Distributions

LPC: Upstart 1.0 plans: manifesto for a new init

Let's make two things clear about Upstart, a proposed replacement for the Linux "init" process. First, it's not there to speed up boot, and second, it's not intended to parallelize startup. "Upstart is not for what most people think it is for," said its author, Scott James Remnant, in a talk in the dbus miniconference at the Linux Plumbers Conference. What it is there for is to expand the capabilities of "init" on Linux, replace some scripts and workarounds with rules that are intended to be easier to understand and modify, and enable future improvements. Remnant is a Canonical employee, and Upstart is in Fedora as of version 9, making it a welcome example of a Canonical-sponsored project finding its way into other distributions.

While Greg Kroah-Hartman mentioned a list of core software on the Linux platform in his Plumbers Conference talk, "the one thing he never put in there was init," Remnant said. The Linux init, originally by Miquel van Smoorenburg, has been unchanged for years, and is modeled on the System V Unix init, which is even older. Instead of updating it, Remnant says that, for too long, distributions have just worked around it. The startup process has traditionally consisted of shell scripts, started by init, but containing workarounds and extensions accumulated over the years. For example, Debian has a wrapper program called start-stop-daemon, that manages PID files, to keep track of what process ID a daemon process ends up with. Upstart handles that itself.

Current features of upstart include sending notifications for system events, for example, when a service starts; eliminating race conditions, by offering dependency tracking; and removing some service startups from the critical path for boot, again by handling dependencies. Upstart allows a distribution or sysadmin to spell out the critical path in a script, and also specify dependencies. Tracking dependencies allows distributions to eliminate "sleep" loops from the boot sequence, and instead take actions based on events.

Events are not limited to the runlevel changes familiar to sysvinit users, but can depend on other things on the system. But what other things? Future directions for Upstart could be ambitious. For 1.0, Remnant is considering adding the ability to do tasks based on cron-like criteria such as "hourly." But should upstart really replace cron? Another possibly useful direction would be an "idle" event. The Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) is a service that makes sense to start "30 seconds before the user thinks of clicking on the print button," he said. CUPS is not in the critical path for boot, but needs to be running to detect printers before the user needs them. Should it be possible to start non-critical services when the system becomes idle?

Even though fast boot isn't the goal of upstart, Remnant is optimistic about being able to help. Some of the slow booting problems that Arjan van de Ven and Auke Kok identified at the conference are deep in the weeds of nested scripts, and might be smoked out by a simpler init layout. "To make boot fast we have to do a bunch of different stuff. it makes it easy for us to do the real work," Remnant said.

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Information on the e1000e corruption bug

Mandriva has sent out an advisory on the e1000e corruption bug which, by virtue of being the best compilation of information on this problem so far, is of interest far beyond the Mandriva user community. If you have an e1000e adapter and run 2.6.27-rc kernels, you probably want to take a look.

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Introducing Foresight Kids Edition

The Foresight Linux Project has announced the first release of the Foresight Kids Edition. "Foresight Kids Edition is a Linux distribution for children that features a number of education and entertainment applications, as well as the benefits of the Foresight GNOME Edition: a rolling release schedule that always keeps your desktop up to date; a revolutionary package manager, Conary; a customized GNOME desktop environment and an innovative set of excellent, up to date software applications."

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openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1 now available

The first beta version of openSUSE 11.1 is now available. It contains new versions of GNOME (2.24), KDE (4.1.x), and the kernel (2.6.27-rc5). It also has basic support for SELinux along with a raft of other enhancements detailed in the announcement below. "Please remember that this is a beta release, and is not suitable for use on production systems. However, this release is ready for widespread testing, and we're encouraging everyone to download and test the beta release. Please run the release through your usual routine, and let us know about any bugs or other issues that you find."

Update: See this warning before installing on a system with an Intel e1000e network card.

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Orange Sombrero 9 Released - based on Fedora

Orange Sombrero 9 has been announced. Orange Sombrero is basically Fedora 9 with a couple of patches that make it a derivative of Fedora. "Why bother? Trademark guidelines right now say a derivative distribution cannot use "based on Fedora" -which is bad, and Orange Sombrero is now raising some red flags about it. Work is well on it's way to improve that situation though, for which I thank everyone involved. I hope soon, very soon, derivative's of Fedora pop up everywhere, like mushrooms in autumn."

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Intrepid Alpha 6 released

Ubuntu has release Alpha 6 of the Intrepid Ibex (v8.10). This release is also available in the Ubuntu Education Edition, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and UbuntuStudio editions.

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Fedora 10 likely to slip again

Though the change has not yet been approved, it looks like the Fedora 10 release will be delayed again. "The Release Engineering team is recommending a slip of the Beta release date to Tuesday Sept 30th. To go along with this slip, we recommend that all further points of the Fedora 10 schedule slip out a week as well, which would put the Fedora 10 release date at November 25th."

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Fedora intrusion update

The latest status report from the Fedora project tells us the work on the infrastructure has returned to normal. Updates for F8 and F9 are flowing and Rawhide and other Fedora Hosted sites are back to normal. "At this time, however, we believe Fedora's recovery efforts are complete. To reiterate our previous statement, we have not found any security vulnerabilities in any Fedora software as a result of our efforts. The security investigation into the intrusion is still in progress. When that investigation is completed, the Fedora Project's intention is to publish a more detailed report on the matter."

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Fedora Board Recap 2008-SEP-16

The September 16th meeting of the Fedora Advisory Board included discussions about Fedora EMEA update, Beta Freeze and Upcoming Release, Beta Release Meeting, Codecs and a Trademark Update.

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Mandriva announces a new solution for netbooks: Mandriva Mini

Mandriva has announced the first release of Mandriva Mini, a version for netbooks. "Netbooks, small in size and cost, are big in functionality. The market is growing fast, rising from a million units in 2007 to industry forecasts of over 50 million by 2010. The products are attractive for emerging markets where they help provide Internet access to the largest number of users, and to highly developed markets where they are seen as mobile tools or a second PC."

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openSUSE Build Service did it!

The openSUSE project announced that openSUSE 11.1 beta 1 is the first release to built using the openSUSE Build Service, without any help from the SUSE internal AutoBuild service.

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Serious e1000e Driver Issue in SLE 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1

openSUSE is warning of nasty interaction between Intel e1000e network cards and the driver in SUSE 11.1 betas. They are asking users with that hardware not to run either openSUSE 11.1 beta 1 and SLE 11.1 beta 1 while SUSE and Intel investigate the problem. The driver "might have a serious issue with the potential to damage the network card in a way that it cannot be used any longer." Click below for the full announcement.

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Serious, potentially hardware-damaging e1000e driver issue on Intrepid

Ubuntu has also posted a warning about the e1000e ethernet driver for Intel GigE chipsets, as included upstream in Linux 2.6.27.

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Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #109

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for September 20, 2008 covers: Intrepid Ibex Alpha 6 released, Codecs & DVD playback in Intrepid for all users, Xubuntu News, New Kubuntu Team, MOTU Team News, SFD: Ubuntu-VE, Ubuntu-NI and Ubuntu NO, Ubuntu-ZA leadership change, Launchpad 2.1.9 released, Ubuntu Mozilla Team summary, and much more.

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OpenSUSE Weekly News/39

This issue of the OpenSUSE Weekly News covers the Board election, OpenOffice_org 3.0rc1 available, Call for SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE Beta Testers, Duncan Mac-Vicar: Extremely easy driver installation, Distribution status, and much more.

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Fedora Weekly News #144

The Fedora Weekly News for September 20, 2008 is out. "In this action packed issue Announcements reminds you of important Fedora 10 freeze dates and the latest on the post security scare clean-up. PlanetFedora muses on some "Legal" issues. Our new Marketing beat-writer Svetoslav Chukov unveils the "Beauty found in Fedora". Developments reveals "Fedora not Free Enough for GNU". News of imminent deadlines in Translations is brought to you by another new writer Runa Bhattacharjee. Infrastructure alerts you to "More Puppet Training!". Artwork offers "Freedom for a Game" and SecurityAdvisories brings you the weeks latest in one handy spot. Virtualization shares information on "Migration Support in Virt-manager GUI"."

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 271

The DistroWatch Weekly for September 22, 2008 is out. "The feature story of the this week's issue is package management or, more precisely, an attempt to create a command-line package management cheatsheet that would cover just about any Linux distribution available today. The first quick version is out today, but we hope to bring you a much improved and more detailed one after this week's feedback and suggestions. In the news section, OpenSolaris releases first test images for its upcoming version 2008.11, Fedora provides a further update on the recent compromise of its servers, Ubuntu responds to the accusations that it contributes little to the Linux kernel, and Phoronix runs a performance benchmark on four different Linux distributions installed on the ASUS Eee PC. Also worth a read, an interesting interview with a senior OpenSolaris engineer and further evidence that Gentoo Linux is no longer that innovative and trend-setting distribution it was just five years ago. Finally, a very happy GNOME 2.24 release week to all the fans of the popular desktop!"

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FUDCon Brno 2008 (Red Hat Magazine)

Red Hat Magazine has an article by Max Spevack on the Fedora Users and Developers Conference recently held in Brno, Czech Republic. "The first talk that I attended was Jeroen van Meeuwen's session on custom spins. It was a workshop-style session, in which people who were trying different customization projects talked about the problems that they were running into. About 20 people attended the session. I took a few notes, and the primary takeaway is that there is still a huge amount of confusion about the Spins Bureaucracy in general-technical approval, trademark approval, what is needed when, etc. I think the work that Paul Frields is currently doing on revamping our trademark guidelines will help to clarify these questions, but the sooner that is rolled out, the better."

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ASUS Eee PC 901 / Intel Atom: Linux Distribution Comparison (Phoronix)

Phoronix test drives four distributions for the ASUS Eee PC 901. "The Linux distributions we used included the ASUS-optimized Xandros operating system that ships with the Eee PC 901, Fedora 10 Alpha, Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 4 with daily updates as of August 26, and Mandriva 2009 Beta 2. The Xandros OS ships with the Linux 2.6.21 kernel, X Server 1.4.0.90, and uses GCC 4.1.2. Fedora 10 Alpha uses the Linux 2.6.27-rc0 kernel, X Server 1.4.99.905, and GCC 4.3.1. Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 4 with the daily updates still uses the Linux 2.6.26 kernel, X Server 1.4.99.905, and GCC 4.3.1. Finally, Mandriva 2009 Beta 2 is using the Linux 2.6.26 kernel, X Server 1.4.2, and GCC 4.3.1."

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