A few days ago, the Debian developers announced the release of the new version of Debian 12.4, which was released omitting the release of Debian 12.3 because in the final stage of its preparation, an error was discovered in the Linux kernel in the package containing the kernel linux-image-6.1.0-14, which causes data corruption in the Ext4 file system.
The problem appears in the stable branch of the Linux kernel 6.1, which has been supported by a fix that was originally added in the 6.5 branch to resolve a crash due to a bug in the code for updating the file size that was reduced after a direct upgrade.
As such, it is noted that the damage is marked as non-critical (it is not explained what exactly this means, probably data loss occurs in very rare circumstances, or the data is not permanently lost, but the file size becomes larger than the actual size).
In the context of Debian 12, the bug was moved to the 6.1 kernel package after synchronizing it with version 6.1.64. During discussions about the bug, Debian developers mentioned that the issue was fixed in the 6.1.66 update, but it's still unclear which of the fixes added to this version resolves the problem, as there are no changes in kernel 6.1.66 that are clearly related to VFS and Ext4 (they are most likely referring to the bug that occurs in the 6.1.66 kernel-based deb package, when in reality the fix was added to the 6.1.65 kernel branch, which contains changes related to Ext4).
What's new in Debian 12.4?
Among the improvements included in this new release of Debian 12.4 (in addition to the kernel package linux-image-6.1.0-15, which is based on kernel version 6.1.66 and includes a fix for the problem), cumulative package updates are introduced, along with fixes for the installer. The release includes 94 updates to address stability issues and 65 updates to fix vulnerabilities.
Debian 12.4 also includes updates to the latest stable versions of packages such as gnome-shell, minizip, systemd, and xen , among others. The gimp-dds package was removed, as its functionality is now integrated into GIMP.
In addition, the LLVM/Clang 16-based llvm-toolchain-16 package , necessary for creating new versions of the Chromium browser, has been added, along with Unicode 15.1 support for gnome-characters and fonts-noto-color-emoji. libsolv also includes support for the zstd compression algorithm.
Other notable changes in this new version include:
- eas4tbsync: New version that restores compatibility with newer versions of Thunderbird
- exfatprogs: Fixes out-of-bounds memory access issues [CVE-2023-45897]
- exim4: Fixes security issues related to the proxy protocol [CVE-2023-42117] and DNSDB lookups [CVE-2023-42119]
- GnomeShell: New version allows notifications to be dismissed with the backspace key in addition to the delete key, fixes duplicate devices showing when reconnecting to PulseAudio, fixes possible use after unlock crashes when restarting PulseAudio/Pipewire.
- libsolv: Zstd compression support enabled
- Linux kernel: Update to stable version 6.1.66
- profile: Fixes buffer overflow issue [CVE-2023-47038]
- php-phpseclib3: Fix denial of service issue
- postgresql-15: New stable version where the SQL injection problem is solved [CVE-2023-39417]; fixes MERGE to apply row security policies correctly [CVE-2023-39418]
- proftpd-dfsg: fix size of SSH key exchange buffers
- qbittorrent: disabled UPnP for web UI by default in qbittorrent-nox
- qemu: Update to stable version 7.2.7
Download and Get Debian 12.4
For those who are interested in being able to obtain the new version of Debian 12.4, you should know that the official website of the project already offers the installation images, while for those who already have a previous version, just execute the commands update to get this new version.
Finally, if you are interested in learning more, you can find the details at the following link.