gmane.linux.suse.opensuse.project

fdisk project - GSoC weekly report 1

Davidlohr Bueso — 2012-05-25T12:43:34

Hi,

This is my first report of what we've been doing regarding the fdisk
redesign project.

1) What's been done in previous weeks, before SoC development officially
started:

- Consolidate and agree on internal fdisk API and data structures with
Petr and mainstream util-linux community.

- Isolate DOS specific label logic. This is important since DOS
partition table context was deeply embedded in the heart of fdisk logic,
making it impossible to implement a new API. Now DOS, like all other
supported labels, has its own file and functions.

- Fixed two nasty bugs that are currently present in most distros.
http://git.kernel.org/?p=utils/util-linux/util-linux.git;a=commit;h=50f6100a960d96471980a9a5354d9ee426b00673
http://git.kernel.org/?p=utils/util-linux/util-linux.git;a=commit;h=44d2fc819840d821db8dc965decf1f490ae9cc95

- Generic code cleanups.

2) What's been done during week 1:

- Implemented and merged in mainstream the initial functions and data
structures of the new internal API.
http://git.kernel.org/?p=utils/util-linux/util-linux.git;a=commit;h=823f0fd107415ced8edde12306b9134058aafdc0

- Implement dynamic debug support. By reading environment variables
($FDISK_DEBUG) developers and users can quickly be informed of important
events during that occur during fdisk's entire execution.
http://git.kernel.org/?p=utils/util-linux/util-linux.git;a=commit;h=f7b1f75e68362071fd3f344fe13d1356f2047a6f

- Generic code cleanups.

3) What's immediately next?
- Add device topology and geometry to the API. We have decided to go
strictly with libblkid for the former, therefore fdisk will probably
depend 100% on it. This enables us not to reinvent the wheel, specially
since this blkid is also part of util-linux.

--
All in all I believe we have had a good, solid start. It really helps
that Petr, I and util-linux maintainer are quite familiar with the code,
thus making quick and important progress. Petr's willingness and
knowledge really make a difference and couldn't be happier working with
him.

Thanks,
Davidlohr

Announcing AppStream GSoC project

Matthias Klumpp — 2012-05-19T20:46:50

Hello OpenSUSE!

I am Matthias Klumpp and I will work on making the AppStream[1]
project work for OpenSUSE as part of the Google Summer of Code this
year.
A little bit about myself:
I study Molecular Biomedicine in my second semester at University of
Bonn in Germany and I use Linux for years now.

I contribute to KDE (mainly to Apper, the PackageKit-based KDE package
manager) and I am PackageKit upstream developer, as well as the
maintainer of Listaller, a cross-distro application installer, which
has the goal to make installations of 3rd-party apps on multiple
distributions as easy, generic and integrated as possible, by using
just one package. (Yes, 3rd-party repos and native packages have some
issues, just before you ask the obvious question ^^)

I’m not really a typical KDE user, as I also use GNOME from time to
time and contribute to GNOME (but just very unimportant things for
now). Knowing both desktops and both communities is usually an
advantage, and therefore I very much enjoyed the last Desktop Summit
in Berlin.  If you’ve been there, you might have met me there already
;-)

I am Debian Maintainer and maintain all PackageKit and most
PackageKit-related packages there. This means I also use Debian, so
doing a project for OpenSUSE might look strange on the first look.
But’s it’s not strange at all: I’m working on a cross-distro project
so the distribution doesn’t matter that much. Also, SUSE was the first
Linux distribution I've ever tried :-) - so I know OpenSUSE.

In general kudos to openSUSE for doing the cross-distro GSoC tasks
which no other distribution does! OpenSUSE has always been the
distribution with the highest activity in this area, although they
could’ve said “we don’t care about collaboration and
interoperability”, which would’ve been perfectly sane. My greatest
respect for that open-minded attitude and I’m really happy to work
with you all!

I already tweaked the Software-Center a little, so starting time is up
to 420% faster, and we just need one call to PackageKit anymore,
instead of doing thousands of Resolve() calls.
Next weeks I'll work on a simple package information cache in
PackageKit, which the SC will use then. The cache will also serve as
some kind of PackageKit-backend-benchmark, as there is a plan to
change PK's structure to allow parallel database-queries. But
implementing that will take much longer than my GSoC (and it needs to
be discussed first) So the cache is a viable solution right now.
After that, I'll split out some components of SC, mainly the
Xapian-database generator, and probably rewrite it in C++ (makes it
faster and reusing the Python code won't necessarily be possible) This
will make it possible to create different implementations of a
Software-center, for example you could write one for KDE too.
Then, I'll focus on tweaking the SC again, making it a pleasure to
work with on other distributions. If I've time left, I'll also work on
other parts of AppStream, but I want a great-looking-great-working
Software Center first.

I'll write weekly or biweekly status reports to this list, to keep you informed.

It's cool to work on a cross-distro project for OpenSUSE and I'm
looking forward to a great time!
If you have any questions regarding anything written above, feel free
to ask! :-)

    Matthias Klumpp

--------
[1]: http://distributions.freedesktop.org/wiki/AppStream

Our progress in taking the list back

Pascal Bleser — 2012-05-19T10:54:31

Hi all

I'm sure everyone will have noticed that we, collectively, made
substantial progress in taking back our list as our media of
communication.

There have been, and still are, quite a few interesting topics
of discussion over here, and the tone remained civil and even
friendly, quite focused, and productive.

So let's pat ourselves on the back and keep up the good work :)

And if you believe I'm wrong, please let me (or even everyone on
the list) know. To fix issues, we first need to be aware of them

a fully autonomous local repository mirror (was: When is a mirror not a mirror?)

Per Jessen — 2012-05-18T13:47:25


I've updated the fetcher206 package and added a step-by-step guide.  

http://wiki.jessen.ch/index/Squid_and_openSUSE

On a fairly fast internet connection (50Mbit/s), I have a time saving of
16% (about 5min for per regular openSUSE12.1 network install). At home
I used to have only ADSL at 6Mbit/s downstream, with that speed a lot
more time was saved by caching.

Freight Train/Bugzilla discussions, etc.

Bryen M Yunashko — 2012-05-17T00:09:30

I think the last few days have definitely brought up some good and
interesting discussions regarding the freight train, and particularly
what we should start looking at regarding bugzilla.

However, at the same time, I see the thread becoming longer and longer.
And the "discussers", including myself, are pretty much a few set of
people.  I wonder if we've reached a sufficient point now where we've
identified the people who are genuinely interested in this topic and
should move those into a task force team to focus on this subject matter
directly (and report to the Project at large of its findings and
conclusions periodically.)   In this way, we won't turn off people who
feel the project list has become too bogged down on a subject they may
not be interested in.

Thoughts (at the risk of bogging down with another long thread)?  :-)

Bryen M Yunashko
openSUSE Project

Does the project have a publicly accessible project management tool?

Jim Henderson — 2012-05-16T22:35:41

General question to those more closely involved in oS project management 
- is there a tool we have access to that can help track tasks and 
progress on projects within the oS project?

I'm thinking something like a Kablink (or Vibe OnPrem) task list.  I've 
got Vibe installed at home with a limited number of users, but I'd rather 
track the bugzilla/bug process project in a more visible way than on a 
private server in my house. :)

If we don't, I can set something on on the Kablink site so those who are 
interested can follow along and help document the tasks that need to be 
completed and their progress.

Thanks,

Jim

Who do I contact about bugzilla?

Per Jessen — 2012-05-16T06:19:04

$SUBJ - I would like to have the "Scheduled Reports (Daily, Weekly,
Hourly, etc.) by Email" feature activated. 

thanks

Improving the bug management lifecycle/process

Jim Henderson — 2012-05-16T03:04:39

OK, so this is something I'd like to start trying to get my arms around 
so we can have a more comprehensive approach to dealing with bug reports 
and increase the rate of resolution as well as the follow-up rate when 
additional information is needed.

It seems that we have a few areas that we should be looking at:

1.  There should be some sort of "screening" that takes place before a 
bug is accepted - to ensure that the devs aren't seeing multiple copies 
of the same bugs.  I think it's fair to say that those who write code 
would far rather *write code* than try to sort through duplicate bug 
entries.  While it's likely there still would be dupes with a screening 
process, the incidence should be reduced.

2.  There needs to be more of a "human" reply, especially on older bugs, 
that are being addressed.  Looking at the current Bugzilla stats, I see 
that (for example) 12.1 has 183 bugs in a "NEEDINFO" state - there needs 
to be some sort of consistent follow-up to ensure that the info needed to 
fix the issues is provided, and if it isn't and the information can't be 
obtained (because the issue cannot be duped, those looking at it don't 
have the necessary hardware, etc), then the bug needs to be closed.

3.  For older bugs, (such as on 10.3-11.3, which there are still open 
bugs on), a determination needs to be made as to whether the current 
supported releases have those issues, and if they do, the bugs need to be 
updated.  If they don't, then the bugs need to be flagged in an 
appropriate way.

4.  It would be extremely useful, I think - especially for the non-techie 
audience - to put some specific training together on things like (a) how 
to submit a bug and include the relevant information, (b) what to expect 
with your bug and how to monitor progress, (c) how to provide additional 
information when requested (and what to do if you've upgraded/moved to 
another version/changed distributions/decided to go back to Windows/MacOS/
whatever) so the bug can continue to be evaluated by those evaluating it.

Ultimately, the goal of this project is to increase resolution rates, 
reduce the time to resolution as much as possible, and to visibly improve 
the bug resolution process so more people don't perceive (correct or not) 
that reporting bugs is useless because they don't get resolved (and 
actually, looking at the stats on bug status, I think it's pretty unfair 
to say bugs aren't getting resolved.  I see, for example, that of the 
reported bugs on 11.1, for example, over 3/4 of the bugs are marked as 
resolved.)

And overall across all releases of openSUSE, and SUSE Linux Professional/
SUSE Linux from 8.2 on, the bugs marked resolved are 13026/18285, which 
is nearly 3/4.

75% isn't bad (the Pareto rule is 80/20, and on 11.1 we're actually 
around 78% "resolved"), but I'm sure that if we can guide the process and 
streamline it, we can increase that.

Of course those are just rough statistics and the reason bugs are marked 
as 'resolved' isn't included in that - and there is a further breakdown 
that can be done that might help identify trends that would be useful.

There's clearly more that we should be looking at, but these four areas 
are a good place to start.  For my own part, I'm willing to do more than 
talk and discuss the ideas, but it's going to take more than just one 
person working in his spare time to move this along.

I also think something similar to this should be done for FATE, but 
that's perhaps a topic for another day. :)

Jim

[reminder] openSUSE Project Meeting tomorrow at 20:00 UTC

openSUSE Meeting Reminder — 2012-05-15T10:00:01

Hello all,

The biweekly project meeting will be held tomorrow at 20:00 UTC
in #opensuse-project on freenode. Everybody is invited to join and
participate!

Find out what time the meeting will be in your timezone:
  http://timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=16&month=5&year=2012&hour=20&min=00&sec=0

Agenda of the meeting:
  http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Project_meeting#Agenda_for_the_next_meeting

If you cannot participate and want a specific question to be answered
during the meeting, please add your question to:
  http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Project_meeting#Questions_Section

Minutes and logs of previous meetings can be found at:
  http://community.opensuse.org/meetings/opensuse-project/

Thanks,

download stats?

Peter Czanik — 2012-05-11T13:46:09

Hello,
We try to estimate the number of syslog-ng users. We already know the 
number of source downloads, as that's downloaded from our servers. As 
one of our most popular platform is openSUSE / SLES (where syslog-ng is 
installed by default), I'd like to know, if it is possible to get any 
download statistics how many times syslog-ng binaries were downloaded. 
The syslog-ng package is part of all releases, Base:system, 
home:czanik:* and a couple more project under home:.
A rough estimate of SLES users would also be useful, but I guess, that's 
not public data...
Bye,
CzP

Resign from medical coordinator

Stathis Iosifidis (aka diamond_gr — 2012-05-11T11:00:18

Hello mates,

With this mail I would like to let you know that I resign from the 
coordinator of medical project.
All this time, I focused more on the Greek community projects I'm 
coordinating and didn't have enough time and technical skills to make 
the medical project work.
All that time I noticed that the live cd isn't functional unless it's 
installed. That was the path I was working and made the first EMR 
(openEMR) program to work but the graphic environment wasn't helping me.
Next step was to check the next EMR programs.
Anyways, I hope next coordinator will make it work.
Have a lot of fun,
Stathis

LinuxTag update

Jos Poortvliet — 2012-05-08T23:10:33

Heya all,

The current status of http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:LinuxTag Berlin

- We've got a booth. I'm quite confident it'll be 14m2, have 2 tables and 6 
chairs. Nothing else, LT is out of budget for furniture :(
- We will have 40 crates of openSUSE beer to hand out for €1 donation to LT
- We'll do that in collaboration with Fedora, which hands out hotdogs
- I have a few hundred DVD's, some flyers and some posters here. Will 
probably walk into a copy shop to create some more.
- don't know yet how many tickets I'll get but anyone who helps at LT will 
get a free ticket. Helping =/ hacking at the booth! We won't have place to 
sit for anything other than showing ppl something.
-Tuesday evening is booth setup. Pls come to LT location and help out a bit!

Now what is still to do. I like to do the Booth program thing, but that 
requires a big screen and presentations. I'll do something every day on 
installing ownCloud on openSUSE (demoing Studio and OBS-for-endusers while 
at it) and Christian Boltz was willing to do something on AppArmor. 
Christian, if you pick a time and add how many times you're willing to do 
it, we're only looking for one more :D

Then we need to make sure we get the right things from Nue. I know some 
people are going by car so I hope they can bring some stuff. At the least 
the box with booth-stuff like tape, pens etcetera.

We need (please tell me if Nue has this):
- some stand(s) to put our merchandise on and hang up posters
- a big screen for the presentations (one of the two big touch-screen-
computers? is transport doable for those?)
- 2-3 power cord extensions (I know Nue has this, don't forget pls)
- I know I forgot things as it's past 1:10 and I need sleep, ideas?


/Jos

download.opensuse.org IPV6 address breaks updates

Gerald Pfeifer — 2012-05-07T15:30:19

I am seeing this with an openSUSE 12.1 system at home, and also a
Factory system at work:

  % host download.opensuse.org
  download.opensuse.org has address 195.135.221.134
  download.opensuse.org has IPv6 address 2001:67c:2178:8::13

And then, when running zypper patch or zypper up, I see

  Retrieving: repomd.xml [error]
  Download (curl) error for 
 'http://download.opensuse.org/update/12.1/repodata/repomd.xml':
  Error code: Connection failed
  Error message: Failed to connect to 2001:67c:2178:8::13: Network is unreachable

Alas, my provider nor that network at work support IPv6.  Still, my
system has IPv6 enabled since roaming around on different networks,
IPv6 may be present, or even necessary there.

(This does not happen all the time, sometimes if I retry a bit later
the system uses IPv4 and everything works.)


Now, is this just a setup problem and I should simply and
unconditionally disable IPv6?

Or are some parts of our update or network stack in need of
some adjustments?

For the time being, unless this is just me running into this,
should we disable IPv6 on download.opensuse.org?

Gerald

python update disappeared from update repo

Cristian Morales Vega — 2012-05-05T08:51:15

I had python installed from the updates repository

$ fgrep python-base /var/log/zypp/history
2011-11-10 16:13:02|install|python-base|2.7.2-7.1.2|x86_64|root< at >opensuse|InstallationImage|c25c9289c1f8b1f03c503dbdc75915ff367ae629e9a847e4f21d194bcea58889
2012-03-01 23:46:39|install|python-base|2.7.2-7.5.1|x86_64||update|86749eaab2f972e2be4df35e71ea833d61e1c40f6055e4cc81a7891043f9fa15

But that 2.7.2-7.5.1 is not in the repo anymore. It should have never
been there and was retired or is this a bug related to the recent
problems with the infrastructure?

SUSE Studio = Awesome!

Chris Jones — 2012-05-05T05:04:44

I am working on a few projects at the moment. I am developing my own
programming language called Simple Dictionary Language (or SDL). I am
also tinkering around with Linux kernel 3.4-rc5. And I have also been working on and preparing my own Linux distribution for a few
months. Today I finally completed my first build of 0.0.1. Although
still in very early development stages and nowhere near ready for a
public release, I just wanted to point out how awesome SUSE Studio is
and how easy it has made the whole management of the whole project.

So a very special thank you to all that make SUSE Studio possible and
such an awesome service. It's an absolute pleasure to use. And I will
always be leaving some sort of SUSE branding in my own distro as a big
kudos to all you guys.


Regards

Chris Jones

Build Service Deployment Application

Alexander Rössler — 2012-05-04T20:05:55

Hello OpenSUSE Developers and Community,

Today I have watched a talk about Appstream at the Linuxwochen in Vienna. As I 
applied for Google Summer of Code for an Build Service Plugin for Kdevelop and 
was rejected, I will apply for Season of KDE. Im writing this e-mail because I 
want to develop and application, that simplifies the procedure of deploying 
applications to the build service. You can read my GSoC proposal if you are 
interested (http://www.google-
melange.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gsoc2012/strahlex/1
). My application was for Build Service Plugin for Kdevelop, but maybe a 
standalone application would be better. This application would perfectly fit to 
Appstream, it would be nice if someone could mentor me.

Regards
Alexander Rössler

Project meeting minutes/logs

Robert Schweikert — 2012-05-02T20:30:49

(04:30:00 PM) bugbot: Meeting ended Wed May  2 20:30:00 2012 UTC.  The 
log and minutes are available from: (v 0.1.4)
(04:30:00 PM) bugbot: Minutes: 
http://community.opensuse.org/meetings/opensuse-project/2012/opensuse-project.2012-05-02-20.02.html
(04:30:00 PM) bugbot: Minutes (text): 
http://community.opensuse.org/meetings/opensuse-project/2012/opensuse-project.2012-05-02-20.02.txt
(04:30:00 PM) bugbot: Log: 
http://community.opensuse.org/meetings/opensuse-project/2012/opensuse-project.2012-05-02-20.02.log.html

When is a mirror not a mirror?

Basil Chupin — 2012-05-02T11:48:25

My ISP is iinet.net.au - and has been for some years now.

iinet.net.au is listed as one of the mirrors for openSUSE files and is 
listed as able to provide all updates for the openSUSE distro.

With the oS servers out of action (but now are about to come back online 
as per Stefan's post) I have been trying to upgrade KDE to 4.8.2 over 
the past couple of days but the widehate server has been rejecting my 
(and others) attempts to access it to do this upgrade.

So I looked up the list of mirrors and found that my ISP is listed as 
being a source for my upgrade of KDE - which is very nice because 
downloading from iinet.net.au costs me nothing as I am it's customer and 
can downloading from what iinet call its "Freezone".

The only problem is is that iinet is not a true mirror for openSUSE. I 
had to go to a Belgian site to be able to upgrade to KDE 4.8.2 on my new 
installation.

I have written to iinet on several occasions in the past telling 
them/complaining to them that their file directories are NOT up-to-date 
nor do they contain all the files - and always received the response 
that "the information has been passed on to the [engineers] for action". 
Well, nothing has been done now for, what?, 3 years.

May I therefore make a request to whoever maintains the list of mirrors 
handling the openSUSE distribution that s/he either writes to 
iinet,net.au and gets them to action this deficiency or removes 
iinet.net.au from the list of mirrors.

BC

[reminder] openSUSE Project Meeting tomorrow at 20:00 UTC

openSUSE Meeting Reminder — 2012-05-01T10:00:01

Hello all,

The biweekly project meeting will be held tomorrow at 20:00 UTC
in #opensuse-project on freenode. Everybody is invited to join and
participate!

Find out what time the meeting will be in your timezone:
  http://timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=2&month=5&year=2012&hour=20&min=00&sec=0

Agenda of the meeting:
  http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Project_meeting#Agenda_for_the_next_meeting

If you cannot participate and want a specific question to be answered
during the meeting, please add your question to:
  http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Project_meeting#Questions_Section

Minutes and logs of previous meetings can be found at:
  http://community.opensuse.org/meetings/opensuse-project/

Thanks,

Permission denied to access the KDE 4.8.2 respository on widehat

Basil Chupin — 2012-05-01T01:11:38

I started last night to ugrade KDE to 4.8.2 and after about a dozen or 
so files were downloaded suddenly the download rate dropped - so I 
stopped the transfers (I was using zypper).

This morning (now, ie) I get the message that I don't have permission to 
access this repository on widehat.

If all the other repos are being redirected, why is this repo being 
denied access? Anyone know? Thank you.

BC

bad news: download.opensuse.org lost its filesystem

Stephan Kulow — 2012-04-30T09:02:08

Hi,

We face at the moment a rather critical problem - in
download.opensuse.org's RAID 2 discs died at the same time,
which means we can't restore the filesystem at all.

Most stuff is copied somewhere else, but restoring it from
scratch can take easily a day - we're talking about several TB.

For now I redirect download.o.o to widehat.opensuse.org, which
won't be able to hold the load for long - but it's better than
spitting errors.

Greetings, Stephan