Linux Kernel 6.12.117 Released, Carries "Must Upgrade" Advisory
Greg Kroah-Hartman has shipped the latest 6.12 LTS point release, and the advisory attached to it is not one you want to sleep on.
Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced Linux kernel 6.12.117, the newest point update in the 6.12 long-term-support series. The release carries a line most sysadmins recognize instantly: "all users of the 6.12 kernel series must upgrade." There's usually a reason for that phrasing, and this time it's a security fix hiding in the patch pile.
It came out November 10, 2026, just four days after 6.12.116, and it's a stable release, which means the changes are tightly scoped. No new features, just backported fixes reviewed and re-tested before they land. That's the whole appeal of a point release like this. You swap it in for the plumbing reasons, not the party ones.
What's actually in the box
Stable updates rarely grab headlines. They're the difference between a quiet Tuesday and a Tuesday where the kernel eats a buffer it shouldn't touch. Recent 6.12.y cycles have ranged from roughly 120 to well over 500 patches, depending on what the upstream tree picked up. Each patch carries a Fixes: tag that traces it to the original mainline commit, then runs through Sasha Levin's handoff before it reaches Greg.
The release right before this one, 6.12.116, was smaller and laser-focused on Xen. It closed use-after-free holes in the xen-blkback and xen-netback drivers that showed up when reading I/O and network statistics. 6.12.117 picks up from there without straying far.
If you want the actual diffstat, head to the change summary page on git.kernel.org. Heads up: that site sits behind an anti-bot wall most of the time now, so you may have to prove you're human before it serves the list. Not a bad sign, just annoying. It doesn't hide anything about the release itself.
The "must upgrade" phrasing almost always points at something memory-safety related. We're talking either a crash that turns into a denial of service or a privilege-escalation hole someone can climb through. Even when an update isn't purely a security fix, the warning still holds, because risk pools up in old stable kernels over time. Debian 13 (Trixie) kernel packs have already folded 68 or more 6.12 CVEs into a single release, for the record.
Why 6.12 still matters
Here's the thing about 6.12. It dropped on November 17, 2024, and it isn't a routine kernel. After roughly two decades of slow progress, it pulled full real-time (PREEMPT_RT) support into mainline for the first time, finished the EEVDF scheduler swap, and handed operators the first whiff of BPF-writable scheduling via sched_ext.
You can even enable a QR code on the panic screen now. Point your phone at a crashed box and it reads out compressed kernel logs straight into a bug report. It's not dinner-table material, but it's a genuinely neat trick once your server goes sideways.
kernel.org still puts 6.12's projected end-of-life at December 2028. That's about two more years of security support riding on top of 6.12.117. Keep in mind that newer trees like 6.18 are already out there, but 6.12 has the runway to stick around until then. Some third-party sites have floated shorter windows, but kernel.org is the authority, and it says 2028.
Getting it is the easy part.
The linux-stable.git branch linux-6.12.y is already updated. If you're coming from 6.12.116 and want to save bandwidth, grab the incremental patch instead of the full tarball. Both live on cdn.kernel.org, as does the PGP signature. Verify before you reboot: import Greg's public key, run gpg --verify against the signature, and you're done.
For anyone still on 6.12, the move is straightforward. Grab 6.12.117, or wait for your distro to fold it into its packaged kernel. Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Amazon AL2023 all tend to follow within days. Check the signature, schedule the reboot, and you've done your part for the part of the internet that quietly keeps running.
Linux kernel 6.12.117 released
Linux kernel version 6.12.117 is now available:
Full source: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/linux-6.12.117.tar.xz
Patch: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/patch-6.12.117.xz
PGP Signature: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/linux-6.12.117.tar.sign
You can view the summary of the changes at the following URL:
https://git.kernel.org/stable/ds/v6.12.117/v6.12.116
