Karmic Koala open for development

Posted Apr 29, 2009 15:03 UTC (Wed) by zooko (guest, #2589)
In reply to: Karmic Koala open for development by muwlgr
Parent article: Karmic Koala open for development

Hi there, muwlgr. Thanks for including ticket numbers of the bugs that you mentioned. Are you Wladimir Mutel who opened this ticket?

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/courier/+bug/29...

(Your LWN name has some letters in common with "Wladimir Mutel".)

I can think of a few things you could do to move these tickets along. The thing that moves them along the furthest, of course, is probably submitting a patch or test cases that spell out the problem as specifically as possible. Another thing you could do is post a "Me too" comment showing details of how the bug affects you. "Me too" comments in discussions are rarely welcome, but I think in bug reports they can be, if they are accompanied by examples or other details, because they help show that the same or similar bug happens on a different system, and they show that someone else cares enough to write a polite and detailed comment about it. One of the easiest things you can do is that launchpad has a "This bug affects me" feature. I don't know what happens if you click that link, but I assume that somewhere there is a count of users who have clicked on that link on that bug, and this too would probably help developers prioritize their work.

Karmic Koala open for development

Posted Apr 29, 2009 16:42 UTC (Wed) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link] (8 responses)

All these bugs are dire. And their fixes are obvious and often already existing. And they are not specific to my use cases. In most cases, the fix is just to revert Ubuntu "freezes" and specific patches and to realign the package with Debian-unstable. But this is against the strictness of their process. Have to wait for Ubuntu 9.10 to get my bugs fixed and who knows what else I would discover then.

You see, I was thinking that Ubuntu would be slightly better than Debian-unstable for my server configurations. And you know, my use pattern for Ubuntu is slightly different that 'Boot LiveCD on a system with empty disk, click Install, wait for the process to complete' (which seems the only pattern they actually test). Sometimes I actually upgrade my systems from version N to version N+6months by update-manager. Don't know what to choose now. Debian-unstable brings its own long-standing breakages. Debian-stable gets old with the time to the next release. Ubuntu releases more often but it loses track of bugs fixed in Debian starting from D.I.F. and up to until the release.

Karmic Koala open for development

Posted Apr 29, 2009 17:01 UTC (Wed) by larryr (guest, #4030) [Link]

my use pattern for Ubuntu is slightly different that 'Boot LiveCD on a system with empty disk, click Install, wait for the process to complete' (which seems the only pattern they actually test).

I have no idea how much testing it receives, but since Gutsy I have used the "alternate" disk with the "install a command-line system" option, and it has always worked fine for me. It seems to be essentially the same as the Debian installer.

Karmic Koala open for development

Posted Apr 29, 2009 17:49 UTC (Wed) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (6 responses)

"""
All these bugs are dire.
"""

Please elaborate. There seems to be little enough interest in any of your listed bugs, judging from the notable lack of participation in the launchpad threads. I would suggest that your time would be better spent posting to launchpad than conducting a negative PR campaign in public forums. Isn't this at least your 3rd recent post here along these lines?

Karmic Koala open for development

Posted Apr 29, 2009 23:13 UTC (Wed) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link] (5 responses)

o.k. I think there are enough details listed in Launchpad for each bug, but if you ask I will copy them there :

LP:298085 - I had a system with Postfix as smtp MTA and Courier as pop3/imap server. Postfix was configured to use Courier's maildrop program as a local MDA for virtual domains. Having upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10, and from Courier maildrop 0.58 to 0.60, I found that maildrop was recompiled without Courier authlib support, thus losing the ability to deliver to the virtual domain mailboxes configured in Courier's userdb. This behaviour is still kept in Ubuntu 9.04.

LP:352622 - the fix is trivial. Just a recompile. But who would recompile this thing, me ? And how big is my chance to get an updated package during the lifetime of Ubuntu 9.04 ? And similar things happen not the first time, with other packages before. The simpler is the fix, the longer you have to wait for update from Ubuntu maintainers. The more you have to rely on your own mind and hands. Which defeats the whole purpose an benefit of distribution-making, I think.

LP:366967 - don't know if it is worth to copy the whole description here. All symptoms are visible. Mindless race to a faster boot. Undermaintainment of an once-critical subsystem. Who needs this ifupdown and interfaces(5), we solve everything with network-manager now, right ? (wrong, I have some complex server and router configs). I propose a working fix there, and would you guess my (and other's) chances to get an useful update during Jaunty lifetime ? Zero or more ?

Debian:513102 - the fix is trivial again. Just give some review to the bugs fixed in Debian after Debian-Import-Freeze happened in Ubuntu, and soon before your release. Just don't try to keep all Debian bugs frozen for about 5 months. I doubt heavily that Ubuntu adds any vaulable specific patches to 'squid' package, and that moving from version 2.7stable3 to 2.7stable6 would bring more breakage than keeping the bug 513102 unfixed.

I hope I have certain ground to state my griefs here and in the Launchpad.
Please correct me if I am anywhere wrong.

Karmic Koala open for development

Posted Apr 30, 2009 0:51 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (4 responses)

You are using a bunch of packages from Universe and complaining that small problems with them are not given top priority, despite the fact that few other users seem to care about the issues. And for the gods' sake, you just reported #36967 on Saturday! This would be the 3rd working day since you reported it, right? And yet here you are in public forums roasting them over it. (This fact establishes to me that you are looking for a reason to complain and colors my perception of your other complaints.)

#35622 is on pptpd. Which is, at least, an actual Canonical-maintained package. But the problem does not look major, and it's hardly an old bug. Just 29 days.

On #298085... I usually give serious consideration to using core packages for a given purpose when I am setting up a server. For Ubuntu, that would be Postfix and Dovecot, rather than Postfix and Courier. It's nice to have all those 21,000 packages available for easy installation. But it doesn't mean you can expect platinum service when some package in Universe has a minor problem.

Karmic Koala open for development

Posted Apr 30, 2009 5:28 UTC (Thu) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link] (1 responses)

Okay, I would prefer a big red autoreply from Launchpad, like :

"You are trying to report a bug in the package outside of Ubuntu-main.
Ubuntu really does not have that much resources to handle your report quickly and efficiently enough.

So please prefer the following way of actions :

1. Install a Debian-unstable version of this package on your system
(rebuild it from the source if needed);
2. If the bug persists, report it to Debian maintainers;
3. If you find it is fixed in Debian, please tell us."

This would teach me (and many others) to do the right things very soon.

Karmic Koala open for development

Posted May 8, 2009 14:32 UTC (Fri) by zenaan (guest, #3778) [Link]

Ack. Vote +1 as good suggestion.

Karmic Koala open for development

Posted Apr 30, 2009 5:39 UTC (Thu) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link] (1 responses)

Okay, I discovered LP:366967 on my home system during testing 8.10->9.04 upgrade, and that's why I reported it on the weekend. Do the chances of the bug being noticed and acted upon really depend from they day it has been reported ?

Re LP:352622, is there a minimal age limit for such bugs ? How long should the bug in 'main' stay unresolved to deserve an action from Ubuntu side ?

Karmic Koala open for development

Posted Apr 30, 2009 23:02 UTC (Thu) by Yasumoto (guest, #42642) [Link]

As with most open source projects, there's a terrible ratio of bugs-reported to QA/Developers. In this case, there were a lot of high-impact bugs that were deemed higher priority in the last few weeks before the release.

The important thing to note about freezes is that they are there for a reason. If a fix/patch is "trivial" (which is a very vague term) then there should be no problems applying it. However, it is difficult to decide whether to introduce new code without giving it ample testing, since it may also include new bugs. I think it was Mark Shuttleworth that recently stated "The bug you know is better than the one you don't". There's a responsibility to the millions of users to not introduce breakage into their systems.

I know it takes a lot of work, and in an ideal world, bugs would magically get fixed, but that's not the case. If these issues are important to you, get on IRC or a mailing list and get some communication flowing.

Karmic Koala open for development

Posted Jun 1, 2009 11:18 UTC (Mon) by mdz@debian.org (guest, #14112) [Link]

Packages in the "universe" component of Ubuntu (like courier) are usually provided more or less as-is from Debian. Most of them do not have a separate maintainer in Ubuntu, and the version which is included in an Ubuntu release is generally a matter of timing relative to Debian. Most of them do not receive updates once they are released (including security updates). In opting to use those packages, a system administrator is taking on an additional responsibility for maintenance beyond what the Ubuntu community can provide.

If you care about courier, and want to make sure that it's solid in each Ubuntu release, by all means dive in and help to maintain it. Otherwise, if you find that a version from Debian meets your needs better, you are welcome to use it instead.