Ubuntu ARM and the linaro kernels

[Jamie Bennett]

Hi Oliver,

Answers in-line below.

On 8 Nov 2010, at 15:12, Oliver Grawert wrote:

> hi,
>
> at UDS we discussed the possibility of using linaro kernels for some  
> of
> the ubuntu ARM flavours (currently for omap3 images but there might be
> more to come) where we seem to have duplicated efforts in kernel team
> and linaro ...
>
> there were some open questions that require further discussion with a
> wider audience which i'd like to bring up in this mail:
>
> * linaro kernels used in ubuntu ARM would need to move to the  
> supported
> package set (main) which makes them fall under all freeze restrictions
> the kernel team sets for ubuntu (only SRUs post kernel freeze, patches
> and changes all need to go through the ubuntu-kernel mailing list etc)

I think we can deal with the via the SRU process. We have already been
using the SRU process this cycle for kernel changes so its a non-issue.

> * configuration changes in the linaro kernels would have to happen to
> match the ubuntu distro kernel configs in all places where they do not
> match yet (this also implies that ubuntu sauce needs to be added to  
> the
> linaro kernels for making all distro features available)

I'm not sure Linaro want to carry the Ubuntu sauce and match configs.
Linaro's continued effort to consolidate and stream-line kernels rather
than expand options to cover all eventualities may conflict, this would
need to be carefully investigated.

> * someone has to commit to do security support for these kernels to
> match the 18 months security support we provide for ubuntu images (can
> the ubuntu kernel team and the ubuntu security team commit to that ?)

This would be a problem for Linaro. Currently we have no support options
that look like what you describe above. The only option at the moment
would be for the Ubuntu Security Team to provide security support for  
the
kernels once they come out of Linaro unless Linaro change their model.

> if not all of the above bulletpoints (please shout if i missed any  
> that
> are obvious) can be fulfulled we can not take linaro kernels for our
> images and another solution needs to be found.

I would love to see the sharing of kernels here. We need to come up with
a good solution of which I don't have at the moment.

I've cc'd linaro-dev in to solicit more comments from the Linaro side.

> ciao
> 	oli

Regards,
Jamie.