"Basic graphics mode" feature and criterion discussion
by Adam Williamson
Hi folks!
So at last week's Fedora 30 Beta Go/No-Go meeting, it was decided that
the Basic release criterion:
"Boot menu contents
The boot menu for all supported installer and live images should
include an entry which causes both installation and the installed
system to use a generic, highly compatible video driver (such as
'vesa'). This mechanism should work correctly, launching the installer
or desktop and attempting to use the generic driver."
should no longer apply to Beta - i.e. that it should no longer be a
Basic or Beta criterion.
The justification for this is, I hope I am correctly representing all
views here (please say so if not), that this mechanism is both less
necessary (due to a general reduction in the amount of 'weird' graphics
hardware out there, and general improvement in the reliability and
coverage of the major drivers for the major graphics hardware
manufacturers) and inherently less likely to work (due to the general
trend of work on kernel modesetting and Wayland) than it used to be.
For context, it is worth noting that the *feature* predates the
introduction of both kernel modesetting *and* Wayland to Fedora. What
the feature initially did was tell anaconda to write an X config file
specifying the 'vesa' driver (instead of working out the correct
'native' driver for the adapter and writing a config file specifying
that). After KMS was introduced in Fedora 10, the mechanism was tweaked
to also pass the 'nomodeset' kernel parameter to disable KMS. Around
2012 (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=858270) we noticed
that the X config file mechanism was a bit superfluous as 'nomodeset'
alone could basically be relied on to force some sort of 'fallback
mechanism', and so the feature was simplified to *only* specify the
'nomodeset' kernel parameter (this is all it does now).
The *criterion* dates to 2010, in the Fedora 15 release cycle: it
appears in the Fedora 15 Alpha criteria but not the Fedora 14 Alpha
criteria. It was added on 2010-08-16:
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Fedora_15_Alpha_Release_Crite...
The group at the meeting did not, however, make any further decisions,
so this leaves us with some open questions:
0) Do we generally agree with the decision made at the meeting? If
anyone (especially a subject matter expert) strongly believes the
decision was wrong and this should still be a Basic/Beta requirement,
please say so.
1) Should the criterion be modified somehow, but some requirement in
relation to some kind of fallback graphical mode be kept at Basic or
Beta?
2) Should the criterion be moved to Final, unchanged or changed
somehow?
3) Should the requirement just basically be dropped entirely as no
longer useful?
4) (This one mainly for ajax and airlied) to what extent does the
concept of a 'fallback option' for our supported desktop environments
and graphical servers still actually make sense? Could a different
implementation of the same basic idea be envisaged, and would it be
useful? If so, should we do that, and what would be the consequences
for the criteria?
I realize this is quite a big and fuzzy topic, but I'm hoping the
responses to this mail will clarify our path :) So if you have any kind
of useful information or strong opinions on the general area here,
please do contribute them, and hopefully a clearer way forward will
emerge.
Thanks everyone!
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
4 years, 6 months
Re: [Test-Announce] Fedora 30 Candidate Beta-1.4 Available Now!
by Adam Williamson
On Thu, 2019-03-21 at 01:36 +0000, rawhide(a)fedoraproject.org wrote:
> According to the schedule [1], Fedora 30 Candidate Beta-1.4 is now
> available for testing. Please help us complete all the validation
> testing! For more information on release validation testing, see:
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Release_validation_test_plan
>
> Test coverage information for the current release can be seen at:
> https://www.happyassassin.net/testcase_stats/30
>
> You can see all results, find testing instructions and image download
> locations, and enter results on the Summary page:
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_30_Beta_1.4_Summary
>
> The individual test result pages are:
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_30_Beta_1.4_Installation
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_30_Beta_1.4_Base
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_30_Beta_1.4_Server
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_30_Beta_1.4_Cloud
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_30_Beta_1.4_Desktop
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_30_Beta_1.4_Security_Lab
>
> All Beta priority test cases for each of these test pages [2] must
> pass in order to meet the Beta Release Criteria [3].
>
> Help is available on #fedora-qa on irc.freenode.net [4], or on the
> test list [5].
Hey folks!
So, unfortunately we had some trouble getting a candidate build done,
but now we have one. The go/no-go meeting is on Thursday at 17:00 UTC -
that's in about 11 hours. Obviously time is tight to do the testing,
but if folks could help test as much stuff as possible, that'd be
great.
We do have one outstanding blocker bug, but there's a chance it'll get
downgraded at the meeting, so it'd be great if we could complete the
testing for all Beta tests on this compose. If there isn't enough time,
though, no-one will blame us :)
Thanks everyone!
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
4 years, 6 months
F30 Testing request: "basic graphics mode" in Workstation
by Adam Williamson
Hi folks!
So there's a current Beta blocker bug:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1683197
it is currently accepted as a blocker on the understanding that trying
to boot to Workstation in 'basic graphics mode' (i.e. with 'nomodeset'
on the cmdline) *always* fails, on all hardware (or at least on most
hardware). However, we don't yet have enough testing to be sure of
this.
It'd be very helpful if folks with a test box can boot a Fedora 30
Workstation live image on it, using the 'Start Fedora-Workstation-Live
30 in basic graphics mode' option from the 'Troubleshooting' menu, and
see if it successfully reaches the desktop. Here's an image you can
use:
https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/compose/branched/Fedora-30-20190301.n....
(For bonus points, you can also try this with the F29 final live image,
and see if it works with *that* :>)
Please report your findings as a reply to this email, thanks a lot!
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
4 years, 6 months
Workstation WG meeting recap 2019-Feb-25
by Kalev Lember
=================================
#fedora-meeting-2: Workstation WG
=================================
Meeting started by kalev at 14:01:00 UTC. The full logs are available at
https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-2/2019-02-25/workstation...
.
Meeting summary
---------------
* Roll call (kalev, 14:01:13)
* Install gamemode by default? (kalev, 14:05:05)
* LINK: https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/88 (kalev,
14:05:12)
* LINK:
https://meetbot-raw.fedoraproject.org/teams/workstation/workstation.2019-...
is the last log that I found (kalev, 14:07:09)
* AGREED: Workstation WG agrees to install gamemode by default. While
we think the design is fundamentally not ideal, the security
implications of allowing the current session to adjust cpu governor
and gpu clocking are small. (kalev, 14:22:56)
* F30 status (kalev, 14:23:23)
* We got first F30 compose last night (kalev, 14:25:10)
* GNOME 3.32 test day is on Wednesday over at #fedora-test-day
(kalev, 14:27:28)
* We're almost fully up to date with GNOME 3.32 upstream releases,
with the exception of gdm and gnome-initial-setup (kalev, 14:31:25)
* We have several new flatpaks built in Fedora: 0ad, wesnoth,
thunderbird (kalev, 14:34:04)
* ship Fedora flatpak repos by default? (kalev, 14:35:41)
* ACTION: kalev to make sure fedora flatpak repos are installed by
default (kalev, 14:43:48)
* Videos discussion from the fedora-desktop list (kalev, 14:44:56)
Meeting ended at 15:00:05 UTC.
Action Items
------------
* kalev to make sure fedora flatpak repos are installed by default
Action Items, by person
-----------------------
* kalev
* kalev to make sure fedora flatpak repos are installed by default
* **UNASSIGNED**
* (none)
People Present (lines said)
---------------------------
* kalev (92)
* otaylor (36)
* zodbot (13)
* mcatanzaro (12)
* juhp (12)
* kparal (11)
* mclasen (11)
* ryanlerch (8)
* kwizart (4)
* cschalle (1)
Generated by `MeetBot`_ 0.1.4
.. _`MeetBot`: http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot
4 years, 6 months
ffwayland feature, screenshots animations screencasting
by Chris Murphy
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1678453
Regarding comment 4: this sounds like pretty basic functionality
(screenshots in particular) will not work with ffwayland until Fedora
31 anyway. Also, ffwayland feature depends on Firefox 66 now, which
isn't releasing until 19.March, and the Beta Release (Preferred
Target) Go/No-go is on 21.March.
Question is whether either of these is enough of a cause for concern
to just push the feature to Fedora 31?
--
Chris Murphy
4 years, 6 months
