F16: Kernel bug with USB disks ?
by Terry Barnaby
Hi,
I am using the latest F16 kernel: 3.3.0-4.fc16.i686.PAE and am having
problems with a MicroSD card connected to a USB card reader. This has
been working fine until recently (at least in F14 on the same hardware).
The problem is that "umount" does not appear to be working correctly.
I have an ext3 file system on the card. I can mount it, and I can copy
files to it. However when I use the "umount ..." command it returns
instantly (should sync the files to the card). The system says the card
is unmounted (at least it is not listed with mount, df etc).
However if I run sync, there is a lot of disk activity to the card ...
Also if I try and run "mkfs" it says the device in in use ...
If I mount a blank card it lists the files present on the previous card ...
This sounds like a nasty kernel bug ...
Anyone else seen this ?
Cheers
Terry
12 years
RFC: Primary architecture promotion requirements
by Matthew Garrett
This is very much a draft, but I'd like to start a discussion regarding
what we expect from primary architectures. Feedback not only welcome,
but actively desired.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secondary architectures in Fedora are subject to looser constraints than
primary architectures for two primary reasons:
1) To make it easier to bootstrap an architecture without the overhead
of the primary architecture release engineering process
2) To avoid primary architecture development being held up by poorly
developed or niche architectures
Promoting an architecture to primary architecture status is a
significant responsibility. It implies that the port is sufficiently
mature that little in the way of further architecture-specific changes
or rebuilds will be required, and also that it has enough development
effort to avoid it delaying the development of other primary
architectures. Further, it means that the architecture becomes part of
the overall Fedora brand. Fedora is an integrated Linux distribution
rather than a technology collection, and as such there are various
expectations that the overall Fedora experience will be consistent over
all primary architectures.
In order to ensure that these expectations are met, secondary
architectures must meet various criteria before they can be promoted:
1) There must be adequate representation for the architecture on the
Fedora infrastructure and release engineering teams.
2) All builds must occur on Fedora-maintained build servers.
3) Where technically possible, all supported hardware targets must be
supported via Anaconda. Exceptions are limited to highly resource
constrained devices or hardware which provides no means for simultaneous
support of install and target media.
4) All supported platforms must have kernels built from the Fedora
kernel SRPM and enabled by default in the spec file. Each kernel must be
built in a timely manner for every SRPM upload.
5) Sufficient developer resources must be available to fix any
architecture-specific issues in such a way that they do not delay
overall Fedora development.
6) It must be possible for maintainers of critical-path hardware
dependent packages to have direct access to supported hardware in order
to rectify any release-blocking issues. For example, X maintainers must
have direct access to any hardware with graphics capabilities.
7) The port must not rely on sourceless binaries unless they fall under
the generic firmware exemption. Where source and toolchain are
available, the binaries must be built in the Fedora build
infrastructure.
As such, promotion to primary architecture status will require agreement
from the Fedora infrastructure, release engineering, kernel and
installer teams and is subject to overall approval by the Fedora
Steering Committee.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59(a)srcf.ucam.org
12 years
F17, firewalld, avahi
by Chris Murphy
Fedora-17-Beta-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FirewallD suggests I should have firewall-config. "The configuration tool firewall-config is the main configuration tool for the firewall daemon."
But I'm not finding firewall-config. So unlike with iptables, where I had a GUI Firewall app, now I no longer have an easy or obvious way of altering the default behavior and I'm in effect stuck without ssh.
Seems the missing firewall-config is probably an oversight, and it needs to be included on LiveCD installs, and default DVD installs as well.
Chris Murphy
12 years
Intent to retire: mod_python
by Joe Orton
mod_python upstream has been inactive for five years, since Graham
Dumpleton went to work on mod_wsgi. IMO it is long past time to retire
mod_python in Fedora. But the following packages still depend on it:
Source : glump-0.9.11-10.fc17.src.rpm
Source : koji-1.6.0-3.fc17.src.rpm
Source : viewvc-1.1.13-1.fc17.src.rpm
Source : yawn-0-0.3.20120227svn561.fc18.src.rpm
I haven't checked whether these are simply to convert over to WSGI or
not. Does anybody want to maintain mod_python? If not, I'm going to
retire it.
Regards, Joe
12 years, 1 month
Dependencies on Bodhi Updates
by Stephen Gallagher
As requested during the FESCo meeting, I am going to try to summarize
some of the issues inherent in the way that Bodhi updates currently
work.
First, I'll try to explain the goals and constraints:
1) The stable 'fedora-updates' yum repository should NEVER exist in a
state where any package has dependency issues. In other words, it should
never be possible for an update to be pushed to stable that breaks
cleanly updating any other package.
2) Updates must be possible and (ideally) timely. This is probably
self-evident.
3) Packages pushed to the stable 'fedora-updates' yum repository should
(ideally) not introduce regressions in packages that depend on them.
4) New features in "superpackages" such as Firefox, GNOME or FreeIPA
that have many and varied dependencies may require new features in
packages they depend on in order to enhance or fix the superpackage.
In the trivial example, a package (let's say libtalloc) needs to make an
update to fix a bug. This package requires nothing new from its
dependencies and is a self-contained fix. For this example, it is simple
to just build libtalloc in koji and then create a Bodhi update and pass
it through "updates-testing", get karma and *poof* off to
"fedora-updates".
Now let's extend the example. Suppose that we have another package
libtevent that has libtalloc as a dependency. Libtevent's maintainer
wants to add a new feature to libtevent, but the patch from upstream
depends on the bug in libtalloc having been fixed in order for the new
feature to work properly. In this situation, the maintainer of libtevent
would build libtevent with an explicit Requires: libtalloc >= <version>
in the specfile (possibly pulling libtalloc into the BuildRoot overrides
if necessary) and then test it locally to see that it works.
So now we have our first updates dependency issue. If we submit
libtevent as its own update, it is possible that it will achieve its
karma requirement before libtalloc does. It would then be pushed to the
"fedora-updates" repository and then introduce a dependency issue in the
stable repository (because users trying to update libtevent would be
unable to update libtalloc without enabling the updates-testing
repository).
The current recommended approach is to bundle the two updates into a
single one carrying multiple packages. The first problem with this is
that you must have commit privilege on all packages that you are
bundling into an update. If you do not, then you need to track down a
provenpackager to do it for you.
Now let's make the problem even more fun. Consider that the update to
libtevent might be coming in because it is necessary for a new feature
in libldb, which is in turn providing new functionality necessary for
SSSD. So now we have four packages all sitting in the same update. The
problem with this is that the tendency will be to only test the most
user-visible package(s) in the set. In this particular case, that might
be SSSD. So people would likely test SSSD and, if nothing went wrong,
consider the entire update stable.
But wait! SSSD isn't the only package that depends on libldb, libtevent
and libtalloc. So too does the samba package. Suppose that the bugfix in
libtalloc, after resolving the original issue, results in exposing
another more serious bug in samba? Now we need to pull a samba update
into this same update series.
A contrived example, you say? That would never happen, bugfixes aren't
likely to do that. Well, for one example:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2011-11845 In this
particular example, we knew up-front that it was going to necessitate a
rebuild of several dependent packages and we coordinated a single
release to address them. So in this case, the proper approach was to
bundle them together in a single update. This worked because we
specifically knew that the libtevent change was going to break other
packages.
But what about when we don't know that? Let's take another example:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2011-17399
In this case, there was a security bug reported against Firefox. Such
things are serious, and acted on quickly. However, the bug was actually
fixed in the nss package, and Firefox, Xulrunner and friends were
rebuilt against that nss package. The problem was this: the fix made to
the nss package introduced regressions in every other package that
depended on it. However, because the default install of Firefox
contained no issues, it rapidly received the necessary karma points and
the whole update was pushed to stable. It then broke nearly every
application in Fedora that relied on cryptography.
The problem here was sociological, not technological. The only package
that received testing was Firefox. It's hard to say without evidence
whether the problem would have been averted by having nss go through its
own update, but I strongly suspect that what we would have seen was
greater testing on actual nss features for that specific update.
Of course, we now have the same potential for an issue that I described
above: If we had separate updates for nss and for Firefox, chances would
be highly-likely that Firefox would be pushed to stable via karma points
rapidly, whereas nss (which requires much more careful testing) might be
left behind in updates-testing.
So I really see two options for improving these situations:
1) https://fedorahosted.org/bodhi/ticket/663 I opened this ticket two
months ago (to silence). The idea would be to add the ability for bodhi
updates to mark other updates as a dependency, so that in the example
above, Firefox could have been marked as ready for stable, but not
pushed until the nss update was also marked as ready for stable. This to
me seems like the best long-term solution. I'd also like to mention that
Ubuntu's Launchpad system has this capability.
2) We could continue on the "single update for multiple packages"
approach, but revamp the karma system so that each SRPM gets its own
karma, rather than the update as a whole. Then, the whole update would
not be pushed via autokarma until all of the dependent packages had
sufficient karma (or the owner of the update could push them after the
stable wait period, of course).
Discuss.
12 years, 1 month
Provenpackager? Want to help out?
by Jon Ciesla
Hey!
As you're aware, as of F15 we changed our default init system from
sysvinit to systemd. But we have lots and lots of packages with
daemons, and not all have thus far been migrated. Some maintainers
haven't responded, some are too busy, some aren't sure how to go about
it. In many cases, unit files have been posted by helpful individuals
(Thanks Jóhann B. Guðmundsson!) but they're not yet in the packages.
If you're a Provenpackager, check out these two tracking bugs:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=713562
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=751869 (mostly this one)
And have a look at:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:ScriptletSnippets#Systemd
Look through, find something that looks manageable, and volunteer.
Most maintainers will be receptive, I think, but remember, offer/ask
before jumping in. If they're not responsive, we'll cross that bridge
separately.
Thanks in advance!
-J
--
in your fear, seek only peace
in your fear, seek only love
-d. bowie
12 years, 1 month
gforth and gcc 4.7
by Adrian Reber
Trying to build gforth with gcc 4.7 fails currently. The forth engine is
build but it fails its included tests. The problem is that every newline
the forth engine writes is replaced with 0x00 as seen in following diff:
0000010: 6566 696e 6564 2047 4458 2020 594f 5520 efined GDX YOU
0000020: 5348 4f55 4c44 2053 4545 2054 4845 2053 SHOULD SEE THE S
0000030: 5441 4e44 4152 4420 4752 4150 4849 4320 TANDARD GRAPHIC
-0000040: 4348 4152 4143 5445 5253 3a00 2021 2223 CHARACTERS:. !"#
^^ actual output
+0000040: 4348 4152 4143 5445 5253 3a0a 2021 2223 CHARACTERS:. !"#
^^ expected output
0000050: 2425 2627 2829 2a2b 2c2d 2e2f 3031 3233 $%&'()*+,-./0123
Removing -O2 from the compiler commandline fixes it, but I have no idea
why this happens. Does anyone have an idea how this can be solved?
Adrian
12 years, 1 month
Orphaning insight
by Patrick Monnerat
I'm afraid I've just orphaned the insight debugger.
It now miss dependency iwidgets, that was a working up-to-date package
orphaned after the forced password change of last year, unperformed by
the iwidgets package owner.
I don't want to start I new troll on this subject: this has already been
widely discussed :-(
But my total disapprobation about this practice encourages me to not
continue support for this product.
If someone wants to adopt this package, please do.
Cheers,
Patrick
12 years, 1 month
httpd 2.4 is coming, RFC on module packaging draft
by Joe Orton
httpd 2.4.1 packages are ready for dist-f18 and will be built early next
week. Rebuilds will be required for all packages containing httpd
modules. There are API changes in 2.4, so module packages may need
patches if upstream has not done that work already:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/developer/new_api_2_4.html
There are some significant changes in the packaging, also:
1) Config changes: I've moved to a minimal default httpd.conf which is
very close to what we're shipping upstream.
a) I'm proposing to split out packaged config snippets from mutable
config, with the former in /etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/, containing only
LoadModule lines, and ordered to avoid load-ordering issues.
b) /etc/httpd/conf.d/*.conf should contain no LoadModules for packaged
modules, and only any reasonable default configurations.
2) Loadable MPMs! MPMs are now loadable modules, so we only need to
ship one httpd binary again. Changing MPM is a config tweak.
3) Content. Putting unmutable content in /var was bad practice, so I've
moved the /var/www/manual and /var/www/icons to into /usr/share/httpd.
We now ship /var/www/* as empty directories.
4) Filesystem locations have moved in-line with upstream, e.g. apxs is
now in /usr/bin. /etc/rpm/httpd.macros has macros for everything module
packages should need.
Since much of the above requires packaging changes for module packages,
I've prepared a draft packaging guideline to document best practice:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/ApacheHTTPModules
If anything there looks stupid, needs fixing, is missing, or there's any
other feedback, please shout!
Regards, Joe
12 years, 1 month
