Union Filesystem Plans

At UDS we return to the subject of those drivers we are carrying which are specific to Ubuntu, why they are not yet upstream and what we can do about it.  Union Filesystems are a key technology in producing the live CD environment used to allow both non-destructive testing and the graphical installer.  This technology has long been a contentious subject as the patch sets have been extensive and intrusive to the VFS.  Worse there have been a number of camps all disagreeing as to the most sensible solution.

For a number of series we have carried the AUFS/AUFS2 patch kit as an Ubuntu add on.  This has been a solid performer in this space and served our purposes well.  About a year ago now talk began upstream on what approach would be acceptable to upstream.  This has resulted in a proposed for an integrated VFS based solution for union filesystems called union-mounts.  Patches have been circulating for the best part of a year and we skirted with them for the Lucid cycle, at that time they were feature incomplete preventing full testing.

Recently updated patches have been circulated which should be feature complete, and we are planning to provide kernels enabled for union-mount for testing in a PPA.  Should testing there prove good we will consider switching to this solution for our live CDs.  Watch this space as they say.

Maverick UDS: the hangover

What a mad week.  Finally UDS is over and at least some of us are back home, dispite the efforts of a certain Icelandic volcano and of Eurostar.  For me this has been one of the most valuable I have attended.  I suspect in large part this is due to my being more experienced in the 'one hour to rule the world' mentality.  The rather fetching five minute warning popups were pretty handy to focus the mind on getting the pertinent actions into the gobby seance.

Last cycle I was Kernel Release Manager, this meant that I had responsibility for all of the core kernel blueprints and meant I was tied to the kernel track almost exclusively.  With that responsibility passing to Leann I found myself free to rove to other tracks and stick my nose in.  I attended a number of X/graphics related discussions.  It was great to meet those behind the IRC nicks which I deal with so very often.

More on what we are going to be playing with once the hangover dissipates, in the meantime some Guitar Hero me thinks.

Ubuntu Developer Summit (Barcelona May 2009)

My second Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) is over. I think I need a week sleeping to let the sheer volume of information to clear from my mind before I can think about anything else. This UDS seemed bigger than the previous one. More tracks, more talks, more information, and more overload. But that has to be seen as a positive we are trying to tackle more and achieve more. At least this time I knew what to expect and was able sift the deluge of information and contribute to the event. It was great to see so many dedicated Ubuntu contributors and fans all in one place, to meet those people who I have been working with regularly.

As a member of the Ubuntu kernel team my focus was on the kernel track, particularly on the subjects I am focused on for this cycle. Though this time round the team did try and make sure we were able to escape our own sessions and get representatives out to other tracks so we could find out what the rest of the distro is planning to do and how that might affect us. They are after all our customers, consuming our kernels.

A number of topics caught my eye during the week. There was the drive to improve boot speed, some pretty aggressive boot speed targets are being banded around. Also plans to shift to grub2 as the default boot loaders bringing internationalisation and perhaps allowing lilo to be retired. The introduction of Kernel Mode Setting to improve boot experience. Plus cloud computing and how that will change both what is possible and our own workflows. All in all a week well spent.