Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?
On 9/16/22 9:23 AM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:47:19AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > On 9/16/22 12:12 AM, Nilesh Patra wrote:
> >>
> > > On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 06:17:02PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > bugs are important. I am not a DD so my bugs are not as important to the
> > maintainers who have a greater responsibility to respond to a DD's bug than
> > to an unknown user's bug. That is the way it should be. No problem here, and
> > please no one reply and say I am complaining. I am not. I am just seeing
> > how things work at Debian and I think they work fairly well.
> >
> Hi Chuck,
>
> *Just because you're a DD* is not a priority call for bugs. At least one
> of the bugs you reference is for Xen and seems to have bounced between
> Debian and kernel devs. and still, perhaps, not to be fixed, for example.
>
> Xen is a much lower priority than it used to be when it was the first
> hypervisor in common use. There are fewer maintainers _anywhere_ with
> deep knowledge of Xen. If the bug with Xen keyboard doesnt' get fixed
> quickly in Debian, it may be bacause there isn't a maintainer / there
> are other higher priority bugs / it genuinely should be fixed upstream.
>
> If you know a fix - you can talk to the Xen maintainer in Debian, you could
> submit a patch, you could ask them if they want to work with you to see
> it fixed. If they say it's a wishlist bug / they have higher priorities on
> their tiem - you can still help.
Ben Hutchings marked it important over a year ago, and that is it's
severity today.
>
> You can politely ask the Linux kernel maintainers similarly. You can ask the
> Linux Foundation at xenproject.org if the bug is still there in their version.
> It's a "do-ocracy" that may rely on you to chase.
I have done polite pings. If you say there is more I can do, I beg to
disagree. I can think of many ways to fix the bug. It could be done
by Xen upstream by patching the driver. It could be done in systemd/udev
configuration files. It could be done by increasing the size of a buffer
in the kernel. I don't know what the best way to do it is. I need feedback
from those who do, but they will not give me any. I am willing to help.
If the Xen upstream people want to patch the device driver that is causing
the trouble, I would be willing to help with that. For that, I would need to
contact Xen upstream, not the Debian Xen Team unless I can convince the
Debian Xen Team to ask the Xen upstream developers to try to fix it.
I actually think that is the best answer, and you make a good point
about Xen upstream, it really is struggling these days and I do not think
that bug is going to be a priority for them. Although the bug is
with a Xen virtual device driver, the upstream project that needs to
patch it is the Linux kernel.
Andrew, could you ask the Debian Xen Team if they would be willing
to support Ben Hutchings' request that the Linux kernel accept a patch to
fix Debian #983357? I am willing to do testing and even suggest
perhaps an RFC patch to the Linux kernel of the buggy driver if the
Linux kernel for some reason cannot accept the patch Ben Hutchings
proposed which increases the size of a buffer in the kernel. The reason
I ask you to do it is because I doubt the Debian Xen Team will listen to
me. But they might listen to you.
Best regards,
Chuck
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