LWN: Comments on "Karmic Koala open for development"

Karmic Koala open for development

mdz@debian.org — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:18:18 +0000

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.

Karmic Koala open for development

zenaan — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:32:11 +0000

Ack. Vote +1 as good suggestion.

It's not always adressed, but at least it's not marked invalid!

jmspeex — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:53:11 +0000

Well, so far every time I reported a bug in gcc, a developer made sure to verify it within a few days, even if the fix took longer. Contrast with Ubuntu, where nothing happens for a year, and then it gets closed because there's information missing or something (without anyone asking for more information). Especially interesting was this bug in Speex (which I maintain), which was causing one of the tools to segfault on startup on amd64. The bug was reported before the 6.06 release, it was already fixed upstream in a later version, and someone even posted a (2-liner) patch. Well, it took about a year of me harassing the developers for them to patch it.

It's not always adressed, but at least it's not marked invalid!

khim — Sat, 02 May 2009 20:36:35 +0000

Take my own "pet bug" in GCC: PR3187. It was reposrted 2001-06-14. Lifetime ago. And it's STILL unfixed. But at least it's there and I check it's status from time to time. Hopefully it'll be fixed at some point.

In Ubuntu I'm forced to constantly renew my bugs if they are not fixed - since they are constantly closed as "duplicate", "invalid", or some other ridiculous mark.

But of course to expect that any minor bug (and any bug with package from universe is minor by definition) will be fixed in three days is strange...

Karmic Koala open for development

jmspeex — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:29:23 +0000

Yes, I've noticed the Long Time to get Support too. I used to report the Ubuntu bugs I noticed, but then I realized that it had zero impact, so I stopped. If I'm going to spend time reporting bugs, it has to be for a project that fixes them. When I file a gcc or LyX bug, I know it gets addressed, so I make sure to file a report. Unfortunately, for many projects, I know it gets ignored.

Karmic Koala open for development

Yasumoto — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:02:22 +0000

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

jldugger — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:56:23 +0000

"Great ! Now just go and fix LP bugs 298085, 352622, 366967 and may be even Debian bug 513102 ? Or had they been swept under the carpet forever?"

Courier is in universe, a best effort project to rebuild Debian packages not in Ubuntu main. If you strongly rely on packages in universe, you should be taking steps to either participate in MOTU or hire someone who does. Or you can simply use Debian, who reports having fixed BTS #513102.

I will add that none of these bugs have been "swept under the rug", marked wontfix or notabug.

Karmic Koala open for development

muwlgr — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 05:39:44 +0000

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

muwlgr — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 05:28:21 +0000

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

TRS-80 — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:26:50 +0000

One of your bugs is an universe bug, so it's completely on community's shoulders, and the community that actually maintains 90% of the packages is Debian (which also has enough of tens of thousands of open bugs).

This is why if I want a bug fixed in Ubuntu, I report it to Debian where I'm guaranteed to have a real person maintaining the package.

There is currently ca. 1000 open bugs per one paid developer, so they need the community effort to collect bugs, mark as significant and combine duplicates.

In the interests of not repeating myself about the "community effort", see my previous comment and the resulting thread.

One more aspect is that some packages in main are more watched than others.

I was going to say, "What about firmware packages?" but then I realised they're in restricted, not main, which explains why no-one cares to actually fix this copyright infringement.

Karmic Koala open for development

sbergman27 — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:51:09 +0000

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

muwlgr — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:13:48 +0000

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

tajyrink — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:50:18 +0000

Ok, I hear you. I just commented on the tone of the first message which resembles the often heard tone of complaints.

But you are definitely right in that Ubuntu can't keep up with the bug reports. It's just that it's exactly not anyone's fault, so there is not exactly anyone who could be summoned to help on the matters of fixing bugs. If there would be more development community, more bugs would get fixed. If it would be made harder to file bugs, less bugs will be filed but maybe signal-to-noise ratio would increase.

It's quite often that a random bug is not acted upon. One of your bugs is an universe bug, so it's completely on community's shoulders, and the community that actually maintains 90% of the packages is Debian (which also has enough of tens of thousands of open bugs). The others are too also largely community's responsibility more often than not, if they do not affect a big bunch of people in a significant way. There is currently ca. 1000 open bugs per one paid developer, so they need the community effort to collect bugs, mark as significant and combine duplicates.

It is _unfortunately_ so that the better you understand how bugs are triaged, combined, noticed, tagged, the better the chances there will be something done about it. Therefore it is not generally very useful to just file a bug, bookmark it and start hitting refresh. Even getting other affected people to click "this affects me" and especially finding any duplicate bug reports might help. If the bug is not very precise, with all the relevant logs (and preferably with patch attached or pointers to other places where the problem is described), it's not necessarily popping up in anyone's radar. And if it does not pop up anywhere, it may be that nearly no-one ever even reads it.

One more aspect is that some packages in main are more watched than others. Therefore it's useful to check what's happening with other bugs in the same package, and of course also if there's an active maintainer that could be contacted directly.

Karmic Koala open for development

sbergman27 — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:49:11 +0000

"""
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

larryr — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:01:59 +0000

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

muwlgr — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:42:25 +0000

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

muwlgr — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:28:12 +0000

I have a Launchpad account (mwg) and honestly report everything that impacts me. I just track my reports that have spent without any attention for 6 months or more. Remember that story with fail2ban, for example. Ubuntu 8.04 is truly LTS. I.e. you have to wait quite a Long Term to get their Support in form of fixing their bugs.

Karmic Koala open for development

muwlgr — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:19:22 +0000

513102, yes, but dear Ubuntu derivers had carefully kept this bug for us in Ubuntu 9.04. Do you feel the care ? Debian Import Freeze is really important.

Karmic Koala open for development

zooko — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:03:55 +0000

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

tajyrink — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:21:09 +0000

Certainly, I have nothing better to do on my free time to catch random bug numbers in some distribution from message boards and start hacking on them. I aim to please.

There are far better ways to get attention to specific bug reports than yelling at message boards, but still it seems to be the most popular method that is tried.

At least my interest goes to 0 at the moment I feel someone is accusing generally everyone for not fixing their pet bugs, as if every developer would be in existence only for pleasing specific users. And I cannot imagine it helps to motivate even a paid developer for the specific package, if there is such (often no).

Karmic Koala open for development

jengelh — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:15:19 +0000

Of the bugs that would be relevant to me, all of them have gone under the carpet. No thanks then.

Karmic Koala open for development

ballombe — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:46:07 +0000

FWIW, Debian fixed #513102 on 2009/03/01.

Karmic Koala open for development

muwlgr — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:41:08 +0000

Great ! Now just go and fix LP bugs 298085, 352622, 366967 and may be even Debian bug 513102 ? Or had they been swept under the carpet forever ?