Archive of posts from 2016
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Debian LTS work, November 2016
I was assigned 11 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative. I worked 9 hours and carry over 2 hours.
In my role as Linux 3.2 stable maintainer, I made a 3.2.84 release with a large number of backported fixes. I then rebased wheezy's linux package on this and made some additional changes to maintain the kernel module ABI. This will probably be released some time in December or January, depending on what security issues turn up.
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Linux Kernel Summit 2016, part 2
I attended this year's Linux Kernel Summit in Santa Fe, NM, USA and made notes on some of the sessions that were relevant to Debian. LWN also reported many of the discussions. This is the second and last part of my notes; part 1 is here.
Updated: I corrected the description of which Intel processors support SMEP. Updated again: I made several more corrections, thanks to PaX Team.
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Linux Kernel Summit 2016, part 1
I attended this year's Linux Kernel Summit in Santa Fe, NM, USA and made notes on some of the sessions that were relevant to Debian. LWN also reported many of the discussions. This is the first of two parts of my notes; part 2 is here.
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Debian LTS work, October 2016
I was assigned 13.75 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative and worked all of them.
I reviewed the fix for CVE-2016-7796 in wheezy's systemd, which needed substantial changes and a few iterations to get right.
I updated linux to the 3.2.82 stable release (and 3.2.82-rt119 for PREEMPT_RT), and added fixes for several security issues including CVE-2016-5195 "Dirty Cow". I uploaded and issued DLA-670-1.
In my role as Linux 3.2 stable maintainer, I made a 3.2.83 release fixing just that issue, and started to prepare a 3.2.84 release with many more fixes.
I cleaned up my work on imagemagick, but didn't go further through the backlog of issues. I put the partly updated package on people.debian.org for another LTS maintatainer to pick up.
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Debian LTS work, September 2016
I was assigned 12.3 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative and carried over 1.45 from last month. I was unwell for much of this month and only worked 6 hours on LTS. I returned 7 hours to the pool and carry over 0.75 hours.
I wrote and sent the DLA for linux 3.2.81-2, and I discussed various handling of various issues on the debian-lts mailing list. Most of my time was spent working on the long backlog of security issues in imagemagick. I hope to complete this and upload a fixed version this month.
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Debian LTS work, August 2016
I was assigned 14.75 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative and carried over 0.7 from last month. I worked a total of 14 hours, carrying over 1.45 hours.
I finished preparing and finally uploaded an update for linux (3.2.81-2). This took longer than expected due to the difficulty of reproducing CVE-2016-5696 and verifying the backported fix. I also released an upstream stable update (3.2.82) which will go into the next update in wheezy LTS.
I discussed a few other security updates and issues on the debian-lts mailing list.
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Debian LTS work, July 2016
I was assigned another 14.7 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative and carried over 1 from last month. I worked a total of 15 hours, carrying over a fraction of an hour.
I spent another week in the Front Desk role and triaged various new CVEs for wheezy.
I spent the remainder of the time working on the next Linux stable updates (3.2.82 and Debian 3.2.81-2), but didn't release them - that will be done in the next few days.
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Debian LTS work, June 2016
I was assigned another 15 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative and carried over 5 from last month. I worked a total of 19 hours, carrying over 1.
I spent a week in the Front Desk role and triaged many new security issues for wheezy.
I prepared the Linux 3.2.81 stable update, sent it out for review and finally released it. I then rebased the wheezy-security branch on top of that and added some later security fixes that were not yet suitable for a kernel.org update. I uploaded to wheezy-security and issued DLA-516-1.
I started working on the next Linux stable updates (3.2.82 and the next wheezy LTS update) and on an update for imagemagick, but haven't uploaded anything for them yet.
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Debian LTS work, May 2016
I was assigned another 15 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative, but only worked a total of 10 hours. I intend to make up for this in June.
I began preparing the next stable update for Linux 3.2 on kernel.org, but haven't yet sent it out for review. I rebased the wheezy-security branch onto Linux 3.2.80, and added fixes for one more security issue and one data corruption issue affecting aufs.
I started a week in the front desk, triaging new issues for wheezy.
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10 years as a Debian Developer
On 1st May 2006 my Debian account was created and I gained the status of Debian Developer. At that time I had already been to several BSPs and one DebConf, and maintained a few applications and Perl library packages. We were working toward the etch release and would soon hold DebConf 6 in Mexico.
Ten years later, I still maintain one of those packages (sgt-puzzles) but the rest were either handed over to the Perl team or entirely removed. I wrote, maintained, and then gave away dvswitch all within this period. I have packaged some other applications that I needed to use - kup, ministat, odhcp6c - and I continue to maintain them. I have also made many NMUs, including security uploads, for all kinds of packages including bind9, e2fsprogs, (e)glibc, lvm2, sudo, sysvinit and udev.
However, for about the past 7 years most of my work in Debian has been done within the kernel team, working on the Linux kernel and closely related packages - such as crda, ethtool, firmware-nonfree and initramfs-tools. I have also become an upstream developer for several of these projects.
I'm proud to have played a part in the etch, lenny, squeeze, wheezy and jessie releases, and I have enjoyed attending 7 more DebConfs and many mini-DebConfs. I'm now looking forward to another great release (stretch) and to attending DebConf 16 in Cape Town this
summerwinter. I hope to still be active in Debian in 2026, looking back on another 10 years in this amazing project. -
Debian LTS work, April 2016
This month was still quiet for me in terms of uploads, as "wheezy" was only handed over to the LTS team near the end of the month. I carried over 5.5 hours from March and was assigned another 15 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative, but only worked a total of 12.25 hours. I have returned the spare hours to the pool.
As last month, I prepared a stable update for Linux 3.2 on kernel.org, which will be released soon as 3.2.80. I also triaged the open security issues and backported a few individual patches to our wheezy-security branch. However I expect to rebase the wheezy-security branch onto Linux 3.2.80 before making the next upload.
I also participated in discussion of supporting armel/armhf in wheezy LTS. I don't expect many LTS users to be using the Debian kernel packages, as we only supported a small range of ARM hardware before the introduction of the multiplatform flavours in jessie. However, those architectures rarely require any extra effort to support in linux stable updates so I had no objection to including them.
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Experiments with signed kernels and modules in Debian
I've lately been working on support for Secure Boot in Debian, mostly in the packages maintained by the kernel team.
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Debian LTS work, March 2016
Last month was relatively quiet for me in terms of uploads, as the "squeeze" LTS period was over and "wheezy" is still in the hands of the regular Debian security team. I carried over 7.25 hours from Feburary and was assigned another 11 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative, and worked a total of 12.75 hours.
As Debian 7 "wheezy" uses Linux 3.2.y, I took on maintenance of that stable branch at kernel.org from May 2012 until wheezy's EOL. (This currently makes it both the oldest of the kernel.org supported releases and the one with the latest projected EOL!) I will now be maintaining it as part of my Debian LTS work, and then taking on Linux 3.16.y in my own time starting next month. Each update takes me around 10 hours to prepare, so Linux 3.2.79 accounted for most of my work this month.
Aside from that, I backported an additional security fix for the kernel (that was not yet suitable for a kernel.org update) to the wheezy-security branch, rebased the wheezy branch on 3.2.79, and pulled upstream updates to the PREEMPT_RT patchset.
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Depression vs fever
There was a connection I meant to draw, and then forgot to do before publishing my last entry.
In severe cases of depression, ECT may still be used as a last resort, and is often effective. I had the idea that the lesser shock to the brain of a high fever might somehow have an effect on less serious depression. It doesn't seem terribly likely, though, and we never did find a thermometer to check just how high my temperature was.
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I'm super, thanks for asking!
Some of you (
butthough probably not many) will know that I've suffered from depression at times. It has made it very difficult for me to do my job, to keep my home in order, even to have real conversations. Many important tasks seemed to require more energy than I had, and every setback left me feeling hopeless. -
Last week 'flu by
Last Monday, I began a new project at Codethink - working on kernel support for the next generation of an interactive system fitted in some high-performance cars. I travelled up to Manchester the night before, and on Monday I met Codethink's team (most of whom I was familiar with).
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Debian LTS work, February 2016
February marked the end of Debian 6.0 "squeeze" LTS, though there was some initial confusion (partly my fault) over which day of month it should end. I carried over 10 hours from January and was assigned another 11.25 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative. I worked a total of 14 hours.
I started the month with "the final" update to the linux-2.6 kernel package (DLA-412-1), fixing 5 CVEs and incorporating upstream stable update 2.6.32.70. After it was agreed that support would continue to the end of the month, I made one more update on the last day (DLA-439-1), fixing 4 CVEs, a regression, and some issues I had found lacking CVEs (one is now CVE-2012-6701).
I helped to edit the end-of-life announcement for Squeeze LTS.
I spent a fairly quiet week in the front desk, triaging new issues for squeeze.
As I've volunteered to handle embargoed issues, I prepared security updates to libssh and libssh2 and issued them minutes after the public disclosure of the similarly disastrous CVE-2016-0739 and CVE-2016-0787 issues.
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Debian LTS work, January 2016
In January I carried over 10 hours from December and was assigned another 15 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative. I worked a total of 15 hours. I had a few days on 'front desk' at the start of the month, as my week in that role spanned the new year.
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Debian LTS work, December 2015
In December I carried over 15 hours from October/November and was assigned another 15 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative. I worked a total of 20 hours despite the holidays.