KernelTesting

Revision 6 as of 2010-07-04 14:36:47

Clear message

The Ubuntu kernel is in a constant state of change and development. There are times when regressions or new bugs will be introduced. Many of these bugs will get fixed and committed to the kernel development tree. However, it may take some time for the fix to get officially released. For example, a kernel bug may have been introduced in the Hardy Heron 8.04 cycle but is fixed in the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 kernel. What is a bug reporter to do when they can see their fix is committed but not yet released? The kernel team has addressed this issue by creating the kernel-ppa (personal package archive). The kernel-ppa provides a bleeding edge Ubuntu kernel to test. The kernel developers will also at times provide a custom patched kernel to test in their own individual PPA. The following will document how to install an Ubuntu kernel provided by the kernel-ppa as well as developer ppa's that you may be asked to test.

Testing kernel-ppa

The kernel personal package archive is currently located at:

On that page you'll notice two lines listed under the "apt sources.list entries" section. It will look something similar to:

To then install packages from this PPA basically do the following:

  1. Create the file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kernel-ppa.list to include the two lines:
  2. Run the command sudo apt-get update

  3. You should then be able to install the linux-image-2.6.xx-y-generic kernel package.
  4. After you've finished testing you can remove the kernel-ppa.list file and run 'sudo apt-get update' once more.

Testing Developer PPA

Kernel developers will sometimes provide custom patches kernels with bug fixes for bug reporters to test. Testing a developers PPA follows the exact same steps as testing the kernel-ppa. The only change will be that you will specify the developers PPA rather than the Kernel Team's PPA. Let's say one of our kernel developers launchpad id was bob-smith. Bob's PPA could be found at https://edge.launchpad.net/~bob-smith/+archive . To install one of Bob's packaged kernels, you would do the following:

  1. Create the file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bob-ppa.list to include the lines:
  2. Run the command sudo apt-get update

  3. You should then be able to install the linux-image-2.6.xx-y-generic kernel package.
  4. After you've finished testing you can remove the bob-ppa.list file and run 'sudo apt-get update' once more.

Testing -proposed

Some bug reports will get nominated for a Stable Release Update (SRU). Fixes will be committed and there will often be a call for testing -proposed. A comment like the following will be made to the bug report:

"Accepted into hardy-proposed, please test and give feedback here."

For more information on how to test -proposed, refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed