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canonical / ubuntu-pro-client

Ubuntu Pro Client for offerings from Canonical
https://canonical-ubuntu-pro-client.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/latest/
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Feature: Add a method to support a backport kernel in Pro #3135

Open khbecker opened 1 month ago

khbecker commented 1 month ago

I'm looking at creating a backport 6.8 realtime kernel for jammy. We will need a way to expose that to Ubuntu Pro users so they can enable this 6.8 realtime kernel for jammy.

This could either be done with a new flag to indicate the version (5.15 or 6.8) or we could make this a new variant (jammy-6.8) supported only on jammy.

This kernel is planned to be added during the 2024.06.03 SRU cycle, which would be available the first week of July at the earliest. It will exist in the usual realtime PPAs. I don't have any customer deadlines for this effort yet.

orndorffgrant commented 1 month ago

Thanks! Yes this will likely be a variant on the realtime-kernel service. Please let us know when this gets closer to becoming available.

khbecker commented 6 days ago

@orndorffgrant The jammy:linux-realtime-6.8 kernel is being cranked in the 2024.06.10 cycle. It will likely arrive in proposed later this week.

orndorffgrant commented 5 days ago

@khbecker Thanks for the update!

For now users will be able to sudo pro enable realtime-kernel --access-only && sudo apt install ubuntu-realtime-6.8 to run the new version. I'll try to get a new variant specifically for this ready in v34 of ubuntu-pro-client (due to be released in September).

Some questions (we can set up a call or something if its easier to discuss live):

  1. Is it fair to characterize the 5.15 and 6.8 RT kernels for jammy as the RT variants of the GA and HWE kernels? And will these be the only two generic variants for jammy? (Or will we also start releasing e.g. a generic-6.3 variant or generic-6.9 variant for jammy?)
  2. Do we hope/expect that we will take a similar approach for future Ubuntu releases? In other words, do we hope to create an RT variant of the final Noble HWE kernel when we get there?

If the answers to those questions are all "yes". Then I propose we call this variant generic-hwe

Separate topic: When a user runs pro enable realtime-kernel after this new variant exists, which variant should be auto-selected: 5.15 (generic) or 6.8 (proposed generic-hwe)? We could, for example, auto-select generic-hwe if we see the system is already running the jammy hwe kernel.

Also tagging @EdoardoBarbieriCanonical

khbecker commented 5 days ago
  1. yes, they're essentially the RT variants of the GA and HWE kernels for now. So far we're only releasing RT kernels on long-term support releases, but that will change with Oracular. The backporting of the Oracular RT kernel to Jammy and Noble is TBD.
  2. That's still TBD.

Also, I don't have the ubuntu-realtime-6.8 package ready yet. I'm working through the first build of the linux-realtime-6.8 packages so far. I'll begin work on ubuntu-realtime-6.8 soon.

For the pro client, detecting an existing 6.8 kernel and suggesting the 6.8 RT kernel is a good idea.