I, Arif Ali, apply for upload rights for package sosreport.

I am applying because:

• I'd like to eliminate delays in getting my work sponsored.
• I'd like to reduce the burden on my sponsors.

Who I am

I am Arif Ali, a Staff Support Engineer at Canonical's supporting a specific customer, I work on sosreport at work as well as my spare time. I have a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics as well as a MSC in Advanced topics in Computer Science.

Before joining Canonical in 2019, I worked in the HPC industry deploying, architect, designing and supporting systems across many industries including Motorsport, Aerospace, Automotive and Research.

I have been using Linux since 1999 with various distributions, with the earliest being Mandrake Linux, with Fedora Core 1 being the first official distro for work Laptop in 2003. Which you can imagine had several issues to actually get working. Over the years I delved into Debian, CentOS, Red Hat and Ubuntu, interchanging based on experiences and requirements.

My Ubuntu story

I started using the first Ubuntu releases, and interchangeably used many of the distributions and versions. Since working with Linux, I have always found that ubuntu is one of the distros that works more easily with many more items integrated to ensure it works from the initial install.

Since joining Canonical, my primary OS has been Ubuntu, and also converted all my Servers, VMs and containers from whole range of Linux OSs to Ubuntu, and all my environments are now solely Ubuntu based.

At the same time, I'm a total open-source advocate, so like to promote Ubuntu/Linux to my family and friends; so much so that my parents use 12.04 on their desktop.

One thing I can improve on, is help promote Ubuntu more on social media and help people to understand the whole ethos of Ubuntu LTS and see how we can close the gap of understanding the support structure that is in place for Ubuntu supported platforms.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Below you can see the sponsorships for the work I have done since May 2024

• Ubuntu Sponorships

• Debian Sponsorships

The things I am proud of with sosreport project:

• I have been contributing to upstream sosreport since I joined Canonical
• Got much more involved since April 2023 and made significant improvements

• In December 2023 I was added as one of the maintainers of the project Discussion #3466

• Due to significant issues with 4.7.0 SRU LP #2054395, I helped revamping the CI for sosreport, and we now do more CI for ubuntu than Redhat.

• Added various functional testing based on issues we have faced in Ubuntu.

• Added non-voting testing for latest dev releases to that we catch issues before any SRU takes place. PR #3587

• Took over as maintainer of sosreport in Debian in July 2024 which is now being auto-synced to Ubuntu Bug #1076347 & Bug #1076253

Areas of work

I work in the Support Engineering at Canonical, and we use sosreport as a regular tool for our support organisation, so haven't worked with a development team or developer directly per-se. Between myself and David Negreira we both contribute to upstream sosreport as well all the verification work that is required for sosreport SRUs.

For the SRU work, I have worked very closely with Dariusz Gadomski and Mauricio Oliveira who have guided me in the ways of ubuntu packaging and SRU process.

I have worked on many sosreport bugs, whether they have been internally within my team, through Github issues or Launchpad bugs.

• Obfuscation issues faced in SRU for 4.7.2 LP #2085607

• msr module being loaded in focal and jammy LP #2089713

• sosreport upgrade from xenial to bionic LP #2038648

• Fix obfuscation issue from the state.json from snap plugin collection LP #1891296

• Password obfuscation issue of wireless password in netplan 2037872

Previously, I have also helped with verification of new release SRUs for sosreport since 2020

Things I could do better

We can always do better, better testing and such.

I would like to improve the testing of the packages, and having PPU rights would help me to run autopkgtests to ensure any infra related issues are resolved before doing SRUs.

Also, I would like to improve and we are working towards is getting more people involved with SRU verifications especially when we have new releases.

Plans for the future

General

• Keep improving and maintaining the sosreport packages for Ubuntu.
• I am also applying for DM in Debian for sosreport, and will continue to maintain the Debian package into unstable, testing and backports.

What I like least in Ubuntu

On the key items is getting people to understand the concepts of snaps. I would like assist in helping to bridge that gap, so that people understand them better so that we can improve the overall.

Key notable update (January 2024)

An ITP to change the name of the package has been logged and has been sponsored and currently in the NEW queue for Debian. This is then likely to be auto-sync'd into the latest development release of Ubuntu, whichever series that may be.

There is a transitional package that will carry the sosreport name, and once upstream remove the sosreport and sos-collector command which has been deprecated for a while, the transitional package will be carrying the relevant new commands. I have a non-passing CI branch/commit currently that will be merged once this happens.

The name of the package was changes upstream since 2020 and all RPM based applications, but we at Ubuntu/Debian never followed suite. This is now an attempt to rectify this, and move this along.

On this basis, if my application goes through for sosreport PPU, then would request for sos as well, as the source and binary for the package will change.

One key question will be for Ubuntu Developers with the SRU exception we have for sosreport, if we will be allowed to change the name in stable releases, or we bring in only the ubuntu patch transition that the above commit is going to happen? This will then clarify which series seeds will need changing as we have 2 seeds that point to sosreport. If, this comes into plucky for example, then the seed would need to updated eventually, but not immediately due to the transitional package taking care of it, but likely to update the o release to give some time for this to settle so that we are potentially ready for the next LTS release.

Comments

If you'd like to comment, but are not the applicant or a sponsor, do it here. Don't forget to sign with @SIG@.

Endorsements

As a sponsor, just copy the template below, fill it out and add it to this section.

Lukas 'slyon' Märdian

General feedback

Arif worked on sosreport mostly, that's why he's requesting PPU for just that package. He's one of the upstream maintainers, and I trust him to be a domain expert on this package. sosreport does have an SRU exception (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SosreportUpdates), so it's tracking the upstream developments closely and Arif can help with accelerating this.

Specific Experiences of working together

I've only worked on a single bug report with Arif (LP: #2054395), it was about bringing in a new upstream release of sosreport and backporting it to stable series. Getting it landed in all the LTS releases was a lengthy progress that he tracked for more than 6 months. He provided a solid SRU template/docs and addressed all the feedback that he received from several patch pilots over the months, honing the package into shape. At some point, I was able to sponsor his changes into the development release and stable series as SRUs.

This was one of his first uploads and he learned a lot from working on this. We talked on IRC, specifically about the Depends/Recommends/Suggests relationships between packages. And he codified those learnings by improving the upstream CI of sosreport accordingly.

Areas of Improvement

There's lots of stuff to learn in Ubuntu development & package maintenance. Especially about interdependencies between packages (e.g. transitions), the different components of the archive (e.g. "main" vs "universe") and corresponding tools and processes ("britney" https://ubuntu-archive-team.ubuntu.com/proposed-migration/update_excuses.html, "ben" https://ubuntu-archive-team.ubuntu.com/transitions/index.html or the MIR process https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-mir#introduction). Most of that is not relevant for PPU of an existing package, thus I feel Arif is ready for sosreport PPU. I trust him to seek review/feedback when unclear or introducing bigger packaging changes. -- slyon 2024-12-12 13:39:23

Athos Ribeiro

General feedback

Arif's public facing packaging experience is mostly in within sosreport, which is the package he is requesting PPU for.

In Ubuntu, he worked on 2 updates setting the package version ahead of Debian and requested one sync with Debian. The other uploads seem to be all related to SRUs, either with specific fixes or backporting upstream versions all the way down to focal.

In Debian, Arif's uploads were sponsored 6 times as of the date I am writing this. These uploads introduced several improvements to sosreport to the point that all our delta was removed from the package and it bacame a sync with Debian (nice job there, Arif). It also got him to the point where the maintainer for sosreport in debian trusts him with the package, added him as an uploader for the package and is also advocating for Arif to become a DM for that specific package.

Finally, Arif is also an upstream developer of that package.

IMHO, Arif has enough knowledge of that specific package and of our processes to get a PPU permission to keep working on sosreport on his own. Do note that he also started the process to get a DM status for this package, which is currently a sync, and already have a (non-Canonical) advocate for that, which is also a good sign that he is ready for this.

Specific Experiences of working together

I Only worked with Arif in LP: #2054395 as part of my patch pilot shifts. Back then, Arif was still getting to understand our packaging processes. There was a lot of communication there both in the bug and offline, and Arif was always asking questions whenever he had any doubt. Arif is a really quick learner and understood the processes well after a few weeks working on that package.

Areas of Improvement

It would be nice to see Arif dealing with other packages as well if he would ever want to also apply for a MOTU or core-dev role in the future. It would also be nice to see Arif performing more and more uploads and SRUs so he can master both processes. Arif is ready for this PPU and I trust he will seek for help whenever in doubt of any of Ubuntu's processes.

Dariusz Gadomski

General feedback

I know Arif for several years now. We have been working for the same organization (Canonical Support). I have been able to get to know him on a professional and personal levels. He demonstrated his dedication to maintaining high quality of sosreport snap and deb releases. I have witnessed his dedication to understand the sosreport release process, getting in touch with upstream to discuss technical matters and determination to obtain the necessary context to be efficient and consistent as person responsible for sosreport.

Specific Experiences of working together

I have not sponsored directly any packages for Arif yet,I had numerous discussions with him about Debian packaging with a specific goal of taking responsibility for Arif taking over the maintenance of sosreport for Ubuntu and Debian. I answered a number of packaging related questions (related and not to sosreport).

Areas of Improvement

I believe there are things related to packaging that Arif needs to explore, but I am sure that he will be able to resolve any potential issues, reach out for guidance if needed and communicate anything the sosreport users need to be aware of. -- dgadomski 2024-12-21 15:46:41

TEMPLATE

== <SPONSORS NAME> ==
=== General feedback ===
## Please fill us in on your shared experience. (How many packages did you sponsor? How would you judge the quality? How would you describe the improvements? Do you trust the applicant?)

=== Specific Experiences of working together ===
''Please add good examples of your work together, but also cases that could have handled better.''
## Full list of sponsored packages can be generated here:
##  https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi
=== Areas of Improvement ===

CategoryPerPackageUploaderApplication