Meeting Minutes

IRC Log of the meeting.

Meeting minutes.

Agenda

20130108 Meeting Agenda

ARM Status

R/master: working on multiplatform (and dtb) support, but except for that, nothing to report this week.

Release Metrics and Incoming Bugs

Release metrics and incoming bug data can be reviewed at the following link:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kt-meeting.txt

Milestone Targeted Work Items

Status: Raring Development Kernel

We have rebased the Raring kernel to the latest v3.8-rc2 upstream
kernel. We have held off on uploading until we have resolved some DKMS
package build failures. Everyone should also review the
ubuntu-raring/dropped.txt file to review anything that may have
inadvertantly gone missing after the rebase.
Important upcoming dates:

• Raring:
  • Fri Jan 18 – 13.04 Month 3 Milestone (1 week)
  • Mon Feb 18 – 13.04 Month 4 Milestone (~6 weeks)
• Precise:
  • Thu Jan 10 – 12.04.2 Kernel Freeze (~2 days)
  • Thu Feb 14 – 12.04.2 Release (~5 weeks)
    We should have the last DKMS issues fixed tomorrow.
    We may have -rc3 by then as well.
    …

Status: CVE’s

Currently we have 33 CVEs on our radar, with 4 CVE added and 2 CVEs retired since last meeting (11th Dec).
See the CVE matrix for the current list:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/ALL-linux.html

  Overall the backlog has decreased slightly this week:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/status/cve-metrics.txt

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/CVE-linux.txt

Status: Stable, Security, and Bugfix Kernel Updates – Quantal/Precise/Oneiric/Lucid/Hardy

Here is the status for the main kernels, until today (January 08):

• Hardy – Nothing in this cycle
• Lucid – In Testing; 1 CVE; (2 commits)
• Oneiric – In Verification; 2 CVEs; 4 upstream stable release(s); (78 commits)
• Precise – In Verification; 3 CVEs; 1 upstream stable release(s); (104 commits)
• Quantal – In Verification; 3 CVEs; 1 upstream stable release(s); (254 commits)
  Current opened tracking bugs details:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kernel-sru-workflow.html

  For SRUs, SRU report is a good source of information:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/sru-report.html

  Future stable cadence cycles:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseInterlock

Open Discussion or Questions? Raise your hand to be recognized

No discussions.

Today we’re announcing our latest and, in my opinion, our most important ever product: Ubuntu is coming to the phone.

When we began developing Unity a few years ago, the aim was to create a single family of interfaces that work the same way on different devices. This means that unlike most of our rivals, we are able to use a single underlying OS across all the devices which people use, be they PCs, phones or any other device.

With the arrival of Ubuntu on smartphones, we can reveal the extent to which that work has paid off. It’s not just that it boasts a beautiful phone interface (which it does). What is remarkable about the Ubuntu phone interface is the extent to which it is instantly recognisable as Ubuntu in terms of how everything looks and works, yet it is perfectly designed for its form factor. Ubuntu makes finding and switching between apps and content easier than any other mobile OS I’ve ever used.

This focus on usability has always been a driving principle of the Ubuntu project, and it’s wonderful to seeing our multi-platform vision in action. But there’s another way in which Ubuntu changes the game – and that’s in the way that apps are developed.

We introduced the concept of installable web apps in the 12.10 desktop release, last October. But they really come into their own on the phone. Developers can re-purpose web applications for the phone, using the very same web app API, or they can adapt HTML5 apps they’ve already written for other mobile platforms. Both require minimum effort, which should ensure that we have plenty of new apps coming to the platform in the coming months. It’s the development of native apps, however, where things really get interesting.

By using the new QML-based Ubuntu SDK, it’s possible to develop a native app in such a way that makes it available for both the desktop and the phone – not to mention any further form factors we address in the future. As long as you create the right interfaces, you can deliver an app for all Ubuntu form factors, but build once and upload once to the same single store, the Ubuntu Software Centre. It’s this point that I hope really enthuses the developers in the Ubuntu community – not to mention all those developers around the world who work on the web or in mobile and who already use Ubuntu on their desktops.

Ubuntu phones aren’t yet available for purchase, but we are ready to start working with partners with an aim to releasing phones before the end of 2013. You can see Ubuntu for phones demonstrated at the Ubuntu booth at CES next week and we’ll be showing it again at MWC in Barcelona in February. We’ve got more interesting things to come in the first half of the year but, for the time being at least, my lips are sealed. So watch this space.

You can learn more about Ubuntu on phones at ubuntu.com/devices/phone

To start developing your first Ubuntu mobile app, go to developer.ubuntu.com/phone

Meeting Minutes

IRC Log of the meeting.

Meeting minutes.

Agenda

20121211 Meeting Agenda

ARM Status

nothing to report this week.

Release Metrics and Incoming Bugs

Release metrics and incoming bug data can be reviewed at the following link:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kt-meeting.txt

Milestone Targeted Work Items

Status: Raring Development Kernel

We have recently rebased the Raring kernel to upstream v3.7 final and
uploaded.
Important upcoming dates:

• Tues Dec 18 – 13.04 Month 2 Milestone (1 week)
• Thur Dec 27 – 12.04.2 Kernel Source Freeze (~2 weeks)

Status: CVE’s

Currently we have 29 CVEs on our radar, with 0 CVE added and 3 CVEs retired this week.
See the CVE matrix for the current list:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/ALL-linux.html

  Overall the backlog has decreased slightly this week:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/status/cve-metrics.txt

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/CVE-linux.txt

Status: Stable, Security, and Bugfix Kernel Updates – Quantal/Precise/Oneiric/Lucid/Hardy

Here is the status for the main kernels, until today (December 11):

• Hardy – Released; 1 CVEs; (1 commits)
• Lucid – Released; 1 CVEs; (1 commits)
• Oneiric – In Verification; 1 CVEs; 2 upstream stable release(s); (78 commits)
• Precise – In Verification; 1 CVEs; 1 upstream stable release(s); (87 commits)
• Quantal – In Preparation; 1 CVEs; 1 upstream stable release(s); (309 commits)
  Current opened tracking bugs details:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kernel-sru-workflow.html

  For SRUs, SRU report is a good source of information:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/sru-report.html

  Future stable cadence cycles:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseInterlock

Open Discussion or Questions? Raise your hand to be recognized

The next meeting is scheduled for after the New Year on Tuesday, January 8th 2013.

We have uploaded a new Raring linux kernel. Please note the ABI Bump. The most notable changes are as follows:

* Rebase to upstream final v3.7
* Re-enable build of dm-raid45
* tools: hv: Netlink source address validation allows DoS (LP: #1084777)
* Improved kernel config annotations for Ubuntu kernel config review
* SAUCE: ACPICA: Fix ACPI mutex object allocation memory leak on error
* SAUCE: drm: Fix possible EDID memory allocation oops
* SAUCE: ttm: Fix possible _manager memory allocation oops
* SAUCE: iwlwifi: iwlagn_request_scan: Fix check for priv->scan_request
* SAUCE: i915: intel_set_mode: Reduce stack allocation from 500 bytes to2 pointers

The full changelog can be seen at:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/3.7.0-6.14

During this latest round of arguing over the inclusion of Amazon search results in the Unity Dash, Alan Bell pointed out the fact that while the default scopes shipped in Ubuntu were made to check the new privacy settings, we didn’t do a very good job of telling third-party developers how to do it.

(Update: I was told a better way of doing this, be sure to read the bottom of the post before implementing it in your own code)

Since I am also a third-party lens developer, I decided to add it to my come of my own code and share how to do it with other lens/scope developers.  It turns out, it’s remarkably easy to do.

Since the privacy setting is stored in DConf, which we can access via the Gio library, we need to include that in our GObject Introspection imports:

from gi.repository import GLib, Unity, Gio

Then, before performing a search, we need to fetch the Unity Lens settings:

lens_settings = Gio.Settings(‘com.canonical.Unity.Lenses’)

The key we are interested in is ’remote-content-search’, and it can have one of two value, ‘all’ or ‘none’.  Since my locoteams-scope performs only remote searches, by calling the API on http://loco.ubuntu.com, if the user has asked that no remote searches be made, this scope will return without doing anything.

And that’s it!  That’s all you need to do in order to make your lens or scope follow the user’s privacy settings.

Now, before we get to the comments, I’d like to kindly point out that this post is about how to check the privacy setting in your lens or scope.  It is not about whether or not we should be doing remote searches in the dash, or how you would rather the feature be implemented.  If you want to pile on to those argument some more, there are dozens of open threads all over the internet where you can do that.  Please don’t do it here.
&nbps;

Update

I wasn’t aware, but there is a PreferencesManager class in Unity 6 (Ubuntu 12.10) that lets you access the same settings:

You should use this API instead of going directly to GSettings/DConf.

As clouds for IT infrastructure become commonplace, admins and devops need quick, easy ways of deploying and orchestrating cloud services.  As we mentioned in October, Ubuntu now has a GUI for Juju, the service orchestration tool for server and cloud. In this post we wanted to expand a bit more on how Juju makes it even easier to visualise and keep track of complex cloud environments.

Juju provides the ability to rapidly deploy cloud services on OpenStack, HP Cloud, AWS and other platforms using a library of 100 ‘charms’ which cover applications from node.js to Hadoop. Juju GUI makes the Juju command line interface even easier, giving the ability to deploy, manage and track progress visually as your cloud grows (or shrinks).

Juju GUI is easy and totally intuitive.  To start, you simply search for the service you want on the Juju GUI charm search bar (top right on the screen).  In this case I want to deploy WordPress to host my blog site.  I have the chance to alter the WordPress settings, and with a few clicks the service is ready.  Its displayed as an icon on the GUI.

I then want a mysql service to go alongside.  Again I search for the charm, set the parameter (or accept the defaults) and away we go.

Its even easier to build the relations between these services by point and click. Juju knows that the relationship needs a suitable database link.

I can expose WordPress to users by setting expose flag  - at the bottom of a settings screen – to on. To scale up WordPress I can add more units, creating identical copies of the WordPress deployment, including any relationships.  I have selected ten in total, and this shows in the center of the wordpress icon.

And thats it.

For a simple cloud, Juju or other tools might be sufficient.  But as your cloud grows, Juju GUI will be a wonderful way not only to provision and orchestrate services, but more importantly to validate and check that you have the correct links and relationships.  Its an ideal way to replicate and scale cloud services as you need.

For more details of Juju, go to juju.ubuntu.com.  To try Juju GUI for yourself, go to http://uistage.jujucharms.com:8080/

For my birthday in October, I received a Fitbit One. The reason that I wanted it is that I thought with better data tracking I could push myself to be more active during the day. The Fitbit One is a “fitness tracker”, essentially a technologically enhanced pedometer, that can also measure elevation gain (steps climbed they call it), and even track your sleep patterns. The device, which is slightly larger than a large paperclip, syncs wirelessly  to iPhones or to a computer. It uploads all your statistics to Fitbit.com, which provides a cool dashboard which you can use to track your steps, floors climbed, calories burned, etc. Here’s my dashboard from yesterday:

My Fitbit dashboard from yesterday

Like most geeks, I love data, and nice charts and graphs too, so I’ve really enjoyed the dashboard. I’ve also found that the maxim, “What gets measured gets done” really applies here. Two nights ago at 11:30PM, I noticed I was 300 steps short of 10000 steps, so I made sure to walk around while brushing my teeth, took the trash out, and generally wandered until I got past 10000 steps. That was only 300 steps, but I’ve also found myself walking the dog more, walking to the library more, etc.

So what does this have to do with Ubuntu? Well you can see at the bottom of that dashboard that Fitbit gives “badges”, which Chris Wayne thought would be a perfect fit for the Ubuntu Accomplishments system.  So Chris hacked all weekend and created an online account plugin for Fitbit. On Monday we hooked the oauth account created by Chris’s plugin into Fitbit’s web API and now we had Fitbit accomplishments!

Badges I can earn

My Trophies

You need a Fitbit to use it, and if you buy one, use this link so that Chris and I can support our daily beer and daily steps habits. The same link is also in the collection itself.

Installing

Note: That this requires Quantal or Raring because it uses Online Accounts. The raring build broke for some reason earlier but it should be ready an hour from the time this posts.

Installing is easy, although if you don’t already have Ubuntu Accomplishments installed it’s a two step process.

First, install Ubuntu Accomplishments if you’ve not already done so:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-accomplishments/releases

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install accomplishments-daemon accomplishments-viewer ubuntu-community-accomplishments ubuntu-desktop-accomplishments accomplishments-lens

Then install the Fitbit Accomplishments collection:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fitbit-accomplishment-maintainers/daily

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install account-plugin-fitbit ubuntu-fitbit-accomplishments

If you’re already running Ubuntu Accomplishments, you’ll need to close the viewer and restart the Accomplishments Daemon to get the new collection to show up.  You can restart the daemon by doing accomplishments-daemon –restart.  A simple logout/login will also work.

The first accomplishment you need to get is connecting to your Fitbit account. Chris also wrote a post with some screenshots if you get stuck.

You need to setup your Fitbit Online Account before you can get any Fitbit badges, follow the steps in the Accomplishment to do so.

Follow the directions in the accomplishment to set this up. Once you do that, the other fitbit accomplishments will unlock in a logical progression as you achieve things (for example, the 10000 steps in a day accomplishment requires you to complete the 5000 steps in a day accomplishment first).

Note that Fitbit admits that the Badge API is still new and there are some quirks, for example, Fitbit provides badges for 50 and 250 lifetime kilometers, but for lifetime miles, they offer 50, 250, 1000, and 5000. Also some badges are transparent, some are not, which I know we could fix, but I haven’t had time yet. As this API improved and is expanded, we’ll add more accomplishments, or better yet, you can add more by sending us a merge proposal (the code is here).

Why?

Fitbit accomplishments, like walking 10000 steps in a day, obviously have nothing to do with Ubuntu, but this collection highlights the flexibility of the Ubuntu Accomplishments system. Anything that can be tested via script can be an accomplishment. I’m sure there are lots of other websites that people use that could be added as collections like this one. If you’re interested and you need help setting one up, you can find me (mfisch) in #ubuntu-accomplishments on Freenode.

About the Accomplishments Code

The code for checking these accomplishments in the accomplishments scripts is very very simple:

    badgeid = "10000 DAILY_STEPS"
    me = FitBit.fetch(None)
    if badgeid in me.badges:
        sys.exit(0)
    else:
        sys.exit(1)

This is because all the hard logic is in helpers.py, which provides the FitBit class and handles caching for us. Since the way accomplishments work is that each accomplishment has a script associated with it, we want to cache the info so that we don’t hammer the Fitbit web API once per script every 15 minutes (all unlocked accomplishments are checked every 15 minutes). The caching solution in helpers.py, was copied from the model used by AskUbuntu and Launchpad in the Ubuntu Community Accomplishments package. helpers.py also is how we interact with the Online Accounts plugin and Fitbit’s web API, so if you want to see the “interesting code”, look there.

Note: Expect a follow-up blog post from Chris Wayne on how to write an online accounts plugin in the next couple of weeks.

Help Needed

If you live outside of the US and you have a Fitbit and are willing to help, I need some assistance to see what happens if the Fitbit API returns localized Badge info. I also need to see if what it looks like when you get a badge marked in Kilometers. I don’t think I get these because of where I live (the US). Drop me an email to matt@<this_domain>.com if you can assist or find me in #ubuntu-accomplishments on freenode, I’m mfisch. I think I’ll only need a few minutes of your time.

We have uploaded a new Raring linux kernel. Please note the ABI Bump. The most notable changes are as follows:

* Rebase to v3.7-rc8
* Revert “VFS: don’t do protected {sym,hard}links by default” (LP: #1084192)
* Simplified locking patches for fsnotify (LP: #922906)
* Misc config updates

The full changelog can be seen at:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/3.7.0-5.13

Meeting Minutes

IRC Log of the meeting.

Meeting minutes.

Agenda

20121204 Meeting Agenda

ARM Status

nothing to report this week.

Release Metrics and Incoming Bugs

Release metrics and incoming bug data can be reviewed at the following link:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kt-meeting.txt

Milestone Targeted Work Items

jsalisbury: meep, 2secs

Status: Raring Development Kernel

We have recently rebased the raring kernel to upstream v3.7-rc8. We
plan to upload today.
Important upcoming dates:

• Tues Dec 18 – 13.04 Month 2 Milestone – (~2 weeks)

Status: CVE’s

Currently we have 29 CVEs on our radar, with 1 CVE added and 0 CVEs retired this week.
See the CVE matrix for the current list:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/ALL-linux.html

  Overall the backlog has decreased slightly this week:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/status/cve-metrics.txt

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/CVE-linux.txt

Status: Stable, Security, and Bugfix Kernel Updates – Quantal/Precise/Oneiric/Lucid/Hardy

Here is the status for the main kernels, until today (December 04):

• Hardy – In Preparation; 1 CVEs; (1 commits)
• Lucid – In Preparation; 1 CVEs; (1 commits)
• Oneiric – In Preparation; 1 CVEs; 2 upstream stable release(s); (78 commits)
• Precise – In Preparation; 1 CVEs; 1 upstream stable release(s); (87 commits)
• Quantal – In Preparation; 1 CVEs; 1 upstream stable release(s); (308 commits)
  Current opened tracking bugs details:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kernel-sru-workflow.html

  For SRUs, SRU report is a good source of information:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/sru-report.html

  Future stable cadence cycles:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseInterlock

Open Discussion or Questions? Raise your hand to be recognized

No discussion.

Ubuntu has long been a favourite with developers – especially in the worlds of web and cloud development. We’re excited that, from today, serious (and not-so-serious) developers will be able to get their hands on the super-sleek Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, preloaded with and fully optimised for Ubuntu.

The Dell XPS 13 is a top spec, high-end ultramobile laptop, offering developers a complete client-to-cloud experience. It is the result of the Dell’s bold Sputnik initiative, which embraced the community and received terrific response from developers around the world. The community has spoken – and they said, “give us power, give us storage, give us a really ‘meaty’ machine – that also looks GREAT. And Dell has delivered.

The XPS 13 with Ubuntu allows developers to create ??microclouds? on the local drive, simulating a proper, at-scale environment, before deploying seamlessly to the cloud using Juju, Ubuntu’s service orchestration tool. That’s something you simply can’t do with a standard installation of any other OS.

With Juju now supporting 103 charms and counting, it covers the world’s most popular open source cloud services, all from the Ubuntu desktop.

I’d like to call out the drive and energy of Barton George and Michael Cote at Dell for making the XPS 13 launch possible. And of course, the team within Canonical for the fine tuning of this great product (mine ‘cold’ boots to desktop in under 11 seconds!) I’d also like to call out the dev community for their incredible support, helping us getting this from drawing board to factory ship – get buying!

Combining Ubuntu with the power of Dell hardware gives developers the perfect environment for productive software development, whatever their sector. The Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition is available from http://www.dell.com/us/soho/p/xps-13-linux/pd in America and Canada today.

We have uploaded a new Raring linux kernel to raring-proposed. Please note the ABI Bump. The most notable changes are as follows:

* Rebase to v3.7-rc7
* Fix periodic build failures on N-way machines
* Add an autopkgtest rebuild test
* Misc firmware cleanup

The full changelog can be seen at:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/3.7.0-4.12

Meeting Minutes

IRC Log of the meeting.

Meeting minutes.

Agenda

20121127 Meeting Agenda

ARM Status

nothing to report this week.

Release Metrics and Incoming Bugs

Release metrics and incoming bug data can be reviewed at the following link:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kt-meeting.txt

Milestone Targeted Work Items

Status: Raring Development Kernel

We have recently rebased the raring kernel to upstream v3.7-rc7. We
plan to upload today.
Important upcoming dates:

• Tues Dec 18 – 13.04 Month 2 Milestone – (~3 weeks)

Status: CVE’s

Currently we have 28 CVEs on our radar, with 0 CVE added and 2 CVE retired since last meeting.
See the CVE matrix for the current list:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/ALL-linux.html

  Overall the backlog has decreased slightly this week:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/status/cve-metrics.txt

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/CVE-linux.txt

Status: Stable, Security, and Bugfix Kernel Updates – Quantal/Precise/Oneiric/Lucid/Hardy

Here is the status for the main kernels, until today (November 27):

• Hardy – In Testing; 1 CVEs; (1 commits)
• Lucid – In Testing; 1 CVEs; (2 commits)
• Oneiric – In Testing; 2 CVEs; 6 upstream stable release(s); (200 commits)
• Precise – In Testing; 2 CVEs; 2 upstream stable release(s); (253 commits)
• Quantal – In Testing; 2 CVEs; (11 commits)
  Current opened tracking bugs details:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kernel-sru-workflow.html

  For SRUs, SRU report is a good source of information:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/sru-report.html

  Future stable cadence cycles:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseInterlock

Open Discussion or Questions? Raise your hand to be recognized

No Discussion.

We have uploaded a new Raring linux kernel to raring-proposed. Please note the ABI Bump. The most notable changes are as follows:

* Rebase to upstream v3.7-rc6
* xen/netfront: handle compound page fragments on transmit (LP: #1078926)
* seccomp: forcing auditing of kill condition (LP: #1079469)
* Add nfsv3 to nfs-modules udeb
* SND_OMAP_SOC*=y (LP: #1019321)
* Enable CONFIG_X86_CPUFREQ_NFORCE2=y (LP: #1079900)
* MIsc firmware cleanup

The full changelog can be seen at:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/3.7.0-3.9

Meeting Minutes

IRC Log of the meeting.

Meeting minutes.

Agenda

20121120 Meeting Agenda

ARM Status

nothing to report this week.

Release Metrics and Incoming Bugs

Release metrics and incoming bug data can be reviewed at the following link:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kt-meeting.txt

Milestone Targeted Work Items

Status: Raring Development Kernel

We have recently rebased the raring kernel to upstream v3.7-rc6. I plan
to prep an upload by EOD.
Important upcoming dates:

• Tues Dec 18 – 13.04 Month 2 Milestone – (~4 weeks)

Status: CVE’s

== 2012-11-20 (weekly) ==
Currently we have 28 CVEs on our radar, with 2 CVE retired this week.
See the CVE matrix for the current list:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/ALL-linux.html

  Overall the backlog has decreased slightly this week:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/status/cve-metrics.txt

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/CVE-linux.txt

  (for henrix)

Status: Stable, Security, and Bugfix Kernel Updates – Quantal/Precise/Oneiric/Lucid/Hardy

Here is the status for the main kernels, until today (November 20):

• Hardy – In Testing; 1 CVE; (1 commit)
• Lucid – In Testing; 1 CVE; (2 commits)
• Oneiric – Previous cycle released, except for ti-omap4 derivative,
  waiting on regression-testing.
  – In Testing (current cycle); 2 CVEs; 6 upstream updates;
  3 SRUs; 200 commits. Derivatives: lts-backport also on
  testing, ti-omap4 waiting on previous cycle update to be
  uploaded
• Precise – Previous cycle released, except for ti-omap4/armadaxp
  derivatives, waiting on regression-testing.
  – In Verification (current cycle); 1 CVE; 2 upstream updates;
  8 SRUs; 253 commits. Derivatives: ti-omap4/armadaxp waiting
  on previous cycle update, lowlatency not started on yet.
• Quantal – In Verification; 2 CVEs; 7 SRUs; 11 commits.
  Derivatives: lts-quantal also in verification. ti-omap4
  waiting copy to proposed; lowlatency not started on yet;
  armadaxp not started on yet, and waiting on previous cycle
  in regression-testing.
  Current opened tracking bugs details:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kernel-sru-workflow.html

  For SRUs, SRU report is a good source of information:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/sru-report.html

  Future stable cadence cycles:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseInterlock

Open Discussion or Questions? Raise your hand to be recognized

No discussions.

Last month I attended DroidCon 2012 and did a talked about using Juju and Ubuntu to deliver Android applications with a Web Service background. The guys at Skillmatters were kind enough to record and edit the video, and now it publicly available.

As part of the Ubuntu Community Appreciation Day initiative, I’d like to write an appreciation for females – of all ages – that we have within Ubuntu and upstream communities, and why I’d like to see more of the same. To do this, I’ve taken the liberty of generalising a bit based on my own personal experiences.

First off, many women have excellent communication and conflict resolution skills. I envision this could come to very good use, including upstream. You see, we software developers can be really picky – which is a good thing, as long as this helps us prevent bugs. But we also tend to set up rules for ourselves and our processes, and we need a counterweight to that in order not to become rule-following robots, which is no fun. A controversial patch can easily lead to heated, discouraging debates and somebody running off, making a fork of the project, together with half of the squad. Seen from an Ubuntu perspective, better communication and conflict resolution skills might help us to maintain fewer remixes and derivatives – but the remaining ones would be more polished and work better.

Second, a mixed company working place is good for everyone. Before working at Canonical, I had been working at both offices with only men, and with both men and women. My experience was that at the male-only office, discussions tended to be more matcho – coffee break chats were often about sports or women, if I remember correctly. And even if background images of women in bikini and jokes towards the vulgar didn’t offend me, I didn’t particularly enjoy it either.
At the mixed company working place, discussions in general had a friendlier tone, and included a wider area of topics. It was just…better.
(Side note: while discussing this with a female colleague a long time ago, she told me she had been working at a women-only place, which was plagued by gossiping to the extent that she was afraid to become ill – because on the day she would not be at work, they would gossip about her. Judging from that, mixed company is likely good for everyone, not just men.)

Third, women know what women want. Or, at least, are slightly more likely to know. Software is more likely to get new features, bug fixes, packaging, support, advertising blog posts and so on, if there are people with sufficient skill and interest in that particular software. When more women get involved in software development, the end result will be more useful for women. If Ubuntu’s ever going to reach 200 million users: if it works great for twice as many people, that would certainly help!

So, I would like to say thank you to all women involved in open source communities, both Ubuntu and upstream. That includes a thank you for not quitting when times get rough.

And finally, if I may extend my appreciation to an invitation: you don’t have to be as fantastic as the open source women I’ve met, to be contributing to Ubuntu, Debian, or upstream. If you already have skills, that helps, but for the most part, you’ll learn as you go. Commit to respecting each other first, and then you can start helping out with everything from writing code to organizing events. Welcome!

Disclaimer: As usual, these are my own views rather than those of my employer, my family, or anyone else. Also, just to make the point clear, this is not scientific research and does not claim that women are in general different from men – we all are so much different from, and so much more than, what an average person of the same gender would be. It is just my “thank you” post, based on my own personal experiences.

[Thanks to Leann Ogasawara for providing some useful feedback when writing this blog post.]

A very brief note to let you all know that I have moved the chromium test extension for browsing simulation under the Ubuntu-nexus7. Please submit improvements at your leasure:

https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-nexus7/ubuntu-nexus7/chromium_extension

Meeting Minutes

IRC Log of the meeting.

Meeting minutes.

Agenda

20121113 Meeting Agenda

ARM Status

nothing new this week

Release Metrics and Incoming Bugs

Release metrics and incoming bug data can be reviewed at the following link:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kt-meeting.txt

Milestone Targeted Work Items

That link acutally displays no work items as the new tracking checkpoints have just been created. I’ll get our blueprints updated. Expect an itemized list in next week’s meeting. For now, I’d suggest looking at:

• http://status.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-raring/canonical-kernel-distro-team.html

Status: Raring Development Kernel

Last week we uploaded the first v3.7-rc4 based Raring kernel to the archive. It is currently sitting in raring-proposed. We have also just rebased our raring tree to upstream v3.7-rc5.
Important upcoming dates:

• 13.04 Month 1 Checkpoint – ??? (release schedule has not been updated)

Status: CVE’s

Currently we have 26 CVEs on our radar, with 3 CVE added and 1 CVE retired since last meeting.
See the CVE matrix for the current list:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/ALL-linux.html

  Overall the backlog has decreased slightly this week:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/status/cve-metrics.txt

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/cve/pkg/CVE-linux.txt

Status: Stable, Security, and Bugfix Kernel Updates – Quantal/Precise/Oneiric/Lucid/Hardy

Here is the status for the main kernels, until today (November 13):

• Hardy – In Preparation; 1 CVEs; (1 commits)
• Lucid – In Preparation; 1 CVEs; (2 commits)
• Oneiric – In Testing, security signoff (from previous cycle)
  – In Preparation (current cycle); 2 CVEs; 6 upstream stable release(s); (200 commits)
• Precise – In Testing, security signoff (from previous cycle)
  – In Preparation; 2 CVEs; 2 upstream stable release(s); (253 commits)
• Quantal – In Preparation; 2 CVEs; (11 commits)
  Current opened tracking bugs details:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/kernel-sru-workflow.html

  For SRUs, SRU report is a good source of information:

• http://people.canonical.com/~kernel/reports/sru-report.html

  Future stable cadence cycles:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseInterlock

Open Discussion or Questions? Raise your hand to be recognized

No open discussions.

I find that sometimes the Network Manager applet in Ubuntu can be a little temperamental (apologies to the maintainer, cyphermox, if he’s reading this – but such is the nature of software). Sometimes it won’t show available routers and if that’s the case then I’ve established a little workaround that I’m telling you about mainly because it involves a script I wrote that lives in a somewhat obscure place in Ubuntu.

Step one in the workaround is needed if you don’t know which networks are available in advance. If you’re sitting in your home then you’ll probably not need this step since most people know their router SSID. If you don’t then you can scan using:

nmcli dev wifi list

This is really reliable and always works if your WiFi hardware is working.

The second step is to use the SSID to create the connection using the script I wrote:

sudo /usr/share/checkbox/scripts/create_connection $SSID --security=wpa --key=$WPA_KEY

If the router doesn’t use any security (which nmcli dev wifi list will tell you) then you don’t need –security or –key. If the router doesn’t use WPA2 (maybe it uses WEP), then you’re out of luck – and deservedly so. Change the routers security settings if you can!

Yesterday I mentioned how I got 7 hours of battery life whilst browsing, this was done at a brightness level of 76. After that I decided to run the test again but set the brightness level to 40. This gave me an extra hour , which is about 14% extra battery life. Was I expecting more? perhaps..