future of dual booting Windows and Fedora, redux
by Chris Murphy
Summary: Windows 10/11 increasingly enables Bitlocker (full disk encryption) out of the box with the encryption key sealed in the TPM. Two different issues result:
1. Fedora's installer, Anaconda, can't resize Bitlocker volumes. We could use better documentation to help the user perform the volume resize in Windows, before proceeding to booting our installation media. The documentation probably should be explicitly referenced by the Windows version of Fedora Media Writer.
2. The Bitlocker encryption key is unsealed only if the boot chain measurement by the TPM matches the expected values in a TPM PCR. When shim+GRUB are in the boot chain, as is the case in our default dual boot installation, the measurements are wrong, and this means the GRUB menu entry to boot Windows won't work. The user is dropped to a Windows Bitlocker recovery page. If they have their backup encryption key handy, it will work but to say the least this condition is unexpected and not user friendly - not least of which is many users won't have this backup key handy since they didn't take the action to enable Bitlocker in the first place.
The bug report for this is https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2049849
It was a Fedora 36 final release blocking bug, but considered a "difficult to fix" exceptional case, moving it to Fedora 37 final. Some of the options for consideration:
a. Fix GRUB by giving it the ability to modify UEFI NRAM "bootnext" value, so that instead of chainloading the Windows bootloader from GRUB, GRUB will modify the system NVRAM such that the next boot (only) will directly boot the Windows bootloader. Thus far there's no interest by GRUB upstream. Whereas systemd-boot has implemented it.
b. Add a user space utility modifies system NVRAM such that the next boot (only) will directly boot the Windows bootloader. And also remove the Windows boot entry in GRUB, on UEFI systems. (It would be retained on BIOS systems.)
c. Change the release criterion.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_36_Final_Release_Criteria#Windows_d...
Current: The installer must be able to install into free space alongside an existing clean Windows installation and install a bootloader which can boot into both Windows and Fedora.
Replacement: The installer must be able to install into free space alongside an existing clean Windows installation, install and configure a bootloader that will boot Fedora.
d. Consider the problem sufficiently difficult to fix that we need an extension to the exceptional case allowance, and wave the bug for another release.
Thoughts?
--
Chris Murphy
3 days, 5 hours
F35 Change: Debuginfod By Default (Self-Contained Change proposal)
by Ben Cotton
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DebuginfodByDefault
== Summary ==
Fedora users / developers who need to debug/trace distro binaries can
make use of the recently activated elfutils-debuginfod servers to
automatically fetch debugging data and source code, instead of having
to use `# sudo dnf` commands.
== Owner ==
* Name: [[User:fche| Frank Ch. Eigler]]
* Email: fche(a)redhat.com
== Detailed Description ==
Numerous fedora debugging-type tools have built-in capabilities to use
the [https://sourceware.org/elfutils/Debuginfod.html debuginfod]
protocol to fetch debuginfo/source code automatically. We would like
to activate a setting so that Fedora's debuginfod servers are
automatically used, rather than requiring hand-editing individual
users' dot files.
== Feedback ==
There has existed
[https://www.spinics.net/lists/fedora-devel/msg279002.html broad
interest] in a Fedora debuginfod server since the project was proposed
/ announced in 2020, and several distros already operate public
servers of this nature. Some of the distros configure their
installations by default to talk to those servers, some do not.
Turning on this by default has some limited privacy implications.
Some Debian users have
[https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2021/02/msg00262.html expressed
concerns] that this facility "calls home" during debugging, so it may
expose a limited amount of information about what a user is debugging.
The information is limited to the build-id and source code file names
of programs being debugged, and is only sent to the servers if their
machine lacks locally installed debuginfo. Whether this should be
opt-in or opt-out and how has been resolved there via an install-time
query to the sysadmin. In contrast, on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, it is
[https://build.opensuse.org/request/show/879926 simply defaulted-on],
and we have heard of no controversy.
We anticipate discussing this topic on the mailing list, and noting it
in the release notes either way.
== Benefit to Fedora ==
This will improve developers' experience.
It may reduce download server burden, as only individual
ELF/DWARF/source files are downloaded rather than entire `-debuginfo`
and `-debugsource` RPMs.
It would help Fedora catch up to other distros who put up `debuginfod`
servers already. :-)
== Scope ==
* Proposal owners:
The work could consist one extra parameter in the `elfutils.spec`
`%configure`. Its effect is to arrange for the
`elfutils-debuginfod-client` RPM
to install an `/etc/profile.d` file that sets the `DEBUGINFOD_URLS`
environment variable automatically to
`https://debuginfod.fedoraproject.org/`. (At the time of this
writing, the _staging_ server is getting ready for testing:
`https://debuginfod.stg.fedoraproject.org/`.)
* Other developers: None - relevant code has been previously upstreamed!
* Release engineering: None - our team is operating the
`debuginfod[.stg].fedoraproject.org` VMs.
* Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
* Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
* Alignment with Objectives: N/A
== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
None.
Note that these servers index all active Fedora releases (32-), all
architectures, so users of those versions can already set
`DEBUGINFOD_URLS` manually to take advantage.
== How To Test ==
* Install `elfutils-debuginfod-client`
* Open arbitrary fedora binary via gdb.
** Admire the immediate downloading of debuginfo and source code.
* Run `eu-stack -v -p $pid` for an arbitrary process.
** Admire the immediate downloading of debuginfo to give precise file:line data.
== User Experience ==
Primarily: users running debuggers, profilers, tracing tools on
internet-capable machines can work immediately, without switching to
privileged users and fragile manual `dnf` commands to install this
data.
== Dependencies ==
The `debuginfod` servers at `fedora-infra` need to be up.
== Contingency Plan ==
* Contingency mechanism: change the elfutils-debuginfod-client subrpm
to not set the default `DEBUGINFOD_URLS` environment variable for all
users. In the case of a server outage, the debugger tools revert to
debuginfo-less operation, prior to this feature.
* Contingency deadline: shortly before freeze
* Blocks release? No
== Documentation ==
There is upstream documentation in the debugging tools as well as
associated with the client code / cli tooling. What our Release Notes
would focus on however is the _automatic activation_ of this facility
via the environment variable.
== Release Notes ==
TBD.
--
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Senior Program Manager, Fedora & CentOS Stream
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis
1 week, 1 day
some man pages have bugs, can't be grep'd
by Chris Murphy
I've been seeing this since clean installing Fedora 30. I don't recall
ever seeing it before, including on a Fedora 29 -> Fedora 30 upgraded
system (is now the clean installed system).
[chris@flap ~]$ man rpm | grep -C 10 rpmverbosity
<standard input>:176: warning [p 3, 0.8i]: cannot adjust line
[chris@flap mantest]$ man rpm >rpm.stdout 2>rpm.stderr
[chris@flap mantest]$ ll
-rw-rw-r--. 1 chris chris 62 Jul 16 14:24 rpm.stderr
-rw-rw-r--. 1 chris chris 28498 Jul 16 14:24 rpm.stdout
Is this a bug that should be reported against rpm or something else?
I'm certain I've seen it in other man pages, but offhand I can't find
another example.
--
Chris Murphy
2 months
Unretire ulogd (or another NFLOG logger?)
by Chris Adams
I'd like to use NFLOG to log firewall drops (so that the kernel message
log isn't spammed by them), but it doesn't appear there's anything
currently in Fedora that can read that other than "tcpdump -i nflog".
It looks like ulogd was retired a while back because it only had a SysV
init script and nobody stepped up to convert it to systemd (which should
be really simple, since the old init script is pretty much a textbook
template of a SysV init script).
Am I missing anything? Is that all it needs? Is there another NFLOG
logger daemon?
--
Chris Adams <linux(a)cmadams.net>
3 months, 1 week
Co-maintainers for my ham packages
by Matt Domsch
Due to an impending move to NYC and related downsizing of my house into a
2-bedroom apartment, I'm selling all my ham radio gear. Therefore I won't
be able to test any of the Fedora packages I maintain with actual
hardware. Would anyone be interested in maintaining or co-maintaining
these?
- direwolf - Sound Card-based AX.25 TNC
- CubicSDR - Cross-Platform Software-Defined Radio Panadapter
- liquid-dsp - Digital Signal Processing Library for Software-Defined Radios
- sdrpp - SDRPlusPlus bloat-free SDR receiver software
- SoapySDR - A Vendor Neutral and Platform Independent SDR Support Library
- soapy-rtlsdr - SoapySDR module for RTL-SDR hardware
Thanks,
Matt N5MLD
6 months, 1 week
F38 proposal: Rpmautospec by Default (System-Wide Change proposal)
by Ben Cotton
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Rpmautospec_by_Default
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes
process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive
community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved
by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.
== Summary ==
Rpmautospec (`%autorelease` and `%autochangelog`) is recommended as
the default approach.
Packaging Guidelines and other documentation are adjusted to describe
this approach first.
Various tools that provide spec file templates are adjusted.
== Owner ==
* Name: [[User:Nphilipp| Nils Philippsen]], [[User:Zbyszek| Zbigniew
Jędrzejewski-Szmek]]
* Email: nphilipp - at - redhat.com, zbyszek - at - in.waw.pl
== Detailed Description ==
{{admon/note|Brief reminder about rpmautospec|
The spec file contains:
<pre>
Version: 1.2.3
Release: %autorelease
...
%changelog
%autochangelog
</pre>
Rpmautospec uses git history. Whenever the package is built
(`.src.rpm` is generated), rpmautospec tooling will replace the
`%autorelease` macro with the number of commits since the last commit
that changed the `Version` field, and the `%autochangelog` macro with
a text generated from `git log`.
For details see the
[https://docs.pagure.org/fedora-infra.rpmautospec/principle.html
docs].
}}
Rpmautospec has been deployed in Fedora since F35
([[Changes/rpmautospec]]), and 3423/23045 packages use it (15%).
But it is still a "second-class citizen": most documentation doesn't
mention it, and many packagers know that it exists but don't use it in
their packages. We think that it's reasonable to switch to
`%autorelease`+`%autochangelog` for almost all packages and that
Packaging Guidelines and various packaging howtos should recommend
that approach to packagers. The "traditional" approach of
manually-managed `Release` and `%changelog` will remain valid and will
be documented as a fallback.
This change is targeted at Fedora 38, but it will actually apply to
all releases. The goal is to update the Packaging Guidelines and other
prominent documentation and tools now, and other docs and tools
possibly at a later time. Changing packages is out of scope.
It is worth mentioning that `rust2rpm` uses
`%autorelease`+`%autochangelog` since a few releases, so most rust
packages have switched. (Generally, rust spec files are recreated
using the generator for each new version, so the switch would happen
whenever a new version is packaged unless the packager opts out.)
== Feedback ==
* Thread on fedora-devel in August 2022:
[https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.o...
rpmautospec by default]
** open issues: a bunch have been fixed.
** maintenance: Nils will add some co-maintainers.
** compatibility with rpmdevtools, fedpkg/rpkg, fedora-review: see
Scope section.
== Benefit to Fedora ==
Various packaging workflows become smoother for packagers and contributors:
* packagers don't need to touch the `Release` field on updates
* packagers describe changes just once in the git commit message, the
`%changelog` entry is autogenerated
* patches to the spec file can be cherry-picked between branches
without trivial conflicts
* pull requests on src.fedoraproject.org can be merged without trivial conflicts
* in workflows that regenerate the spec file (rust2rpm, pip2rpm, …)
`%changelog` section doesn't need to be copied over
== Scope ==
* Proposal owners:
** provide pull requests to Packaging Guidelines and other docs to
make `%autorelease`+`%autochangelog` the default
** implement fixes for issues reported by packagers
** make semi-regular releases of rpmautospec
([https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.o...
0.3.1 was released on November 17th, and should be deployed to
production in about two weeks])
* Other developers:
** provide pull requests to other docs as appropriate
** accept the changes to documentation
** update other spec file generators (pip2rpm, others?)
* Somebody (TBD):
** `fedora-review` — https://pagure.io/rpkg/issue/641
** `fedpkg import` — with https://pagure.io/rpkg/c/3087dd7, the
command will fail. A replacement workflow that instead restores
`%autorelease`+`%autochangelog` in the file committed to dist-git
needs to be implemented.
* Related work
** https://pagure.io/rpkg/c/3087dd7
** https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/fedora-packager/pull-request/4
* Release engineering: [https://pagure.io/releng/issues #Releng issue number]
* Policies and guidelines: a list of places to be updated
** https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/#changelogs
** https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/Versioning
** https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/package-maintainers/Packaging_Tutori...
* Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
* Alignment with Objectives: N/A
== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
Rpmautospec is already used by a decent number of packages, so any
issues are already being seen and need to be fixed anyway.
== How To Test ==
* Convert an existing package: `rpmautospec convert`. Ideally this
step is done right before a version bump so that the release numbers
restart at `-1`.
* Do local builds (`fedpkg local`, `fedpkg mockbuild`). Verify
correctness of version-release (`rpm -qpi`) and the changelog (`rpm
-qp --changelog`).
* Do builds in koji. Verify correctness of version-release and the changelog.
* For new packages, use `%autorelease`+`%autochangelog`. Repeat all
the tests listed above.
* Assume you are a newbie packager. Read the packaging docs and check
that the workflow is clear and the intructions are sufficient to use
rpmautospec tooling correctly.
== User Experience ==
No changes visible to end users.
== Dependencies ==
None.
== Contingency Plan ==
If it turns out that the rpmautospec workflows have unknown problems,
we can revert changes to documentation.
* Contingency mechanism: Revert changes to documentation by reverting
the appropriate commits. This can be done easily by FPC.
* Contingency deadline: Any time.
* Blocks release? No.
== Documentation ==
This page and any changes to Packaging Guidelines and other documents.
== Release Notes ==
Not needed.
--
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Fedora Program Manager
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis
7 months, 1 week
Bootstrapping package with circular dependencies in koji
by Jaroslav Skarvada
Hi,
I need to bootstrap package which has bootstrap support written
according to the [1]. I am able to bootstrap it locally (rpmbuild,
mock, ...) with the "--with bootstrap" or "-D '_with_bootstrap 1'". Is
there support for it in koji? E.g. something like:
koji build SIDE-TAG PACKAGE --bootstrap? Or do I have to manually do:
1. patch:
- %bcond_with bootstrap
+ %bcond_without bootstrap
2. koji build SIDE-TAG SCM
3. update&build the circular dep
4. unpatch:
- %bcond_without bootstrap
+ %bcond_with bootstrap
5. release bump
6. koji build SIDE-TAG SCM
Or is there some better way?
thanks & regards
Jaroslav
[1] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/#bootstrapping
8 months, 3 weeks
