Debian Kernel Group Meeting =========================== Report by Vincent Sanders for Debian Project Kernel List
The meeting was held as a series of 60 to 90 minute sessions over a
four day period.
The location was:
Linux Plumbers Conference
Mariott Waterfront,
Portland,
Oregon
My primary role in the sessions was to ensure all points on the
agenda were covered adequately, to attempt to keep focus within
the discussion and to ensure the discussions remained civil.
I attempted to ensure everyone had opportunity to contribute and
ensure no-one was excluded because of a lack of communication skill in
a group setting.
These are the notes from the formal sessions, several informal
conversations happened which I have not made notes of, nor recorded
here.
=================================================================
Session 1
=========
The first session was organized to convene in the conference area
reception area at 17:00 local time. Most people who might possibly
wish to contribute were in the area when the time and location were
set. It has been suggested this information was not made sufficiently
clear which cause some confusion and contribted to the late start.
A initial group of nine members were in attendance at 17:00 and a
suitable location in the front of one of the conference rooms was
found. However the absence of Bastian Blank was noted and several
attempts made to contact him. Luk Claes does not beleive Bastian was
aware of the meeting. The meeting was started with the absence of
Bastian who was going to arrive later.
Start: Wednesday 23rd September 2009 17:20 (PDT)
Present:
Andres Salomon (dilinger)
Luk Claes (luk)
Steve Langasek (vorlon)
Mark Brown (broonie)
Dann Frazier (dannf)
Troy Heber (troyh)
Max Attems (maks)
Ben Hutchings (bwh, Womble2)
Vincent Sanders (kyllikki)
Not present throughout:
Bastian Blank (Waldi)
Keith Packard
Co-operation and version synchronization with other distributions
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The Ubuntu developers made it clear their distribution is interested
in syncing as a general aim. This was extended to mention it is actually
a "corporate mandate" of Canonical.
Steve Langasek as the Ubuntu release manager gave a generally positive
indication as it would allow us all to share the burden of updates.
A more general discussion of which kernels we might choose
followed. Linux 2.6.31 has numerous issues and does not look good as a
candidate for long term support or use as a release kernel. There was
general agreement on this, the main issues being the number of
regressions it shipped with and its generally poor state.
If the kernel release cycle patterns from previous years remains
constant, the general assent is that there would be a 2.6.32 release in
late December or early January.
Steve Langasek voiced concerns that the Debian release team still have
no idea of freeze date and that Debian might slip much later into the
new year. Some discussion occurred about the Debian release team might
want to conclude the (currently) unrevealing consultation process and
fix a date to allow greater collaboration. Luk seemed to smile but
wouldn't make further comment.
Ubuntu have made no final decision for 10.04 but highly unlikely to be 2.6.31
There was a discussion of what Greg K H will keep maintaining longer term
Finally a consensus that 2.6.32 would be the "long term" supported
version due to timings across several distributions. This decision was
subject to change depending on freeze timeline/quality. Steve Langasek
opined that we should try and say yes to that version for release.
Vince was to go and talk with Greg K H about implications for long
term support of 2.6.32
Separate firmware, what is left to do?
--------------------------------------
This item seemed much less controversial and discussion was generally
positive. The main topic was concerned with continued splitting of non
free firmware and ensuring Debian kernels remain useful even with our
DSFG challenges.
Discussion about upstream firmware releases and general agreement was
reached to talk to Dave Woodhouse about this (as he did most of the
upstream firmware splits) . Action item for Vince and Max to talk to
Dave Woodhouse.
Brief discussion about bnx2/bnx2x firmware in initramfs and to fix
kernel annotations.
General discussion about firmware loading.
Kernel Mode Setting transition
------------------------------
Keith Packard was Present for this part of teh meeting.
There were concerns about initramfs and strategy to get X started in
the right way, KMS for Intel drivers is a flag day with 2.9 release
Lots of strategy was discussed but we ran out of time in this session.
Session concludes 18:20
====================================================================
Session 2
=========
Second session arranged for conference reception area at 17:30.
Steve Langasek informs me he will be slightly late as he has something
to attend to.
Start: Thursday 24th September 2009 17:45 (PDT)
Present:
Andres Salomon (dilinger)
Luk Claes (luk)
Mark Brown (broonie)
Dann Frazier (dannf)
Max Attems (maks)
Ben Hutchings (womble)
Bastian Blank (Waldi)
Vincent Sanders (kyllikki)
Not present throughout:
Steve Langasek (vorlon)
Kees Cook
KMS transition
--------------
General technical disagreement of how it fits together.
We resolved that KMS would be enabled at build time but disabled at run
time by default, with the X packages using modprobe config files to
enable it at run time.
Action item that Steve Langasek will take the issue to X guys
Feature patches
---------------
Some of this discussion was easy but there were some somewhat
impassioned arguments about specific patches.
openvz
++++++
yes we can support, little comment
Ben Hutchings said that he talked to some OpenVZ upstream developers
about the likelihood of an up-to-date OpenVZ patch for a likely common
Debian/Ubuntu LTS/RHEL kernel version, and they seemed keen to work on
that.
rt patchset
+++++++++++
Ben Hutchings recalls that there was a comment that upstream (Steven
Rostedt?) did not consider this to be in a production-ready state.
no
vserver
+++++++
Dann Frazier willing to do the work with Micah Anderson
Micah has agreed to handle the vserver<->kernel communication and
testing, while Dann helps w/ the nuts & bolts of getting the patches
applied.
Bastian Blank was opposed to carrying the patch.
It was agreed however users should be given sufficient warning of its
deprication.
Action item for Dann Frazier to investigate migration to Linux
containers. Dann Frazier and Micah Anderson willing to integrate
patches. Max will put Deprecation notice in squeeze release but looks
like this patch will make squeeze if Dann Frazier gets the work merged.
xen dom 0
+++++++++
Upstream development is splintered but Bastian Blank is willing to
implement the patch for squeeze. Final decision on inclusion subject
to building.
We also agreed to have a deprecation notice for Xen dom 0 as well as
vserver into the Release Notes.
Action item for Luk Claes to add the deprecation notices to the
Release Notes.
IDE to libata decision
----------------------
Steve Langasek will look at what Ubuntu migration did, and send a
mail, as there was general agreement that Debian can copy that.
UDEV package did the upgrade
Ben hutchings notes the "migration" and "upgrade" are about fixing
device names in configuration files (/etc/fstab, /boot/grub/menu.lst
etc).
Consensus that non udev users get to fix it themselves.
Steve Langasek to talk to Marco further.
preemption
----------
A (very brief) discussion occurred but there appeared to be little or
no disagreement and a decision to enable this feature was reached.
OSS
---
The LPC audio track has raised numerous issues with OSS and that it
would be helpful if distributes can just get rid of its use. Turns out
Fedora and Ubuntu already did.
Also turns out Bastian Blank already disabled it for Debian too!
Mark Brown has an action item to find and kill OSS users (thats what
was in my notes. I *think* we just meant the software which uses the
OSS interface ;-)
bug triage and tagging
----------------------
current bug count is 600 to 700
Usertags were discussed but possibly unhelpful in the kernel packages model.
We discussed the appalling quality of many bug reports and Ben
Hutchings took an action item to improve reportbug as a technical
thing we can do to improve matters.
It was noted there were too many bugs without logs.
A decision that the whole team needs to verify policy for bugs and
patches, publish and *enforce* it. This is an action on the whole
team. Ben Hutchings will post call for comments to mailing list with
deadline.
Session concludes 18:40
====================================================================
Session 3
=========
Third session arranged for conference reception area at 17:30.
Turns out this wasn't possible as the final keynote didn't get finished
till 17:50, we started at the back of the keynote room but were forced
to relocate due to noise halfway through.
Start: Friday 25th September 2009 18:0 (PDT)
Present:
Andres Salomon (dilinger)
Luk Claes (luk)
Mark Brown (broonie)
Dann Frazier (dannf)
Max Attems (maks)
Ben Hutchings (womble)
Bastian Blank (Waldi)
Vincent Sanders (kyllikki)
Steve Langasek (vorlon)
Andy Whitcroft (apw)
Amit Kucheria (amitk)
initramfs strategy
------------------
A general discussion on what (if any) changes to the initramfs
strategy was started and concluded that we would strip down to block
drivers but allow for framebuffer on non text console.
Max and Steve Langasek were to have an out of band conversation about
this and try and benefit from whats been done in ubuntu.
Git
---
The discussion started with most of the group agreeing git would be a
better RCS for use with the kernel as it would integrate with upstream
better. Ben Hutchings presented a fairly positive list of benefits and
expressed his favour for a switch.
Bastian Blank responded with a negative view because what we have now
works fine and there is no reason to switch. He presented several
issues and wants to wait for a working stratagy before using git.
Steve Langasek made some points about the need to do a
complete fresh checkout with the current SVN approach and Bastian
would not comment further and took a somewhat closed posture.
There was some discussion about our current model of development and
tools and how they might be adapted for use with git. Several solutions
were suggested and a reasonable technical discussion followed. Bastian
when queried for his input responded with a statement that he doesn't
know how git works and "i don't know" in relation to what impact it
might have if we converted to git.
The rest of the group knocked together a rough consensus where what we
have today is directly transitioned to git and as a second stage we
convert topic branches.
The group decision is that we want to switch. An action item for Ben
Hutchings, Max and Andres Salomon to investigate and implement; this
group will keep the mailing list up to date with progress.
Bastian Blank asked that his opposition to this process and decision
to be noted.
The canonical guys present who were representing the Ubuntu kernel
team offered assistance and were very positive.
coordination with release team and d-i
--------------------------------------
A general decision that the udeb generation should probably be pushed
back into the kernel source package (it is the only source package
which doesn't generate its udebs directly and uses a second stage) Luk
seemed happy with this proposal as it reduces the issues surrounding
kernel-wedge
Steve Langasek raised the point that, since one of the original
arguments for the separate udeb packages was the need for the d-i team
to asynchronously rev the udebs during d-i development without being
blocked on the much slower kernel builds, we should establish
empirically whether the d-i team has been making use of this feature -
to forestall having a tempest-in-a-teapot flamewar.
Testing migration is a burden/issue and the kernel team should be responsible
Kernel ABI changes should be treated as a library transition for each version.
Action for Luk Claes to try to reach consensus with the d-i Team about this.
It was also noted that it is a challenge for ftpmasters to map
binaries to source.
Conclusion was to move onto next item which is really the main issue.
out of tree modules
-------------------
After a somewhat involved discussion taking into account the FTP
masters extreme irritation about trying to match binaries to source by
hand for the lenny release it was resolved to remove
linux-modules-extra and -nonfree as they are an impossible to support
approach.
A few modules the project really want/must have will be placed
directly into the linux-2.6 source
The kernel team would endorse the use of dkms as a way for out-of-tree
module maintainers to get their modules auto-built.
Ben Hutchings to talk to Greg K H about extra modules being merged
into staging tree.
Leveraging upstream .deb building
---------------------------------
This became a discussion about the general kernel packaging and how we
might use the upstream provided facilities better. There was some
discussion we have way too many ways to build a kernel.
A general agreement was reached that "make-kpkg" should go away as
it is no longer adequately maintained. Action item for Vince to tell
Manoj it is deprecated and thank him for his contribution.
Max agreed he would make the upstream in tree "make deb-pkg" packaging
work and keep a general eye on it.
Ben Hutchings and Max agreed they would make postinst better and
rationalize some of this huge script.
Ubuntu team noted that they are looking at doing the same, and general
consensus was to combine efforts.
New lists to co-ordinate
------------------------
There is a mailing list which we might resurrect for general
distribution co-ordination
kernel-packag...@vger.org
And a list the Debian kernel team might want to join to co-ordinate with Ubuntu
kernel-t...@lists.ubuntu.com
Session concludes at 19:00
====================================================================
Session 4
=========
Fourth session arranged for Mariott hotel lobby at 09:00
We finally get sorted sat on the waterfront in the sunshine.
Start: Saturday 26th September 2009 09:15 (PDT)
Present:
Max Attems
Bastian Blank
Dann Frazier
Luk Claes
Ben Hutchings
Vincent Sanders
Debug Packages
--------------
Debugging information from current packages, not a separate
configuration, useful for crash tool
Aids some debugging scenarios though it was pointed out we cannot get
users to submit data for the data we already generate. A *major*
drawback is the data debs produced would total some 10 Gigabytes for
all architectures and some arches simply could not build them.
We talked about subsetting - data is more likely to be used on some
archs/flavors (i386/amd64) and not all buildds are capable of this
much data. I also noted that HP would like to see this to ease support
of debugging customer issues on debian.
Dann Frazier will talk to ftp masters and the buildd people to see if
it is even feasible and report back to mailing list.
Automated test
--------------
Vince explained the kautobuild idea and infrastructure. General assent
that it will be useful. Vince needs to work with Mark Hymers and Steve
Gran to get a viable system actually up and running.
Experimental
------------
Max agreed to do some upload 2.6.31 to experimental.
Backports
---------
Low priority idea and no action item considered
Session concludes 09:50
====================================================================
Action Items
============
1) Vince was to go and talk with Greg K H about implications for long
term support of 2.6.32
[[
I performed my action item, although Greg could not commit SUSE to any
specific release it does seem that Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and several
other distributions have all said pretty much the same thing now and
that 2.6.32 seems like "a nice one to settle on for longer term stable
support"
]]
2) Vince and Max to talk to Dave Woodhouse about firmware.
3) Action item that Steve Langasek will take the KMS issue to X guys
4) Dann Frazier to follow trough on vserver patches.
5) Bastian Blank to follow through on xen dom 0
6) Luk Claes to add the deprecation notices to the Release Notes.
7) Steve Langasek to talk to Marco further.
8) Mark Brown has an action item to find and kill OSS users.
9) A decision that the whole team needs to verify policy for bugs and
patches, publish and *enforce* it. This is an action on the whole
team. Ben Hutchings will post call for comments to mailing list with
deadline.
10) Max and Steve Langasek were to have an out of band conversation about
initramfs stratagy and try and benefit from whats been done in ubuntu.
11) Ben Hutchings, Max and Andres to investigate and implement this group will
keep the mailing list up to date with progress.
12) Luk Claes to try to reach consensus with the d-i Team about
testing migration.
13) Ben Hutchings to talk to Greg K H about extra modules in staging.
14) Vince to tell Manoj its deprecated and thank him for his contribution.
15) Max agreed he would make the upstream in tree "make deb" packaging
work and keep a general eye on it.
16) Ben Hutchings and Max agreed they would make postinst better and
rationalize some of this huge script.
17) Dann Frazier will talk to ftp masters and the buildd people to see if
debug packaging is feasible and report back to mailing list.
18) Vince needs to work with Mark Hymers and Steve Gran to get a viable
autobuild system actually up and running.
19) Max agreed to do a 2.6.31 upload to experimental.
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