Random musings about Free/Libre/Open Source Software - and also about Linux and the way that the world is, gadgets and trends
*Busy* day in Cambridge. A roomful of people, large numbers of laptops and a lot of parallel installations. Joined here by Emyr, Chris, Helen and Simon with Isy doing speech installs from her university accommodation. Two Andy's always makes it interesting. Steve providing breakfast, as ever. We're almost there: the last test install is being repeated to flush out a possible bug. Other release…
All finished and wrapping up. The bug I thought was fixed has been identified on two distinct sets of hardware. There are workarounds: the most sensible is *not* to use i386 without a modeset parameter but to just use amd64 instead. amd64 works on the identical problematic hardware in question - just use 64 bit.
Almost finished the testing we're going to do at 15:29 UTC. It's all been good - we've found that at least one of the major bug reports from 12.10 is not reproducible now. All good - and many thanks to all testers: Sledge, rattusrattus, egw, smcv (and me).
We're now well under way: Been joined by a Simon McVittie (smcv) and we're almost through testing most of the standard images. Live image testing is being worked through. All good so far without identifying problems other than mistyping :)
In Cottenham with Andy and the usual suspects. The point release update files are already on the servers - anyone can do an "apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade" and update any running machine. This machine has just been upgraded and "just worked". Here to do release testing for the images that we will end up publishing later in the day. Expecting one more of us to turn up a bit later. Team will…
We're part way through the testing of release media. Rat tusRattus, Isy, Sledge, smcv and Helen in Cambridge, a new tester Blew in Manchester, another new tester MerCury[m] and also highvoltage in South Africa. Everything is going well so far and we're chasing through the test schedule. Sorry not to be there in Cambridgeshire with friends - but the room is fairly small and busy :) [UPDATE/EDIT -…
LATE NEWS I haven't blogged until now: I should have done from Thursday onwards. It's a joy to be here in Cambridge at ARM HQ. Lots of people I recognise from last year here: lots *not* here because this mini-conference is a month before the next one in Toulouse and many people can't attend both. Two days worth of chatting, working on bits and pieces, chatting and informal meetings was a very good…
We're doing fairly well: Debian release team have been working really hard on a double point release today. Final release for Bullseye as 11.11 as it moves to LTS. 12.7 Bookworm install media finishing tests - it's been quite a long day so far. For 11.11 we're part way through media tests. We've been joined by a lot of enthusiastic folk from Cape Town who've been a great help. Always nice to see…
A double length Debian release means the Release Team don't get much peace What with last minute breaks And the time that it takes Treat them with respect today, please The media teams on the hook As we follow our normal play book With laptops all primed The images are timed Once we're told we'll start taking our look This is the last time for 11 And for Bookworm, it's just 12.7 Give us time for…
I have had excellent colleagues both at my day job and, especially, in Debian over the last thirty-odd years. Several have attempted to give me good advice - others have been exemplars. People retire: sadly, people die. What impression do you want to leave behind when you leave here? Belatedly, I've come to realise that obduracy, sheer bloody mindedness, force of will and obstinacy will only get…
It's been a LONG day: two point releases in a day takes of the order of twelve or thirteen hours of fairly solid work on behalf of those doing the releases and testing. Thanks firstly to the main Debian release team for all the initial work. Thanks to Isy, RattusRattus, Sledge and egw in Cottenham, smcv and Helen closer to the centre of Cambridge, cacin and others who have dropped in and out of…
That's all folks ... Sadly, nothing too much to report. I delivered a very quick three slides lightning talk on Accessibility, WCAG [Web Content Accessibility Guidelines] version 2.2 and a request for Debian to do better WCAG 2.2: WCAG 2.2 Abstract Debian-accessibility mailing list link: debian-accessibility I watched the other lightning talks but then left at 1500 - missing three good talks - to…
Quick recap of slides and safety information for the day from Steve McIntyre Now into the Release Team questions following a release team overview. A roomful of people all asking questions which are focused and provoke more questions - how unlike a Debian session :) May just have talked myself into giving a lightning talk this afternoon :) Now about to have a talk about from Sudip about OpenQA,…
A great talk on SteamOS progress to effective boot loaders for atomic OS updates. How to produce something that will allow instant updates and instant fallbacks when updating a whole OS image - lots of explanation - and it's good when three or four people who are directly interested in problems and solutions round, for example, Secure Boot are in the room. Jessica Clarke on CHERI, Morello and…
A quick one slide presentation from Helmut on how to use Debian without sudo - Sudo Apt Purge Sudo A presentation on upcoming Ph.D research on Digital Obsolescence - from Eda Antarctic and Arctic research from Carlos Pina i Estany * Amazing * what you can get into three well chosen slides. Ten minutes until the afternoon's talks
So following Emanuele's talk on a Lenovo X13s, we're now at the Debian on Mobile BoF (Birds of a feather) discussion session from Arnaud Ferraris Discussion and questions on how best to support many variants of mobile phones: the short answer seems to be "it's still *hard* - too many devices around to add individual tweaks for every phone and manufacturer. One thing that may not have been audible…
And we're here - a couple of lectures in. Welcome from one Steve, deep internals of ARM from another Steve. A room filling with people - and now a lecture I really need to listen to on a machine I'd like to own. As ever, the hallway track is interesting - and you find people who know you from IRC or mailing lists. Four screens and a lecture theatre layout. Here we go. Video team doing a great job,…
Another really good day at ARM. Still lots of coffee and good food - supplemented by a cooked breakfast if you were early enough :) Lots of small groups of people working earnestly in the main lecture theatre and a couple of meeting rooms and the soft seating area: various folk arriving ready for tomorrow. Video team setting up in the afternoon and running up servers and cabling - all ready for a…
Motivation Andy (RattusRattus) and I have been formalising instructions for using Pete Batard's version of Tianocore (and therefore UEFI booting) for the Raspberry Pi 4 together with a Debian arm64 netinst to make a modified Debian installer on a USB stick which "just works" for a Raspberry Pi 4. Thanks also to Steve McIntyre for initial notes that got this working for us and also to Emmanuele…
At Arm for two days before the mini-Debconf this weekend. First time at Arm for a few years: huge new buildings, shiny lecture theatre. Arm have made us very welcome. A superb buffet lunch and unlimited coffee plus soft drinks - I think they know what Debian folk are like. Not enough power blocks laid out at the beginning - only one per table - but we soon fixed that 😀 The room is full of Debian…
Over in Cambridge with RattusRattus, Sledge, egw and Isy. Andy is very kindly putting us up. We're almost all of the way through testing 12.2 and some of the way through testing 11.8. It's a LONG day - heads down into laptops and relatively quiet - I think we're all tired and we've a way to go yet.
Building a mirror for rpm-based distributions. I've already described in brief how I built a mirror that currently mirrors Debian and Ubuntu on a daily basis. That was relatively straightforward given that I know how to install Debian and configure a basic system without a GUI and the ftpsync scripts are well maintained, I can pull some archives and get one pushed to me such that I've always got…
And nothing changes: rediscovered from past Andrew at his first Cambridge BBQ and almost the first blog post here: "House full of people I knew only from email, some very old friends. Wires and leads filling the front room floor - laptops _everywhere_ . ... Thirty second rule on sofa space - if you left for more than about 30 seconds you had to sit on the floor when you got back (I jammed myself…
There's been a very successful barbeque running in the garden: burgers, sausages, beer, vegetarian dishes and then ice cream. The chance to catch up with people you only meet in IRC. Talking and laughter - and probably a couple of games of Mao. Thanks also to our sponsors - Collabora, Codethink and RattusRattus for contributions to food and drink.
The meat has been fetched: those of us in the house are about to get bacon sandwiches. Pepper the dog is in the garden. Time for the mayhem to start, I think. Various folk are travelling here so it will soon be crowded: the weather is sunny but cool and it looks good for a three day weekend. This is a huge effort that falls to Steve and Jo and a huge disruption for them each year - for which many…