MiniDebconf 2015 ARM, Cambridge - ARM, Cambridge 1640 - final wrap-up - thanks to all

Two days worth of sprints - lots of hugely good work done.

Two days worth of open days with talks - lots of interest, feedback, chatting out of earshot in the breakout rooms.

Two days worth of monetary and other input from all the sponsors:  ARM, Codethink, Cosworth, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Collabora  - PRICELESS

Sociableness in pubs and so on overnight

Thanks also to Steve and Jo McIntyre for a houseful of guests and to all on front desk

And also lastly, again to ARM, as in all these posts because of this great venue and for the small army of ARM pass holders who have let us in and out of doors all this time.

MiniDebconf, ARM, Cambridge - ARM 8 November 1600

 Peter Green's talk very clear and well received.

Now for (almost) the last of the day - Steve McIntyre (93sam / Sledge) for his annual presentation on the state of UEFI

MiniDebconf ARM Cambridge 1525 8 November

Good talk on what it means to transfer LARGE data sets in academia and the downfalls of networking.

Peter Green is about to give a talk on Raspbian - these talks filling in for the missing talk mentioned earlier

Raspbian project - What is it, why it was needed, who is behind it etc.

Lots of typing around me and IRC on #debconf-cambridge

Edit methods - ARM Cambridge - 1500

MiniDebconf postings are being typed on my lap on a laptop real time.

I can't remember the consistent format of how I titled them last time :)

Thanks to all for coffee carrying, to Planet Debian for getting the postings up so quickly, to front desk, organisers, facilitators.

Next up - Network Performance Tuning: Lessons from the Coal Face by Christopher J Walker

[And yes, elgriff, I'm breaking all your good advice I heard less than an hour ago]

MiniDebconf ARM CAmbridge 1400 - ARM, Cambridge 8 November

Andy (rattusrattus) on Video team sprint over the last few days with Ivo de Decker and Stefano Rovera

Background/Existing infrastructure/Why change? [DV/Firewire are EOL]
Things to do

1. Replace twinpact video slide capture system with something that can capture HDMI - better resolution,- digital all the way
Using a pre-production prototype at the moment. CCC also hoping to use this. All kit needs to go into one big box with sensible power supplies
2. Replace DVswitch
Better resolution, select sources, record all inputs, record all edits
Gstreamer based transport solution - import/output format agnostic
GST-Switch - possibly dead? VoctoMix looks more promising - CCC are testing this. First use in anger may be December
3. Improve streaming - single stream out. Encode stream on in-room hardware.
Sharing is a thing ... CCC workflow and setup are good  - everyone should share technology. FOSDEM has 25 rooms ...
4 Replace/expand AV equipment 
Workstation PC - SDI capture/video mixing/local record and encode
Laptop for remote UI
2 cameras
Opsis frame grabber
5 BoF Room recording - lots of options to handle differently
1 Operator maximum / preferably automated
Video conferencing camera / microphone setup
Frame grabber for slides / Gobby feed
6 Logistics
Organise equipment by room
Kit must be kept deployable
Quartermastering necessary
Checklists for each box
Set up a lab for development and release
DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ON THE PRODUCTION KIT

MiniDebconf Cambridge - ARM, Cambridge, 1340

Lightning talks -

David McBride Scalable infrastructure package distribution - even more mad idea than last year for his scalable package distribution round University of Cambridge - npn

Iain Learmonth - Vmdebootstrap sprint report detailing the work from the Sprint on Thursday/Friday. Live-build-ng needs more unit testing, boot testing, documentation. Working now and some images have been built but still in progress http://vmdebootstrap.alioth.debian.org

Helen (elgriff) talking about her weird keyboard
Repetittive strain injuries, carpal tunnel injuries.
Extensive computer use / brass instrument playing AND ignoring pain doing the above. Dont do this.
Vertical keyboards - SafeType and Yogitype.
You should care. If it hurts stop.You don't come with a five year warranty

Stefano Rovera (stefanor) - SVN-Git migration. Debian Python migration team did this for hundreds of packages. "Subversion is really, really evil - it's more evil than you thought"

Sledge - Update on ARM ports. Three ports - armel - older hardware. Armhf - ARMv7 hard float ABI. ARM64 / aarch64 - in Jessie - mostly working. Bits and pieces to be done. Over time, requirements have gone up and there are bits and pieces to work on. For the oldest machines in armel there's an amount of  work to do - port may not survive beyond stretch: manpower / people who care is critical.

MiniDebconf Cambridge - ARM, Cambridge 1115 8 November

Just had a really good couple of sessions: one from the DPL including Q&A, then a good overview of reproducible builds and where we are today  from Holger Levsen (h0lger) and Chris Lamb (lamby)

Then a 2 minute silence at 11.00 as is customary in the UK on this date.

Now Lucy Wayland - who says she has a brainful of IEEE754 from a few years ago working on safety-critical systems so she's unburdening by sharing with all of us - everything you wanted to know about floating point but were afraid to ask (and including a primer on signed/unsigned and fixed point as part of the explanation)

Steve Capper's Java presentation is unfortunately not going to take place, so this afternoon's live stream schedule will be different.

Coffee going down well.

Debian MiniConf Cambridge - ARM, November 8 0930

Auditorium fairly full - waiting for Bits from the DPL talk to kick off proceedings.

Thanks to ARM staff for getting me in, sat down, with coffee and ready to blog. Front desk friendly as ever ... and here we go.

Debian miniconf, Cambridge - ARM, 1430 7 November

A couple of good quick lightning talks from Dmitri Ledkovs, Daniel Silverstone and Phil Hands

A good talk on mass-deployment of Debian for Durham University's workstations. Cue a small huddle of people talking similar topics and exchanging useful information

Lars Wirzenius is now talking about how to speed up Obnam, his backup program.

Auditorium in silence - some of us heads down, hunched over  laptops, but laptop keyboards are silent these days.

Debconf, ARM, Cambridge - 1250 7 November

Lunchtime - full talks over for the minute. Lightning talks may happen soon-ish.

Isolated knots of people chatting: Video Sprint folk chatting about how much can be done in time for Debconf 2016 in South Africa in the break out room.

Three or four people on laptops immediately behind me. Activity never stops

Thanks go to ARM for the venue in a good auditorium space, and also to the other sponsors who have sponsored our lunches or other expenses - and the  staff here on the weekend / out of hours which I would guess is unusual.

Mini Debconf ARM Cambridge 1115 7 November

Between talks - coding and testing going on in the row infront of me - vmdebootstrap rework for Debian Live CD still going on.

Beaglebone SBC hanging from a Thinkpad in the row behind

Others talking - most getting coffee

Next up - Daniel Silverstone on Lua

Mini Debconf ARM CAmbridge 7 November 1022

Now watching Neil Williams (codehelp) on testing, continuous integration, ARM diversity and the problems of a huge spectrum of small ARM devices.

Mass testing == better for everyone using ARM but it's hard.

Betty Dall presented on HP Enterprise's The Machine as the first session: very interesting and dependent on ARM SoCs and Debian Linux. Linux running everywhere, even on huge hardware still being built.

Mini Debconf 2015 ARM Cambridge - ARM, 7 November

Belated thanks to the ARM folk who arranged car park spaces for me for Thursday and Friday. I'm mobility impaired so this made a huge difference.

Today is the more open day - not so much programming, more presentations and talks. Also being live streamed. http://video.debconf.org:8000/minidebconf.ogv

Schedule is slightly changed but the wiki is correct

The auditorium is pretty full even at 0925

Thanks as ever to front desk and the ARM security staff who have wekcined ** welcomed us. Here's to a good day

** typing on laptop balanced on lap

MiniDebconf Cambridge ARM, Cambridge 1020 6 November

Back here. Now a silent room - seven people on laptops in the Video Sprint rooom. A couple of low-key mutterings as various "stuff" is attempted to be ported.

Last night most folk watched the fireworks - November 5th is the celebration in UK which involves fireworks. [Obligatory Wikipedia link  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night ]

Cambridge has a huge free public display and it was apparently well worth watching.

A side conversation on keyboards - Belgians, UK English, Germans - but most of us have US English layout in our touch typing fingers, I suspect. Changing keyboards is fun :)


I may have been talked into packaging something for Debian for the first time in a very long time :)

MiniDebconf2015, ARM Cambridge 1320 5 November

Back after lunch - chatting about video and stuff with the Video Team sprint.
Thanks to the ARM employees swiping us in and out and shepherding the bunch of us over to lunch and keeping track of us.

From behind me, there's the chat over sorting out a switch to handle the LAN setup to test the video equipment later on.

Next door, they're busy, busy, busy - four tables full of people working fairly quietly. Steve McIntyre (Sledge) is running around facilitating, answering questions, sorting out "stuff"

Front desk are still front desking although most of us have arrived: I'm guessing they'll be busiest over the weekend.

Three of us on laptops doing whatever in here: Helen busy working to make sense of scribbled notes on whiteboards into a proper diagramming package - green and red marker pen on two walls full of whiteboard becomes a sensible project - objectives, bullet points, tasking - seemingly far too much organisation for this sort of thing and not the way some of us naturally work but necessary if we're not to forget something tiny but vital.

Thanks for this expertise, Helen, that most of us don't have :)

Cambridge MiniDebConf2015 - ARM, Cambridge 1030 5 November

Now safely here - good to be home with the family. Some old faces who were here last year, some new.

Roomful of laptops: fairly quiet hum of people coding. I've stolen what could be the largest table - but I have integrated a Cubietruck so far this morning :)

Next door is the Video team sprint - working to try and get something sorted to replace dvswitch - the software behind all the Debconf videos.

ARM staff helpful as ever, good surroundings and, of course, good coffee :)