tl;dr: Providing support for all 3 init systems (sysv-rc, Upstart and systemd) isn t hard, and generating the init scripts / Upstart job / systemd using a template system is a lot easier than I previously thought. As always, when writing this kind of blog post, I do expect that others will not like what I did. But that s the point: give me your opinion in a constructive way (please be polite even if you don t like what you see I had too many times had to read harsh comments), and I ll implement your ideas if I find it nice. History of the implementation: how we came to the idea I had no plan to do this. I don t believe what I wrote can be generalized to all of the Debian archive. It s just that I started doing things, and it made sense when I did it. Let me explain how it happened. Since it s clear that many, and especially the most advanced one, may have an opinion about which init system they prefer, and because I also support Ubuntu (at least Trusty), I though it was a good idea to support all the main init system: sysv-rc, Upstart and systemd. Though I have counted (for the sake of being exact in this blog) : OpenStack in Debian contains currently 64 init scripts to run daemons in total. That s quite a lot. A way too much to just write them, all by hand. Though that s what I was doing for the last years until this the end of this last summer! So, doing all by hand, I first started implementing Upstart. Its support was there only when building in Ubuntu (which isn t the correct thing to do, this is now fixed, read further ). Then we thought about adding support for systemd. Gustavo Panizzo, one of the contributors in the OpenStack packages, started implementing it in Keystone (the auth server for OpenStack) for the Juno release which was released this October. He did that last summer, early enough so we didn t expect anyone to use the Juno branch Keystone. After some experiments, we had kind of working. What he did was invoking /etc/init.d/keystone start-systemd , which was still using start-stop-daemon. Yes, that s not perfect, and it s better to use systemd foreground process handling, but at least, we had a unique place where to write the startup scripts, where we check the /etc/default for the logging configuration, configure the log file, and so on. Then around in october, I took a step backward to see the whole picture with sysv-rc scripts, and saw the mess, with all the tiny, small difference between them. It became clear that I had to do something to make sure they were all the same, with the support for the same things (like which log system to use, where to store the PID, create /var/lib/project, /var/run/project and so on ). Last, on this month of December, I was able to fix the remaining issues for systemd support, thanks to the awesome contribution of Mikael Cluseau on the Alioth OpenStack packaging list. Now, the systemd unit file is still invoking the init script, but it s not using start-stop-daemon anymore, no PID file involved, and daemons are used as systemd foreground processes. Finally, daemons service files are also activated on installation (they were not previously). Implementation So I took the simplistic approach to use always the same template for the sysv-rc switch/case, and the start and stop functions, happening it at the end of all debian/*.init.in scripts. I started to try to reduce the number of variables, and I was surprised of the result: only a very small part of the init scripts need to change from daemon to daemon. For example, for nova-api, here s the init script (LSB header stripped-out):

DESC="OpenStack Compute API"
PROJECT_NAME=nova
NAME=$ PROJECT_NAME -api

That is it: only 3 lines, defining only the name of the daemon, the name of the project it attaches (eg: nova, cinder, etc.), and a long description. There s of course much more complicated init scripts (see the one for neutron-server in the Debian archive for example), but the vast majority only needs the above. Here s the sysv-rc init script template that I currently use:

#!/bin/sh
# The content after this line comes from openstack-pkg-tools
# and has been automatically added to a .init.in script, which
# contains only the descriptive part for the daemon. Everything
# else is standardized as a single unique script.
# Author: Thomas Goirand <zigo@debian.org>
# PATH should only include /usr/* if it runs after the mountnfs.sh script
PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
if [ -z "$ DAEMON " ] ; then
	DAEMON=/usr/bin/$ NAME 
fi
PIDFILE=/var/run/$ PROJECT_NAME /$ NAME .pid
if [ -z "$ SCRIPTNAME " ] ; then
	SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$ NAME 
fi
if [ -z "$ SYSTEM_USER " ] ; then
	SYSTEM_USER=$ PROJECT_NAME 
fi
if [ -z "$ SYSTEM_USER " ] ; then
	SYSTEM_GROUP=$ PROJECT_NAME 
fi
if [ "$ SYSTEM_USER " != "root" ] ; then
	STARTDAEMON_CHUID="--chuid $ SYSTEM_USER :$ SYSTEM_GROUP "
fi
if [ -z "$ CONFIG_FILE " ] ; then
	CONFIG_FILE=/etc/$ PROJECT_NAME /$ PROJECT_NAME .conf
fi
LOGFILE=/var/log/$ PROJECT_NAME /$ NAME .log
if [ -z "$ NO_OPENSTACK_CONFIG_FILE_DAEMON_ARG " ] ; then
	DAEMON_ARGS="$ DAEMON_ARGS  --config-file=$ CONFIG_FILE "
fi
# Exit if the package is not installed
[ -x $DAEMON ]   exit 0
# If ran as root, create /var/lock/X, /var/run/X, /var/lib/X and /var/log/X as needed
if [ "x$USER" = "xroot" ] ; then
	for i in lock run log lib ; do
		mkdir -p /var/$i/$ PROJECT_NAME 
		chown $ SYSTEM_USER  /var/$i/$ PROJECT_NAME 
	done
fi
# This defines init_is_upstart which we use later on (+ more...)
. /lib/lsb/init-functions
# Manage log options: logfile and/or syslog, depending on user's choosing
[ -r /etc/default/openstack ] && . /etc/default/openstack
[ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
[ "x$USE_SYSLOG" = "xyes" ] && DAEMON_ARGS="$DAEMON_ARGS --use-syslog"
[ "x$USE_LOGFILE" != "xno" ] && DAEMON_ARGS="$DAEMON_ARGS --log-file=$LOGFILE"
do_start()  
	start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --background $ STARTDAEMON_CHUID  --make-pidfile --pidfile $ PIDFILE  --chdir /var/lib/$ PROJECT_NAME  --startas $DAEMON \
			--test > /dev/null   return 1
	start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --background $ STARTDAEMON_CHUID  --make-pidfile --pidfile $ PIDFILE  --chdir /var/lib/$ PROJECT_NAME  --startas $DAEMON \
			-- $DAEMON_ARGS   return 2
 
do_stop()  
	start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE
	RETVAL=$?
	rm -f $PIDFILE
	return "$RETVAL"
 
do_systemd_start()  
	exec $DAEMON $DAEMON_ARGS
 
case "$1" in
start)
	init_is_upstart > /dev/null 2>&1 && exit 1
	log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
	do_start
	case $? in
		0 1) log_end_msg 0 ;;
		2) log_end_msg 1 ;;
	esac
;;
stop)
	init_is_upstart > /dev/null 2>&1 && exit 0
	log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
	do_stop
	case $? in
		0 1) log_end_msg 0 ;;
		2) log_end_msg 1 ;;
	esac
;;
status)
	status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0   exit $?
;;
systemd-start)
	do_systemd_start
;;  
restart force-reload)
	init_is_upstart > /dev/null 2>&1 && exit 1
	log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
	do_stop
	case $? in
	0 1)
		do_start
		case $? in
			0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
			1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
			*) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
		esac
	;;
	*) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to stop
	esac
;;
*)
	echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME  start stop status restart force-reload systemd-start " >&2
	exit 3
;;
esac
exit 0

Nothing particularly fancy here You ll noticed that it s really OpenStack centric (see the LOGFILE and CONFIGFILE things ). You may have also noticed the call to init_is_upstart which is needed for upstart support. I m not sure if it s at the correct place in the init script. Should I put that on top of the script? Was I right with the exit values for it? Please send me your comments Then I thought about generalizing all of this. Because not only the sysv-rc scripts needed to be squared-up, but also Upstart. The approach here was to source the sysv-rc script in debian/*.init.in, and then generate the Upstart job accordingly, using the above 3 variables (or more as needed). Here, the fun is that, instead of taking the approach of calculating everything at runtime with the sysv-rc, for Upstart jobs, many things are calculated at build time. For each debian/*.init.in script that the debian/rules finds, pkgos-gen-upstart-job is called. Here s pkgos-gen-upstart-job:

#!/bin/sh
INIT_TEMPLATE=$ 1 
UPSTART_FILE= echo $ INIT_TEMPLATE    sed 's/.init.in/.upstart/' 
# Get the variables defined in the init template
. $ INIT_TEMPLATE 
## Find out what should go in After=
#SHOULD_START= cat $ INIT_TEMPLATE    grep "# Should-Start:"   sed 's/# Should-Start://' 
#
#if [ -n "$ SHOULD_START " ] ; then
#	AFTER="After="
#	for i in $ SHOULD_START  ; do
#		AFTER="$ AFTER $ i .service "
#	done
#fi
if [ -z "$ DAEMON " ] ; then
        DAEMON=/usr/bin/$ NAME 
fi
PIDFILE=/var/run/$ PROJECT_NAME /$ NAME .pid
if [ -z "$ SCRIPTNAME " ] ; then
	SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$ NAME 
fi
if [ -z "$ SYSTEM_USER " ] ; then
	SYSTEM_USER=$ PROJECT_NAME 
fi
if [ -z "$ SYSTEM_GROUP " ] ; then
	SYSTEM_GROUP=$ PROJECT_NAME 
fi
if [ "$ SYSTEM_USER " != "root" ] ; then
	STARTDAEMON_CHUID="--chuid $ SYSTEM_USER :$ SYSTEM_GROUP "
fi
if [ -z "$ CONFIG_FILE " ] ; then
	CONFIG_FILE=/etc/$ PROJECT_NAME /$ PROJECT_NAME .conf
fi
LOGFILE=/var/log/$ PROJECT_NAME /$ NAME .log
DAEMON_ARGS="$ DAEMON_ARGS  --config-file=$ CONFIG_FILE "
echo "description \"$ DESC \"
author \"Thomas Goirand <zigo@debian.org>\"
start on runlevel [2345]
stop on runlevel [!2345]
chdir /var/run
pre-start script
	for i in lock run log lib ; do
		mkdir -p /var/\$i/$ PROJECT_NAME 
		chown $ SYSTEM_USER  /var/\$i/$ PROJECT_NAME 
	done
end script
script
	[ -x \"$ DAEMON \" ]   exit 0
	DAEMON_ARGS=\"$ DAEMON_ARGS \"
	[ -r /etc/default/openstack ] && . /etc/default/openstack
	[ -r /etc/default/\$UPSTART_JOB ] && . /etc/default/\$UPSTART_JOB
	[ \"x\$USE_SYSLOG\" = \"xyes\" ] && DAEMON_ARGS=\"\$DAEMON_ARGS --use-syslog\"
	[ \"x\$USE_LOGFILE\" != \"xno\" ] && DAEMON_ARGS=\"\$DAEMON_ARGS --log-file=$ LOGFILE \"
	exec start-stop-daemon --start --chdir /var/lib/$ PROJECT_NAME  \\
		$ STARTDAEMON_CHUID  --make-pidfile --pidfile $ PIDFILE  \\
		--exec $ DAEMON  -- --config-file=$ CONFIG_FILE  \$ DAEMON_ARGS 
end script
" >$ UPSTART_FILE 

The only thing which I don t know how to do, is how to implement the Should-Start / Should-Stop in an Upstart job. Can anyone shoot me a mail and tell me the solution? Then, I wanted to add support for systemd. Here, we cheated, since we only just called the sysv-rc script from the systemd unit, however, the systemd-start target uses exec, so the process stays in the foreground. It s also much smaller than the Upstart thing. However, here, I could implement the After thing, corresponding to the Should-Start:

#!/bin/sh
INIT_TEMPLATE=$ 1 
SERVICE_FILE= echo $ INIT_TEMPLATE    sed 's/.init.in/.service/' 
# Get the variables defined in the init template
. $ INIT_TEMPLATE 
if [ -z "$ SCRIPTNAME " ] ; then
	SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$ NAME 
fi
if [ -z "$ SYSTEM_USER " ] ; then
	SYSTEM_USER=$ PROJECT_NAME 
fi
if [ -z "$ SYSTEM_GROUP " ] ; then
	SYSTEM_GROUP=$ PROJECT_NAME 
fi
# Find out what should go in After=
SHOULD_START= cat $ INIT_TEMPLATE    grep "# Should-Start:"   sed 's/# Should-Start://' 
if [ -n "$ SHOULD_START " ] ; then
	AFTER="After="
	for i in $ SHOULD_START  ; do
		AFTER="$ AFTER $ i .service "
	done
fi
echo "[Unit]
Description=$ DESC 
$AFTER
[Service]
User=$ SYSTEM_USER 
Group=$ SYSTEM_GROUP 
WorkingDirectory=/var/lib/$ PROJECT_NAME 
PermissionsStartOnly=true
ExecStartPre=/bin/mkdir -p /var/lock/$ PROJECT_NAME  /var/log/$ PROJECT_NAME  /var/lib/$ PROJECT_NAME 
ExecStartPre=/bin/chown $ SYSTEM_USER :$ SYSTEM_GROUP  /var/lock/$ PROJECT_NAME  /var/log/$ PROJECT_NAME  /var/lib/$ PROJECT_NAME 
ExecStart=$ SCRIPTNAME  systemd-start
Restart=on-failure
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
" >$ SERVICE_FILE 

As you can see, it s calling /etc/init.d/$ SCRIPTNAME sytemd-start, which isn t great. I d be happy to have comments from systemd user / maintainers on how to fix it to make it better. Integrating in debian/rules To integrate with the Debian package build system, we only need had to write this:

override_dh_installinit:
	# Create the init scripts from the template
	for i in  ls -1 debian/*.init.in  ; do \
		MYINIT= echo $$i   sed s/.init.in//  ; \
		cp $$i $$MYINIT.init ; \
		cat /usr/share/openstack-pkg-tools/init-script-template >>$$MYINIT.init ; \
		pkgos-gen-systemd-unit $$i ; \
	done
	# If there's an upstart.in file, use that one instead of the generated one
	for i in  ls -1 debian/*.upstart.in  ; do \
		MYPKG= echo $$i   sed s/.upstart.in//  ; \
		cp $$MYPKG.upstart.in $$MYPKG.upstart ; \
	done
	# Generate the upstart job if there's no already existing .upstart.in
	for i in  ls debian/*.init.in  ; do \
		MYINIT= echo $$i   sed s/.init.in/.upstart.in/  ; \
		if ! [ -e $$MYINIT ] ; then \
			pkgos-gen-upstart-job $$i ; \
		fi \
	done
	dh_installinit --error-handler=true
	# Generate the systemd unit file
	# Note: because dh_systemd_enable is called by the
	# dh sequencer *before* dh_installinit, we have
	# to process it manually.
	for i in  ls debian/*.init.in  ; do \
		pkgos-gen-systemd-unit $$i ; \
		MYSERVICE= echo $$i   sed 's/debian\///'  ; \
		MYSERVICE= echo $$MYSERVICE   sed 's/.init.in/.service/'  ; \
		dh_systemd_enable $$MYSERVICE ; \
	done

As you can see, it s possible to use a debian/*.upstart.in and not use the templating system, in the more complicated case (I needed it mostly for neutron-server and neutron-plugin-openvswitch-agent). Conclusion I do not pretend that what I wrote in the openstack-pkg-tools is the ultimate solution. But I m convince that it answers our own need as the OpenStack maintainers in Debian. There s a lot of room for improvements (like implementing the Should-Start in Upstart jobs, or stop calling the sysv-rc script in the systemd units), but that this is a very good move that we did to use templates and generated scripts, as the init scripts are a way more easy to maintain now, in a much more unified way. As I m not completely satisfied for the systemd and Upstart implementation, I m sure that there s already a huge improvements on the sysv-rc script maintainability. Last and again: please send your comments and help improving the above! :)

There s many ways to interpret the last GR. The way I see it is how Joey hoped Debian was: the outcome of the poll shows that we don t want to do technical decisions by voting. At the beginning of this GR, I was supportive of it, and though it was a good thing to enforce the rule that we care for non-systemd setups. Though I have slowly changed my mind. I still think it was a good idea to see what the community thought after a so long debate. I now think that this final outcome is awesome and couldn t have been better. Science (and computer science) has never been about voting, otherwise the earth would be flat, without drifting continents. So my hope is that the Debian project as a whole, will allow itself to do mistakes, iterative trials, errors, and go back on any technical decision if they don t make sense anymore. When being asked something, it s ok to reply: I don t know , and it should be ok for the Debian project to have this alternative as one of the possible answers. I m convince that refusing to take a drastic choice in this point in time was exactly what we needed to do. And my hope is that Joey comes back after he realizes that we ve all understood and embarrassed his position that science cannot be governed by polls. For Stretch, I m sure there s going to be a lot of new alternatives. Maybe uselessd, eudev and others. Maybe I ll have a bit of time to work on OpenRC Debian integration myself (hum I m dreaming here ). Maybe something else. Let s just wait. We have more than 300 bugs to fix before Jessie can be released. Let s happilly work on that together, and forget about the init systems for a while P.S: Just to be on the safe side: the rotten tomatoes image was not about criticizing the persons who started the poll, who I respect a lot, especially Ian, who I am convinced is trying to do his best for Debian (hug).

Wednesday 1:
Uploaded python-xstatic-jquery removing the .pth file from package.
Uploaded python-taskflow 0.4 to experimental, needed by Cinder Juno RC1
Uploaded Cinder Juno RC1 to experimental Thuesday 2:
Finally understood that the issue with murano-dashboard was that it doesn t build without django-nose >= 1.2. Opened new patch at: https://review.openstack.org/125565
Uploaded murano-dashboard to Experimental, now using django-nose from wheezy-backports in my jenkins setup, so murano-dashboard can be built for Wheezy.
Uploaded python-oslotest 1.1.0.0 (really is upstream 1.1.0)
Uploaded python-oslo.serialization 1.0.0-1 (needed by Ceilometer Juno RC1)
Uploaded Ceilometer Juno RC1
Uploaded Heat Juno RC1
Uploaded oslo.rootwrap 1.3.0.0
Uploaded oslo.db 1.0.2 (bugfix release)
Wrote a new system in openstack-pkg-tools to generate init scripts and. service files from a template, so we don t have to write N times the same thing. Friday 3:
Reworked openstack-pkg-tools to generate automatically sysv-rc init scripts, upstart jobs and systemd unit files, making the system more unified and consistent.
Applied the new system to all packages in Juno.
Uploaded Keystone 2014.1.3-1 to Sid
Uploaded Nova 2014.1.3-1 to Sid
Uploaded Glance 2014.1.3-1 to Sid
Uploaded Neutron 2014.1.3-1 to Sid
Uploaded Horizon 2014.1.3-1 to Sid
Uploaded Cinder 2014.1.3-1 to Sid
Uploaded Trove 2014.1.3-1 to Sid
Uploaded Ceilometer 2014.1.3-1 to Sid Saturday 4:
Uploaded Horizon Juno RC1 to Experimental
Uploaded oslotest 1.1.0.0 to Experimental
Uploaded Ironic Juno RC1 to Experimental
Uploaded Designate Juno RC1 to Experimental
Uploaded Nova Juno RC1 to Experimental
Uploaded Neutron Juno RC1 to Experimental
Uploaded openstack-meta-packages 0.10 to Sid
Uploaded openstack-pkg-tools 13 to Experimental
Uploaded murano-agent Juno RC1 to Experimental Sunday 5:
Uploaded Sahara Juno RC1 to Experimental (it s been approved by FTP masters)
Uploaded Murano Juno RC1 to Experimental (it s been approved by FTP masters)
Fixed all debian/watch file to understand ~b and ~rc releases (fixed applied on both Icehouse and Juno branches, though no upload yet, I ll wait until uploads are needed to have this in the archive ).
Uploaded Trove Juno RC1 to Experimental
Uploaded Sahara Juno RC1 to Experimental With this last upload, everything of Juno RC1 is in Debian Experimental! \o/ Monday 6:
Uploaded some fixes for Nova 2014.1.3-2 in Sid:
* Removed contrib/boto_v6/* in debian/copyright, replaced bin/nova-manage by nova/cmd/ baremetal_, manage.py.
* Mangling upstream rc and beta versions in watch file.
* Added 9990_update_german_programm_messages.patch, thanks to Helge Kreutzmann <debian@helgefjell.de>.
* Fixed correct de.po (Closes: #763682).
* Added nl.po initial Debconf translation, thanks to Frans Spiesschaert <Frans.Spiesschaert@yucom.be> (Closes: #764125).
* Standards-Version is now 3.9.6 (no change).
Upstreamed german translation of po file: https://review.openstack.org/126212
Uploaded Designate 2014.1-12 to Sid, added new de.po also to the Juno branch on alioth (but didn t upload the fix yet).
Uploaded sphinxcontrib-httpdomain new upstream 1.3.0 release, added Python 3.x support to the package, and transitionning to the correct namespaced python-sphinxcontrib.httpdomain package name.
Spent most of the day fixing python-xstatic issues:
o uploaded libjs-twitter-bootstrap-datepicker 1.3.1
o uploaded python-xstatic-bootstrap-datepicker requiring this libjs package
o fixed python-xstatic-jquery-ui package
Now Horizon Juno RC1 builds well, and can be installed again. \o/ Tuesday 7:
Backported python-libvirt 1.2.8 in Wheezy (for Nova Juno support )
Uploaded Ceilometer Juno RC1 with ceilometer-agent-ipmi added (the package will therefore go through the NEW queue).
Uploaded python-requestbuilder 0.2.2-1, needed by the maintainers of euca2ools.
Ported the unified generated init system scripts to Icehouse packages.
Uploaded to Sid updates for: openstack-pkg-tools, ceilometer, cinder, glance, keystone, cinder, nova. Wednesday 8:
Uploaded openstack-pkg-tools 16 to Sid
Uploaded murano-dashboard (with upstream fix to remove font-awesome, which was the reason for FTP master s rejection)
Uploaded ceilometer Juno RC1 with new IPMI agent package (needed for Ironic support).
Uploaded heat 2014.1.3 which I forgot.
Tested https://review.openstack.org/#/c/126777/ which solves the bug I sent to launchpad and approved the patch.
Uploaded python-requestbuilder 0.2.3 Thesday 9:
Worked on fixing Neutron Alembic migration with SQLite3.
Uploade Neutron 2014.2~rc1-3 with a fix for a patch that was destroying dhcp.py. This still doesn t include the Alembic migration fixes, which are still a WIP. Firday 10:
Finished fixing Neutron SQLite 3 Alembic migrations.
Uploaded neutron 2014.2~rc1-3 with the fixes.
Fixed Ceilometer wrong generation of sample config file, using upstream patch (after discussing with Julien Danjou so he wrote it).
Uploaded Ceilometer 2014.2~rc1-4 with the fix
Checked that all packages can be installed in non-interactive mode. This works well now! \o/ Saturday 11:
Uploaded new version of python-xstatic-angular-cookies (ie: 1.2.24.1-2) which allows a higher version of libjs-angularjs (otherwise the package is not installable in Sid/Jessie since last version of angularjs is uploaded). Sunday 12:
Uploaded factory-boy fix for FTBFS
Uploaded python-django-appconf FTBFS
Uploaded Horizon Juno RC2
Uploaded Heat Juno RC3
Uploaded Trove Juno RC2
Uploaded Glance Juno RC2
Uploaded Sahara Juno RC2
Uploaded Nova Juno RC2
Uploaded Neutron Juno RC2
Uploaded Cinder Juno RC2
Uploaded murano-dashboard Juno RC2 Monday 13:
Uploaded python-heatclient 0.2.12-1 to Experimental
Uploaded python-yaql with RC bugfix to Sid (missing dep on python3-ply). Thuesday 14:
Fixed arping newly added dependency in Neutron
Started testing install of all of openstack Juno at once Wednesday 15:
Fixed missing configuration files in Ceilometer (ceilometer-api couldn t start)
Upgraded to Ceilometer Juno RC3.
Backported python-setuptools, as keystone and others are broken due to the namespace of modules not working correctly with the old version of python-pkg-resources. With the new one, everything is back in order. Thesday 16:
Uploaded to Debian Experimental the final release of Juno (ie: 2014.2) for:
Sahara
Nova
Ceilometer
Cinder
Heat
Neutron
Glance
Keystone
Horizon (with fix for Django 1.7 in the wsgi file)
Uploaded to Sid:
Swift 2.2.0
Horizon 2014.1.3-3 with fix for Django 1.7 in the wsgi file that was crashing apache. OpenStack Juno packages are out!!! (ready the day of the upstream release ) Friday 17:
Investigated Trove RC bug #765348, couldn t reproduce, and therefore closed it.
Uploaded Ironic Juno final to Experimental
Uploaded Designate Juno final to Experimental
Uploaded a fix for python-jingo which failed to build with Django 1.7. Sent pull request upstream: https://github.com/jbalogh/jingo/pull/63
Uploaded CVE-2014-7230 & CVE-2014-7231 fixes for both Cinder and Nova in Debian Sid, as per OSSA 2014-036 patches. No need to upload a fix for Trove, as 2014.1.3 already has the fixes. Saturday 18:
Started building Trusty packages
Fixed oslo-config so that it never depends on python3-argparse, which doesn t exist (uploaded to Experimental)
Uploaded python-django-pyscss 1.0.3-2 with python-simplejson now as build-depends (it failed to build in my Trusty jenkins without it).
Uploaded a fix for stevedore and oslo-config to not depends on python3-argparse in Ubuntu (added debian/py3dist-overrides) Sunday 19:
Uploaded python-taskflow with ordereddict in debian/pydist-overrides.
Backported JS packages for Horizon and libvirt for Trusty (from Sid). My new Jenkin server is now producing a full set of Juno packages for Ubuntu trusty. And of course, it s updated on each git push, just like for the Wheezy backports. Monday 20:
Added FORCE_COULEUR=1 when running tests in python-couleur, so that it doesn t fail when running with git-buildpackage. Uploaded result in Sid.
Fixed python-mockito so that it never downloads distribute or nose on its clean target, which was annoying when running git-buildpackage. Uploaded to Sid.
Started to work again on automatic package deployment using openstack-deploy, from the openstack-meta-packages source package. Thuesday 21, Wednesday 22:
Worked on testing packages, did couples of minor fixes, reworked some of the default configuration files to match the install-guide, move configuration directive to the correct new section in nova.conf, etc. Thursday 23:
Patch the Neutron chapter in the install-guide to take into account the changes done on Thuesday 21, Wednesday 22, and simplify the install procedure in Debian. https://review.openstack.org/#/c/130501/ Friday 24:
Busy packing my stuff for moving to France Not much packaging work, except more auto-deploy stuff and some tests. Saturday 25:
Uploaded Nova, Neutron, Cinder and Horizon Icehouse in Sid, including some debconf translation updates, beating the Jessie freeze deadline in 10 days.
Fixed and uploaded openstack-debian-images in Sid: the login option wasn t modifying the default sudoers file, which always contained debian , instead of the custom login. Sunday 26:
Traveled to Moscow Monday 27 & Tuesday 28:
Fixed some murano & murano-dashboard stuff, thanks to the help of some murano team members in Moscow office. Uploaded fixes for murano & murano-dashboard. Tested that murano-dashboard works well, and now it does! :)
Uploaded version dependency fixes for python-xstatic-angular-cookies and python-xstatic-d3 which couldn t be installed in Sid/Jessie because of libjs-* updates. Wednesday 29:
Meeting with Saratov team
Updated sahara endpoints, but didn t upload the package yet to Debian. Thursday 30:
Uploaded ruby-raemon needed for Astute (part of Fuel web).
Packaged ruby-symboltable (not uploaded yet). Friday 31:
Wrote unit test runner for python-webpy (the current package doesn t have unit test runs).
Uploaded python-dbutils (needed by python-web.py unit tests) to Sid: now in NEW queue
Uploaded python-nose-parametrized & python-nose-timer to Sid: now in NEW queue
Uploaded sahara -2 fixing the API endpoint registration URL and service name.
Uploaded python-sphinxcontrib.plantuml to Sid: : now in NEW queue

During 2 years, my packaging efforts were sponsored by eNovance. It has been great to work with them, and I would like to thank them for what they did. However (for a number of reasons which I don t really think is appropriate to write in this blog), I decided to join Mirantis. This is a formal public announce of it: I will be working from Mirantis office in Grenoble just right after the Paris OpenStack summit of this first week of November.

This is just a quick announce: Debian packages for Juno are out. In fact, they were ready the day of the release, on the 16th of October. I uploaded it all (to Experimental) the same day, literally a few hours after the final released was git tagged. But I had no time to announce it. This week-end, I took the time to do an Ubuntu Trusty port, which I also publish (it s just a mater of rebuilding all, and it should work out of the box). Here are the backports repositories. For Wheezy: deb http://archive.gplhost.com/debian juno-backports main deb http://archive.gplhost.com/debian juno main For trusty: deb http://archive.gplhost.com/debian trusty-juno-backports main But of course, everything is also available directly in Debian. Since Sid/Jessie contains OpenStack Icehouse (which has more chance to receive long enough security support), and it will be like this until Jessie is released. So I have uploaded all of Juno into Debian Experimental. This shows on the OpenStack qa page (you may also notice that the team is nearly reaching 200 packages though am planning to off-load some of that to the Python module team, when the migration to Git will be finished). On the QA page, you may also see that I uploaded all of the last Icehouse point release to Sid, and that all packages migrated to Jessie. There s only a few minor issues with some Python modules which I fixed, that haven t migrated to Jessie yet. I can already tell that all packages can be installed without an issue, and that I know Horizon at least works as expected. But I didn t have time to test it all just yet. I m currently working on doing even more installation automation at the package level (by providing some OVS bridging init script and such, to make it more easy to run Tempest functional testing). I ll post more about this when it s ready.

I decided I d post this monthly. It may be a bit boring, sorry, but I think it s a nice thing to have this public. The log starts on the 6th, because on the 4th I was back from Debconf (after a day in San Francisco, plus 20 hours of traveling and 15 hours of time gap). It is to be noted that every time something is uploaded in Debian for Icehouse (in Sid), or for Juno (in Experimental), there s also a corresponding backport produced for Wheezy. Saturday 6th & Sunday 7th:
packaged libjs-twitter-bootstrap-wizard (in new queue)
Uploaded python-pint after reviewing the debian/copyright
Worked on updating python-eventlet in Experimental, and adding Python3 support. It seems Python3 support isn t ready yet, so I will probably remove that feature from the package update.
Tried to apply the Django 1.7 patches for python-django-bootstrap-form. They didn t work, but Raphael came back on Monday morning with new versions
of the patches, which should be good this time.
Helped the DSA (Debian System Administrators) with the Debian OpenStack cloud. It s looking good and working now (note: I helped them during Debconf 14).
Started a page about adding more tasksel tasks: https://wiki.debian.org/tasksel/MoreTasks. It s looking like Joey Hess is adding new tasks by default in Tasksel, with OpenStack compute node and OpenStack proxy node . It will be nice to have them in the default Debian installer! :)
Packaged and uploaded python-dib-utils, now in NEW queue. Monday 8th:
Uploaded fixed python-django-bootstrap-form with patch for Django 1.7.
Packaged and uploaded python-pysaml2.
Finilized and uploaded python-jingo which is needed for python-django-compressor unit tests
Finalized and uploaded python-coffin which is needed for python-django-compressor unit tests
Worked on running the unit tests for python-django-compressor, as I needed to know if it could work with Django 1.7. It was hard to find the correct way to run the unit tests, but finally, they all passed. I will add the unit tests once coffin and jingo will be accepted in Sid.
Applied patches in the Debian BTS for python-django-openstack-auth and Django 1.7. Uploaded the fixed package.
Fixed python-django-pyscss compat with Django 1.7, uploaded the result.
Updated keystone to Juno b3.
Built Wheezy backports of some JS libs needed for Horizon in Juno, which I already uploaded to Sid last summer:
o libjs-twitter-bootstrap-datepicker
o libjs-jquery.quicksearch
o libjs-spin.js
Upstreamed the Django 1.7 patch for python-django-openstack-auth: https://review.openstack.org/119972 Tuesday 9:
Updated and uploaded Swift 2.1.0. Added swift-object-expirer package to it, together with init script. Wednesday 10:
Basically, cleaned the Debian BTS of almost all issues today :P
Added it.po update to nova (Closes: #758305).
Backported libvirt 1.2.7 to Wheezy, to be able to close this bug: https://bugs.debian.org/757548 (eg: changed dependency from libvirt-bin to libvirt-daemon-system)
Uploaded the fixed nova package using libvirt-daemon-system
Upgraded python-trollius to 1.0.1
Fixed tuskar-ui to work with Django 1.7. Disabled pep8 tests during build. Added build-conflicts: python-unittest2.
Fixed python-django-compressor for Django 1.7, and now running unit tests with it, after python-coffin and python-jingo got approved in Sid by FTP masters.
Fixed python-xstatic wrong upstream URLs.
Added it.po debconf translation to Designate.
Added de.po debconf translation to Tuskar.
Fixed copyright holders in python-xstatic-rickshaw
Added python-passlib as dependency for python-cinder. Remaining 3 issues in the BTS: ceilometer FTBFS, Horizon unit test with Django 1.7, Designate fail to install. All of the 3 are harder to fix, and I may try to do so later this week. Thursday 11:
Fixed python-xstatic-angular and python-xstatic-angular-mock to deal with the new libjs-angularjs version (closes 2 Debian RC bugs: uninstallable).
Fixed ceilometer FTBFS (Closes rc bug) Friday 12:
Fixed wrong copyright file for libjs-twitter-bootstrap-wizard after the FTP masters told me, and reuploaded to Sid.
Reuploaded wrong upload of ceilometer (wrong hash for orig.tar.xz)
Packaged and uploaded python-xstatic-bootstrap-scss
Packaged and uploaded python-xstatic-font-awesome
Packaged and uploaded ntpstat Monday 15:
packaged and uploaded python-xstatic-jquery.bootstrap.wizard
Fixed python-xstatic-angular-cookies to use new libjs-angularjs version (fixed version dependencies)
Fixed Ceilometer FTBFS (Closes: #759967)
Backported all python-xtatic packages to Wheezy, including all dependencies. This includes backporting of a bunch of packages from nodejs which were needed as build-dependencies (around 70 packages ). Filed about 5 or 6 release critical bugs as some nodejs packages were not buildable as-is.
Fixed some too restrictive python-xstatic-angular* dependencies on the libjs-angularjs (the libjs-angularjs increased version). Tuesday 16:
Uploaded updates to Experimental:
o python-eventlet 0.15.2 (this one took a long time as it needed maintenance)
o oslo-config
o python-oslo.i18n
Uploaded to Sid:
o python-diskimage-builder 0.1.30-1
o python-django-pyscss 1.0.2-1
Fixed horizon libapache-mode-wsgi to be a dependency of openstack-dashboard-apache and not just openstack-dashboard (in both Icehouse & Juno).
Removed the last failing Django 1.7 unit test from Horizon. It doesn t seem relevant anyway.
Backported python-netaddr 0.7.12 to Wheezy (needed by oslo-config).
Started working on oslo.rootwrap, though it failed to build in Wheezy with a unit test failure. Wednesday 17:
To experimental:
o Uploaded oslo.rootwrap 1.3.0.0~a1. It needed a build-depends on iproute2 because of a new test.
o Uploaded python-oslo.utils 0.3.0
o Uploaded python-oslo.vmware 0.6.0, fixed sphinx-build conf.py and filed a bug about it: https://bugs.launchpad.net/oslo.vmware/+bug/1370370 plus emailed the commiter of the issue (which appeared 2 weeks ago).
o Uploaded python-pycadf 0.6.0
o Uploaded python-pyghmi 0.6.17
o Uploaded python-oslotest 1.1.0.0~a2, including patch for Wheezy, which I also submited upstream: https://review.openstack.org/122171/
o Uploaded glanceclient 0.14.0, added a patch to not use the embedded version of urllib3 in requests: https://review.openstack.org/122184
To Sid:
o Uploaded python-zake_0.1.6-1 Thesday 18:
Backported zeromq3-4.0.4+dfs, pyzmq-14.3.1, pyasn1-0.1.7, python-pyasn1-modules-0.0.5
Uploaded keystoneclient 0.10.1, fixed the saml2 unit tests which were broken using testtools >= 0.9.39. Filed bug, and warned code author: https://bugs.launchpad.net/python-keystoneclient/+bug/1371085
Uploade swiftclient 2.3.0 to experimental.
Uploaded ironicclient 0.2.1 to experimental.
Uploaded saharaclient, filed bug with saharaclient expecting an up and running keystone server: https://bugs.launchpad.net/python-saharaclient/+bug/1371177 Friday 19:
Uploaded keystone Juno b3, filed but about unit tests downloading with git, while no network access should be performed during package build (forbidden by
Debian policy)
Uploaded python-oslo.db 1.0.0 which I forgot in the dependency list, and which was needed for Neutron.
Uploaded nova 2014.2~b3-1 (added a new nova-serialproxy service daemon to the nova-consoleproxy) Saturday 20:
Uploaded Neutron Juno b3.
Uploaded python-retrying 1.2.3 (was missing from depends upload)
Uploaded Glance Juno b3.
Uploaded Cinder Juno b3.
Fixed python-xstatic-angular-mock which had a .pth packaged, as well as the data folder (uploaded debian release -3).
Fixed missing depends and build-conflicts in python-xstatic-jquery. Sunday 21:
Dropped python-pil & python-django-discover-runner from runtime Depends: of python-django-pyscss, as it s only needed for tests. It also created a conflicts, because python-django-discover-runner depends on python-unittest2 and horizon build-conflicts with it.
Forward-ported the Django 1.7 patches for Horizon. Opened new patch: https://review.openstack.org/122992 (since the old fix has gone away after a refactor of the unit test).
Uploaded Horizon Juno b3.
Applied https://review.openstack.org/#/c/122768/ to the keystone package, so that it doesn t do git clone of the keystoneclient during build.
Uploaded oslo.messaging 1.4.0.0 (which really is 1.4.0) to experimental
Uploaded oslo.messaging 1.4.0.0+really+1.3.1-1 to fix the issue in Sid/Jessie after the wrong upload (due to Zul wrong tagging of Keystone in the 2014.1.2 point release). Monday 22:
Uploaded ironic 2014.2~b3-1 to experimental
Uploaded heat 2014.2~b3-1 (with some fixes for sphinx doc build)
Uploaded ceilometer 2014.2~b3-1 to experimental
Uploaded openstack-doc-tools 0.19-1 to experimental
Uploaded openstack-trove 2014.2~b3-1 to experimental Tuesday 23:
Uploaded python-neutronclient with fixed version number for cliff and six. This missing requirement for cliff version produced an error in Trove, which I don t want to happen again.
Added fix for unit tests in Trove: https://review.openstack.org/#/c/123450/1,publish
Uploaded oslo.messaging 1.4.1 in Experimental, fixing the version conflicts with the one in Sid/Jessie. Thanks to Doug Hellman for doing the tagging. I will need to upload new versions of the following packages with the >= 1.4.1 depends:
> ceilometer
> ironic
> keystone
> neutron
> nova
> oslo-config
> oslo.rootwrap
> oslo.i18n
> python-pycadf
See http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2014-September/046795.html for more explanation about the mess I m repairing
Uploaded designate Juno b3. Wednesday 24:
Uploaded oslosphinx 2.2.0.0
Uploaded update to django-openstack-auth (new last minute requirement for Horizon).
Uploaded final oslo-config package version 1.4.0.0 (really is 1.4.0)
Packaged and uploaded Sahara. This needs some tests by someone else as I don t even know how it works. Thuesday 25:
Uploaded python-keystonemiddleware 1.0.0-3, fixing CVE-2014-7144] TLS cert verification option not honoured in paste configs. https://bugs.debian.org/762748
Packaged and uploaded python-yaql, sent pull request for fixing print statements into Python3 compatible print function calls: https://github.com/ativelkov/yaql/pull/15
Packaged and uploaded python-muranoclient.
Started the packaging of Murano (not finished yet).
Uploaded python-keystoneclient 0.10.1-2 with the CVE-2014-7144 fix to Sid, with urgency=high. Uploaded 0.11.1-1 to Experimental.
Uploaded python-keystonemiddleware fix for CVE-2014-7144.
Uploaded openstack-trove 2014.2~b3-3 with last unit test fix from https://review.openstack.org/#/c/123450/ Friday 26:
Uploaded a fix for murano-agent, which makes it run as root.
Finished the packaging of Murano
Started packaging murano-dashboard, sent this patch to fix the wrong usage of the /usr/bin/coverage command: https://review.openstack.org/124444
Fixed wrong BASE_DIR in python-xstatic-angular and python-xstatic-angular-mock Saturday 27:
uploaded python-xstatic-boostrap-scss which I forgot to upload :(
uploaded python-pyscss 1.2.1 Sunday 28:
After a long investigation, I found out that the issue when installing the openstack-dasboard package was due to a wrong patch I did for Python 3.2 in Wheezy in python-pyscss. Corrected the patch from version 1.2.1-1, and uploaded version 1.2.1-2, the dashboard now installs correctly. \o/
Did a new version of an Horizon patch at https://review.openstack.org/122992/ to address Django 1.7 compat. Monday 29:
Uploaded new version of python-pyscss fixing the last issue with Python 3 (there was a release critical bug on it).
Uploaded fixup for python-django-openstack-auth fail to build in the Sid version, which was broken since the last upload of keystoneclient (which makes some of its API now as private).
Uploaded python-glance-store 0.1.8, including Ubuntu patch to fix unit tests.
Reviewed the packaging of python-strict-rfc3339 (see https://bugs.debian.org761152).
Uploaded Sheepdog with fix in the init script to start after corosync (Closes: #759216).
Uploaded pt_BR.po Brazilian Portuguese debconf templates translation for nova Icehouse in Sid (only commited it in Git for Juno).
Same for Glance. Tuesday 30:
Added Python3 support in python-django-appconf, uploaded to Sid
Upgraded to python-django-pyscss 1.0.3, and fixed broken unit tests with this new release under Django 1.7. Created pull request: https://github.com/fusionbox/django-pyscss/pull/22
Fixed designate requirements.txt in Sid (Icehouse) to allow SQLA 0.9.x. Uploaded resulting package to Sid.
Uploaded new Debian fix for python-tooz: kills memcached only if the package scripts started it (plus cleans .testrepository on clean).
Uploaded initial release of murano
Uploaded python-retrying with patch from Ubuntu to remove embedded copy of six.py code.
Uploaded python-oslo.i18n 1.0.0 to experimental (same as before, just bump of version #)
Uploaded python-oslo.utils 1.0.0 to experimental (same as before, just bump of version #)
Uploaded Keystone Juno RC1
Uploaded Glance Juno RC1

If you didn t notice, Javascript isn t as simple as it used to be Want to backport the 2 simple javascript libs? No problem. You then just need to backport a bunch of other packages which are build-dependencies (and file #761670, #761672, and #761674 on the way when rebuilding ). Here s the short list:

gyp
node-abbrev
node-ansi
node-ansi-color-table
node-archy
node-async
node-block-stream
node-combined-stream
node-contextify
node-cookie-jar
node-cssom
node-delayed-stream
node-diff
node-eyes
node-forever-agent
node-form-data
node-fstream
node-fstream-ignore
node-github-url-from-git
node-glob
node-graceful-fs
node-gyp
node-htmlparser
node-inherits
node-ini
node-jake
node-jsdom
node-json-stringify-safe
node-lockfile
node-lru-cache
node-marked
node-mime
node-minimatch
node-mkdirp
node-mute-stream
node-node-uuid
node-nopt
node-normalize-package-data
node-npmlog
node-once
node-optimist
node-osenv
node-qs
node-queue-async
node-read
node-read-package-json
node-request
node-retry
node-rimraf
node-semver
node-sha
node-sigmund
node-slide
node-smash
node-tar
node-tunnel-agent
node-uglify
node-underscore
node-utilities
node-vows
node-whic
node-which
node-wordwrap
nodejs
npm
ruby-ronn

Yes, that s 66 packages above And of course, backporting some ruby stuff makes sense :)

Before I start a short listing of (some of) the stuff I did during Debconf 14, I d like to say how much I enjoyed everyone there. You guys (all of you, really!) are just awesome, and it s always a real pleasure to see you all, each time. Anyway, here s a bits of the stuff I did. 1/ packaging of Google Cloud Engine client tools. Thanks to the presence of Eric and Jimmy, I was able to finish the work I started at Debconf 13 last year. All python modules are packaged and uploaded. Only the final client (the gcloud command line utility) isn t uploaded, even though it s already packaged. The reason is that this client downloads stuff from internet, so I need to get the full, bundled, version of it, to avoid this. Eric gave me the link, I just didn t have time to finish it yet. Though the (unfinished) package is already in the Git in Alioth. 2/ Tasksel talks We discussed improvements in Tasksel both during the conference, and later (in front of beers ). I was able to add a custom task on a modified version of the Tasksel package for my own use. I volunteered myself for adding a more task option in Tasksel for Jessie+1 because I really would like to see this feature, and nobody raised hand, but honestly, I have no idea how to do it, and therefore, I m not sure I ll be able to do so. We ll see Anyway, before this happen, we must make sure that we know what kind of tasks we want in this more tasks screen, otherwise it d be useless work for nothing. Therefore, I have setup a wiki page. Please edit the page and drop your ideas there. I ve already added entries for desktops and Debian blends, but I m sure there s more that we could add. 3/ Custom Debian CD I started experimentation on building my own Debian Wheezy CD image (well, DVD, since the resulting image is nearly 2GB). This was fun, but I am still having the issue that the installer fails to install Dash, so the CD is still unusable. I ll try to debug it. Oh I nearly forgot of course , the ISO image aims at including all OpenStack Icehouce packages backported to Wheezy, and the goal was to include the above custom Tasksel task, with an OpenStack proxy node task, and a OpenStack compute task. Let s hope I can figure out what the issue is, and finally release it. 4/ OpenStack talk Nothing special to say, just watch the video. I hope my talk was interesting enough. Of course, after watching myself, I hate everything I see, and would like to correct so many mistakes, but that s the usual, I guess. 5/ Some RC fixing Thanks to the nice work of our DPL rebuilding all the archive, I had to fix a couple of FTBFS issues on my own packages. 3 of them have been easy to fix (2 missing build-dependencies which I missed because my automated build environment has them by default, and a unit test failure), I still don t understand what s going on with Ceilometer. I also NMU-ed transmission (switching from 2.82 to 2.84, as upstream had the bugfix, and current maintainer was not responsive) which was the last blocker for the miniupnpc transition to Jessie. After the 5 days delay of the upload, it went in Sid, then migrated to Jessie, together with the miniupnpc library. I also fixed a trivial RC bug with python3-webob. 6/ Python team meeting It was nice to see everyone, and hopefully, we ll soon implement what we discussed. I hope to start migrating some of my OpenStack dependencies to the team once we move to Git (though please don t expect this to happen before the Juno release, which keeps me very busy these days). There s probably more stuff which I did during Debconf 14 (hacking or otherwise), but either it s not worth sharing, or I can t remember :)

I spent many, many hours trying to understand why I couldn t have both nova console-log showing me the output of the log, AND have the OpenStack dashboard (eg: horizon) console to work at the same time. Normally, this is done very easily, by passing multiple times the console= parameter to the Linux kernel as follow:

console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200

But it never worked. Always, it s the last console= thing that was taken into account by sysvinit (or, shall I say, bootlogd). Spending hours trying to figure out what would be the correct kernel command to pass didn t help. Then this week-end, by the magic pure chance of being subscribed to the sysvinit bug reports, I have finally found out. We ve had this bug in Debian for more than 10 years: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=181756 And it has the patch! It just feels so lame that the issue has been pending since 2003, and with a patch since 2006, and nobody even tried to have it enter Debian. I tried the Wheezy patch in the above bug report, and then tadaaaaaa! I finally had both the nova console-log (eg: ttyS0) console output, and the interactive tty0 to work on my Debian cloud image. I have produced a fixed version of the sysvinit package for Wheezy, if anyone wants to try it: http://archive.gplhost.com/debian/pool/juno-backports/main/s/sysvinit/ This doesn t only affect only the cloud images use case. Let s say you have a server. If it s a modern server, probably you have IPMI 2.0 on it. While having access through the integrated KVM over IP may be nice, seeing the boot process through the serial console redirection is often a lot more snappy than the (often VNC based) video output, plus it wouldn t require Java. Too often, Java a requirement for these nasty IPMI web interface (that s the case for at least: Dell DRAC, Supermicro IMPI, and HP iLO). Well, it should now be possible to just use ipmitools to debug the server boot process or to go fix stuff in the single user interactive shell, AND keep the normal video output! :) But keeping this fix private doesn t help much. I would really love to get this fixed within Debian. So I have sent the patch (which needed a very small rebase) in the Git repository of sysvinit (see http://deb.li/3YxUD). I of course tested it in Sid too. Though I tested only under a Xen virtual machine, I see no reason why it would work there and not elsewhere. That being said, I would welcome more testing, given the high profile of sysvinit (everyone uses/needs it, and I wouldn t like to carry alone the unhappiness of having no boot log). Please do test it from the sysvinit git, before it s even uploaded to Sid. Also, these days, sysvinit gets often uploaded to Experimental first. It will probably also be the case for version 2.88dsf-56. If it works well and nobody complains about the patch, maybe it d be worth adding it to Wheezy as well (though that decision is of course left to the release team once the fix reaches Jessie).

As I care to have all the Lintian output and warnings, I have this in my ~/.lintianrc:

info=yes
display-info=yes
display-experimental=yes
pedantic=yes
show-overrides=yes
color=auto

So, by default, my Lintian setup displays all pedantic warnings. However, it s been annoying me with the debian-watch-may-check-gpg-signature, which I don t really care about since 1/ there s never such a PGP stuff upstream, and 2/ I mostly use Git tags from upstream, in which I do check signatures whenever possible (and mostly, if I have upstream s key in my keyring after a key signing party, which happened a few times). The solution? Well, very easy:

sudo sed -i 's/Disable-Tags:/Disable-Tags: debian-watch-may-check-gpg-signature,/' /usr/share/lintian/profiles/debian/main.profile

There s nothing more to it! Of course, you can also create your own profile, with the added benefit that your changes wont be overwritten on next upgrade. But that s overkill if you re alone in the system, and anyway it s damned easy to do the changes again, plus I often reinstall this computer from scratch. With the above, you can of course disable the display of any tag you wish.

I ve done some clean-up in the Debian BTS. The result can be seen in the QA graphs: The last remaining 6 bugs are only affecting OpenStack Essex (which is what Wheezy ships, and which unfortunately I have not enough time to support properly), and the last one is waiting for FTP masters approval after I added Python 3 support to oslo-config (OpenStack is slowly moving to Python3, and I ve tried to add support to Python3 in the packages as well each time it was possible). Also, the Icehouse packages have passed the tempest tests (a set of functional tests) which we run in our continuous integration system. As I was doing some triaging, it is possible that some bugs have been closed a bit quickly (like for example the Ceilometer FTBFS which I couldn t reproduce, even with sbuild and cowbuilder), so it is well possible that some more QA work will be needed later on. I m also expecting a new set of patches for supporting Ceph in Nova. I m sure there s issues which we will discover later on, however, it is nice to have this result right after the first Icehouse release of OpenStack. Next up: testing new components that I uploaded for this release: Trove (DB as a Service), Designate (DNS as a Service), Ironic (Metal as a Service, or cloud computing on bare-metal), and TripleO (OpenStack on OpenStack). I unfortunately know already that TripleO and Tuskar wont really work yet, and that it needs some patches to be sent upstream for it to support Debian correctly (let s work it out for Juno!). So please consider it as a technology preview only. Though Trove, Designate and Ironic are supposed to be in good enough shape, I didn t have the chance to test them more than just installing the packages and checking daemons are running and connected to the various components of OpenStack (eg: database, keystone and RabbitMQ). Please do test them and report bugs in the BTS. I d like to thanks Gustavo Panizzo & Thomas Bechtold who contributed to this release, and also the folks at eNovance (Emilien, Cyril, Seb ) who provided precious help with the CI and package quality. See you in the Juno Atlanta design summit next week (as hopefully, my plane ticket issue will be soon solved).

The new version of OpenStack is out, and I have just finished uploading it all into Debian Sid. With a total of 38 packages that I uploaded yesterday (which was exhausting!), most, if not all, were only moving from Experimental to Sid with only tiny updates, and this represents the achievement of 6 months of packaging work. The new feature list is impressive, and I would like to highlight some part of it:

• New Ironic bare metal service.
• New Designate DNS as a Service project.
• Trove (DB as a Service) graduated from incubation and should work well now.
• TripleO (OpenStack On OpenStack) is now fully in Debian, together with Tuskar and Tuskar-UI.
• OpenStack now has VXLAN support through the new version of OVS and kernel >= 3.13. This solves the scalability issues with GRE tunnels.

For the moment, I haven t packaged Sahara (eg: Hadoop as a service), but it might come later as a customer of us might require it. There s a lot less unit tests issues in the packages I uploaded to Sid: all SQLAlchemy issues have been dealt with. I wasn t confident with the Havana release that Sid / Testing would be a good environment for OpenStack, but this time with Icehouse, I think it should be much better. Please test this brand new release and report issues on the BTS. As always, the packages are available also as Wheezy backports through the usual channels (see the official install guide).

Since I have to do a lot of backports for the OpenStack packages in Debian Wheezy, I got tired of doing them by hand. Therefore, I have created a script to automate the task. I m not particularly proud (or ashamed) of that script, but I just want to share it. Probably some fellow readers will happily provide me with enhancements and ideas. Note that the use of mk-build-deps implies that the equivs package has to be installed. What I do is run this build-backport script within a cowbuilder, to make sure I always have a clean backport environment.

#!/bin/sh
set -e
set -x
PKG_NAME=$ 1 
BPO_DISTRO=wheezy-backports
BPO_POSTFIX=bpo70+1
REPO_ROOT=/home/ftp
REPO_DEST=icehouse-backports
if [  whoami  = "jenkins" ] ; then
        BUILD_ROOT=/var/lib/jenkins/jobs/openstack-pkg-tools/builds/$ BUILD_NUMBER 
else
        BUILD_ROOT=~/sources
fi
# Get info from packages.debian.org
PKG_INFO_FILE= mktemp -t pkg_info_file.XXXXXX 
wget --no-check-certificate -O $ PKG_INFO_FILE  http://packages.debian.org/sid/$ PKG_NAME 
DEB_VERSION= rmadison $ PKG_NAME    grep sid   awk ' print $3 ' 
UPSTREAM_VERSION= echo $ DEB_VERSION    cut -d'-' -f1    cut -d":" -f2 
DSC_URL= cat $ PKG_INFO_FILE    grep dsc   cut -d'"' -f2 
rm $ PKG_INFO_FILE 
# Prepare build folder and go in it
MY_CWD= pwd 
rm -rf $ BUILD_ROOT /$PKG_NAME
mkdir -p $ BUILD_ROOT /$PKG_NAME
cd $ BUILD_ROOT /$PKG_NAME
# Download the .dsc and extract it
dget -d -u $ DSC_URL 
PKG_SRC_NAME= ls *.dsc   cut -d_ -f1 
PKG_NAME_FIRST_CHAR= echo $ PKG_SRC_NAME    awk ' print substr($0,1,1) ' 
dpkg-source -x *.dsc
echo "Now running mk-build-deps -i $ PKG_SRC_NAME -$ UPSTREAM_VERSION /debian/control"
mk-build-deps -i $ PKG_SRC_NAME -$ UPSTREAM_VERSION /debian/control
# Build the package as backport using cowbuilder
cd $ PKG_SRC_NAME -$ UPSTREAM_VERSION 
dch --bpo -m "Backported for $ BPO_DISTRO ."
dpkg-buildpackage
cd ..  
PKG_FINAL_DEST=$ REPO_ROOT /debian/pool/$ REPO_DEST /main/$ PKG_NAME_FIRST_CHAR /$ PKG_SRC_NAME 
ssh archive.gplhost.com "mkdir -p $ PKG_FINAL_DEST "
scp *.orig.tar.* *$ DEB_VERSION ~$ BPO_POSTFIX * archive.gplhost.com:$ PKG_FINAL_DEST 

Out of laziness, like many, I use WordPress for this blog. I did try others, but was disappointed (after my blog got hacked a few times), so I just use that. WordPress has a long history of security issues. So upstream decided to preform automatic updates. This would have been a good thing if automatic update didn t completely mess my blog each and every single time. On my hosting system, PHP scripts have to be chmod +x to be executed. Otherwise, there s a error, and Apache wont execute the PHP script. The same way, an error will happen if a directory is world writable (eg: chmod 777). This is in order to prevent some of the most common hacks: a hacker finds a way to upload a PHP script (often via a feature of the hosted software), and then uses the uploaded script to do nasty things (like installing phishing sites, send spam, you name it ). Checking on these basic unix rights prevents uploaded scripts to be executed, and it s normally a way harder for hackers to find a way to chmod the PHP scripts than it is to just upload it. Unfortunately, WordPress, on each upgrade, is resetting these unix rights. Someone got to explain to me the reason why it absolutely needs to chmod 777 the hosted folders, and why it wouldn t keep the chmod +x on the php scripts. Direct result? My blog often gets completely broken by these automated updates. And I didn t find a way to disable them (if someone knows, please send me a quick email). I have reported the bug upstream: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/27568

This is the 2nd point release of OpenStack Havana (this is the name of the current stable release of OpenStack). It was out on Thursday (US time), and I uploaded it on Friday (Chinese time). Unfortunately, I realized that the latest python-keystoneclient didn t support the token and endpoint command line options, effectively breaking Keystone itself, and all automated endpoint registration in all core packages. So after fixing Keystone and openstack-pkg-tools, I had to re-upload a 2nd Debian release. However, after this glitch, the packages passed successfully our CI testing suite: my friends at eNovance and I run the tempest functional test suite each time there s this kind of major update, so that we can validate the packages are working as expected. And all went well after the new keystone command line options were fixed in the postinst scripts. As a side note, I fail to see consistency on deprecating these interfaces. While we still have the old glance index thing in the Glance client (this is really old), keystoneclient just broke backward compatibility, when keystone is quite recent. So, it looks to me that it wasn t a great idea to just remove token and endpoint this way (though I can understand the need of consistency). Hopefully, this will all be fixed anyway, when we move to the unified python-openstackclient command lines instead of per-project clients. I realized today that the pkg-openstack team now maintains more than 100 packages. This of course includes general purpose Python modules, which probably will move to the Python module team if it one day supports Git (life is too short: I do not wish to learn such a deprecated technology as SVN). Though this is still a lot of packages, and some more are coming: as per the OpenStack TODO list wiki page, Ironic (a replacement for nova-baremetal), TripleO (OpenStack on OpenStack), Tuskar (contols where things are deployed with TripleO) and Designate (DNS as a Service) are already packaged, and I am waiting for the Icehouse (this is the name of the next stable release) beta3 to be out to upload them to Experimental. This is scheduled for the 6th of March. I believe I am currently nearly up-to-date with the current global-requirements.txt (eg: python dependencies of OpenStack), pending a few Python module upgrades, so hopefully, packaging OpenStack Icehouse beta3 will smooth.

This is sad, but no choice, due to the lack of upstream support: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=738322 I just hope xenserver-core will work soon in Debian, so we can fix this unfortunate situation.

I thought it would have been smooth, though it wasn t. OpenRC shipped /sbin/rc, which conflicted with the rc shell (an implementation of the AT&T Plan 9 shell), and /sbin/runscript was conflicting with minicom. With the help of upstream authors, /sbin/rc was renamed /sbin/openrc, and /sbin/runscript was renamed /sbin/openrc-run. However, the main goal is reached: after last summer Google Summer of Code project, and a bit of rework for the ruff edges, OpenRC made it to Debian. So, if you wish to try OpenRC, which is a direct replacement for sysv-rc, just add the Debian Experimental repository to your sources.list, and do apt-get install openrc . The only issue will be the first reboot, though that should be fine if one manually shuts down every running daemon, and then type what the postinst suggests as command echoed on the screen. Suggestions on how to improve this is welcome. I warmly also welcome more general feedback. I d like to publicly thank Patrick Lauer, Benda ( ), WIlliam Hubbs, Alexander Vershilov (who are all OpenRC upstreams), Bill Wang who was the GSoC studdent working on OpenRC, Roger Leigh who is the current sysv-init/sysv-rc maintainer, for their help and support when porting OpenRC to Debian. Without them, it wouldn t have been possible.

Peter Reinholdtsen posted an article on planet.debian.org about symplifying init scripts. I don t think that s a good idea. I tried to do that, and then scrapped all my code, because I ve found OpenRC that was doing what I wrote, in a much better way. We shouldn t reivent the wheel, OpenRC is there already!

The point of switching to a new init system is to get rid of huge init scripts. Well, here s an example OpenRC runscript, rewriting /etc/init.d/rsyslog:

#!/sbin/runscript
command=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
name="enhanced syslogd"
depend()
 
        provide rsyslogd syslog
        need $remote_fs $time
 

Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc script was 126 lines, and the above is just 10 lines.

I have always pretended that OpenRC would be very easy to port to Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. Well, now I stop pretending: http://youtu.be/zoNoi8BgQjs This was done within a few hours working with upstream. Now, next-up: Debian GNU/Hurd. Hoping that porters will volunteer to do the work.