A look at Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

[cjohnston]

Features and Goals (http://chrisjohnston.org/2008/what-to-look-for-in-ubuntu-904-jaunty-jackalope-due-in-april-2009)

[tuxxy]

Boot time improvments! alreaad Ibex is really fast at boot ups/down, bring it on :)

[spoons]

I just hope stuff doesn't get pulled in the name of boot times.

[smartboyathome]

There also should be kernel 2.6.29, which, from what the linux modesetting team says, will be when the modesetting patches are included (hooray!).

[Phreaker]

I just hope stuff doesn't get pulled in the name of boot times.
God Forbid!

[Saint Angeles]

Features and Goals (http://chrisjohnston.org/2008/what-to-look-for-in-ubuntu-904-jaunty-jackalope-due-in-april-2009)
thats not very informative.

lets hope theres more to jaunty than whats on this list.

[guss606]

i guess there should be much improvements on the wireless connection issue, and the flash player, and .. well thats for now,, :P but i'm sure it will be gr8 as usual..

[EdThaSlayer]

I do like it however that they are focusing on speed for this next Ubuntu. Just imagine, your laptop booting up nice and fast easily outpacing the Vista laptops. That would also convert a few users to our side. :)

[bikeboy]

There also should be kernel 2.6.29, which, from what the linux modesetting team says, will be when the modesetting patches are included (hooray!).

Can you explain this a bit? A link will do of course, just interested in finding out what it means :)

[aaaantoine]

Sure. Here's a Phoronix article on Kernel-Based Mode-Setting (KMS) (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=kernel_modesetting&num=1). It's about 6 months old, so some of the information is out of date. But the concept is the same.

The following paragraph from the article lists the awesome things that are promised with KMS:
Suspend and resume support is improved with kernel mode-setting as the kernel no longer relies upon external resources for restoring the graphics adapters. With the process now being in-kernel, it's able to restore the mode automatically and more quickly. Likewise, virtual terminal switching is also improved as a result. Kernel mode-setting will also allow for an improved debugging experience, as this will eliminate the "hard hang" and make it possible to display a graphical error message (think the "Blue Screen of Death" for Linux). This technology leads to a flicker-free boot experience by only needing to set the video mode once, instead of turning on and off when starting the boot process (in the case of Fedora, with Red Hat Graphical Boot) and then properly initializing the device when the X server has finally started and loading the GNOME Display Manager.

[Slug71]

Would love to have 2.6.29 but i think in order for this to be possible we need to have 2.6.28 from Alpha 1 so that bug tracking and fixing can start right away and pave the way for 2.6.29.

If we go from 2.6.27 - 2.6.28 - 2.6.29, i just see a lot of headaches and things not working properly again.

What i'd like to see in Alpha 1 is:

Kernel 2.6.28(with PA 0.9.14 and Alsa 1.0.18)
Grub2
Ext4
OOo. 3
LSB 4.0
Firefox 3.1
A new Theme.

[K.Mandla]

Moved to Jaunty Jackalope discussion.

[kernelhaxor]

I hope the list is longer than that!

[talkingwires]

Hey, thanks for posting the blogspam! Never mind that you have no new information, just rehashing what Mark Shuttleworth said months ago and rehashing two goals that were meant for Intrepid.

I'll stick with the official news (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty). And the official news right now is that there is no news. The blueprints will be going up soon, but until the UDS in December, everything is up in the air.

[bikeboy]

Sure. Here's a Phoronix article on Kernel-Based Mode-Setting (KMS) (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=kernel_modesetting&num=1)

Thanks for that.

[andras artois]

Weblications

Another goal of Jaunty will be to integrate desktop applications and web services together.

Not everyone has a working internet connection or access to the internet at all. BAD IDEA. Leave that for plugins.

[jerrylamos]

The BIGGEST improvement over Intrepid would be to BOOT and RUN. I've been doing everything Ubuntu since Dapper Beta. It's really amazing how many people had trouble trying to boot, including me, or upgrading to find their pc is a vegetable. Look at the forums. Yes, Alpha's do that, but Beta? Release Candidate?? Release??? ref Launchpad bug #259385.

If Ubuntu is ever going to increase its penetration vs. Microsoft, then Ubuntu has got to be able to boot and run.

Jerry

[Shwefty]

How about a better default sound theme? I dislike the default sound theme more than the default visual scheme.

It's hard to say what's Jaunty and what's Gnome. I'd like to see some practical desklet applications that don't hurt performance. (to-do lists, weather, heck - even conky). I mean this without having to customize the interface too much. While modifying themes and such aren't too hard the most of us, the other 99% are less likely to be hands-on computer users.

[Starks]

Lsb?

Linux sound base?

[olskar]

Lsb?

Linux sound base?

The goal of the LSB is to develop and promote a set of open standards that will increase compatibility among Linux distributions and enable software applications to run on any compliant system even in binary form. In addition, the LSB will help coordinate efforts to recruit software vendors to port and write products for Linux. :)

[plun]

Most important is Gnomes roadmap for an enduser and its nearly nothing.:(

http://live.gnome.org/RoadMap


I hope that Neil and MacSlow are free to do something great...:)

Neil is AWNs and Ubuntu netbook remix creator.

MacSlow has already a spec for Spit & polish and a new login....

Just dreaming..:lolflag:

[Slug71]

Lsb?

Linux sound base?

Linux Standard Base ;)


Anyone know if LSB-4.0 is out yet? Was supposed to be out on the 11th.

[MadsRH]

How about a better default sound theme? I dislike the default sound theme more than the default visual scheme....

Please read this post "New startup sound in Ubuntu 9.04" (http://anotherubuntu.blogspot.com/)



//MadsRH
http://anotherubuntu.blogspot.com/

[plun]

The goal of the LSB is to develop and promote a set of open standards that will increase compatibility among Linux distributions and enable software applications to run on any compliant system even in binary form. In addition, the LSB will help coordinate efforts to recruit software vendors to port and write products for Linux. :)

Well... "its a long way to Tipperary"...:) The LSB project will take time, Debian for example can discuss and discuss...:)

Freedesktop is more important for us. IMHO...

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/

And in the end Gnomes roadmap....

I saw a picture somewhere with the new Gnome volume control.

So we must move upstream with our wishes... !!!!

[Half-Left]

Sure. Here's a Phoronix article on Kernel-Based Mode-Setting (KMS) (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=kernel_modesetting&num=1). It's about 6 months old, so some of the information is out of date. But the concept is the same.

The following paragraph from the article lists the awesome things that are promised with KMS:

The bad news is that you need special drivers for it and the driver needs to support it, dont expect Nvidia or ATI to support it anytime soon.

[RAOF]

The bad news is that you need special drivers for it and the driver needs to support it, dont expect Nvidia or ATI to support it anytime soon.

That, of course, depends. You can expect the open-source ATI drivers to support it pretty much now, and there's some sort of support for it in the nv5x nouveau code, but don't hold your breath here - nouveau moves substantially slower than radeon{,hd}. What a difference specs + paid developers makes, eh?

[Slug71]

Id like to see the FAH client be in Jauntys Apps menu by default too. :)

[plun]

That, of course, depends. You can expect the open-source ATI drivers to support it pretty much now, and there's some sort of support for it in the nv5x nouveau code, but don't hold your breath here - nouveau moves substantially slower than radeon{,hd}. What a difference specs + paid developers makes, eh?

News from Phoronix about this:

Nouveau Merged In Gallium3D 0.2

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Njg1MQ

Stephane Marchesin, the leader of the Nouveau project, has announced that the Mesa work has been merged into the Gallium3D version 0.2 branch instead of being developed in an independent branch. Nouveau is the community project that's been reverse-engineering NVIDIA's binary Linux driver in order to provide an open-source 2D and 3D driver for NVIDIA graphics hardware. Gallium3D is the 3D graphics architecture developed by Tungsten Graphics that delivers a number of advantages to both developers and end-users.

In addition, the Mesa Gallium3D implementation now supports g3dvl, which was the Google Summer of Code project this year to create a unified video decoder that isn't bound to specific GPUs but sits atop Gallium3D and uses the graphics processor's shaders. Back in September we shared the state of Gallium3D video decoding.

Users interested in checking out the latest 3D code can acquire the mesa/gallium-0.2 git branch. As Stephane noted in his mailing list message, "that does not mean nouveau magically became stable overnight, but at least we don't have multiple trees all around." Nouveau's 3D side is still being actively developed and certain NVIDIA GPU series are currently working better than others.

The mailing list message announcing this branch merger can be read on dri-devel.

All rights to Phoronix

[MadsRH]

Are there any plans to use plymouth (http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13029)for 9.04?

[gnomeuser]

Would love to have 2.6.29 but i think in order for this to be possible we need to have 2.6.28 from Alpha 1 so that bug tracking and fixing can start right away and pave the way for 2.6.29.

If we go from 2.6.27 - 2.6.28 - 2.6.29, i just see a lot of headaches and things not working properly again.

What i'd like to see in Alpha 1 is:

Kernel 2.6.28(with PA 0.9.14 and Alsa 1.0.18)
Grub2
Ext4
OOo. 3
LSB 4.0
Firefox 3.1
A new Theme.

Seriously.. look at Fedora 10. It has the kernel you ask for, ext4 (just add ext4 as a parameter to the boot when installing from the dvd), OOo3 and a theme that is not brown (but admittedly not pretty either). Forefox 3.1 is very likely to be released as an update (Fedora tends to push out major things such as Firefox to all maintained platforms). You can even get grub2, not by default since it's not ready for that but still. You also get both the PA and ALSA versions you ask for.

LSB4 is as I recall not even out yet, there is debate on the mailing lists on when to adopt and if it even makes sense (hint, it doesn't - it's a utterly braindead standard with no future).

I'm not saying Ubuntu isn't nice but what you ask for is already present 95% on Fedora 10. It's a very big list of changes to get in to Alpha 1 given that there are 6 days till release (meaning maybe 4 days of development left). You will probably not see your wish come true this time so if you crave it now, try Fedora 10, it will be out just about the same day as Alpha 1 (or you can use the preview, we are frozen pretty damn solid now so expect preview + updates to be extremely close to F10 proper). That would at least give you a chance to play with the features you crave till Ubuntu delivers them in Jaunty.

[olskar]

Seriously.. look at Fedora 10. It has the kernel you ask for, ext4 (just add ext4 as a parameter to the boot when installing from the dvd), OOo3 and a theme that is not brown (but admittedly not pretty either). Forefox 3.1 is very likely to be released as an update (Fedora tends to push out major things such as Firefox to all maintained platforms). You can even get grub2, not by default since it's not ready for that but still. You also get both the PA and ALSA versions you ask for.

LSB4 is as I recall not even out yet, there is debate on the mailing lists on when to adopt and if it even makes sense (hint, it doesn't - it's a utterly braindead standard with no future).

I'm not saying Ubuntu isn't nice but what you ask for is already present 95% on Fedora 10. It's a very big list of changes to get in to Alpha 1 given that there are 6 days till release (meaning maybe 4 days of development left). You will probably not see your wish come true this time so if you crave it now, try Fedora 10, it will be out just about the same day as Alpha 1 (or you can use the preview, we are frozen pretty damn solid now so expect preview + updates to be extremely close to F10 proper). That would at least give you a chance to play with the features you crave till Ubuntu delivers them in Jaunty.

Wow, all your posts about Fedora seriously makes me wanna change distribution, ever thought of working on a advertising agency? ;)

[gnomeuser]

Wow, all your posts about Fedora seriously makes me wanna change distribution, ever thought of working on a advertising agency? ;)

Believe it or not, I am not even on the Marketing team. Fedora is fast moving, it seems to be what you want. You can try it if you feel like, poke me on PM if you have questions.

That is not to say Fedora is the best option for everyone, nor for every deployment.

You can keep your /home on a separate partition then if you want to switch back to Ubuntu pretty much every one of your user settings and data will stay the same with a bare minimum of work.

[olskar]

Believe it or not, I am not even on the Marketing team. Fedora is fast moving, it seems to be what you want. You can try it if you feel like, poke me on PM if you have questions.

That is not to say Fedora is the best option for everyone, nor for every deployment.

You can keep your /home on a separate partition then if you want to switch back to Ubuntu pretty much every one of your user settings and data will stay the same with a bare minimum of work.

Indeed, I like fast moving distributions that still is stable, I think it is possible to have both.

Not including OpenOffice3 in Intrepid was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

[shuttleworthwannabe]

any chance that SKYPE will work in any Ubuntu release (I know this is a SKYPE issue not making it work with Ubuntu; but Pulse Audio is to blame for this as well).

Alternatively, we need a Ubuntu VOIP app (that could talk to SKYPE and Other protocols).

S

[ReddogOne]

Not everyone has a working internet connection or access to the internet at all. BAD IDEA. Leave that for plugins.

Not sure I agree that as I see that integrated desktop applications and web services being a huge thing in the future.

I take your point about not all people having internet at all but for those three people good implementation shouldn't leave them without functional software. The SW will just never sync with the services.

[Slug71]

Seriously.. look at Fedora 10. It has the kernel you ask for, ext4 (just add ext4 as a parameter to the boot when installing from the dvd), OOo3 and a theme that is not brown (but admittedly not pretty either). Forefox 3.1 is very likely to be released as an update (Fedora tends to push out major things such as Firefox to all maintained platforms). You can even get grub2, not by default since it's not ready for that but still. You also get both the PA and ALSA versions you ask for.

LSB4 is as I recall not even out yet, there is debate on the mailing lists on when to adopt and if it even makes sense (hint, it doesn't - it's a utterly braindead standard with no future).

I'm not saying Ubuntu isn't nice but what you ask for is already present 95% on Fedora 10. It's a very big list of changes to get in to Alpha 1 given that there are 6 days till release (meaning maybe 4 days of development left). You will probably not see your wish come true this time so if you crave it now, try Fedora 10, it will be out just about the same day as Alpha 1 (or you can use the preview, we are frozen pretty damn solid now so expect preview + updates to be extremely close to F10 proper). That would at least give you a chance to play with the features you crave till Ubuntu delivers them in Jaunty.

Ive actually been thinking about trying Fedora 10. I havent used Fedora since Fedora Core 3/4. Would be nice to see how far theyve come.

[gnomeuser]

any chance that SKYPE will work in any Ubuntu release (I know this is a SKYPE issue not making it work with Ubuntu; but Pulse Audio is to blame for this as well).

Alternatively, we need a Ubuntu VOIP app (that could talk to SKYPE and Other protocols).

S

how is it PA's fault that skype mishandles audio devices under Linux. They don't even follow the old (bad) standard, they just take over the device.

That being said you can make it work "padsp skype" is your friend.

Good luck reverse engineering the skype protocol, it's very well guarded and the code contains many reverse engineering prevention technics. Even if you succeed they will just do an msn on you and change the protocol slightly then force people to update and you to invest even more time in their arms race. There used to be a draft p2p-sip standard to compete with Skype but I can't say I've heard any news from that front in ages.

We are down to begging and pleading sadly, that or maybe some kind of government level monopoly abuse lawsuit. Or eBay is said to want to sell Skype off again as it is not profitable nor fulfiling the technological promise they hoped (voice auctions basically), hope any new owners will care better for open standards as well as the Linux platform.

[Gina]

I would have thought they were excluding a significant part of the market by excluding Linux users. Unfortunately, they're far from alone :(

An open source VoIP app would be great but I suspect other things are deemed more important by those clever enough to write one.

[bash]

On the topic of PulseAudio: Gnomeuser since you seem to be in the know about all new and upcoming fancyness for Linux, do you know if there has been any progress on libsydney. Last time I read about it Mr. Poettering said that it was still mostly lost in Vaporware land.

Oh and for the Skype users: According to the Skype Linux blog the next release will have better vastly improved audio quality [1]. For now I say, I'll believe it when I see it ;)

[1] http://share.skype.com/sites/linux/2008/09/linux_team_updates.html

[gnomeuser]

On the topic of PulseAudio: Gnomeuser since you seem to be in the know about all new and upcoming fancyness for Linux, do you know if there has been any progress on libsydney. Last time I read about it Mr. Poettering said that it was still mostly lost in Vaporware land.

Oh and for the Skype users: According to the Skype Linux blog the next release will have better vastly improved audio quality [1]. For now I say, I'll believe it when I see it ;)

[1] http://share.skype.com/sites/linux/2008/09/linux_team_updates.html

Would the choice of wording "improved sound" not imply there is sound.. something I would argue is not the case on my machine, at least not sound input.

As for libsydney you can check the git repo.
http://git.0pointer.de/?p=libsydney.git;a=summary

It seems Lennart had some new thoughts on the design while working on the new glitch-free (basically timer based rather than interupt based) PulseAudio we have in Fedora 10. I suspect that set us back a touch but hopefully to a better end.

[stinger30au]

i just dont get the big deal about how fast the os takes to load.

i dont really care it it takes 10 seconds or 30 seconds

after it boots i still have to load my apps up and they take their time too

its not like i have to wait 24 hours after i power on the machine before i can do anything with it???

seriously some people need to take a chill pill and learn to relax

[bash]

Would the choice of wording "improved sound" not imply there is sound.. something I would argue is not the case on my machine, at least not sound input.

As for libsydney you can check the git repo.
http://git.0pointer.de/?p=libsydney.git;a=summary

It seems Lennart had some new thoughts on the design while working on the new glitch-free (basically timer based rather than interupt based) PulseAudio we have in Fedora 10. I suspect that set us back a touch but hopefully to a better end.

I thought "glitch-free" PA server was done. At least I remember reading a fancy article from Lennart about it, that sounded like it was all implemented.

As for Skype, sound actually works for me on all the 5 computers I maintain Ubuntu on. Only problem I have with Skype at the moment, is getting my bluetooth headset to work. At least the bluetooth part about it works. Just not the sound part. And the other problem is the happily tearing Skype video. Put that is actually the fault of the ATI binary driver. Hope we see some continued advancement on the open-source ATI driver front, so I can finally drop the fglrx driver. As I have my doubts ATI will manage to release a (more or less) bug free driver any time soon.

[cariboo907]

Quick bootup times are all the rage right now. The first thing I saw about it was that Mandriva was trying to cut boot times and just yesterday, I saw on slashdot that Microsoft has come up with a way to boot Windows in 2-5 seconds, although it is fairly usless, all you can do is whatever apps they've loaded in to the rom.

I really don't care about fast boot times, as I usually start the computer, and then go get a cup of coffee. By the time I get back, the desktop is loaded and the computer is ready to go. I admit I would like to see some programs load faster, but is more my perception, than anything else.

I am happy with the way my system runs, and if I feel the need for more speed, then it's time for a new system.

Jim

[gnomeuser]

I thought "glitch-free" PA server was done. At least I remember reading a fancy article from Lennart about it, that sounded like it was all implemented.

As for Skype, sound actually works for me on all the 5 computers I maintain Ubuntu on. Only problem I have with Skype at the moment, is getting my bluetooth headset to work. At least the bluetooth part about it works. Just not the sound part. And the other problem is the happily tearing Skype video. Put that is actually the fault of the ATI binary driver. Hope we see some continued advancement on the open-source ATI driver front, so I can finally drop the fglrx driver. As I have my doubts ATI will manage to release a (more or less) bug free driver any time soon.

yeah but he only finished a little while ago, if he then realised that libsydney needed a redesign that might have set it back a bit. Besides he has obligations to Red Hat, time dedicated to libsydney might be limited by other factors. I frankly don't know, Lennart is one of the few Free Software people who does not socialize much so I don't have a chance to talk to him and he also rarely blogs making the amount of information coming out of camp Lennart rather small.

I'll see if I can't secure an email interview with him or something.

[Geekkit]

All I want out of this release is a distro that actually runs and doesn't lock up on my laptop. I really don't care about desktop images, multi-tabbed file manager features, more python applets that I won't use, fade/dissolve for startups/shutdowns. Let me say again just to make sure it's clear:

NO MORE KERNEL LOCKUPS. This is more important than anything else to me.

[gnomeuser]

All I want out of this release is a distro that actually runs and doesn't lock up on my laptop. I really don't care about desktop images, multi-tabbed file manager features, more python applets that I won't use, fade/dissolve for startups/shutdowns. Let me say again just to make sure it's clear:

NO MORE KERNEL LOCKUPS. This is more important than anything else to me.

you could install the kerneloops package. Then if you catch it throwing an oops it will be automatically submitted to the kernel developers. That being said, you should start by removing any troublesome drivers such as the proprietary nvidia and ati drivers, they cause a lot of this kind of pain.

[Geekkit]

you could install the kerneloops package. Then if you catch it throwing an oops it will be automatically submitted to the kernel developers. That being said, you should start by removing any troublesome drivers such as the proprietary nvidia and ati drivers, they cause a lot of this kind of pain.

Sorry to be blunt but it has absolutely nothing to do with the proprietary drivers and everything to do with the bleeding edge kernel. Case in point: same hardware, 8.04 runs like a charm with no freezes/kernel lockups, 8.10 freezes at various points, both use the same proprietary driver(s).

I don't have any experience/knowledge with kerneloops but unless it has the ability to check every interrupt request (which should slow things down some IMO) I can't see it having the ability to sort out the types of crashes I've been getting with 8.10 which is total system lockup requiring a cold boot (i.e., it's hard to report when the thread/process holding the "talking stick" isn't letting go).

I guess this says something negative against monolithic kernels although the Linux games players would most likely be quite unhappy if Linux developers did the same thing that Microsoft developers did with Vista which is pull the video drivers out of the kernel.

[MacUntu]

Sorry to be blunt but it has absolutely nothing to do with the proprietary drivers and everything to do with the bleeding edge kernel. Case in point: same hardware, 8.04 runs like a charm with no freezes/kernel lockups, 8.10 freezes at various points, both use the same proprietary driver(s).

Drivers having errors can work with one kernel and fail with another. That's not necessarily a kernel problem. As those drivers are proprietary you cannot check if they are free of errors so your conclusion is just guessing.

[gnomeuser]

Sorry to be blunt but it has absolutely nothing to do with the proprietary drivers and everything to do with the bleeding edge kernel. Case in point: same hardware, 8.04 runs like a charm with no freezes/kernel lockups, 8.10 freezes at various points, both use the same proprietary driver(s).

I don't have any experience/knowledge with kerneloops but unless it has the ability to check every interrupt request (which should slow things down some IMO) I can't see it having the ability to sort out the types of crashes I've been getting with 8.10 which is total system lockup requiring a cold boot (i.e., it's hard to report when the thread/process holding the "talking stick" isn't letting go).

I guess this says something negative against monolithic kernels although the Linux games players would most likely be quite unhappy if Linux developers did the same thing that Microsoft developers did with Vista which is pull the video drivers out of the kernel.

I merely suggested a place to start, get the kernel in a state that can be debugged if it wasn't already. Nvidia' stack abuse is well known and on kerneloops the flgrx regular features as a cause of at least one of the top 10 oops. So if you do use them it's a good place to start, it doesn't mean it's them but for a report to be taken by upstream not being tainted will greatly help.

Secondly, Linux does not ship video drivers in the kernel, they are part of the X stack. Currently we are moving modesetting and memory management into the kernel but aside that the drivers are userspace components. What ATI and Nvidia do on their own I don't know.

Kerneloops might be able to catch this, it does not cause significant slow down. It is not a magic fix it all but what it can catch will get counted and upstream where it matters.

If all else fails you should file a bug. I know the pain, 8.04 would hard lockup on my AMD64 X2 everytime I turned my back on it. I never found the cause, I know other users had the same problem and a bug was filed. I merely elected to remove Ubuntu was it was an experient for me anyways as I am a Fedora developer.

[ronacc]

I was getting random hardlockups on 8.04 64bit for awhile that were leaving no traces that I could find . that hasn't occured for the last few weeks I have no idea what "fixed" it.

[ronacc]

darn me and my foot in mouth disease ! I hand't had a hard lockup in a couple of weeks so I thought it was cured , not 15 minutes after I made the above post it did it again :confused: where do I find the kerneloops package ? I checked synaptic and tried apt-get no luck .

[danbuter]

Boot time improvement looks great. Weblications, I don't understand what he means. Unless Flash will no longer crash the system, which would be great.

[Changturkey]

I merely suggested a place to start, get the kernel in a state that can be debugged if it wasn't already. Nvidia' stack abuse is well known and on kerneloops the flgrx regular features as a cause of at least one of the top 10 oops. So if you do use them it's a good place to start, it doesn't mean it's them but for a report to be taken by upstream not being tainted will greatly help.

Secondly, Linux does not ship video drivers in the kernel, they are part of the X stack. Currently we are moving modesetting and memory management into the kernel but aside that the drivers are userspace components. What ATI and Nvidia do on their own I don't know.

Kerneloops might be able to catch this, it does not cause significant slow down. It is not a magic fix it all but what it can catch will get counted and upstream where it matters.

If all else fails you should file a bug. I know the pain, 8.04 would hard lockup on my AMD64 X2 everytime I turned my back on it. I never found the cause, I know other users had the same problem and a bug was filed. I merely elected to remove Ubuntu was it was an experient for me anyways as I am a Fedora developer.
Will kerneloops be in 9.04?

[castrojo]

Will kerneloops be in 9.04?

It's in 8.10 - don't think by default though.

[Geekkit]

@MacUntu: Thanks, you have a good point.

@gnomeuser: Thank you for your replies and suggestions - thanks for the extra (in depth) information about the kernel that you provided - and about the stack abuses as you said. :)


Either way I think I'll wait a month or two and try again - if it fails then I'll file that bug report (I'm busy right - I'm about to be a new father so I don't have time to do a reinstall :) ). One of the downsides of a bleeding edge distro I guess. :)

[gnomeuser]

It's in 8.10 - don't think by default though.

It damn well should be, I even saw someone got it to work with apport (and damned if I didn't forget to star the blog posting so I can't remember the name).

[ronacc]

I found it by googleing , here are links to kerneloops.org and to the debian packages . The 64bit deb installed ok on my hardy install .
http://www.kerneloops.org/
http://packages.debian.org/sid/kerneloops

[RAOF]

Any particular reason you got the Sid package rather than the one in Universe?


└─(08:38:%)── aptitude show kerneloops ──(Mon,Nov17)─┘
Package: kerneloops
New: yes
State: not installed
Version: 0.10-2ubuntu1
Priority: optional
Section: universe/utils
Maintainer: Ubuntu MOTU Developers <ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com>
Uncompressed Size: 172k
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4), libcurl3-gnutls (>= 7.16.2-1), libdbus-1-3 (>= 1.0.2),
libdbus-glib-1-2 (>= 0.71), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.14.0), libgtk2.0-0 (>=
2.14.1), libnotify1 (>= 0.4.4), libnotify1-gtk2.10
Description: kernel oops tracker
kerneloops is a daemon that collects kernel crash information and then submits
the extracted signature to the kerneloops.org website for statistical analysis
and presentation to the Linux kernel developers.

[ronacc]

@RAOF please note I said on my HARDY install , kerneloops is not in the repos for hardy that I could find . I did not intend this as an OT post , several posts back kerneloops for 9.04 was being discused ,gnomeuser said something about a link he had forgoten about where to find it so I posted the ones I found .

[jerrylamos]

The BIG problem for many of us on Intrepid was it DIDN'T BOOT. Period. No matter how long they waited. Do an upgrade from a 8.04 running O.K., then 8.10 didn't boot. There are lots of people whose installs or worse yet upgrades wouldn't boot. People were asking for Ubuntu downgrades - guess what, there isn't any.

After Intrepid Release, there were lots of "black screen" or "tan screen" it won't run posts. An update finally went out which worked around the problem, i.e. didn't fix it but at least people could boot. See Launchpad Bug #259385.

If Ubuntu is ever to get a wider acceptance, first it HAS TO RUN.

Jerry

[ronacc]

a reliable easy downgrade path would be a real help for those times when an upgrade fails miserably ( it should not happen with a release but alas it does ).

[gnomeuser]

a reliable easy downgrade path would be a real help for those times when an upgrade fails miserably ( it should not happen with a release but alas it does ).

I would suggest looking at Conary and it's rollback feature, then you can cry yourself to sleep thinking of the many ways in which Ubuntu will never adopt such coolness. So it's pretty much back to waiting for btrfs and it's snapshotting feature which we might be able to hook up to do something like this.

Note neither one of these solutions will ever solve the case where the data format change, migration is done and data is added. Going back via a snapshot at best can bring you back to a situation prior to the update but will discard all changes to the data done after the upgrade.

It is in every practical sense impossible to support rollback for all packages, that is likely to never change. You will always have flag day upgrades. One example of such things is an upgrade from MySQL 4 to MySQL 5, you just can't roll that back easily.

[ronacc]

I was thinking of the case mentioned by jerrylamos where the failure is immeadiately evident and in that case no data would have changed . Sadly this seems to happen to some people at almost every version upgrade , I have no idea how the rollback would be accomplished, I just mentioned that it would be helpful to have the ability for those that do not have the ability to repair a broken upgrade .

[gnomeuser]

I was thinking of the case mentioned by jerrylamos where the failure is immeadiately evident and in that case no data would have changed . Sadly this seems to happen to some people at almost every version upgrade , I have no idea how the rollback would be accomplished, I just mentioned that it would be helpful to have the ability for those that do not have the ability to repair a broken upgrade .

If you can't boot there is nothing much to do. To avoid failures in unpacking a package you could do transaction testing (I know yum and conary does this but I don't know if dpkg does).

Yum also has a plugin to keep a set of kernels, including the one you used while performing the upgrade. That way you have the chance to boot back into your old kernel (which might work on a major distro upgrade as well) gather information for a bugreport and hopefully resolve the problem (and again I am tempted to mention smolt as being extremely useful technology here).

One should also question the sanity of doing such upgrades on a running system (http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/04/15/interview-fedora-developers-seth-vidal-and-will-woods/)

[ronacc]

apt also has the option of keeping old kernels , I always do this and also keep atleast the last working kernel in my grub menu.list , this means you have to manualy clean out the clutter every once in a while but thats a small price to pay for saftey ( IMHO) especialy during testing.

[Gina]

Two ways occur to me to do it manually
1. Backup the system partition with partimage - and restore if/when required.
2. Use rsync to keep a backup. That will do an incremental backup and a restore need only restore what's changed.

I'm sure I've seen mention of apps that will do an automatic backup but haven't got the info to hand. I wouldn't have thought it was all that difficult.

[plun]

Well.. I wonder what happened to time vault ?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TimeVault

The code is there and maybe works.


Then to compare apt with yum is maybe like a Rolls Royce against something from Detroit....:)


Nevertheless I can only see small reasons for a Time Vault solution

BUT !!!!

sudo apt-get install -f
and
sudo dpkg --configure -a


must be included as a GUI function in the update manager. Nearly a scandal that the update-manager doesn't handle apt repairs.

(I have not checked PackageKit for repairs)

[obsrv]

I wrote a review into my blog about Ubuntu 9.04 A2 Jaunty. Take a look:

PIRATE.lt (http://pirate.lt)

Please post comments, or PM me about mistakes I made, this is my first review EVER. And English is not my native language.