Notice: IPv6 breaking issues tentatively considered blocker for F17

[Adam Williamson]

Hey, folks. We made a fairly significant call at the blocker review
meeting today, and agreed to notify devel list and FESCo (I'll file a
FESCo ticket also) so everyone's aware and can raise objections if they
wish.

The bug under discussion was
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=591630 . The effect of the
bug is that, if you install Fedora OOTB (the bug applies to at least 15
and 16 as well as 17) on a system on an IPv6-only network, it will not
be able to connect to the network.

Procedurally, the bug violates the Alpha release criteria "It must be
possible to run the default web browser and a terminal application from
all release-blocking desktop environments. The web browser must be able
to download files, load extensions, and log into FAS" and "The installed
system must be able to download and install updates with yum and the
default graphical package manager in all release-blocking desktops", but
in the specific context of an IPv6-only network. When criteria are
breached only in specific configurations, whether they're a blocker or
not becomes a judgment call, under this preamble which is in each
criteria page:

"There may be times where a requirement is unmet only in a particular
configuration, such as with some keyboard layouts but not others, or if
a particular character is used in a username, password or passphrase. In
such cases, the release team should use their judgement and refer to
precedent to determine whether or not the issue should be considered to
block the release. They should consider the number of users likely to be
affected by the issue, the severity of the case when the issue is
encountered, and the ease or otherwise with which the issue can be
avoided by both informed and uninformed users."

At the meeting, we made the call that IPv6-only networks are becoming a
configuration sufficiently important that a serious breach of the
criteria in the context of an IPv6-only network is significant enough to
be considered a release blocker, and we accepted the bug as a blocker.

Obviously this is a pretty significant call that would set a precedent
for future releases and proposed blockers, so we wanted to flag it up
for wider discussion in case anyone thinks it was the wrong way to go.

A full log of the meeting is available at
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-bugzappers/2012-03-09/f17-beta-blocker-review-2.2012-03-09-17.02.log.html . Discussion of this bug starts from:

18:41:26 <buggbot> Bug 591630: high, urgent, ---, twoerner, ASSIGNED,
DHCPv6 responses are not allowed by default ip6tables ruleset

Please feel free to comment, thanks!
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net