Re: Intention to drop Wubi from 13.04 release
On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 8:31 PM, Robert Bruce Park wrote: > On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 04:09:35PM +0100, Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote: > > On 8 April 2013 18:01, bcbc bcbc wrote: > > > It's hard to make an informed decision without knowing the usage stats > of > > > Wubi. If it's quite low then I expect there'd be little impact, but if > it's > > > popular then it's taking a low-risk installation method away from > users who > > > might otherwise not have tried Ubuntu. Does Canonical have any > statistics on > > > this? > > > > > > > The point that it's not low-risk any more. It can cause data-loss on > > windows 8 side when it's hibernated. > > I can't find the original article right now, but I recently read a > gaming blog where some random journalist had attempted to install > Steam inside of a Wubi Ubuntu installation. His readers mercilessly > flamed him as being essentially a total idiot (because everybody "just > knows" that Wubi is *incredibly* terrible), and so he was forced to > try it again without Wubi. Had he not been a journalist, he would have > simply given up on Wubi and written Ubuntu off as an unstable product. > > The unfortunate reality is that if Wubi is your first experience with > Ubuntu, you're likely to come to the conclusion that Ubuntu is an > unstable mess, when really it's the fact that Windows is an unstable > base underneath your Ubuntu that is causing the problems (but you > don't know that). Wubi is basically a disaster and is generating a lot > of negative associations with Ubuntu in novice's minds. > > Here's an alternate page where "Don't use Wubi" is given as the number > one piece of advice for getting Steam to run on Ubuntu: > > http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3079968 > > In short, Wubi needs to die a quick and painless death so we can get > on with providing positive experiences to new users of Ubuntu. > > -- > ubuntu-devel mailing list > ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel > I agree with the fact that Wubi should die. recently a friend of mine installed Ubuntu inside Windows 7 using Wubi and after a couple of days Ubuntu was no longer usable (it won't even boot). -- My Best Regards, *Oussama* -- ubuntu-devel mailing list ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
Re: Intention to drop Wubi from 13.04 release
This is an often repeated argument against Wubi, but there are some problems with it. 1. Wubi isn't supposed to compete head-to-head with a normal install. I've seen cases of people that aren't even aware they are using Wubi or what the differences are, and this is definitely an issue. So I raised this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/1078959 2. If point #1 is not understood then, yes, I can understand why people would get upset about Wubi. But imagine if every time someone burned a live CD and it failed and then we decided it was a problem and we should get rid of live CDs because it was making Ubuntu look bad. No, I don't believe that argument holds. 3. Wubi does in fact work well. I could forgive a newcomer to Ubuntu thinking "why do a normal install when Wubi works so well". I can hear you laughing, but this is actually stated often[*]. Yes there are bugs. Yes people have problems. But these need to be looked at without emotion and used to make a rational decision. Saying "I have a friend who..." or "I couldn't even get it working so..." or "Windows is unstable therefore..." just doesn't add anything of value. So to answer your main point... the journalist did make a mistake recommending Wubi. I haven't seen anyone in mainstream put forward Wubi as a viable long-term alternative or a production system. There should indeed be warnings. But we should IMO go further to understand what real positives and real negatives they are, and arrive at a reasoned decision. And I'm fine with that decision either way. Regards, bcbc [*] References 1. Comments in the same article you referenced 2. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2131454 (Wubi is no more) 3. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2093840 (Is WUBI worth it) 4. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1982669 (Wubi opinion/usage survey) On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 12:31 PM, Robert Bruce Park < robert.p...@canonical.com> wrote: > On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 04:09:35PM +0100, Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote: > > On 8 April 2013 18:01, bcbc bcbc wrote: > > > It's hard to make an informed decision without knowing the usage stats > of > > > Wubi. If it's quite low then I expect there'd be little impact, but if > it's > > > popular then it's taking a low-risk installation method away from > users who > > > might otherwise not have tried Ubuntu. Does Canonical have any > statistics on > > > this? > > > > > > > The point that it's not low-risk any more. It can cause data-loss on > > windows 8 side when it's hibernated. > > I can't find the original article right now, but I recently read a > gaming blog where some random journalist had attempted to install > Steam inside of a Wubi Ubuntu installation. His readers mercilessly > flamed him as being essentially a total idiot (because everybody "just > knows" that Wubi is *incredibly* terrible), and so he was forced to > try it again without Wubi. Had he not been a journalist, he would have > simply given up on Wubi and written Ubuntu off as an unstable product. > > The unfortunate reality is that if Wubi is your first experience with > Ubuntu, you're likely to come to the conclusion that Ubuntu is an > unstable mess, when really it's the fact that Windows is an unstable > base underneath your Ubuntu that is causing the problems (but you > don't know that). Wubi is basically a disaster and is generating a lot > of negative associations with Ubuntu in novice's minds. > > Here's an alternate page where "Don't use Wubi" is given as the number > one piece of advice for getting Steam to run on Ubuntu: > > http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3079968 > > In short, Wubi needs to die a quick and painless death so we can get > on with providing positive experiences to new users of Ubuntu. > -- ubuntu-devel mailing list ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
Re: Intention to drop Wubi from 13.04 release
I think the point in the original post was that Wubi 13.04 was broken and doesn't work with Windows 8 UEFI, not that there's a risk of data loss. There's also no evidence that I have seen to indicate that Wubi causes data loss in Windows 8. The Windows boot manager won't give you any choice if you have hibernated Windows, and therefore it's not possible to boot Wubi with normal hibernation. And if "fast-start" is enabled the Windows 8 boot manager also removes this hibernated system session prior to booting Wubi. This is more of a problem on a normal dual boot, and even then, unless you force-mount the NTFS partition you shouldn't see any data loss. You can refer to this bug report for more info: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ntfs-3g/+bug/1043149 The only issue shown there is if you enable hybrid-sleep (not switched on by default), and even then there's no data loss - just the partition can't be mounted so Wubi doesn't boot. So, if we go back to the original point, given that Wubi 13.04 is easily fixable, are your "guesstimates" of usage high or low? Are they based on the downloads of Wubi.exe? Any numbers on that? Regards, bcbc On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 8:09 AM, Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote: > On 8 April 2013 18:01, bcbc bcbc wrote: > > It's hard to make an informed decision without knowing the usage stats of > > Wubi. If it's quite low then I expect there'd be little impact, but if > it's > > popular then it's taking a low-risk installation method away from users > who > > might otherwise not have tried Ubuntu. Does Canonical have any > statistics on > > this? > > > > The point that it's not low-risk any more. It can cause data-loss on > windows 8 side when it's hibernated. > > W.r.t. statistics - we don't have them, as with all open-source > software it's free to distribute and we do not have any central point > to measure install base. And we will not be introducing one either, as > it is against our project. We can guesstimate, but it will be > guesstimates. > > > Re. the bugs. I had a look at "Wubi fails to detect 12.04.2 and 13.04 > AMD64 > > ISO" https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/1134770 and found that the > fix is > > a one-liner configuration file change (in data/isolist.ini). > > > > The fix for "13.04 installer doesn't create user account" > > https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/1155704 could be to simply remove > the > > disk-image installs from 13.04. This again is a two line removal from the > > same configuration file. > > > > I've patched and tested both 12.04.2 and 13.04 with these changes to > confirm > > they work. > > > > Re. Windows 8: that may not be solvable right now, but I expect there are > > still many more BIOS-based computers out there than UEFI. And the regular > > dual boot for UEFI has many problems as well. Wubi could probably be > smarter > > about checking whether Windows is booting through UEFI and exit > gracefully > > prior to downloading the ISO/diskimage. > > > > Window 8 + Wubi is dangerous regardless of BIOS/UEFI boot. > > Regards, > > Dmitrijs. > -- ubuntu-devel mailing list ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
EFI secure boot failure (grubx64.efi instead of shimx64.efi) + nvram space filled with kernel debug data
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1
Hi
This is a short update from a debugging session that started after my
raring 3.8.0-something, I believe -5, kernel failed to boot. My
firmware got me something looking like [1].
After disabling secure boot I discovered that my keyboard / touchpad
no longer work. I could work with a spare USB keyboard. Trying
additional upgrades did not help and I could not re-enable secure boot.
I joined #ubuntu-devel and started asking for help. I got great
support from slangasek (who will probably remind me to add essential
data that I may have omitted typing this at 1AM).
The debugging session found a few interesting problems:
1) efibootmgr -v listed grubx64.efi instead of shimx64.efi - we
believe that is the imminent cause of the secure boot failure as only
shimx64.efi is signed by the microsoft key
2) attempts to add the shim failed on lack of space, as shown below:
# efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p 1 -w -L ubuntu -l '\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi'
# echo $?
# cat relevant part of strace
open("/sys/firmware/efi/vars/new_var", O_WRONLY) = 3
write(3,
"B\0o\0o\0t\\\\0004\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"...,
2084) = -1 ENOSPC (No space left on device)
3) my efi variable flash/nvram was filled with debug entries from
numerous kernel oopses that I've encountered over the past few months.
It is questionable if oopses should be logged at all and if there
should be a mechanism that keeps data in nvram all the time. My
suggestion would be to not log oopses at all and definitely copy
debug- entries to the filesystem after each boot so that we don't keep
unbound amount of data there
4) attempts to rsync all efivars to disk before removing debug-*
variables crashed my system (I have photos of the backtrace if anyone
is interested).
5) rebooting after that worked fine (in non-secure mode)
6) removing debug-* variables worked okay
7) re-issuing efibootmgr command to install the shim worked okay
8) a reboot into secure mode worked okay but I lost my keyboard and
touchpad again (probably unrelated but I cannot be sure)
9) another reboot got keyboard / touchpad / secure boot to work
Somewhere early on I've downgraded grub2 to the previous version
(slangasek mentioned there was a recent upgrade and I still had the
old version on my local mirror)
Our conversation was logged on the #ubuntu-devel channel, I've posted
numerous pastebins to more detail. The conversation starts here [2]
I'd like to file bugs on the kernel debug / backtrace behavior as that
seems most serious to me. I'd like to file a bug on the grubx64.efi
image but I have no information that I can add that would seem
helpful. Perhaps if more people are affected this can go somewhere.
Thanks Steve!
ZK
[1]: https://plus.google.com/116315264177593873442/posts/9UUGFQ2cphM
[2]: http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2013/04/10/%23ubuntu-devel.html#t20:47
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Ubuntu Touch Summary (week 14)
Hi Everyone, Another good week of progress! Here are the highlights since last time: - Raring daily builds of Ubuntu Touch are happening (see Sergio's blogpost http://sergiusens.github.com/posts/initial-ubuntu-touch-raring-build.html) and are available here: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-touch-preview/daily-preinstalled/current/ - Dynamic apps lens! Yes, you can now install your very own applications and they will show up in the Applications Lens and can be launched directly from there. Nice work by the awesome Shell team to make that happen. - Core-apps in the image: Calendar, Clock and Calculator are now included in the image! Congrats to all of the community developers and to the design team for putting in the hard work to achieve this important milestone. They will continue to be updated daily so be on the lookout for ongoing features and improvements. - Blueprint, blueprints, blueprints: the team has been working hard on planning, designing an updating specs on components all over the stack. Check out the latest updates here: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/sprints/uds-1303 - camera-app: work underway to implement the video recording feature - gallery-app: work in progress to improve performance and implement HUD actions - phone-app: work underway to split app into separate backend and ui components for telephony, contacts and messaging. See blueprints for phone-app (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/appdev-1303-apps-telephony) and contacts service (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/client-1303-contact-service) - telephony/MMS: lots of great work in progress around GPRS support, MMS and SIM initialization. See https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/client-1303-telephony-stack. Also telepathy-ofono connection manager is in process of being rebased to use telepathy-qt. - Media Playback: good progress being made on GStreamer->Android pipeline bridge to enable hardware accelerated playback via GStreamer. See https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/client-1303-hw-video-decode-rendering-support Also make sure to check https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices, as the list of supported devices keeps growing almost in a daily basis. Newly added since last time was support for Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. Cheers, Bill -- ubuntu-devel mailing list ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
Patch pilot report 2013-04-10
Hey everyone, (I was feeling in the mood of doing some sponsoring this afternoon so I moved my shift, scheduled for tomorrow, to today.) Here is what I got done (started with 35 items, down to 30 with some that will fall in the next update and some new one that got added while I was working on the queue): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gedit-plugins/+bug/1165742 the suggested fix was not correct but was enough to figure out the issue, tweaked and uploaded a fix https://code.launchpad.net/~geoubuntu/ubuntu/raring/sessioninstaller/1049467/+merge/157605 sponsored https://launchpadlibrarian.net/136603963/emacs-fix-column-shrinkage.diff sponsored precise sru https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/raring/+source/python-gnutls/+bug/1013798 sponsored for precise/quantal/raring https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bitcoin/+bug/1159832 the debdiff was already uploaded, unsubscribed sponsors https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk+3.0/+bug/1160379 unsubscribing sponsors, upstream is not really happy with the current solution and we don't want to SRU something they think is buggy https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-cuda-toolkit/+bug/1162945 the debdiff was already uploaded, unsubscribed sponsors https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/flightgear/+bug/1077624 unsubscribing sponsors from the bug, that's already in the queue through a merge request https://code.launchpad.net/~mitya57/ubuntu/precise/marble/lp1049473/+merge/156256 sponsored Cheers, Sebastien Bacher -- ubuntu-devel mailing list ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
Re: Coverity static analysis for C, C++ and Java code
On 10/04/13 13:41, Loïc Minier wrote: > On Mon, Apr 08, 2013, James Hunt wrote: >> We're already using it for critical packages including Upstart and >> Whoopsie [3], but it would be great to expand its scope to make it use >> the norm rather than the exception. > > Cool! How did you hook it up to the Upstart sources though? I haven't done that yet - currently a slightly manual process but looking at ways to automate further (starting with a daily cron :) Ideally, I'd like to have all MP's scanned. at release > time, or e.g. from some Jenkins job pushing the latest version daily? > > Does this scan the Ubuntu branch of Upstart, the upstream one or both? I do both. > > Would it be ok license-wise and hard for us to do this at a larger > scale; e.g. have some kind of daily job that pushes the latest Ubuntu > source packages from a set to be tested? I don't know. Coverity seemed to have relaxed the restriction that the individual that requests Coverity scans for a project be the "project owner". If you look at the "Role with the Project" option on [1], there are now 6 values including "other". I'll contact them and see if it might be possible... Kind regards, James. [1] - http://scan.coverity.com/project_register.html James Hunt #upstart on freenode http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/upstart-devel -- ubuntu-devel mailing list ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
Re: Coverity static analysis for C, C++ and Java code
On Mon, Apr 08, 2013, James Hunt wrote: > We're already using it for critical packages including Upstart and > Whoopsie [3], but it would be great to expand its scope to make it use > the norm rather than the exception. Cool! How did you hook it up to the Upstart sources though? at release time, or e.g. from some Jenkins job pushing the latest version daily? Does this scan the Ubuntu branch of Upstart, the upstream one or both? Would it be ok license-wise and hard for us to do this at a larger scale; e.g. have some kind of daily job that pushes the latest Ubuntu source packages from a set to be tested? -- Loïc Minier -- ubuntu-devel mailing list ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
Re: Further Coverity info
On 09/04/13 22:28, Scott Ritchie wrote: > On 4/9/13 7:34 AM, Allan LeSage wrote: >> * As part of our Jenkins CI program, we're Coverity-scanning merge >> proposals, and disapproving them upon finding a new defect: >> https://code.launchpad.net/~mrazik/unico/coverity/+merge/156877 . > > As an upstream (wine) that uses Coverity, I'm curious how we can get this sort > of feature in the free tier. From what I can tell Coverity just periodically > scans our git tree periodically and produces a list of reports. > > We have a testbot that scans incoming patches (submitted via mailing list) to > measure new defects: in Wine's case this is defined as tests that fail on one > of > the bot VMs, but if I could invoke coverity directly it could in principle > scan > an arbitrary patchset. > > Do I need to setup some elaborate system of making a new git branch with the > incoming patch set and then automatically asking coverity to scan that > branch? Or can it be manually invoked with arbitrary patches? Yes - you can run it manually once you have a login... Wine is already shown in the list of Coverity projects [1], so all you need to do is: - Request a login by mailing scan-ad...@coverity.com and access to the Wine Coverity project. - Download the Coverity scan tool and run it across any version of the wine codebase. - Submit your "snapshot" (Coverity scan tool output) using [3] or [4]. - Login to http://scan5.coverity.com and view the results. Here's an example of the web interface: http://ubuntuone.com/7Ufq2dHdgGVeqJ16ftqJk1 The first two steps are one-off activities of course. Note that the "snapshots" can be any arbitrary version of wine - you differentiate them by adding a tag and/or version on the upload page [3] or using the -b/-t coverity-scan options. For example, here's how I might upload a scan of Upstart manually using [4]: $ coverity-submit -t lp:upstart-20130410-foobar-baz.2 upstart This will: - clean the build tree - run the build with Coverity - upload the snapshot You'll get a mail from Coverity once the scan is available (takes a few minutes for me, although might take longer for Wine ;-). If you have multiple versions/tags, when you login to http://scan5.coverity.com, select the appropriate version from the Snapshots menu on the left. Kind regards, James. [1] - http://scan.coverity.com/all-projects.html [2] - http://scan.coverity.com/start/ [3] - http://scan.coverity.com/upload.html [4] - http://www.catb.org/~esr/coverity-submit/ James Hunt #upstart on freenode http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/upstart-devel -- ubuntu-devel mailing list ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
Re: Intention to drop Wubi from 13.04 release
On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 04:09:35PM +0100, Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote: > On 8 April 2013 18:01, bcbc bcbc wrote: > > It's hard to make an informed decision without knowing the usage stats of > > Wubi. If it's quite low then I expect there'd be little impact, but if it's > > popular then it's taking a low-risk installation method away from users who > > might otherwise not have tried Ubuntu. Does Canonical have any statistics on > > this? > > > > The point that it's not low-risk any more. It can cause data-loss on > windows 8 side when it's hibernated. I can't find the original article right now, but I recently read a gaming blog where some random journalist had attempted to install Steam inside of a Wubi Ubuntu installation. His readers mercilessly flamed him as being essentially a total idiot (because everybody "just knows" that Wubi is *incredibly* terrible), and so he was forced to try it again without Wubi. Had he not been a journalist, he would have simply given up on Wubi and written Ubuntu off as an unstable product. The unfortunate reality is that if Wubi is your first experience with Ubuntu, you're likely to come to the conclusion that Ubuntu is an unstable mess, when really it's the fact that Windows is an unstable base underneath your Ubuntu that is causing the problems (but you don't know that). Wubi is basically a disaster and is generating a lot of negative associations with Ubuntu in novice's minds. Here's an alternate page where "Don't use Wubi" is given as the number one piece of advice for getting Steam to run on Ubuntu: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3079968 In short, Wubi needs to die a quick and painless death so we can get on with providing positive experiences to new users of Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-devel mailing list ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
