[Fedora-ambassadors-list] Report: LUGS April Meeting

[Eugene Teo]

Report;

I gave a talk on "All about Fedora Core 5" last saturday, and it went
well. I did a short preview on SystemTap to illustrate it's kernel
instrumentation capabilities. I also gave away Fedora Handouts.

There were about 8-10 attendees, out of which 2 are already Fedora
users. Some questions (not in actual words though) asked were:

1) Is yum still as slow, as compared to apt-get?
2) How does beagle work internally?
3) What do you need to install, in order to run Xen?
4) Where can I get the kernel source rpm?
5) Does suspend and hibernation really work in FC5?
6) How does SystemTap work internally? How does the scripts look like?

Some feedbacks I got were (not in actual words of course):

1) Fedora should include mp3 support, otherwise new users will not be
able to play their favourite music. Some form of documentation on how
to setup mp3 support would be great. It should be easily accessible to
new users as well.

You can download my slides at:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Presentations?action=AttachFile&do=get&...

Thanks!

Eugene
-- 
eteo redhat.com  ph: [phone]  http://www.kernel.org/~eugeneteo
gpg fingerprint:  47B9 90F6 AE4A 9C51 37E0  D6E1 EA84 C6A2 58DF 8823

[Rahul Sundaram]

On Wed, 2006-05-03 at 20:28 +0800, Eugene Teo wrote:
>  Report;
>  
>  I gave a talk on "All about Fedora Core 5" last saturday, and it went
>  well. I did a short preview on SystemTap to illustrate it's kernel
>  instrumentation capabilities. I also gave away Fedora Handouts.
>  
>  There were about 8-10 attendees, out of which 2 are already Fedora
>  users. Some questions (not in actual words though) asked were:
>  
>  1) Is yum still as slow, as compared to apt-get? 
It has steadily improved in speed over previous versions and there is
ongoing work on this. Benchmarks have shown it to be faster on local
networks. On remote connections there is the unreliability of the mirror
(locality, load etc) which has to be factored. Since yum connects to the
repositories every time, it appears to be slower to a seemingly
equivalent apt-get connection. If you do prefer apt-get, it is available
in Fedora Extras.

>  2) How does beagle work internally? 
Indexed searches based on a in-kernel file notification mechansim called
inotify. Different documents have additional filters to index and keep
track of data better. More information in
http://beaglewiki.org/Main_Page
 

>  3) What do you need to install, in order to run Xen? 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tools/Xen


>  4) Where can I get the kernel source rpm? 
People who usually ask for this only need the kernel-devel package which
provides the headers for the third party modules to be build against the
current kernel.

There are instructions on using this as well as downloading the full
source code if you need it in http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-
notes/fc5/#id2917672


>  5) Does suspend and hibernation really work in FC5? 
Hardware specific. We tested them on many of internal systems we could
get our hands on. 

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HCL/Machines/Laptops

Overall feedback has been pretty positive. If there are systems that
this doesnt work out of the box, feedback in http://bugzilla.redhat.com
against the kernel with workarounds if any would be quite useful.


>  6) How does SystemTap work internally? How does the scripts look
> like? 
http://sourceware.org/systemtap/

SystemTap is a higher level layer (awk like scripting language) over the
in-kernel kprobes/dprobes mechanism (C voodoo). It provides a safety as
well as guru mode for executing scripts based on check points and
finding out various interesting information on the system.


Examples: http://people.redhat.com/berrange/systemtap/bootprobe/ and we
have already used it effectively for OLPC to reduce memory consumption
and bloat. Patches flow back into Fedora as appropriate.

Caveat: Technology preview and more works need to be done on polishing
before it gets into production systems. 

>  
>  Some feedbacks I got were (not in actual words of course):
>  
>  1) Fedora should include mp3 support, otherwise new users will not be
>  able to play their favourite music. Some form of documentation on how
>  to setup mp3 support would be great. It should be easily accessible to
>  new users as well. 
We are going to continue support only open formats while making it
easier for users to grab plugins for such codecs.

http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc5/#sn-Multimedia
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems

>  
>  You can download my slides at:
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Presentations?action=AttachFile&do=get&...
>  
>  Thanks!
>  
>  Eugene 
Good report. Thanks. 


Rahul

[Eugene Teo]

I have already answered them during the talk.

Thanks for the answers, Rahul.

Eugene

Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>  On Wed, 2006-05-03 at 20:28 +0800, Eugene Teo wrote:
> > Report;
> >
> > I gave a talk on "All about Fedora Core 5" last saturday, and it went
> > well. I did a short preview on SystemTap to illustrate it's kernel
> > instrumentation capabilities. I also gave away Fedora Handouts.
> >
> > There were about 8-10 attendees, out of which 2 are already Fedora
> > users. Some questions (not in actual words though) asked were:
> >
> > 1) Is yum still as slow, as compared to apt-get?
>  
>  It has steadily improved in speed over previous versions and there is
>  ongoing work on this. Benchmarks have shown it to be faster on local
>  networks. On remote connections there is the unreliability of the mirror
>  (locality, load etc) which has to be factored. Since yum connects to the
>  repositories every time, it appears to be slower to a seemingly
>  equivalent apt-get connection. If you do prefer apt-get, it is available
>  in Fedora Extras.
>  
> > 2) How does beagle work internally?
>  
>  Indexed searches based on a in-kernel file notification mechansim called
>  inotify. Different documents have additional filters to index and keep
>  track of data better. More information in
>  http://beaglewiki.org/Main_Page
>   
>  
> > 3) What do you need to install, in order to run Xen?
>  
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tools/Xen
>  
>  
> > 4) Where can I get the kernel source rpm?
>  
>  People who usually ask for this only need the kernel-devel package which
>  provides the headers for the third party modules to be build against the
>  current kernel.
>  
>  There are instructions on using this as well as downloading the full
>  source code if you need it in http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-
>  notes/fc5/#id2917672
>  
>  
> > 5) Does suspend and hibernation really work in FC5?
>  
>  Hardware specific. We tested them on many of internal systems we could
>  get our hands on. 
>  
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HCL/Machines/Laptops
>  
>  Overall feedback has been pretty positive. If there are systems that
>  this doesnt work out of the box, feedback in http://bugzilla.redhat.com
>  against the kernel with workarounds if any would be quite useful.
>  
>  
> > 6) How does SystemTap work internally? How does the scripts look like?
>  
>  http://sourceware.org/systemtap/
>  
>  SystemTap is a higher level layer (awk like scripting language) over the
>  in-kernel kprobes/dprobes mechanism (C voodoo). It provides a safety as
>  well as guru mode for executing scripts based on check points and
>  finding out various interesting information on the system.
>  
>  
>  Examples: http://people.redhat.com/berrange/systemtap/bootprobe/ and we
>  have already used it effectively for OLPC to reduce memory consumption
>  and bloat. Patches flow back into Fedora as appropriate.
>  
>  Caveat: Technology preview and more works need to be done on polishing
>  before it gets into production systems. 
>  
> > Some feedbacks I got were (not in actual words of course):
> >
> > 1) Fedora should include mp3 support, otherwise new users will not be
> > able to play their favourite music. Some form of documentation on how
> > to setup mp3 support would be great. It should be easily accessible to
> > new users as well.
>  
>  We are going to continue support only open formats while making it
>  easier for users to grab plugins for such codecs.
>  
>  http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc5/#sn-Multimedia
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems
>  
> > You can download my slides at:
> >
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Presentations?action=AttachFile&do=get&...
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Eugene
>  
>  Good report. Thanks. 
>  
>  
>  Rahul
>  
>  --
>  Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list
>  Fedora-ambassadors-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list 

-- 
eteo redhat.com  ph: [phone]  http://www.kernel.org/~eugeneteo
gpg fingerprint:  47B9 90F6 AE4A 9C51 37E0  D6E1 EA84 C6A2 58DF 8823

[Rex Dieter]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>  On Wed, 2006-05-03 at 20:28 +0800, Eugene Teo wrote: 
> > 1) Is yum still as slow, as compared to apt-get?
>  
>  It has steadily improved in speed over previous versions and there is
>  ongoing work on this.  
...
>  Since yum connects to the repositories every time... 
Not *every* time, yum reconnects only after "metadata_expire" seconds
(man yum.conf for details).

-- Rex

[Rahul Sundaram]

On Wed, 2006-05-03 at 08:03 -0500, Rex Dieter wrote:
>  Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>  > On Wed, 2006-05-03 at 20:28 +0800, Eugene Teo wrote:
>  
>  >> 1) Is yum still as slow, as compared to apt-get?
>  > 
>  > It has steadily improved in speed over previous versions and there is
>  > ongoing work on this. 
>  ...
>  > Since yum connects to the repositories every time...
>  
>  Not *every* time, yum reconnects only after "metadata_expire" seconds
>  (man yum.conf for details). 
Ya. I knew that. Good to know that I cant leave out tiny weeny details
without people screaming at me ;-)

Rahul

[puneet batura]

Nice Upfate Eugene!

On 5/3/06, Eugene Teo <eteo(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  Report;
>
>  I gave a talk on "All about Fedora Core 5" last saturday, and it went
>  well. I did a short preview on SystemTap to illustrate it's kernel
>  instrumentation capabilities. I also gave away Fedora Handouts.
>
>  There were about 8-10 attendees, out of which 2 are already Fedora
>  users. Some questions (not in actual words though) asked were:
>
>  1) Is yum still as slow, as compared to apt-get?
>  2) How does beagle work internally?
>  3) What do you need to install, in order to run Xen?
>  4) Where can I get the kernel source rpm?
>  5) Does suspend and hibernation really work in FC5?
>  6) How does SystemTap work internally? How does the scripts look like?
>
>  Some feedbacks I got were (not in actual words of course):
>
>  1) Fedora should include mp3 support, otherwise new users will not be
>  able to play their favourite music. Some form of documentation on how
>  to setup mp3 support would be great. It should be easily accessible to
>  new users as well.
>
>  You can download my slides at:
>
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Presentations?action=AttachFile&do=get&...
>
>  Thanks!
>
>  Eugene
>  --
>  eteo redhat.com  ph: [phone]  http://www.kernel.org/~eugeneteo
>  gpg fingerprint:  47B9 90F6 AE4A 9C51 37E0  D6E1 EA84 C6A2 58DF 8823
>
>  --
>  Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list
>  Fedora-ambassadors-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
>  


--
Regards,


Puneet Batura
Open Source Developer