UDS Lucid was a busy time for the Kernel Team. They chose a new kernel for the Lucid Lynx release, they reviewed their policies for Stable Updates, reviewed their kernel delta and configuration, and much more. Here is a very brief overview of their decisions for those who are interested. I should warn you that this might get a bit geeky.
The primary decision for the kernel team at UDS is to choose the base kernel version for the release. For Lucid this will be 2.6.32. This version has just released providing the maximum stabalization time, it also is expected to be the kernel of choice for long term releases from other major distributions (SUSE, Fedora?). The kernel team will also keep ext4 as their primary filesystem.
They also reviewed their Stable Release Update policy, moving to a more upstream stable branch oriented policy. The team will be taking upstream stable updates for longer and preferring those for Lucid.
The team reviewed their Ubuntu delta, the drivers, and patches they are carrying. They plan to update all of their Ubuntu drivers except for drbd. drbd is primarily consumed by the server team and they use a dkms module to get a more up to date version. On the patch side they have identified a number of redundant patches which have been dropped, and a number which should be moved upstream.
The team has decided to experiment with backporting newer kernels onto LTS releases for Lucid. This will involve provision of a kernel from later cycles into Lucid, supported on certified platforms. The policy here is being firmed up now.
For graphics, they chose to enable Radeon Kernel Mode Settings by default and to seriously look at enabling Nouveau for Lucid. This should bring a flicker-free Plymouth boot to the majority of users, but for people using the 2D-only "Nouveau" NVidia driver on Nvidia chipsets, they will have to sacrifice things like 3D compiz and VDAPU video playback. Confused? Read more about Plymouth and KMS here...
For those who crave more detail on these and a couple of other key initiatives can find more information at the following wiki page, which they will be keeping up to date with the current state of the union for the kernel http://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/UDSLucid
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kernel-team/2009-December/007948.html
Showing posts with label kernel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kernel. Show all posts
Dec 7, 2009
Aug 20, 2009
Linux Development Thrives - 130 Patches Every Day
Perhaps you've read my post "Manufacturers are Requesting Linux Drivers", but now there's a more in-depth and very interesting report. The newly published report by the Linux Foundation provides insight into the growth of the Linux kernel development community. It reveals that the entire code base has grown by 2.7 million lines over the past year while an average of 5.45 patches are accepted every hour, which is over 130 patches every day. The average kernel development cycle currently runs for 81 days - just under twelve weeks. A good geeky read.
You can download the report from the Linux Foundation website.
Source: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/08/linux-dev-community-is-growing-5-patches-accepted-per-hour.ars
You can download the report from the Linux Foundation website.
Source: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/08/linux-dev-community-is-growing-5-patches-accepted-per-hour.ars
Feb 12, 2009
Jaunty Kernel News
Pete Graner has tried to recap some of the more interesting things that have been going on with Ubuntu, specifically the kernel happenings in the Jaunty Jackalope release.
The Platform Team met in Berlin for the Jaunty Platform Sprint for the week of 2-6 Feb. This was an incredible event with the vast majority of the Canonical Engineering teams. Here is some of the roadmap items and the most interesting highlights...
Kernel Version:
The Jaunty Kernel version will be 2.6.28. The 2.6.29 kernel was considered, but it was not selected however due to all of the major changes. The primary reasons were due to the large number new features that are scheduled to land in it. Regression of functionality is a large concern and there would be a good chance of that happening given when estimated date that Linus will declare it baked. Unfortunately it just doesn't line up with the Jaunty release cycle. On the bright side... for Jaunty+1 we will have time to shake out any issues and are looking towards 2.6.30 or .31
Suspend & Resume:
Suspend & resume is one of the top priorities for this cycle. We ran a suspend and resume workshop with every notebook at the sprint.
Surprisingly we had a small number of failures. Most of them were on resume with NVidia video. We did not test the priority divers only the free ones. Out of 65 machines tested (various models) there were 12 failures.
We will be issuing a Call For Testing at the Beta release, however for those of you that want to play along at home early you can visit the Suspend/Resume wiki here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/SuspendResumeTesting and some more of the background material is here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/SuspendResume
Other notable suspend and resume news for Jaunty:
* There is a new testing script to test (and stress test) suspend resume.
* Suspend/Resume script will also be integrated into checkbox (aka System->Administration->System Testing) for ease of testing.
* If a suspend/resume cycle fails it is detected by apport and the user will have the option of filing a bug
Source: Pete Graner...
The Platform Team met in Berlin for the Jaunty Platform Sprint for the week of 2-6 Feb. This was an incredible event with the vast majority of the Canonical Engineering teams. Here is some of the roadmap items and the most interesting highlights...
Kernel Version:
The Jaunty Kernel version will be 2.6.28. The 2.6.29 kernel was considered, but it was not selected however due to all of the major changes. The primary reasons were due to the large number new features that are scheduled to land in it. Regression of functionality is a large concern and there would be a good chance of that happening given when estimated date that Linus will declare it baked. Unfortunately it just doesn't line up with the Jaunty release cycle. On the bright side... for Jaunty+1 we will have time to shake out any issues and are looking towards 2.6.30 or .31
Suspend & Resume:
Suspend & resume is one of the top priorities for this cycle. We ran a suspend and resume workshop with every notebook at the sprint.
Surprisingly we had a small number of failures. Most of them were on resume with NVidia video. We did not test the priority divers only the free ones. Out of 65 machines tested (various models) there were 12 failures.
We will be issuing a Call For Testing at the Beta release, however for those of you that want to play along at home early you can visit the Suspend/Resume wiki here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/SuspendResumeTesting and some more of the background material is here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/SuspendResume
Other notable suspend and resume news for Jaunty:
* There is a new testing script to test (and stress test) suspend resume.
* Suspend/Resume script will also be integrated into checkbox (aka System->Administration->System Testing) for ease of testing.
* If a suspend/resume cycle fails it is detected by apport and the user will have the option of filing a bug
Source: Pete Graner...
Jan 5, 2009
Suspend/resume solved in Kernel 2.6.29
It sounds like one of the major bugs in Linux has been solved. On Linus' blog he wrote two posts on suspend/resume. The first one titled "Debugging hell" and the last one titled "Life is good again...". If this fix is for any suspend/resume in general is still questionable?
As a response to a question in the comments, Linus wrote:
Source: http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/
As a response to a question in the comments, Linus wrote:
...it's too late to hit the 2.6.28 release (the fix is fairly small, but very invasive), so it will go in early in the 2.6.29 merge window...
Source: http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/
Nov 15, 2008
16 video interviews with Linux Kernel hackers
The Linux Foundation has published a series of video interviews from the annual Linux Kernel Summit held Sept. 15-16 in Portland, Oregon. In the videos, 16 developers — including Linux creator Linus Torvalds (shown at left) — discuss their development activities.
The Kernel Summit is an annual invitation-only meeting during which kernel developers discuss the current state of the Linux kernel and plans for future development.
Below is a list of the 16 kernel developer interviews from the Summit. Each is 5-10 minutes in length, and is available for viewing in YouTube, Ogg, and Flash formats. http://www.linuxfoundation.org/events/video/gallery
* Linus Torvalds of The Linux Foundation - speaks about the Linux Kernel Summit and shares his thoughts on kernel quality, regressions and the state of the current release cycle. He also shares his thoughts on userland tools and the Git development community.
* Rafael Wysocki of Novell - discusses his presentation on regressions, the importance of getting more kernel developers involved in the regression mailing list and the importance of testing.
* Chris Mason of Oracle - shares his thoughts on the benefits of the Linux Kernel Summit, the filesystem and reporting workshop, the importance of file systems to Linux users, BtrFS (Butter FS) and Oracle’s involvement within the Linux community.
* Greg Kroah-Hartman of Novell - shares his thoughts on the current Kernel release cycle and how it impacts enterprise releases. He also discusses his work with the staging server, the Linux Driver Project and the importance of the Linux Plumbers’ Conference.
* Mathieu Desnoyers of Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal - describes the LTTng project, the state of Linux monitoring tools and an in-depth comparison of the existing tools.
* Paul Mackerras of IBM - talks about Patchwork, a web-based system that creates an interactive webpage that lists all patches and corresponding comments to allow for easy review and filtering. He also discusses the implementation of the tool by other maintainers for their projects.
* John Linville of Red Hat - speaks about his experience at the Kernel Summit and summarizes the state of wireless LAN networking in Linux and the importance of supporting vendors that are more “open.”
* Stephen Rothwell of IBM - Stephen talks about his work on the Linux-next tree, the process he follows when making a release, the benefits to core maintainers and the challenges involved in maintaining the tree.
* Kristen Accardi of Intel - talks about the Linux Plumbers’ Conference, the evolution of Linux conferences and about open source development being a viable career option for students.
* Dirk Hohndel of Intel - speaks about the past, present and future of the Kernel Summit. He also discusses the importance of open-sourcing drivers and the benefits having drivers be part of the “upstream.”
* Dave Jones of Red Hat - talks about unifying boot time tools for the Linux kernel, his presentation on speeding up boot time and what can be done to improve interaction between the userspace and kernel communities.
* David Miller of Red Hat - speaks about the state of Linux and Linux networking and his experience speaking at Linux Symposium Japan.
* Len Brown of Intel - provides an update on Linux power management, how close we are to parity with other operating systems and how developers can get involved with power management through testing and bug submissions.
* Frank Eigler of Red Hat - speaks about the SystemTap, a tool for systems administrators that lets them see what is happening in a running kernel. He also shares his experience as a first-time attendee of the Kernel Summit and the feedback he received from the core maintainers.
* Ted Ts’o of The Linux Foundation and IBM - talks about the past, present and future of the Linux Kernel Summit, Linux 3.0 and the “hallway tracks” at the Kernel Summit.
* Jon Corbet of LWN.net - talks about the his involvement with the Kernel Summit, Linux 3.0, the state of documentation and the growth of the Linux kernel community and the shifting demographic as involvement becomes more global.
A detailed report on what took place at the Summit can be found here.
Lots of interesting insights into the status and future of Linux!
The Kernel Summit is an annual invitation-only meeting during which kernel developers discuss the current state of the Linux kernel and plans for future development.
Below is a list of the 16 kernel developer interviews from the Summit. Each is 5-10 minutes in length, and is available for viewing in YouTube, Ogg, and Flash formats. http://www.linuxfoundation.org/events/video/gallery
* Linus Torvalds of The Linux Foundation - speaks about the Linux Kernel Summit and shares his thoughts on kernel quality, regressions and the state of the current release cycle. He also shares his thoughts on userland tools and the Git development community.
* Rafael Wysocki of Novell - discusses his presentation on regressions, the importance of getting more kernel developers involved in the regression mailing list and the importance of testing.
* Chris Mason of Oracle - shares his thoughts on the benefits of the Linux Kernel Summit, the filesystem and reporting workshop, the importance of file systems to Linux users, BtrFS (Butter FS) and Oracle’s involvement within the Linux community.
* Greg Kroah-Hartman of Novell - shares his thoughts on the current Kernel release cycle and how it impacts enterprise releases. He also discusses his work with the staging server, the Linux Driver Project and the importance of the Linux Plumbers’ Conference.
* Mathieu Desnoyers of Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal - describes the LTTng project, the state of Linux monitoring tools and an in-depth comparison of the existing tools.
* Paul Mackerras of IBM - talks about Patchwork, a web-based system that creates an interactive webpage that lists all patches and corresponding comments to allow for easy review and filtering. He also discusses the implementation of the tool by other maintainers for their projects.
* John Linville of Red Hat - speaks about his experience at the Kernel Summit and summarizes the state of wireless LAN networking in Linux and the importance of supporting vendors that are more “open.”
* Stephen Rothwell of IBM - Stephen talks about his work on the Linux-next tree, the process he follows when making a release, the benefits to core maintainers and the challenges involved in maintaining the tree.
* Kristen Accardi of Intel - talks about the Linux Plumbers’ Conference, the evolution of Linux conferences and about open source development being a viable career option for students.
* Dirk Hohndel of Intel - speaks about the past, present and future of the Kernel Summit. He also discusses the importance of open-sourcing drivers and the benefits having drivers be part of the “upstream.”
* Dave Jones of Red Hat - talks about unifying boot time tools for the Linux kernel, his presentation on speeding up boot time and what can be done to improve interaction between the userspace and kernel communities.
* David Miller of Red Hat - speaks about the state of Linux and Linux networking and his experience speaking at Linux Symposium Japan.
* Len Brown of Intel - provides an update on Linux power management, how close we are to parity with other operating systems and how developers can get involved with power management through testing and bug submissions.
* Frank Eigler of Red Hat - speaks about the SystemTap, a tool for systems administrators that lets them see what is happening in a running kernel. He also shares his experience as a first-time attendee of the Kernel Summit and the feedback he received from the core maintainers.
* Ted Ts’o of The Linux Foundation and IBM - talks about the past, present and future of the Linux Kernel Summit, Linux 3.0 and the “hallway tracks” at the Kernel Summit.
* Jon Corbet of LWN.net - talks about the his involvement with the Kernel Summit, Linux 3.0, the state of documentation and the growth of the Linux kernel community and the shifting demographic as involvement becomes more global.
A detailed report on what took place at the Summit can be found here.
Lots of interesting insights into the status and future of Linux!
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