Driver Backport/Running Agenda

From The Linux Foundation

The running agenda has four major sections: new, open, postponed and done.

I propose, we in each call discuss new items, walk through the open items and review postponed items where it makes sense. The last section will hopefully grow fast and give us the good feeling of actually getting something, well, done ;)

New

check if we know each other, brief #introduction if needed
review agenda

Open

team norms

use git to share files. Susanne to set up git repo and share access.

Jeff Garzyik git mini howto.

Git Crash Course for SVN users

share ssh public key with David Ames to get access

bi-weekly call
live on the list and in the wiki (btw: subscribe to the wiki recent changes rss feed)
any mediawiki page history can be fed as rss feed by adding &type=rss to the history url

wg calendar: how to share apptmt from google calendar? official LF

calendar? Susanne got first feedback from LF, will be ok.

#driverbackports on freenode

 Password reminder:  the lower case place we are going to

Driver Life Cycle

Ram Pai volunteers to contribute first draft
will be in the wiki

2008-02-21 Ram waits for susanne's slides

OLS whitepaper

Ram has submitted an abstract
final submission date end of april
milestone I: expand outline to Japan slides
review 'hackfest' in austin on friday

Dan Kohn suggested to plan a sequel at the plumbers conference?

 milestones...

Glossary

2008-02-05 Susanne wants to start a glossary

backport source / patches

Susanne is examining symversion correlation between distro releases, kernel flavors and the mainline kernel releases.

She's got some Symbol.modversion files from Martin, Jon promised to proivde the same, needs to figure how to get them for the corresponding vanilla upstream kernels.

At the summit we agreed that this part will rest until we have contributors from IHVs who actually want the benefits of shared API patches and such.

All the OSVs, CSIs and ISVs need is a standard _output_ of these efforts so they don't have to deal with per-IHV driver backport formats.

2008-06-12  Susanne to finish with Matt how driver backports shall be provided.

driver package / driver kit build

Jon said that he is attempting to bring kmod compatible to kmp in the rhel5.3 timeframe. Martin Wilck suggested a approach based on m4 macros. A idea based on having a different spec file and tools that converted it to the spec file format of the distros was discussed.

2008-05-15  Ann Davis joined the group.  She volunteered to work towards a common specfile:
    http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/KMP_packaging_and_build#possible_common_solutions

2008-06-12  Discussed spec file unification with Andreas Gruenbacher, Jon,
    Ann, Ram and Susanne:

    * target is RHEL 5.3, sle11, possibly backport to sle10sp2 or sp3
    * walked over outstanding differences and missing features (see KMP_packaging_and_build)
    * Andreas and Jon agreed to discuss details on-list, starting next week
    * Ann will update documentation as work progresses

driver package / driver kit selection, installation

regarding online driver database that Jon is developing, he expected the tool to be frowned upon by the community distro by Fedora since they did not have the concept of standardized ABI. But wants it to be pushed into Fedora so that it can easily make its way into RHEL6. Susanne was not clear if the tool will be incorporated into OpenSuse and later into SLES11.

Martin said he will have a working prototype of his driver management gui tool soon. Ram has volunteered Jon to help him progress faster. Jon will send Ram a mail with details on how/where to start.

Martin announced the first public version of Jockey, the driver management GUI tool for announcing and installing drivers. It landed in the current Ubuntu development release and replaces the old Ubuntu specific restricted-manager. Jon intends to have a port for Fedora/RedHat soon. Adoption by OpenSUSE is not determined yet.

2008-02-05 Jon intends to resurrect http://drivertool.org until monday for martin

2008-02-21
 - kde frontend for Jockey available

 - driver database stand-alone (like rhel 'satelite' or Novell
   stand-allone customer-center) comes 'later'.

   Discussed wether this is a differentiator each company solves
   differently or wether it should have a connection to satelite/ncc
   while being a simple to use, simple to deploy standardized
   component.

   Agreed that first we do the base technology so we fully understand
   the implications, then we address this.

2008-06-12
 - Martin is looking at PackageKit as X-plat package installation backend
 - Ram offered intern to _use_ and _try_ the driver DB API until he can actually contribute code,
   Jon to provide Ram the needed infos and needed access to the system.

workgroup announcement / publicity --- have something specific first

The group felt it was better to have something concrete before we further publicise the workgroup.

Jon revives the driver database and intends to have a working prototype of a RedHat port of Jockey soon.

Susanne is working on a self-serviceable build server for driver packages.

involve component vendors

We are discussing how driver authors of component vendors should work with system vendors and distributors. We don't have many active component vendors in this workgroup yet. So we need to get them aboard. We brainstormed who could contact whom:

intel and qlogic: Jon Masters

2008-02-05 Jon intends to ping Arjan van de Ven at intel before the next call
2008-02-21   -"-  qlogic:  Andrew Vasquez

LSI: Matt Domsch

intel:   Kirsher, Jeffrey T [jeffrey.t.kirsher at intel.com] has
   joined the list already

broadcom and ??? other: Greg Cymbalski, Ram Pai
via: susanne

2008-02-08 Susanne invited via to the workgroup: 'interesting mid-term'

LF Japan Symposium (march 2008)

Susanne will present the workgroup at the symposium. She intends to share the slides beforehand for comments.

Good out of tree driver example: GPL webcam drivers (from the french guy. URL??)

2008-02-05 susanne wants to provide expanded outline in time for next call (done 2008-02-14)
2008-02-21 susanne wants to provide expanded outline in time for next call

LF Austin Collaboration Summit (april 8-10 2008)

Anticipated attendance:

Susanne Oberhauser: 100% sure
Matt Domsch: 100% sure
Ram Pai: 90% sure
Jon Masters: 80% sure
Martin Pitt: 100% sure, flight in sat before, out friday afternoon

People to meet with / involve:

Tim Gardner canonical kernel team
Till Kamppeter debian LF printer driver workgroup

Mario Limonciello ubuntu Dell ati drivers

Dave Jones fedora kernel guy

Hotel: Dan Kohn suggested double tree

Schedule link:

2008-02-21 Susanne to share schedule here and on list as soon as available

Agenda:

fermentation and purification (aka finish charter, discuss competing^wcomparable technologies, anything that benefits from face to face time) driver lifecycle
BoF with other workgroups / initiatives: Greg KH's linuxdriverproject.org, Till Kamppeter's printer drivers
briefly present lightning talk + 30' discussion --- who we are / what we do / charter

Ram's Notes on the Workgroup decisions and schedules

Ottawa Linux Symposium (july 2008)

Portland Kernel Summit and Plumbers Conference (september 2008)

Postponed

value of this workgroup for community distros

Fedora currently seems to favour updating to the current upstream kernel to add newly supported hardware, even if that may break some existing systems.

openSUSE seems to prefer security bugfix backports only, however potentially breaking the kABI in openSUSE releases. That keeps installed users in a tested environment yet requires some driver process for new hardware.

Done

workgroup focus area determination

The workgroup has three major focus areas:

introduction

This is the currently active members of this workgroup:

Susanne Oberhauser, Novell, SUSE Partner Linux Driver Process

Jon Masters, Red Hat, upstream maintainer of module-init-tools, kmod packages, RH 3rd party driver efforts

Ram Pai, IBM, LTC driver currentcy work, driver backports

Matt Domsch, Dell, originator of dkms

Martin Wilck, Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, builds drivers for servers

Greg Cymbalski, IBM, driver packaging team

Martin Pitt, Canonical, Jockey driver management UI

Ann Davis, Novell, SUSE Partner Linux Driver Process, driver packging

Adam Di Carlo, IBM, LTC driver currentcy, driver backports

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