Luis R. Rodriguez
2012-07-26 18:54:01 UTC
The project you may know as "compat-wireless" [0] will soon be renamed
to "compat-drivers" given the growth in support for different
subsystems and general interest by a few Linux distributions to see
this work become more decentralized from the wireless subsystem. After
my presentation about the project at the last San Francisco Linux
Collaboration summit [1] I was asked if the project could be moved
onto some vendor / subsystem neutral place. I decided to work with the
Linux Foundation and see what I could do about it. As it turns out the
Linux Foundation already had a working group working on similar
project but such efforts received little traction and it seems the
efforts we have completed through the compat / compat-wireless project
actually ended up accomplishing some of the more difficult aspects of
the project envisioned by the LF backport working group.
MadWifi served as an example framework which provided a full 802.11
stack and one driver backported to a few kernel releases. The
compat-wireless driver started supporting all 802.11 Linux upstream
drivers backported in similar way but with the new 802.11 framework:
cfg80211, mac80211. The other subsystems contributed later were
support for Bluetooth and also Ethernet. Ozan is a Google Summer of
Code student and is working with great progress on adding Video
support. As it is now the package provides backport support drivers
across a range of 21 kernels. Each commit is test compiled prior to
integration. We have daily snapshots based on linux-next.git and then
stable releases based on linux-stable.git and Linus' RC releases /
final releases. Each test compile is currently taking me about 120
minutes -- that is after every patch committed (obviously sometimes I
do not test compile between a series of patches and then I'd bisect,
it depends). At times, I have to test compile 3 different releases in
a day, for a total time spent just on compiling to 6 hours. I have a
pretty decent system but its time to grow the project up and get a bit
more serious about compilation. I've reached out to a few
organizations for assistance but would like to ensure that if I get a
build server I'd like to ensure that other contributors to the project
get similar access to the system to be able to do their own test
compiles as well. I looked into distributed compiling with Alex
Mendoza but after a few promising results in the end it seems big iron
wins in terms of practicality and setup. At this point I am
coordinating with possibilities in working with the Linux Foundation
and John Hawley, Chief kernel.org Systems Administrator, on options.
After a few tests and reviews of technologies it seems using a big
iron box hosted and maintained exclusively by kernel.org folks would
be the best option. The estimated server and cost is:
HP DL165G7 (last generation though still on sale)
2 x AMD 6262HE ( 16-core cpu )
96G ram (though you can take the system to 384M, for another 8K)
3 x 300G 10K rpm sas drives
5yr warranty.
$7,807 before any discounts, taxes, etc.
There is good progress in this direction but as could be expected this
can take time. Pavel mentioned to e-mail this distribution list given
that the compat-driver backport project's mission statement parallels
the best interests of getting users access to Atheros 802.11 hardware
device drivers as easily / fast as possible. If the project can help
with this -- it'd be great. Even of the Linux Foundation can secure
somehow the build server alone for the project I do wonder if
MadwWifi's own funding can be further considered for supporting
similar upstream endeavors, perhaps now is a good time to review. My
preference would be that if its decided supporting general backporting
effort is useful -- for the money to be used specifically for this
project alone and for the server to be administered by kernel.org
folks. Please me know what you think.
[0] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download
[1] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1axVNEGwKZjnzG1ocdd289WMqPxzJ3qfMv70ghGcnUKc/edit
Luis
to "compat-drivers" given the growth in support for different
subsystems and general interest by a few Linux distributions to see
this work become more decentralized from the wireless subsystem. After
my presentation about the project at the last San Francisco Linux
Collaboration summit [1] I was asked if the project could be moved
onto some vendor / subsystem neutral place. I decided to work with the
Linux Foundation and see what I could do about it. As it turns out the
Linux Foundation already had a working group working on similar
project but such efforts received little traction and it seems the
efforts we have completed through the compat / compat-wireless project
actually ended up accomplishing some of the more difficult aspects of
the project envisioned by the LF backport working group.
MadWifi served as an example framework which provided a full 802.11
stack and one driver backported to a few kernel releases. The
compat-wireless driver started supporting all 802.11 Linux upstream
drivers backported in similar way but with the new 802.11 framework:
cfg80211, mac80211. The other subsystems contributed later were
support for Bluetooth and also Ethernet. Ozan is a Google Summer of
Code student and is working with great progress on adding Video
support. As it is now the package provides backport support drivers
across a range of 21 kernels. Each commit is test compiled prior to
integration. We have daily snapshots based on linux-next.git and then
stable releases based on linux-stable.git and Linus' RC releases /
final releases. Each test compile is currently taking me about 120
minutes -- that is after every patch committed (obviously sometimes I
do not test compile between a series of patches and then I'd bisect,
it depends). At times, I have to test compile 3 different releases in
a day, for a total time spent just on compiling to 6 hours. I have a
pretty decent system but its time to grow the project up and get a bit
more serious about compilation. I've reached out to a few
organizations for assistance but would like to ensure that if I get a
build server I'd like to ensure that other contributors to the project
get similar access to the system to be able to do their own test
compiles as well. I looked into distributed compiling with Alex
Mendoza but after a few promising results in the end it seems big iron
wins in terms of practicality and setup. At this point I am
coordinating with possibilities in working with the Linux Foundation
and John Hawley, Chief kernel.org Systems Administrator, on options.
After a few tests and reviews of technologies it seems using a big
iron box hosted and maintained exclusively by kernel.org folks would
be the best option. The estimated server and cost is:
HP DL165G7 (last generation though still on sale)
2 x AMD 6262HE ( 16-core cpu )
96G ram (though you can take the system to 384M, for another 8K)
3 x 300G 10K rpm sas drives
5yr warranty.
$7,807 before any discounts, taxes, etc.
There is good progress in this direction but as could be expected this
can take time. Pavel mentioned to e-mail this distribution list given
that the compat-driver backport project's mission statement parallels
the best interests of getting users access to Atheros 802.11 hardware
device drivers as easily / fast as possible. If the project can help
with this -- it'd be great. Even of the Linux Foundation can secure
somehow the build server alone for the project I do wonder if
MadwWifi's own funding can be further considered for supporting
similar upstream endeavors, perhaps now is a good time to review. My
preference would be that if its decided supporting general backporting
effort is useful -- for the money to be used specifically for this
project alone and for the server to be administered by kernel.org
folks. Please me know what you think.
[0] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download
[1] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1axVNEGwKZjnzG1ocdd289WMqPxzJ3qfMv70ghGcnUKc/edit
Luis