Intel's Clear Linux optimizations
by František Zatloukal
Hi,
Phoronix recently release article[1] about Intel's Clear Linux with some
cool graphs showing nice performance gain compared to Xubuntu.
I didn't have time to dig in and look how it's performing against Fedora,
but I'd assume Fedora can be compared to Xubuntu in terms of compiler
settings.
I think i'll be interesting to look into it and find out if Fedora can't
tweak compiler settings (eg use LTO for critical things like Mesa, Kernel,
...). I think it could be interesting fo Fedora users to have this enabled
if there are not any disadvantages other than compile time, compile memory
usage and so on.
What do you think?
[1]
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-clr-opengl&num=1
--
Best regards / S pozdravem,
František Zatloukal
Project Coordinator
Red Hat
1 week, 5 days
kcov: code coverage for programs and python/shell scripts
by Dridi Boukelmoune
Greetings developers,
I just submitted a review request [1] for kcov [2] that I recently
discovered. It has no relation to Linux's kcov and is more akin to
lcov, except that all it needs is a binary with DWARF debuginfo
instead of requiring compile-time instrumentation.
I came across kcov when I was looking for a way to measure code
coverage in a Rust project and I'm impressed. It supposedly has a low
overhead, but so far I've been monitoring small single-threaded
programs so I can't really tell. I haven't tested python and shell
support, although I have cases where it would be relevant, but I don't
have time yet.
The package itself is simple, but it bundles javascript and doesn't
build on all main platforms so I may have to be granted an exception
from some group starting with an F. Been busy lately, I'm a little
behind on anything Fedora. If that's the case, please RTFM me a link
to the wiki, and if you want to take the review I'll gladly take one
in return.
Cheers,
Dridi
[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=kcov
[2] https://simonkagstrom.github.io/kcov/index.html
1 month
Reliability test for hard drives and SSD
by Andrey Ponomarenko
Hi there!
Good news for all interested in hardware compatibility and reliability.
I've started a new project to estimate reliability of hard drives and SSD in real-life conditions based on the SMART data reports collected by Linux users in the Linux-Hardware.org database since 2014. The initial data (SMART reports), analysis methods and results are publicly shared in a new github repository: https://github.com/linuxhw/SMART. Everyone can contribute to the report by uploading probes of their computers by the hw-probe tool!
The primary aim of the project is to find drives with longest "power on hours" and minimal number of errors. The following formula is used to measure reliability: Power_On_Hours / (1 + Number_Of_Errors), i.e. time to the first error/between errors.
Please be careful when reading the results table. Pay attention not only to the rating, but also to the number of checked model samples. If rating is low, then look at the number of power-on days and number of errors occurred. New drive models will appear at the end of the rating table and will move to the top in the case of long error-free operation.
Thanks to ROSA, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, openSUSE, Arch, Gentoo users and others who had made this work possible by contribution to the database!
1 month, 2 weeks
Updates to mathematical software
by Jerry James
Hello everyone. Months ago, I started working on updates to a couple of
our mathematical packages. But they, in turn, required other packages to
be updated, and those updates required other packages to be updated, and
the whole thing kind of snowballed. I believe that I have finally reached
a point of closure, where I can update the whole pile and have everything
still work afterwards.
I propose to do the following updates and builds in Rawhide in about a
week. If maintainers of any of these packages object, please let me know
the nature of your objection.
The only explicit soname bump in these updates is libntl.so.35 to
libntl.so.36. However, there are a few other libraries that changed ABI
without a corresponding soname bump (typically with an soname of
libfoo.so.0, sigh), so I will rebuild all consumers.
Changes:
- arb: update from 2.11.1 to 2.13.0
- brial: update from 0.8.5 to 1.2.3. Build for both python 2 and 3.
Add a %check script.
- cbmc: rebuild for glpk 4.65
- coin-or-lemon: rebuild for glpk 4.65
- eclib: update from 20170815 to 20171002
- fflas-ffpack: update from 2.2.2 to 2.3.2. Drop all patches.
- flint: rebuild for ntl 11.0.0. Attempt to work around bz 1555151 on
arm.
- gap-pkg-float: rebuild for libfplll 5.2.1 and mpfi 1.5.3
- gfan: build libgfan as a shared library and distribute it in a new
subpackage, which obsoletes the erroneous gfanlib subpackage of Singular.
- giac: rebuild for libfplll 5.2.1 and mpfi 1.5.3
- givaro: update from 4.0.2 to 4.0.4
- glpk: update from 4.61 to 4.65. Add a patch slated for 4.66, needed
by sagemath. Build with ODBC and MariaDB support.
- latte-integrale: rebuild for ntl 11.0.0 and glpk 4.65
- libfplll: update from 5.1.0 to 5.2.1. Drop the rounding patch, fixed
upstream.
- libgap: require the GAP default packages (silences startup warnings
about missing packages).
- linbox: update from 1.4.2 to 1.5.2. Drop upstreamed fplll patch. Add
gcc8 patch as recommended by upstream to fix a C++ issue.
- Macaulay2: update from 1.9.2 to 1.11. Drop upstreamed verbose_build,
givaro, pari, and endian patches.
- mpfi: update from 1.5.1 to 1.5.3. Drop the aarch64 patch, fixed
upstream.
- normaliz: update from 3.4.0 to 3.5.4. Drop all patches.
- ntl: update from 10.5.0 to 11.0.0
- octave: rebuild for glpk 4.65
- openms: rebuild for glpk 4.65
- pari: backport ellratpoints and hyperellratpoints from pari 2.10
alpha, needed by sagemath. The alternative is to update pari to an alpha
version, which makes me very uncomfortable.
- polymake: update from 3.1 to 3.2r3. Drop upstreamed gcc7 patch.
- ppl: rebuild for glpk 4.65
- pynac: update from 0.7.8 to 0.7.16. Drop arch conditionals for giac,
which is now available on all supported arches.
- python-cvxopt: update from 1.1.9 to 1.2.0
- python-cypari2: update from 1.1.3 to 1.1.4. Drop upstreamed offbyone
patch.
- python-cysignals: update from 1.6.4 to 1.7.1
- python-flask-autoindex: update from 0.4.1 to 0.6. Drop upstreamed
tests patch. Build for both python 2 and 3. Build and package the
documentation.
- python-flask-silk: update from 0.1.2 to 0.2. Do not bundle
flask-sphinx-themes. Build for both python 2 and 3. Build and package the
documentation. Add a %check script.
- python-fpylll: update from 0.2.4dev to 0.4.0dev for libfplll 5.2.1.
- python-gmpy2: update from 2.0.8 to 2.1.0a2. The alpha version has
some functions required by the latest sagemath. Since the only consumers
of this package currently in Fedora are sagemath and sympy, which is
consumed by sagemath, I figure that if the sagemath team is going to
require an alpha version, they are only hurting themselves if something
goes wrong.
- sagemath: update from 8.0 to 8.2. Numerous changes were necessary to
make this work.
- shogun: rebuild for glpk 4.65. Add two patches to fix FTBFS. The
sources use some deprecated json-c macros, which are no longer defined by
default; the first patch includes the relevant header. The second patch
works around a bug in pybtex, which has already been reported to upstream
pybtex and fixed in git. If a new pybtex release is made soon, I will
build it and drop this patch.
- Singular: drop the mistakenly exposed gfanlib package; build with
libgfan instead. Rebuild for ntl 11.0.0 and polymake 3.2r2. Drop the
sequence-point patch, which patches the libgfan sources.
NOTE ON MPFR: There is an update to mpfr 4 in the works:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/mpfr-4.0.0. The above updates help
that effort in the following ways:
- The mpfi update brings in a version that is compatible with both mpfr
3 and 4, so when the time comes, simply rebuilding against mpfr 4 will work.
- The sagemath update brings in a version that wants mpfr 4. For now, I
will patch it to use the old mpfr 3 interface. Once we have mpfr 4
available, all we have to do is remove that patch and rebuild.
Let me know of any concerns you might have about this pile of updates. As
usual with this particular set of packages, some builds take many hours, so
the rebuilds will probably span multiple days. Expect broken deps reports
out of Rawhide while in the middle. They will disappear once the entire
stack has been built.
Regards,
--
Jerry James
http://www.jamezone.org/
1 month, 2 weeks
[fesco] Updated FTBFS package policy
by Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek
Fedora package maintainers,
FESCo approved an updated policy for packages which fail to build from
source during mass rebuilds (FTBFS) [1].
The updated policy is still at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fails_to_build_from_source.
Highlights:
- packages which FTBFS are subject to orphaning if there is no
maintainer acknowledgement within 8 weeks
- packages which FTBFS in two consecutive mass rebuilds will be
retired soon after the second mass rebuild
The implementation of this policy hinges on improving the releng
scripts used to create and manage FTBFS bugs. There is approximately
two months until the next use of those scripts, so I'm hopeful we'll
get them working.
If your package wasn't successfully built for F28, please fix that!
[1] https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/1890
[2] https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/1877#comment-509161
2 months
Intent to orphan Python 2
by Petr Viktorin
tl;dr: Unless someone steps up to maintain Python 2 after 2020, we need
to start dropping python2 packages now.
Python 2.7 will reach end of upstream support on 1st of January, 2020,
after almost 10 years (!) of volunteer maintenance.
Fedora still has more than 3000 packages depending on python2 – many
more than we can support without upstream help.
We (rightly) don't have the authority to say "please drop your unneeded
python2 subpackages, or let us drop them for you" [0].
The next best thing we *can* say is: "if Fedora is to keep python2
alive, we won't be the ones doing it – at least not at the current
magnitude".
Here are the details.
The current maintainers of python2 would like to "orphan" the python2
package in 2020 (~ Fedora 30):
- Charalampos Stratakis (cstratak)
- Tomáš Orsava (torsava)
- Miro Hrnočok (churchyard)
- Petr Viktorin (pviktori)
- Iryna Schcherbina (ishcherb)
- Michal Cyprian (mcyprian)
- Bohuslav Kabrda (bkabrda)
- David Malcolm (dmalcolm)
- Thomas Spura (tomspur)
As with any orphaning, that leaves two options:
- someone else agrees now to take over in 2020 (keeping in mind this is
a security-critical package and will be abandoned upstream), or
- dependent packages drop support for Python 2.
Unlike most other orphanings, we have some thousands of dependent
packages, so a lot of time and care is required.
In case no one steps up, we'd like to start dropping Python 2 support
from dependent packages *now*, starting with ported libraries on whose
python2 version nothing in Fedora depends. (We keep a list of those at [1].)
Of course, we're ready to make various compromises with interested
packagers, as long as there's an understanding that we won't just
support python2 forever.
If you are a maintainer of anything at [1] we ask you kindly to consider
removing the python2 subpackages.
You can either do it now in Rawhide, or add a conditional for Fedora >
29. (On the current schedule, Fedora 30 will be the first release still
supported after 2020-01-01.)
If no one steps up to maintain python2 after 2020, we're prepared to
package a "legacy" python27 package, similar to what we do for e.g.
python33 [2], to:
- help developers that still need to test against this version
- support exceptionally important non–security critical applications, if
their upstreams don't manage to port to Python 3 in time
[0] https://pagure.io/packaging-committee/issue/753
[1] http://fedora.portingdb.xyz/#legacy-leaf
[2] https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/python33/
2 months
Hiding the grub menu by default on single OS installs
by Hans de Goede
Hi All,
I'm working on improving the Fedora boot experience, with the
end goal being a user pressing the on button and then going
to the graphical login manager without him seeing any
text messages / menus filled with technical jargon.
IIRC we used to hide the grub-menu by default on single
OS installs, but we seemed to have stopped doing that,
for new Fedora 29 installs I would like us to start
hiding the menu by default on single OS installs again,
see:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/HiddenGrubMenu
The goal if this email is to:
1) Give people an advance warning about the plan to change
this so we can discuss this early on
2) See if anyone knows why we stopped doing this, I think
we may simply have stopped doing this to simplify to bootconfig
code in anaconda and because we did not always identify the
single OS case correctly, but I wonder if there were other
reasons?
Regards,
Hans
2 months, 2 weeks
Valid use case for modularity or not?
by Fabio Valentini
Hi all,
I think I finally found a scenario where building some of my (and others')
packages as modules would be beneficial.
The situation is:
- The syncthing package has a lot of golang dependencies.
- Some of them are too old in fedora, even in fedora rawhide, and some of
them have not been touched in years.
- However, some other packages may depend on those older versions, or the
packagers don't have time to check for compatibility.
The idea for a solution I came up with:
- Build syncthing as a module.
- Add "syncthing" branches to all incompatible dependencies (I guess I have
to request commit/admin access to do that for packages I don't own yet?).
- Update those branches to use the exact same commit as the vendored
sources in upstream syncthing.
- Use those modules as dependencies for the syncthing module.
Is that a valid, feasible use case of modularity?
Fabio
2 months, 4 weeks
F29 System Wide Change: Hide the grub menu
by Jan Kurik
= Proposed System Wide Change: Hide the grub menu =
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/HiddenGrubMenu
Owner(s):
* Hans de Goede <hdegoede at redhat dot com>
On systems with only a single OS installed, the grub menu does not
offer any useful functionality, so we should hide it by default.
== Detailed description ==
On systems with only a single OS installed, the grub menu's only
function is to allow booting older kernels, which is only necessary as
a rescue option in case of a severe kernel bug and as such not
something which is directly useful for normal use.
Fedora already has a lot of work done to not show too technical boot
messages to end users during bootup, e.g. we pass quiet to the kernel
and we've plymouth to show a bootsplash instead of a bunch of
"Starting service-foo: OK" messages.
The grub menu with its kernel versions is another example of showing
too technical info to end-users and on non multi-boot systems it
normally is not necessary, so it is better to hide it.
The implementation of this consists of the following changes:
1. Currently if the menu is hidden the user needs to press ESC to show
it, modify grub to also except F8 as show-menu key, there are 2
reasons for this:
1.1 F8 is (was) the key to bring up the boot/rescue menu in Windows
1.2 On some machines ESC brings up the firmware-setup menu
2. On non multi-boot systems set GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=1 and
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET="true" in /etc/default/grub
== Scope ==
* Proposal owners:
1. Add patches to grub to also make pressing F8 show the menu
2. Make sure this is all properly documented in release-notes, etc.
3. Write patches for anaconda to set GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=1 and
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET="true" in /etc/default/grub on non
multi-boot systems
* Other developers:
The anaconda developers will need to review and merge the
/etc/default/grub related patches
* Release engineering:
https://pagure.io/releng/issue/7539
** List of deliverables: all
* Policies and guidelines:
The policies and guidelines do not need to be updated.
* Trademark approval:
Not needed for this Change.
--
Jan Kuřík
JBoss EAP Program Manager
Red Hat Czech s.r.o., Purkynova 99/71, 612 45 Brno, Czech Republic
2 months, 4 weeks
Prioritizing ~/.local/bin over /usr/bin on the PATH
by Tomas Orsava
Hi!
I'd like to propose putting the ~/.local/bin in front of the /usr/bin on
the PATH.
Currently /usr/bin has priority over ~/.local/bin, which causes a [bug]
where the old system-installed executable written in Python (from
/usr/bin) is launched, but it finds new Python sources (installed into
$HOME) which it doesn't work with and crashes.
[bug] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1571650
I believe the current configuration breaks the intuitive expectation
that things installed closer to the user should take priority. That's
for example how it works with Python.
Interestingly, ubuntu and opensuse do not have ~/.local/bin on their
PATH (though Ubuntu has ~/bin) so we can't take guidance there.
Does anyone see a reason not to prioritize ~/.local/bin over /usr/bin?
Regards,
Tomas
3 months
