SIG/Kernel meeting 2023-11-30

Attendees

• Sherif Nagy
• Neil Hanlon
• Pratham Patel
• Mustafa Gezen
• Pablo Greco

Discussions

• This SIG does have some overlap with SIG/Altarch
  • Altarch was expecting to base on elrepo
  • Two options: mainline and LTS. Default to Mainline
• Two kernels right now:
  • LTS - manual, done by Pablo
  • Mainline - kernel packer in Peridotv2
    • standard config from upstream doesn't support a lot of our SBCs
    • intending to stay as close to upstream as possible
      • Upstream == fedora rawhide branch's RHEL configs
    • ** Can we build a kernel-mainline artifact for altarch. e.g., kernel-mainline-sbc like kernel-rt/64ka **
      • Alternatively, we can create a new package for that name, but that is probably a lot of rework (?)
• ELrepo contributions
  • What changes are we going to contribute?
    • There are some subset of changes which are beneficial to the overall ecosystem (like an SBC variant which is disabled by default)
    • There's some stuff they might not want to use, and our specs will definitely change over time, not necessarily in step with ELRepo
• Mainline variant for SBCs
  • Two options: subpackage of mainline or discrete packed kernel with a new name
  • Leaning towards a discrete package which can be 'packed' directly into git.r.o/sig/altarch/ namespace, if needed
• Idea on generating kernel configs for SBCs
  • For some sbcs we need to boot via dtb and not acpi so we require mainline kernel
    • usually require drivers which are disabled by default
  • https://git.resf.org/thefossguy/kernel-elrepo/commit/ff349cb79376d1ef4b80c4f8c2cb07703dc3db5e
  • Pablo: Fedora is generally open to enabling these in those configs, and are usually enabled already
    • RHEL configs are a lot more conservative as they only enable what they need
    • Harder to go from RHEL -> working SBC than Fedora -> working (typically), so this is the approach usually he takes
    • ELRepo is in the middle :)
    • Recommends starting with fedora than trying to work backwards
      • Pratham will try this
  • Also working on comparing 9.2 configs to 9.3 with prior work on sbc enablement
    • seems to be working (booting) where elrepo kernel was not
    • need to work out when acpi is not there
• https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-ark
• Mainline kernel is 6.5 right now, we will go to 6.6
  • There is an issue with 6.7, we have issues w/ NX and shim
  • There is an exception for Linux distributions right now, but we won't be able to sign 6.7 without a new shim
  • We'll try and hold onto 6.6 for as long as we can -- and that's OK
  • May need to have non-nx and nx-ready shim
    • :upside-down-face:
• Sherif will be working on LTS 6.1 on x86 a bit this week

Action items

• Documentation on SIG
  • Kernel packer - Mustafa
    • Specfile derrived from ELRepo
    • Configs derrived from s.fp.o/rpms/kernel (rawhide branch, RHEL configs)
    • Sources from kernel.org
  • Roles / Responsibilities - Neil / Sherif
  • Onboarding - Neil
  • Update membership - Neil
  • Usage instructions
    • What packages are available, what are they, etc
  • Secureboot info
• Update kernel-mainline to 6.6 - Neil / Mustafa
• Write ticket about shim / kernel 6.7 issues (for tracking and visibility) - Neil
• Setup and document creation of variant for mainline-sbc - Mustafa / Sherif / Neil
• Develop plan on how to contribute our changes to ELRepo - Neil
• LTS 6.1 not compiling on x86 - Sherif
• Write SIG update for Fresh Air newsletter - Neil

Old business

2023-11-28

• Published kernel-mainline!

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Last update: November 30, 2023