it is transformed into an active part of the investigation process when troubleshooting an issue. It empowers an LLM to directly query the system state, allowing it to help identify performance bottlenecks, and identify important log entries that might be missed by a manual review.
What is the model context protocol (MCP)?
Anthropic introduced MCP in November 2024 as an open standard for LLM tool use. This provides a way for LLMs to interact with outside systems and data sources.
Prior to MCP, there wasn't as strong a standard and ecosystem for LLM systems to call tools. LLMs were thus frequently limited to have only the information contained in their training. They were isolated from the outside world. For example, if you asked an LLM "what is the weather going to be next week", the LLM would respond with a message indicating that it doesn't know what the weather will be, as it doesn't have access to that information. MCP helps solve this problem by enabling a standardized way for an LLM to access an outside data source, such as the weather forecast.
At a high level, users can use an AI agent application, such as Goose (open source), or Claude Desktop, and specify which MCP servers they would like to use. The AI agent application informs the LLM that there are tools available via these MCP servers that can be used to help answer the requests from the user. The LLM model can then decide when to invoke these tools.
MCP is an open standard. You have the flexibility to use MCP servers, such as linux-mcp-server, with either open source-licensed LLM models, or hosted proprietary LLM models.
What is the linux-mcp-server?
The linux-mcp-server is a project started by Red Hat's RHEL Engineering team. It provides a number of tools that enable an LLM to query information from a Linux system, such as system info, service information and logs, process information, journald and other logs, network information, and storage and disk information. For a full list of the tools provided, refer to the project's Github page.
These tools, provided by linux-mcp-server, are focused on providing the LLM access to read-only information. In the future, we'll be exploring expanding past these read-only use cases.
The linux-mcp-server can be used to interact with the local Fedora Linux system that it is running on. It can also be used to interact with remote Fedora Linux systems over SSH. For example, if you have SSH key authentication setup with the remote systems, you could make a request to your AI agent application such as "Determine the current memory usage on the fedora1.example.com, fedora2.example.com, and fedora3.example.com servers".
Prerequisites
The main components needed are an AI agent application, access to LLM model inference, and the linux-mcp-server.
There are a number of options for the AI agent application, both open source and proprietary. An example of an open source AI agent is Goose, which provides an RPM that can be installed on Fedora.
There are several LLM model inference options, ranging from locally hosted open source models, to proprietary hosted LLM models. If hosting a model locally, you generally need to have GPU/accelerator hardware available. Open source tools that can be used to locally host LLM models include RamaLama, llama.cpp, and Ollama. There are a number of open source LLM models capable of tool calling. These include models such as gpt-oss-20b and Granite 4 small.
Once you've installed your preferred AI agent application, the next step is to install the linux-mcp-server and configure your AI agent application to use it. The linux-mcp-server Github page includes installation instructions, and configuration details for Goose and Claude Desktop.
Use cases for linux-mcp-server
NOTE
The example scenarios below include LLM generated output. The output is presented here as it was generated by the AI systems cited so you can assess the quality of the output they are capable of, particularly in a non-cloud, self-hosted scenario.
The sample LLM output provided here is not intended to be run by readers without the same level of review we recommend anyone perform on AI generated content prior to use on their systems.
Dear Fedora, why are you so slow today?
Has this happened to you? Time to hop on a call and give a demo. You're pumped. It's your go-time aaaaand… your system starts lagging. Folks on the call say your video is choppy or they can't understand you. OH NO.
You've got to assess what's up, quickly. Run `top`, check `dmesg`, check your network connection (read the man page for `netstat` because you can't remember the flag you want), check `journalctl`, cross-reference what you're seeing, then start killing processes, restarting services, reloading kernel modules willy-nilly based on hastily-crafted theories, see if it improves…
This is a case where you could actually ask the system to tell you why it's slow and give it the ability to do the analysis via linux-mcp-tools. The LLM you connect with won't just run the commands through the MCP server; it will understand what the numbers it gets means in context and be able to explain in human terms.
So let's start working with a relatively new laptop. It's a Thinkpad T14S with the AMD Ryzen
AI Pro 7 ( Ryzen
AI 360 chip.) Recently one of the wifi networks it must connect to regularly was upgraded. It now has issues with the network connection stability. So let's talk to Goose + gpt-oss:20b + linux-mcp-server about it. Here's the initial prompt I used:
My Wifi doesn't work very well. It cuts out after a few minutes. Help me fix it. Can you find the error messages in the system logs and diagnose the problem?
It responded with the following:
I'll help you diagnose your WiFi connectivity issues by examining the system logs for error messages related to your network interfaces and wireless connectivity. Let me start by gathering information about your system and checking the relevant logs.
LLM output 
I'll help you diagnose your WiFi connectivity issues by examining the system logs for error messages related to your network interfaces and wireless connectivity. Let me start by gathering information about your system and checking the relevant logs.
It then made a series of tool calls, including Get System Information, Get Network Interfaces, Get Journal Logs, Get Hardware Information, Get Service Status service_name:NetworkManager, Get Service Status service_name:wpa_supplicant, Read Log File. The result was this analysis, which is the actual problem I was hoping it could find!
LLM output 
Problem Summary
Your ATH12K PCI (Qualcomm 802.11ax) wireless card repeatedly reports
every few minutes, which triggers a drop of the wireless link. The driver is trying to enqueue an RX buffer for the hardware but fails with errno ‑28.
‑28 →
-ENOMEM(out‑of‑memory for the driver buffer); the kernel cannot allocate a DMA‑coherent RX descriptor.
Likely Root Causes
| Cause | Evidence / Typical Scenario | Fix / Work‑around |
|---|---|---|
| Driver bug or missing patch | The kernel's ath12k driver has had a long‑running issue with RX ring management in older 5.15/5.4 series. | Update the kernel or apply the latest patch from the
linux
tree (5.18+ or the
ath12k
backports). |
| Out‑of‑memory in the driver | The error itself is "‑28" - a memory‑allocation failure inside the driver. | Reduce the number of RX descriptors, or enable fast‑RX disabled mode (
modprobe ath12k_pci ath12k_pci_disable_fast_rx=1
). |
| Firmware mismatch / corruption | Old firmware (
ath12k_hwgen
files) don't match the driver version. |
Reinstall firmware from your distro (
sudo apt‑install --reinstall linux‑firmware
) or copy the latest from kernel source. |
| System memory pressure | If many big processes run, DMA‑coherent memory pool can be exhausted. | Free RAM, close memory‑heavy apps, or add swap. |
| ACPI/PCIe power‑management quirk | Some laptops throttle the Wi‑Fi device after idle, resetting the buffer queue. | Add
pci_bus_reset = off
or set
ath12k_pci_disable_ps=1
in a modprobe conf. |
| Hardware issue (e.g., faulty PCIe slot or NIC) | Persistent failure after multiple driver/kernel upgrades. | Test on another machine/PCIe slot or replace the card. |
Diagnostic Checklist
- Kernel & Driver Version
uname -r
modinfo ath12k_pci | grep ^version: - Driver Parameters
cat /sys/module/ath12k_pci/parameters/*
- See if
ath12k_pci_disable_fast_rxor similar is already set. - Firmware Location
ls /lib/firmware/ath12k/ath12k/ar9009/ | grep wlan0 | head
- If the files are missing or older than the driver, copy newer ones from
/lib/firmwareof a newer kernel. - Kernel Log Around the Error
sudo dmesg --ctime | grep -A3 'ath12k_pci 0000:c2:00.0'
- Observe if there are any other "-ENOMEM" or "resource exhaustion" messages.
- Memory Usage Stats
free -h
vmstat 1 5 - PCIe Latency / Link State
sudo lspci -vvv -s c2:00.0 | grep -iE "link|latency"
Quick‑Fix Path (Try in this order)
| Step | Command | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade linux-firmware
|
Refresh firmware to the latest distro version. |
| 2 |
sudo apt upgrade linux-image-$(uname -r)
|
Apply latest kernel with patched ath12k driver (or switch to 5.18+ if still on 5.15). |
| 3 |
echo "ath12k_pci ath12k_pci_disable_fast_rx=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/ath12k.conf
|
Force the driver to use a more conservative RX scheme. |
| 4 | Reboot and monitor:
dmesg -T | grep ath12k_pci
|
Verify the error disappears. |
| 5 | Optional: test on another machine or use a USB‑WiFi dongle (USB 802.11ax / 802.11ac) as a temporary workaround. | Ensure the issue is not hardware‑specific. |
**Tip:** After reboot, you can also verify driver parameters:
Advanced Debugging (if basic fixes don't help)
- Enable debug logs
sudo bash -c 'echo 1 > /sys/module/ath12k_pci/parameters/debug'
sudo dmesg -T | grep ath12k - Check PCIe device state
sudo lspci -vv -s c2:00.0
- Use
ethtoolon the Wi‑Fi interfacesudo ethtool -S wlp4s0
- Look for firmware logs
grep -i 'ath12k' /var/log/syslog
Bottom Line
The "failed to enqueue rx buf: -28" is an internal driver allocation failure that typically follows one of two paths:
- The driver or firmware is out of date → upgrade kernel/firmware.
- The driver configuration is too aggressive for your system's memory budget → tweak module parameters or free RAM.
If you're still stuck after following the quick‑fix path, it's worth capturing more detailed logs with the above diagnostic commands and sharing them. We can then cross‑reference the exact kernel version/driver commit to see if a known patch exists.
Feel free to let me know which step you've tried or if you encounter any new log messages, and we'll dig deeper!
Not too bad an analysis and set of debugging steps! I'll follow up in the comments and let you know if the solution works.
Where'd my disk space go, Fedora?
Trawling through `du` on the command line, converting the numbers in your head, sorting them - it can be tedious. We even have graphical tools like `baobab`, but it takes time to load in the results and explore the data. And sometimes you might have questions it can't answer in terms of the risk of deleting a specific directory, or the age of a specific file. It's easier to be sloppy and just let the disk fill up. But there comes a time where that is no longer an option.
You can ask the system using the linux-mcp-server to analyze your disk usage, give you a hitlist of the top space-eating places on the file system, and give you advice with a risk analysis of how to clean it up.
Here's my prompt:
I need help analyzing disk usage on my system. Can you: 1. Show me the current disk usage across all filesystems using get_disk_usage 2. Use list_directories_by_size to show me the 10 largest directories (this will help identify where disk space is being consumed) 3. Check if there are any large log files consuming space using get_journal_logs or read_log_file 4. Review running processes with list_processes to see if any are consuming excessive resources or creating temporary files After gathering this information, help me identify potential space-saving opportunities and assess the safety of cleaning up specific directories. Please don't only examine top-level directories. I want you to go deep if needed to find out where the largest files are!
I ran this prompt on my Fedora 42 system using linux-mcp-server with Goose connected to locally-served gpt-oss:20b, and here's the output I got:
LLM output 
Disk‑space overview (as of Nov 24 2025 15:21)
| Filesystem | Size | Used | Avail | Use % | Mounted on |
| /dev/mapper/luks‑61cedb0e… | 952.3 GB | 548.9 GB | 399.6 GB | 57.9 % | / |
| /dev/mapper/luks‑61cedb0e… | 952.3 GB | 548.9 GB | 399.6 GB | 57.9 % | /home |
| /dev/nvme0n1p2 | 973.4 MB | 462.8 MB | 443.4 MB | 51.1 % | /boot |
| /dev/nvme0n1p1 | 598.8 MB | 19.3 MB | 579.6 MB | 3.2 % | /boot/efi |
Overall usage is comfortably below 60 % of a 952 GB volume, so immediate capacity pressure isn't a concern. The biggest contributors to disk space today are in the ~/. hierarchy.
1. Biggest directories on the system
| Path (relative to the mount point) | Size (≈) | Notes |
| ~/ - User home (2 mounts: /home + /) | 1 TB total | 57 % used; the bulk of the space is in ~/ |
| ~/duffy/.local/share | 238 GB | Containers sub-dir, followed by Trash (7GB) - typical podman/docker container images |
| ~/duffy/.local/share/containers | 238 GB | Container layers, images, root filesystems - the prime candidate for cleanup |
| ~/duffy/.local | 266 GB | share (237 GB) dominates it |
| ~/duffy/.local/share/containers (inside share) | 238 GB | Same as above - just a different view |
| ~/duffy/.local/lib | 13 GB | Likely a virtual‑environment library set |
| ~/duffy/.local/bin | 4 GB | Helper binaries |
| ~/duffy/.local/share/Trash | 7 GB | User‑deleted items still resident on disk |
| ~/duffy/.local/share/containers (nested) | 238 GB | Same as above; redundant listings from recursive depth‑1 scans |
| ~/duffy/.local/share (top‑level) | 238 GB | containers is the absolute largest item |
Take‑away - 75 % of the 238 GB live inside three nested directories:
- ~/duffy/.local/share/containers (238 GB) → Rooted in Podman/Container‑Store
- ~/duffy/.local/share (238 GB) → Same data exposed at a higher level
- ~/duffy/.local/share/Trash (7 GB)
2. Possible space savers
| Category | Recommendation | Rationale |
| Containers | podman system prune -a (or docker system prune -a if Docker is in use) | Removes unreferenced images, containers, and caches. This can reclaim 200-250 GB if most containers are outdated or no longer referenced. |
| Trash | gio trash -empty | The 7 GB in Trash is still taking physical space; simply emptying it will free that amount. |
| Large libs/binaries | Check ~/duffy/.local/lib - 13 GB, and ~/duffy/.local/bin - 4 GB | If these are not actively used by a project, consider uninstalling or moving them to a secondary, less‑frequented store. |
| Ramalama & UV | 9 GB (ramalama), 8 GB (uv) | Possibly temporary files or caches from development tools. Inspecting the contents of these directories (du -h) can reveal if they are still needed. |
| Other caches | pnpm store prune, virtualenv or pip cache purge | Development tool caches often accumulate; they're usually safe to delete once you're done with the current development sessions. |
| Logs | The system journal shows normal activity, and syslog access is blocked by policy. | Systemd journal stores are rotated automatically; no urgent action required. |
| Boot partitions | Not relevant - they're low‑usage (boot/efi only 3 % used). | No action needed. |
3. Disk‑IO perspective
- Reads: 111.8 GB; Writes: 85.6 GB since boot (≈ 1.2 TB total).
- If writes are high relative to free space, consider enabling a tmpfs overlay for temporary files or moving large data to a separate, faster SSD. But in this case, writes are not approaching the 399 GB free.
4. Suggested cleanup workflow
# 1. Empty Trash
gio trash --empty
# 2. Prune unused containers/images
podman system prune -a # or docker system prune -a
# 3. Remove leftover caches
pnpm store prune # if pnpm is installed
pip cache purge # for Python
virtualenv --clean # optional
# 4. Inspect large "RAM" directories manually if you need deeper cleanup
du -h --max-depth=1 ~/duffy/.local/share/containers
Tip: After each step run df -h /home or du -sh ~/duffy/.local/* to see the impact.
5. Safety checklist
| Action | Why it's safe (or risk) |
| Emptying Trash | Deletes only user‑deleted files; confirm you don't need the content. |
| podman system prune -a | Deletes container images, containers, and volumes that are not referenced by any running or stopped container. Verify with podman ps -a before pruning. |
| Removing lib/bin from .local | Only safe if you're sure those libraries/bin files aren't part of a running application. |
| Caution with tmpfs or moving large directories | If you move a directory on‑the‑fly, ensure no running application depends on that path. |
Bottom line
- Current free space: ≈ 400 GB on both / and /home.
- Largest consumptions: User‑space under ~/duffy/.local/share/containers (≈ 238 GB).
- Actionable clean‑ups: Empty Trash, prune unused container images, and review large libraries/binaries. This should reclaim over 200 GB and bring the usage from 57.9 % down to roughly 40‑45 % - plenty of headroom for the future.
Feel free to ask what next steps you'd like to dig into (e.g., detailed contents of the containers dir, specific application logs, or targeted pruning commands).
Upgrade planning
So you may have noticed a little detail above - the system is a Fedora 42 system… and Fedora 43's been out a month now!
So, time to upgrade.
This example shows where we have some tools missing from the set provided in the linux-mcp-server. We're including it for two reasons:
- So you can see how this works manually
You can see that even when specific tools you might not need are available in the MCP server, you can have the response give you instructions on commands to run on your own, and copy/paste the command output back into your chat to get analysis alongside the data the system is able to pull via the MCP tool calls; - To encourage you to submit additional tools to our project!
We would love your additions to the project! Here's where to get started: https://github.com/rhel-lightspeed/linux-mcp-server/blob/main/docs/CONTRIBUTING.md
Here's the prompt I started with, with the same Goose + gpt-oss:20b + linux-mcp-server combination:
You are a Linux system administrator assistant analyzing a Fedora system for upgrade readiness. TASK: Examine this Fedora 42 system and provide a comprehensive upgrade readiness report for Fedora 43. ANALYSIS CHECKLIST: 1. Check current Fedora version: cat /etc/fedora-release 2. Review system updates status: dnf check-update 3. Identify third-party repositories: dnf repolist 4. List installed packages from non-Fedora repos: dnf list installed | grep -v @fedora 5. Check for broken dependencies: dnf check 6. Review disk space on root partition: df -h / 7. Check for unsupported or deprecated packages 8. Identify custom kernel modules: lsmod | grep -v "^Module" 9. Review SELinux status: sestatus 10. Check for pending system updates: dnf upgrade --refresh --assumeno REPORT FORMAT: # Fedora 43 Upgrade Readiness Report ## Current System Status - Fedora version: [version] - Kernel: [kernel version] - Updates status: [current/outdated] ## Potential Issues [List blocking issues with HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW severity] ## Third-Party Software [List non-Fedora packages that may need attention] ## Recommendations [Specific pre-upgrade steps needed] ## Overall Readiness: [READY/NEEDS ATTENTION/NOT READY] Run the necessary commands and provide this analysis. Be specific about any issues found and give actionable recommendations.
Now, right away the model came back to me to complain it doesn't have access to `dnf`, `cat`, etc. And that's expected here. What it did was give me a list of homework to run for it to complete the analysis… for example, `dnf check-update` and `cat /etc/fedora-release`. I had a little back and forth in Goose with the model where it would ask me to run a command and I'd copy the output into the context. This resulted, finally, in the following report:
LLM output 
Fedora 43 Upgrade Readiness Report
Analyzed System - Fedora 42 (Kernel 6.17.7‑200.fc42.x86_64)
Date - 2025‑11‑24
1. Current System Status
| Item | Value |
| Fedora release | 42 (Adams) |
| Kernel | 6.17.7‑200.fc42.x86_64 |
| Root filesystem | 953 GB LUKS, 58 % used (411 GB free) - > 15 % free |
| /var /usr | Same as root partition (mounted the same LUKS device) |
| SELinux | enabled (policy targeted), currently permissive |
| System‑wide packages | No held packages (dnf versionlock list empty) |
| System modules | No modules held. |
TL;DR - The base system is clean; the kernel is up‑to‑date for 42, there is ample disk space, and there are no version‑locked packages.
2. Third‑Party Repos & Packages
| Repository | Description | Current dnf repolist status |
| rpm-fusion-free, rpm-fusion-nonfree, rpm-fusion-updates | Widely used RPM‑Fusion components | Enabled |
| google-cloud-cli | Google Cloud SDK (RPM built for EL 10) | Enabled |
| visual-studio-code | Microsoft VS Code RPMs | Enabled |
| command‑line‑assistant, google‑chrome, PyCharm, unsupported‑fedora‑packages, goose, leaktk | Various Copr builds (mostly Fedora‑42 based) | Enabled |
What we need to verify
- Is a Fedora 43 build available for each of the non‑Fedora repos above?
- Does google-cloud-cli have a Fedora 43‑compatible package? (EL 10 build may not be usable).
- Are there any el10‑specific dependencies that could surface during the upgrade?
- Any custom kernel modules that will require re‑compilation against the 43 kernel.
3. Potential Issues & Severity
| Issue | Severity | Why it matters | Immediate Remedy |
| Non‑Fedora packages (e.g., google‑cloud‑cli) | MEDIUM | May contain packages built for EL 10; could conflict with Fedora 43 libs. | Verify if a Fedora 43 build exists or plan to remove/re‑build it. |
| Third‑party repos without 43 builds | MEDIUM | dnf system-upgrade pulls all enabled repos; lacking 43 packages causes transaction failure. | Disable such repos temporarily (dnf config-manager -set-disabled <repo>) or enable the 43 stream when available. |
| Custom kernel modules | LOW | Modules compiled against 42 kernel won't load on 43; services may drop. | Re‑compile or patch modules after upgrade. |
| Broken dependencies reported by dnf check | HIGH | Would block the upgrade transaction. | Run sudo dnf check now; fix any reported issues. |
| Insufficient disk space | HIGH | Upgrade scripts need > 15 % free. | Not an issue (58 % free). |
Current High‑Risk Items - None detected yet.
Next Action - Confirm each third‑party repo has 43‑compatible packages and set SELinux to enforcing.
4. Recommendations (Pre‑Upgrade Checklist)
| Step | Command | Purpose |
| Confirm 43‑stream packages | `dnf list -available * | grep <repo-id>` |
| Verify SELinux enforcement | sestatus | Should show enforcing. |
| Check for broken dependencies | sudo dnf check | No errors should appear. |
| Refresh all repos | sudo dnf upgrade -refresh | Pull latest metadata. |
| Dry‑run upgrade | sudo dnf system-upgrade download -releasever=43 -allowerasing | Detect any missing packages or conflicts. |
| Optional: Disable problematic repos | sudo dnf config-manager -set-disabled <repo> | Prevent upgrade crash if a repo has no 43 build. |
| Persist SELinux config | sudo sed -i 's/SELINUX=permissive/SELINUX=enforcing/' /etc/selinux/config | Make enforcement permanent. |
5. Post‑Upgrade Actions
- Reboot into the new kernel (dnf system-upgrade reboot).
- Re‑compile any custom kernel modules against the new kernel (yum install kernel-devel-$(uname -r) then rebuild modules).
- Re‑enable any disabled repos once the upgrade completes.
- Verify critical services (systemctl status <service>) and check logs.
- Run sudo dnf distro-sync to ensure all packages are the latest from Fedora 43.
6. Overall Readiness
| Criteria | Status | Comment |
| Disk space | Ready | 58 % free |
| Package health | Ready | No held or broken packages |
| Third‑party repos | Conditional | Verify 43‑compatibility |
| Custom modules | Pending | Need to identify modules and re‑compile |
| Final verdict | READY (after addressing above points) |
Next step - Run the three verification commands below and share the output with me:
sudo dnf check
sudo dnf repolist
dnf list installed | grep -v @fedora
With those outputs I can pinpoint any remaining blockers and give you a final, ready‑to‑proceed plan.
Happy upgrading!
Give it a try, let us know what you think!

You can see from these few examples that tool calling with LLMs is a valuable tool for troubleshooting Linux systems. We could use your help building this and making it awesome! How can you help?
- Give it a try, let us know what you think, file any bugs you find, and let us know what tools are missing that you could use! You can respond in the comments here, file a bug, or chat with us on Fedora matrix.
- We're primarily working with Goose as our client, but if you have another preferred client and want to help us support it better, we'd love to work with you!
- Get involved in the linux-mcp-project generally, we'd love to see your PRs!
- Let us know what you'd like to see in the future. What workflows would you like to see supported? How do you see this making your Fedora or overall Linux experience better? What larger workflows do you see this plugging into?
Join us upstream at https://github.com/rhel-lightspeed/linux-mcp-server! And come chat with us in the Fedora AI/ML SIG chat room on Matrix!
10 Dec 2025 8:00am GMT
Fedora Infrastructure Status: Fedora Copr outage - updating servers
10 Dec 2025 7:00am GMT
Chris Short: Short Family's Ultimate Holiday Movie Marathon: 29 Holiday Films
10 Dec 2025 5:00am GMT
09 Dec 2025
Fedora People
Michael Catanzaro: Significant Drag and Drop Vulnerability in WebKitGTK
WebKitGTK 2.50.3 contains a workaround for CVE-2025-13947, an issue that allows websites to exfiltrate files from your filesystem. If you're using Epiphany or any other web browser based on WebKitGTK, then you should immediately update to 2.50.3.
Websites may attach file URLs to drag sources. When the drag source is dropped onto a drop target, the website can read the file data for its chosen files, without any restrictions. Oops. Suffice to say, this is not how drag and drop is supposed to work. Websites should not be able to choose for themselves which files to read from your filesystem; only the user is supposed to be able to make that choice, by dragging the file from an external application. That is, drag sources created by websites should not receive file access.
I failed to find the correct way to fix this bug in the two afternoons I allowed myself to work on this issue, so instead my overly-broad solution was to disable file access for all drags. With this workaround, the website will only receive the list of file URLs rather than the file contents.
Apple platforms are not affected by this issue.
09 Dec 2025 3:29pm GMT
Fedora Magazine: Flock 2026 CfP open now until Feb 2nd 2026

Apply now for the Flock to Fedora 2026 Call for Proposals (CfP) at cfp.fedoraproject.org. This year, the submission deadline for the Flock CfP is Monday, February 2nd, 2026.
Flock 2026 registration is open
Last month we announced that we'll be convening again in Prague for Flock 2026 in June. Everyone interested in attending can head over to the Flock 2026 website and register today! For those of you who want to contribute to Flock by presenting your thoughts and ideas in front of your fellow contributors, we've got some inspiration for you in the form of updated proposal themes.
Flock 2026 proposal themes
This year's proposal themes are inspired by Fedora's four foundations:
- Freedom: The Open Frontier - This theme explores how Fedora pushes the boundaries of technological freedom. We invite proposals on FOSS approaches to Artificial Intelligence, the advancement of open hardware like RISC-V, the development of open standards, and the protection of data privacy. Sessions should focus on how our work in the Fedora Project creates a more free and collaborative technological world for everyone.
- Friends: Our Fedora Story - This theme celebrates the people and practices that make our community unique. We seek proposals that share stories of mentorship, successful team collaboration, and effective onboarding within Fedora. Collaboration is key to our success. Sessions about our partnerships with other FOSS communities should center on the mutual benefits and the positive impact these relationships have on the Fedora Project.
- Features: Engineering Fedora's Core - As a contributor conference, this theme dives deep into the craft of building our distribution and other Fedora outputs. We welcome sessions on improvements to our infrastructure, release engineering processes, quality assurance, packaging, and community tooling. This is the place for technical talks that showcase our engineering excellence and the collaborative work that makes Fedora's deliverables possible, from code to final artifact.
- First: Blueprint for the Future: Fedora Linux 45 & 46 - This theme focuses on the near-term innovations that will define the next generation of Linux. With the next few Fedora Linux releases serving as the foundation for RHEL 11 and EPEL 11, this is a critical time. We are looking for forward-looking technical talks on the changes, features, and architectural decisions in F45 and F46 that will shape the future of the operating system, from the community desktop to the core of the enterprise platforms.
These themes are here to help get you thinking about topics you'd like to present. If you have something you want to talk about that doesn't quite fit neatly into these themes, but you feel it belongs at Flock, go ahead and submit anyways! The reviewers are open to alternative topics. They are on the look out for topics that Fedora contributors are interested in discussing.
Flock financial travel assistance available
Financial travel assistance applications are now open as well. When you go to register to attend on the Flock 2026 website, you should also see links on how to apply for travel assistance if you need it. Financial assistance will be open until March 8th (several weeks after CfP closes on Febuary 8th). This is to give those with accepted talks an opportunity to figure out if they'll need travel assistance.
09 Dec 2025 8:00am GMT
08 Dec 2025
Fedora People
Fedora Infrastructure Status: rdu2 to rdu3 datacenter move
08 Dec 2025 1:00pm GMT
Chris Short: Common Display Resolutions
08 Dec 2025 5:00am GMT
06 Dec 2025
Fedora People
Kevin Fenzi: infra weekly recap: early december 2025
hey everyone, it's saturday so time for another recap of adventures in fedora infrastructure and other fedora areas.
scrapers
I started a discussion thread about the current scrapers we are dealing with. To summarize, anubis has cut out a bunch of them and really helped out quite a lot. It has caused some issues with clients as well, but we have been working thought those as we hear about them. The remaining scrapers are large botnets of browsers, probibly running on end user machines. Those are more troublesome to deal with.
The discussion thread is at: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/scrapers-and-ideas-for-how-to-deal-with-them/175760 if anyone would like to read or contribute.
We had another run in with them eariler this morning. A great way to spend saturday morning, but I did look more carefully this time. The main cause of issues was them hitting src.fedoraproject.org and it's /history/ and /blame/ endpoints. This was causing the backend to have to do a somewhat expensive git blame/history call to the local repos and since it took a bit to come back requests piled up and latency went way up. I have for now blocked those endpoints in the src.fedoraproject.org web interface. This brought everything back to normal. If you need to do those things, you can easily clone the git repo locally and do them.
rdu2-cc to rdu3 datacenter move
This last week, I moved pagure.io (virtually) to the new datacenter. Unfortunately it didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. All the data synced over in about 15minutes or so, but then I tried to test it before switching it live and it just wasn't allowing me to authenticate on git pushes. Finally the light bulb went on and I realized that pagure was checking for auth, but it wasn't 'pagure.io' yet because I hadn't updated dns. ;( It's always DNS. :) After that everything went fine. There were a few loose I had to fix up the next day: mirroring out was not working because we didn't have ssh outgoing listed as allowed. Uploading releases wasn't working due to a selinux labeling issue, and finally our s390x builders couldn't reach it because I forgot they needed to do that. Hopefully pagure.io is all happy now and I even gave it more resources in the new dc.
Monday the actual physical move happens. See: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issue/12955 for more details. Mostly, folks shouldn't notice these machines moving. abrt submissions will be down, and download-cc-rdu01 will be down, but otherwise it should be a big nothing burger for most folks. Machines will move monday and we will work tuesday to reinstall/reconfigure things and bring it all back up.
Matrix outage on dec 10th
There is going to be a short outage of our fedora.im and fedoraproject.org matrix servers. We are migrating to the new MAS setup (Matrix Authentication Server). This will allow clients to use things like element-x and also is a important step we wanted to complete before moving forward on deploying our own matrix servers.
forge migration
A number of groups have already moved over to forge.fedoraproject.org from pagure.io. I really was hoping to move infrastructre, but haven't had the cycles yet. We do have the orgs created now and are planning on moving our docs over very soon. I don't know if we will move tickets before the end of the year or not, but we will see.
December of docs
So, I committed myself to doing a docs pr/issue/something every day in December, and so far I am doing so! 6 days and 6 PR's and more tickets updated. Hopefully I can keep it up.
comments? additions? reactions?
As always, comment on mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@nirik/115674367344830186
06 Dec 2025 7:29pm GMT
Fedora Infrastructure Status: src.fedoraproject.org access degraded
06 Dec 2025 4:30pm GMT