The Debian Kernel team recently had a series of face to face meetings during the Linux Plumbers Conference [1]. The DPL managed to arrange for the whole team to be present in Oregon at the same time, a representative of the release team was also present. The LPC conference venue allowed the kernel team to interact with the upstream developers and other distributions kernel teams in an positive and productive way. The Debian kernel team meetings ran over four days and covered a large number of topics, the abridged minutes are presented here, the full meeting minutes are also available [2]. Co-operation and version synchronisation with other distributions ----------------------------------------------------------------- This discussion involved timing of the Debian freeze and what implications this might have on the kernel version selected for squeeze. The version selected by other distributions was also discussed. In conclusion the 2.6.32 release will probably be the initial kernel version shipped with squeeze. Separate firmware, what is left to do? -------------------------------------- A constructive discussion was held about the outstanding firmware issues, how the team addresses them and how we might work with upstream to address our DSFG issues with kernel sources. Kernel Mode Setting transition ------------------------------ It was resolved that KMS will be enabled at build time but disabled at run time by default. The X packages will be able to use modprobe config files to enable KMS at run time as required. Feature patches --------------- These are patches the Debian kernels have for major features which are not upstream. openvz ++++++ Debian will continue to support this system with assistance from the openvz developers. rt patchset +++++++++++ This is apparently not ready for production use and will not be present in Debian kernels. vserver +++++++ This feature will be present in squeeze but will be marked as deprecated and a migration path to Linux containers investigated. xen dom 0 +++++++++ This feature will be included in the squeeze kernel release subject to ongoing stabilisation work. The feature will be marked as deprecated and will not appear in future releases. IDE to libata decision ---------------------- Debian will perform this transition using the udev packages in a similar way to Ubuntu. The Ubuntu developers have offered their assistance with this transition. preemption ---------- This feature will be enabled for the squeeze release. OSS --- This has been a deprecated kernel interface for some time and will be disabled for squeeze with mechanisms put in place to deal with legacy users. bug triage and tagging ---------------------- The kernel team has a large number of bugs, many of which contain inadequate information. The team decided that a policy for bugs and patches will be produced and enforced. We will also be improving the bug reporting by improving the reportbug usage. Moving the Debian Kernel packaging to Git ----------------------------------------- A robust discussion happened with several views and ideas expressed. The final outcome was that the team as a whole favoured the move to git and that further investigation and implementation would occur. Coordination with release team and D-I -------------------------------------- Several issues were covered the main item from this session was an investigation as to if udeb generation should be merged with the main kernel source package. Out of tree modules ------------------- After some discussion it was resolved to remove linux-modules-extra and -nonfree as they are an impossible to support properly. A few modules the project really must have will be placed directly into the linux-2.6 source The kernel team will endorse the use of dkms as a way for out-of-tree module maintainers to get their modules auto-built. 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. We will be rationalising this to two methods, an upstream merged "make deb-pkg" target and the linux-2.6 Debian source. We will also be rationalising the kernel postinst and co-ordinating our efforts with the Ubuntu developers. New lists to co-ordinate ------------------------ There is a mailing list which we might resurrect for general distribution co-ordination kernel-packagers@vger.org And a list the Debian kernel team might want to join to co-ordinate with Ubuntu kernel-team@lists.ubuntu.com Debug Packages -------------- This refers to debugging information from current packages, not a separate configuration, useful for crash tools. This will be investigated further. Automated build and test ------------------------ This might be a useful tool in the future and work is ongoing. Experimental ------------ Some upload experimental uploads of the 2.6.31 version will be made. [1] http://linuxplumbersconf.org/2009/ [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2009/10/msg00613.html
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