RattusRattus, Isy, smcv have all just left after a very long day. Steve is finishing up the final stages. The mayhem has quietened, the network cables are coiled, pretty much everything is tidied away. A new experience for two of us - I just hope it hasn't put them off too much.
The IRC channels are quiet and we can put this one to bed after a good day's work well done.
Working a bit more slowly - coming to the end of the process. I've been wrestling with a couple of annoying old laptops and creating mayhem. The others are almost through the process - it's been a very long day, almost 12 hours now.
As ever, it's good to be with people who appreciate this work - I'm also being menaced by a dog that wants fuss all the time. It certainly makes a difference to have fast connectivity and even faster remarks backwards and forwards.
Definitely settling into a rhythm - we've been joined by smcv in person (and bittin on line). Bullseye testing is now well beyond the standard image testing into the live images.
Buster images are gradually being built so there's the added confusion of two sets of wiki editing, two sets of potential edit conflicts ...
So six people in a small-ish sitting room, several with multiple laptops running several checks at once. It's all good, as ever.
Dining room table has nine machines on it, three packet switches are fairly well full ...
And I'm over here with the Debian images/media release team in Cambridge.
First time together in Cambridge for a long time: several of the usual suspects - RattusRattus, Sledge, Isy and myself. Also in the room are Kartik and egw - I think this is their first time.
Chat is now physically in Sledge's sitting room as well as on IRC. The first couple of images are trickling in and tests are starting for Bullseye.
This is going to be a very long day - we've got full tests for Bullseye (Debian 11) and Buster (Debian 10) so double duty. This should be the last release for Buster since this has now passed to LTS.
And here we are: second day of the barbeque in Cambridge. Lots of food - as always - some alcohol, some soft drinks, coffee.
Lots of good friends, and banter and good natured argument. For a couple of folk, it's their first time here - but most people have known each other for years. Lots of reminiscing, some crochet from two of us. Multiple technical discussions weaving and overlapping
Not just meat and vegetarian options for food: a fresh loaf, gingerbread of various sorts, fresh Belgian-style waffles.
I''m in the front room: four of us silently on laptops, one on a phone. Sounds of a loud game of Mao from the garden - all very normal for this time of year.
Thanks to Jo and Steve, to all the cooks and folk sorting things out. One more night and I'll have done my first full BBQ here. Diet and slimming - what diet?
I've just finished my last test: Sledge is finishing his and will then push the release out. Today's been a bit slow and steady - but we've finally got there.
Thanks, as ever, due to the release team for actually giving us an update, the press team for announcements - and, of course, the various sponsors, administrators and maintainers of Debian infrastructure like cdimage.debian.org and the CD building machines.
It's been a quiet release for the media team in terms of participation - we've not had our usual tester for debian-edu and it's been a bit subdued altogether.
Not even as many blog posts as usual: I suppose I'll make up for it in August at the BBQ in Cambridge - if we don't all get another lockdown / COVID-19 variants / fuel prices at ££££ per litre to dissuade us.
We're flagging a bit now, I think but close to the end. The standard Debian images caused no problems: Sledge and I are just finishing up the last few live images to test now.
Thanks, as ever, to the crew: RattusRattus and Isy, Sledge struggling through feeling awful. No debian-edu testing today, unfortunately, but that almost never breaks anyway.
Everyone's getting geared up for Kosovo - you'll see the other three there with any luck - and you'd catch all of us at the BBQ in Cambridge. It's going to be a hugely busy month and a bit for Steve and the others. :)
A lower profile release today: Sledge working in the background as affected by COVID. RattusRattus and Isy doing sterling service on the other side of Cambridge, /me over here.
Testing on the standard install media is pretty much done: Isy, Andy and Sledge have moved on to testing the live images.
Stupidly hot for UK - it's 28 degrees indoors with windows open.
All good so far :)
OK - so it wasn't quite all done in one day - and since today is TZ change day in the UK, it might actually run into the TZ bump but I suspect that it will all be done very soon now. Very few glitches - everybody cheerful with what's been done.
I did spot someone in IRC who had been reading the release notes - which is always much appreciated. Lots of security fixes overall in the last couple of months but just a fairly normal time, I think.
Thanks to the team behind all of this: the ftpmasters, the press team and everyone else involved in making Debian more secure. This is the last blog for this one - there will be another point release along in about three months or so.
And we're working through quite nicely.
It's been a long, long day so far and we're about 1/2 way through :)
Shout out to Isy, Sledge and RattusRattus in Cambridge and also smcv.
Two releases in a day is a whole bunch :)
For various obscure reasons, I have a mirror of Debian in one room and the main laptop and so on I use in another. The mirror is connected to a fast Internet line - and has a 1Gb Ethernet cable into the back directly from the router, the laptop and everything else - not so much, everything is wired, but depends on a WiFi link across the property. One end is fast - one end runs like a snail.
Steve suggested I use a different tool to make images directly on the mirror machine - jigit. Slightly less polished than jigdo but - if you're on the same machine - blazingly fast. I just used it to make the Blu-Ray sized .iso and was very pleasantly surprised.
jigit-mkimage -j [jigdo file] -t [template file] -m Debian=[path to mirror of Debian] -o [output filename]
Another nice surprise for me - I have a horrible old Lenovo Ideapad. It's one of the Bay Trail Intel machines with a 32 bit UEFI and a 64 bit processor. I rescued it from the junk heap. Reinstalling it with an image today fixed an issue I had with slow boot and has turned it into an adequate machine for web browsing.
All in all, I've done relatively few tests so far - but it's been a good day, as ever.
More later.
And back to relative normality : the usual suspects are in Cambridge. It's a glorious day across the UK and we're spending it indoors with laptops :)
We'll also be releasing a point release of Buster as a wrap up of recent changes.
Debian 10 should move from full support to LTS on July August 14th - one year after the release of Debian 11 - and there will be a final point release of Buster somewhere around that point.
All seems to be behaving itself well.
Thanks to all for the hard work that goes into preparing each release and especially the security fixes of which there seem to be loads lately.
