Tues Dec 01, 2015

Introduction

This newsletter is to provide a status update from the Ubuntu Kernel Team. There will also be highlights provided for any interesting subjects the team may be working on.

If you would like to reach the kernel team. You can find us at the #ubuntu-kernel channel on FreeNode. Alternatively you can mail the Ubuntu Kernel Team mailing list at: kernel-team@lists.ubuntu.com

Highlights

• We are pleased to report that the UEFI Board of Directors recommends the open source Firmware Test Suite (FWTS) release 15.08.00, see:

  • http://uefi.org/testtools

  FWTS is a comprehensive tool for ACPI and UEFI firmware testing and has been co-developed by members of the Canonical Kernel Team and Hardware Enablement Team. References:

  • http://uefi.org/testtools

  • https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Reference/fwts

• The Kernel Team has released stress-ng 0.05.01 for Ubuntu Xenial 16.04.

  • This tool has been developed to systematically stress test the Linux kernel. Highlights for this release include: a stressor for the new userfaultfd() system call, a new filename stress test and the ability to tweak timer coalescing with the --timer-slack option.

• Precise, Trusty and Vivid have been updated to be master in Launchpad.

  • There is now a list of repositories and their URLs in kteam-tools/info. A full list of all of our repositories (ubuntu and ubuntu-archive) is available. This reflects the original URL, the Launchpad URL, and the current master at any particular time:

    • http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git/ubuntu/kteam-tools.git/tree/info/repositories.txt

---

Devel Kernel Announcements

• Our Xenial master-next branch has been rebased to v4.3 and our first v4.3 based kernel has been uploaded to xenial-proposed in the archive. Please test and let us know your results. Our unstable repo continues to track v4.4-rc3 in parallel. As noted last week, we will eventually rebase both our Xenial master/master-next branches to v4.4 since that is our target kernel version for 16.04.
• Important upcoming dates:

  • https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseSchedule

• Thurs Dec 31 - Alpha 1 (~ 4weeks away)

---

Stable Kernel Announcements

• Status for the main kernels, until today:

• Precise - Prep & Building

  • lts-Trusty - Prep & Building

• Trusty - Prep & Building

  • lts-Utopic - Prep & Building

  • lts-Wily - Prep & Building

• Vivid - Prep & Building

• Wily - Prep & Building

  Current opened tracking bugs details:

  • http://kernel.ubuntu.com/sru/kernel-sru-workflow.html

  For SRUs, SRU report is a good source of information:

  • http://kernel.ubuntu.com/sru/sru-report.html

  Schedule:

  Current cycle: 29-Nov through 19-Dec

  • 27-Nov Last day for kernel commits for this cycle
  • 29-Nov - 05-Dec Kernel prep week.

  • 06-Dec - 12-Dec Bug verification & Regression testing.

  • 13-Dec - 19-Dec Regression testing & Release to -updates.

  Next cycle: 20-Dec through 09-Jan

  • 18-Dec Last day for kernel commits for this cycle
  • 20-Dec - 26-Dec Kernel prep week.

  • 27-Dec - 02-Jan Bug verification & Regression testing.

  • 03-Jan - 09-Jan Regression testing & Release to -updates.

---

Status: CVE's

• The current CVE status can be reviewed at the following link:

  http://kernel.ubuntu.com/reports/kernel-cves.html

---