Search Results: "Ivo De Decker"

31 December 2020

Holger Levsen: 20201231-no-source-change-source-uploads

On doing 540 no-source-change source-only uploads in two weeks So I've been doing 540 no-source-change source-only uploads in the last two weeks and am planning to do 3000 more in January 2021. We'll see how that goes ;) Let me explain what I have been doing and why. So, starting with the Bullseye release cycle the Release Team changed policy: only packages which were build on buildds are allowed to migrate to testing. Which is pretty nice for reproducible builds as this also ensures that a .buildinfo file is available for anyone wanting to reproduce the binaries of that package. However, there are many binary (and source) packages in Debian which were uploaded before 2016 (which is when .buildinfo files were introduced) or were uploaded with binaries until that change in release policy July 2019. Then Ivo De Decker scheduled binNMUs for all the affected packages but due to the way binNMUs work, he couldn't do anything about arch:all packages as they currently cannot be rebuilt with binNMUs. Ivo and myself discussed what could be done about the remaining packages and (besides long complicated changes to Debian's workflows) the only thing deemed possible was doing many many source uploads with just a new changelog entry:
  * Non maintainer upload by the Reproducible Builds team.
  * No source change upload to rebuild on buildd with .buildinfo files.
These packages are all inherently buggy, because Debian policy mandates that packages should be reproducible and without .buildinfo files one cannot reproducibly rebuild packages. So instead of filing many many bugs we've decided to just fix these bugs by doing a no-source-change source uploads. One nice aspect of these uploads is that there's no follow-up work imposed on the maintainer: whether they keep that changelog entry or whether they discard it, it does not matter. So Ivo had developed an SQL query which showed 570 packages needing an update roughly two weeks ago, on December 18 and so I started slowly. This is the amount of NMUs I did in the last days:
for i in $(seq 18 30) ; do echo -n "Dec $i: " ; ls -lart1 done/*upload grep -c "Dec $i" ; done
Dec 18: 12
Dec 19: 0
Dec 20: 3
Dec 21: 13
Dec 22: 13
Dec 23: 16
Dec 24: 4
Dec 25: 28
Dec 26: 0
Dec 27: 38
Dec 28: 198
Dec 29: 206
Dec 30: 9
About ten packages had FTBFS bugs preventing an upload and seven packages were uploaded by the maintainer before me. I've seen two cases of sudden maintainer uploads after 8 and 10 years of no activity! So what did I do for each upload? Much to my surprise I didn't get much feedback, there were like 6 people on the #debian-reproducible channel cheering and one on #debian-qa, though that person is a Release Team member so that was kind of important cheering. And I've seen some maintainer uploads to packages which haven't seen uploads since some years. And really nice: no-one complained so far. I hope this will stay this way with the plan to do 3000 more uploads of this kind: Those 570 packages were only key packages but there are 3000 more source packages which have a binary in bullseye for which no .buildinfo file exists. So I plan to upload them all in January 2021 and you can help me doing so, by uploading your packages before me - and maybe fixing some other bugs in the process! I've posted the list of packages (sorted by ddlist) to debian-devel@lists.d.o, see https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2020/12/msg00419.html. Many thanks to Ivo and the whole Release Team for their support of Reproducible Builds and generally speaking for the many many enhancements to the release process we've seen over the years. Debian in 2021 will rock'n'roll more than ever! So thank you all, once again, for making Debian what it is and what it will be!

16 July 2020

Louis-Philippe V ronneau: DebConf Videoteam Sprint Report -- DebConf20@Home

DebConf20 starts in about 5 weeks, and as always, the DebConf Videoteam is working hard to make sure it'll be a success. As such, we held a sprint from July 9th to 13th to work on our new infrastructure. A remote sprint certainly ain't as fun as an in-person one, but we nonetheless managed to enjoy ourselves. Many thanks to those who participated, namely: We also wish to extend our thanks to Thomas Goirand and Infomaniak for providing us with virtual machines to experiment on and host the video infrastructure for DebConf20. Advice for presenters For DebConf20, we strongly encourage presenters to record their talks in advance and send us the resulting video. We understand this is more work, but we think it'll make for a more agreeable conference for everyone. Video conferencing is still pretty wonky and there is nothing worse than a talk ruined by a flaky internet connection or hardware failures. As such, if you are giving a talk at DebConf this year, we are asking you to read and follow our guide on how to record your presentation. Fear not: we are not getting rid of the Q&A period at the end of talks. Attendees will ask their questions either on IRC or on a collaborative pad and the Talkmeister will relay them to the speaker once the pre-recorded video has finished playing. New infrastructure, who dis? Organising a virtual DebConf implies migrating from our battle-tested on-premise workflow to a completely new remote one. One of the major changes this means for us is the addition of Jitsi Meet to our infrastructure. We normally have 3 different video sources in a room: two cameras and a slides grabber. With the new online workflow, directors will be able to play pre-recorded videos as a source, will get a feed from a Jitsi room and will see the audience questions as a third source. This might seem simple at first, but is in fact a very major change to our workflow and required a lot of work to implement.
               == On-premise ==                                          == Online ==
                                                      
              Camera 1                                                 Jitsi
                                                                          
                 v                 ---> Frontend                         v                 ---> Frontend
                                                                                            
    Slides -> Voctomix -> Backend -+--> Frontend         Questions -> Voctomix -> Backend -+--> Frontend
                                                                                            
                 ^                 ---> Frontend                         ^                 ---> Frontend
                                                                          
              Camera 2                                           Pre-recorded video
In our tests, playing back pre-recorded videos to voctomix worked well, but was sometimes unreliable due to inconsistent encoding settings. Presenters will thus upload their pre-recorded talks to SReview so we can make sure there aren't any obvious errors. Videos will then be re-encoded to ensure a consistent encoding and to normalise audio levels. This process will also let us stitch the Q&As at the end of the pre-recorded videos more easily prior to publication. Reducing the stream latency One of the pitfalls of the streaming infrastructure we have been using since 2016 is high video latency. In a worst case scenario, remote attendees could get up to 45 seconds of latency, making participation in events like BoFs arduous. In preparation for DebConf20, we added a new way to stream our talks: RTMP. Attendees will thus have the option of using either an HLS stream with higher latency or an RTMP stream with lower latency. Here is a comparative table that can help you decide between the two protocols:
HLS RTMP
Pros
  • Can be watched from a browser
  • Auto-selects a stream encoding
  • Single URL to remember
  • Lower latency (~5s)
Cons
  • Higher latency (up to 45s)
  • Requires a dedicated video player (VLC, mpv)
  • Specific URLs for each encoding setting
Live mixing from home with VoctoWeb Since DebConf16, we have been using voctomix, a live video mixer developed by the CCC VOC. voctomix is conveniently divided in two: voctocore is the backend server while voctogui is a GTK+ UI frontend directors can use to live-mix. Although voctogui can connect to a remote server, it was primarily designed to run either on the same machine as voctocore or on the same LAN. Trying to use voctogui from a machine at home to connect to a voctocore running in a datacenter proved unreliable, especially for high-latency and low bandwidth connections. Inspired by the setup FOSDEM uses, we instead decided to go with a web frontend for voctocore. We initially used FOSDEM's code as a proof of concept, but quickly reimplemented it in Python, a language we are more familiar with as a team. Compared to the FOSDEM PHP implementation, voctoweb implements A / B source selection (akin to voctogui) as well as audio control, two very useful features. In the following screen captures, you can see the old PHP UI on the left and the new shiny Python one on the right. The old PHP voctowebThe new Python3 voctoweb Voctoweb is still under development and is likely to change quite a bit until DebConf20. Still, the current version seems to works well enough to be used in production if you ever need to. Python GeoIP redirector We run multiple geographically-distributed streaming frontend servers to minimize the load on our streaming backend and to reduce overall latency. Although users can connect to the frontends directly, we typically point them to live.debconf.org and redirect connections to the nearest server. Sadly, 6 months ago MaxMind decided to change the licence on their GeoLite2 database and left us scrambling. To fix this annoying issue, Stefano Rivera wrote a Python program that uses the new database and reworked our ansible frontend server role. Since the new database cannot be redistributed freely, you'll have to get a (free) license key from MaxMind if you to use this role. Ansible & CI improvements Infrastructure as code is a living process and needs constant care to fix bugs, follow changes in DSL and to implement new features. All that to say a large part of the sprint was spent making our ansible roles and continuous integration setup more reliable, less buggy and more featureful. All in all, we merged 26 separate ansible-related merge request during the sprint! As always, if you are good with ansible and wish to help, we accept merge requests on our ansible repository :)

8 November 2015

Andrew Cater: MiniDebconf ARM CAmbridge 1400 - ARM, Cambridge 8 November

Andy (rattusrattus) on Video team sprint over the last few days with Ivo de Decker and Stefano Rovera

Background/Existing infrastructure/Why change? [DV/Firewire are EOL]
Things to do

1. Replace twinpact video slide capture system with something that can capture HDMI - better resolution,- digital all the way
Using a pre-production prototype at the moment. CCC also hoping to use this. All kit needs to go into one big box with sensible power supplies
2. Replace DVswitch
Better resolution, select sources, record all inputs, record all edits
Gstreamer based transport solution - import/output format agnostic
GST-Switch - possibly dead? VoctoMix looks more promising - CCC are testing this. First use in anger may be December
3. Improve streaming - single stream out. Encode stream on in-room hardware.
Sharing is a thing ... CCC workflow and setup are good - everyone should share technology. FOSDEM has 25 rooms ...
4 Replace/expand AV equipment
Workstation PC - SDI capture/video mixing/local record and encode
Laptop for remote UI
2 cameras
Opsis frame grabber
5 BoF Room recording - lots of options to handle differently
1 Operator maximum / preferably automated
Video conferencing camera / microphone setup
Frame grabber for slides / Gobby feed
6 Logistics
Organise equipment by room
Kit must be kept deployable
Quartermastering necessary
Checklists for each box
Set up a lab for development and release
DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ON THE PRODUCTION KIT


6 March 2015

Raphaël Hertzog: My Free Software Activities in February 2015

My monthly report covers a large part of what I have been doing in the free software world. I write it for my donators (thanks to them!) but also for the wider Debian community because it can give ideas to newcomers and it s one of the best ways to find volunteers to work with me on projects that matter to me. Debian LTS This month I have been paid to work 14.5 hours on Debian LTS. I worked mostly on CVE triage (41 commits in the security tracker) and organizational issues. One maintainer complained that he had not been kept in the loop for an LTS update of his package. After some discussion, I decided to change the way I did CVE triage so that any time that I add a package to our list of packages needing an update, I also send a mail to the maintainer, thus offering him the opportunity to step in. To make this sustainable, I wrote a small helper script that will generate a mail out of a template. And to kickstart the process I mailed all maintainers of packages that were already listed in our queue of packages to update. To improve the email generated, I requested a JSON export of the security tracker data (see discussions in #761859). In the mean time, Holger worked on this already and after a few iterations we did converge on an output format that will be really useful both for my needs in terms of CVE triage but also for the Package Tracker to be able to display the list of security vulnerabilities affecting each release (see #761730). Last but not least, I don t want to be the only one doing CVE triage for our LTS release so I documented the process in our wiki page. As a side note, I sponsored an e2fsprogs update prepared by Nguyen Cong and I sent the DLA for the embargoed samba update that had been prepared by Ivo de Decker (thanks to both of them!). Tryton Like last month, I invested again a copious amount of time on Tryton, fixing some bugs that were affecting me and improving the French chart of accounts to properly manage purchases and sales within the European Union. Here are some links for more details: Debian I did some work on Distro Tracker, I fixed #777453 (password reset not working because the generated email was using an invalid From email) and #779247 (obsolete build reproducibility action items were not dropped). I also started to work on restructuring the mail handling in distro-tracker (cf #754913) but it s not public yet. While I have no plans to stop contributing to Debian (it s part of my day job!), I reduced my non-work related involvement by officially recognizing that I was no longer properly assuming some of my responsibilities and that I was following too many mailing lists and RSS feeds. The most notable changes are that I removed myself from the maintenance of dpkg, developers-reference, quilt, sql-ledger, and a few perl/python modules. Misc Voting software. Part of the reason why I m reducing my involvement in Debian is that I got more involved in Nouvelle Donne (a French political party) and in particular in the handling of its digital infrastructure (currently running on Ubuntu, doh!). As part of this, I was looking for free software to handle secure votes and elections (and if possible adhering to the principles of liquid democracy). There s no perfect solution and no clear winner. That said I started following the evolution of AgoraVoting because it seems to have a good momentum and has some interesting features (it already supports votes with ranked choices, supports good crypto, has been used for elections involving large numbers of voters in the context of Podemos in Spain). But it still has some ways to go to establish itself as a truly international and community-backed project. GDM bug. Due to my work on Kali, I filed a bug against GDM (this one has been quickly fixed upstream, it s still open in Debian) and another one against accountsservice to request the possibility to define the default graphical session. Dirvish formula for Salt. I contributed another formula to manage backups with dirvish. Thanks See you next month for a new summary of my activities.

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31 August 2013

Christian Perrier: DebConf 13: hacking outcome

I *did* some hacking at DebConf, as usual. For once, I had no TODO list: after all, I never complete these, so why make one? Still, I participated to discussions around samba packaging, mostly animated by Ivo De Decker and I think we're making good progress towards samba 4.x packages. The road is long, quite complicated, but we now have a stronger team, with a very active Ivo, Jeroen Dekkers who officially joined, Steve Langasek who still cherishes one of his pet packages (and even branched in our git with the Ubuntu packages). Great work and thanks to Ivo for pushing this forward. I also worked quite actively on the migration of fonts packages to git (I now reached the point where I'm more comfortable with git than SVN, yes, everything can happen). These packages were modernized at the same time and checked for new upstream versions (I have to say that few of these fonts had new upstream versions, indeed). We unfortunately found no time to have a good font BoF in Vaumarcus, indeed...but I'm not sure we would have many things to say. The work is done and done well, in this team. Some progress was made, also, for restoring a working "monolithic" build of D-I. This build gathers together all udebs from unstable, which means it offers a D-I image that uses ALL udebs from nustable.....which is not the default of other images. This would be very helpful for translators who want to check their work as soon as possible. In the future, with a Jenkins task that would build each package at each commit and then build a monolithic image, we could have a way to provide a tes snapshot of D-I git repos.....which could help catching more bugs (or more of my stupid mistakes). So, in general, I consider this a quite successful DebConf when it comes at "real" production.

27 January 2013

Gregor Herrmann: RC bugs 2013/04

yeah, the RC bug count is going down, mostly due to the bug squashing party taking place in cambridge, uk, this weekend (with participation of some release team members). here are my contributions during the last week:

23 December 2012

Gregor Herrmann: RC bugs 2012/51

I just realized it's sunday again, so here goes my list of RC bugs I've worked on during the last week:

Gregor Herrmann: RC bugs 2012/51

I just realized it's sunday again, so here goes my list of RC bugs I've worked on during the last week:

16 December 2012

Gregor Herrmann: RC bugs 2012/50

have I said before that we are running out of easy RC bugs? the list is a bit short this week: to make up for this poor performance, I've uploaded ~14 new lib.*-perl packages to the NEW queue yesterday & today :)

2 December 2012

Gregor Herrmann: RC bugs 2012/47-48

I was a bit busy (mostly in pleasant ways) during the last two weeks, so this reports covers a longer period of my RC bug activities:

18 November 2012

Gregor Herrmann: RC bugs 2012/46

it's seems we're starting to run out of RC bugs with the implicit usertag easy-enough-for-gregoa

what I've done in the last days besides working on the bugs listed below is to tag quite a few bugs pending that were uploaded into a DELAYED queue. please try to remember to set this tag on delayed NMUs, nmudiff is quite convenient here.

26 August 2012

Gregor Herrmann: RC bugs 2012/34

good news: I'm seeing more & more people contributing to RC bugs in the BTS. here are my own contributions for the past week: