Ubuntu Wiki

Summary

My name is James Hunt, and I work for Canonical as a member of the FoundationsTeam working on Upstart and other early-boot and plumbing technologies.

Info

• https://launchpad.net/~jamesodhunt/

Specs

• FoundationsTeam/Specs/MaverickFinishUpstart

• FoundationsTeam/Specs/QuantalUpstartStatefulReexec

• FoundationsTeam/Specs/RaringUpstartUserSessions

Contributions

Saucy (01/05/2013-17/10/2013)

• Upstart

  • Wrote upstart-local-bridge.

  • Wrote upstart-dbus-bridge.

  • Part wrote upstart-dconf-bridge.

  • Created libupstart library.

  • Optimised Session Init shutdown (Bug 1227212).

  • Added ability to unset inherited environment variables.
  • Wrote a suite of DEP-8 tests for automatic Upstart boot testing.
  • Created an apport hook to handle both System Init and Session Init issues.
  • Fixed a bug in apport that stopped core files being collected for Upstart.
• Boot
  • Wrote lp:~jamesodhunt/ubuntu/saucy/sysvinit/log-processes-and-open-files-on-shutdown
    • to help diagnose shutdown issues (not yet merged).

• Modified distro-info to allow number of days until a milestone to be displayed.

Raring (19/10/2012-24/04/2013)

• Upstart
  • Landed Stateful re-exec feature (Upstart 1.6.1).

  • Wrote spec for Enhanced User Sessions.

  • Wrote upstart-monitor GUI/CLI tool.

  • Wrote upstart-file-bridge.

  • Landed Upstart 1.8.
• Misc

  • Wrote utfout utility (in Debian and Ubuntu archives).

  • Wrote procenv utility (in Debian and Ubuntu archives).

Quantal (27/04/2012-18/10/2012)

• Upstart
  • "stateful re-exec" feature.

    • Wrote spec for Stateful Re-exec.

    • Code completed but not landed in Quantal since tests not finished.

Precise (20/10/2011-26/04/2012)

• Upstart

  • "console log" facility allowing job output to be logged (bug 328881)

  • Default console value of "log" so all job output logged by default.

    • (has already found some long-standing bugs in other packages since errors are now visible!)

  • "initctl notify-disk-writeable" facility to allow jobs *ending* before the disk becomes writeable to be logged

    • (this even works for jobs which "start on startup").

  • User job logging
    • (totally different design to system job logging for performance and security reasons. Not yet available).
  • Enhanced Upstart test framework in NIH library.

  • Detailed Upstart Release Notes covering Oneiric->Precise and Lucid->Precise upgrades.

Oneiric (05/05/2011-13/10/2011)

• Made significant progress on:

  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/foundations-o-upstart-for-admins/

  • Bug 328881: implementation of Job logging for Upstart (complicated by need to support user jobs).

Natty (25/10/2010-28/04/2011)

• Upstart

  • Added Debug stanza (not documented).

  • Added Manual stanza.

  • Added Override File support.

  • Wrote Upstart bash-completion script.

  • Implemented initctl show-config and initctl check-config commands (see man page.

  • Wrote init-checkconf(8).

  • Wrote initctl2dot(8).

  • Wrote comprehensive upstart-events(7) manual page.

  • Improved unit/functional tests by adding ability to run "init" and "initctl" directly.

  • Co-authored the "Upstart Cookbook" (currently Draft):

    • http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/

• Byobu

  • Wrote /usr/lib/byobu/time_binary.

  • Wrote /usr/bin/byobu-ulevel.

  • Wrote /usr/bin/byobu-ugraph.

• Miscellaneous

  • Wrote Plymouth wiki page.

  • Wrote Section 0 of UDD GettingTheSource page.

  • Wrote clone tool (similar to unshare(1)).

Significant Bugs

• Bug 876626: A nasty security bug caused by a small behavioural change (which itself had been introduced to make the boot more robust).

• Bug 553745: The infamous plymouth SIGSEGV bug had been open for over 2 years and took a significant amount of effort to identify the fix. With 270 duplicates, it even put launchpad under strain: if the main bug links hangs/fails (due to all those duplicates (Bug 839141)), try the text view.

• Bug 771372: Required taking a holistic approach and seeing the real problem, not just patching the very particular problem reported.

• Bug 829980: Required tracing the problem through Upstart's udev bridge, D-Bus, udev and the kernel. Identified fact that udev is not fully specified (precise format of data is not defined).

• Bug 912558: Worked closely with Daviey and community members on this "Critical" bug to identify the problem (rather a bizarre one which proved difficult to track down!) and find a fix.

• Bug 1060249: One of those awkward "multiple failure" bugs that can be tricky to track down. Comment #15 explains the problem and solution succinctly.

• Bug 1235649: Critical Saucy release bug. Nominally appeared to be a memory leak in Upstart. But extensive debugging proved that it was not an Upstart bug. In fact, the issue was caused by a combination of a kernel bug on particular Touch hardware (Bug 1234743) coupled with a bug in the way Unity was registering a D-Bus connection with Upstart coupled to libdbus caching all unprocessed client signals.

Applications

• PPU

Contact

• mailto:james.hunt@ubuntu.com

• freenode irc: jodh on #ubuntu-devel & #upstart

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