Linux Plumbers Conf 2014

The Linux Plumbers 2014 Android/Mobile track is focusing on the ongoing integration of Android into the mainline, as well as new form factors where Android ecosystem is expanding and the new challenges arising from this.

The Linux Plumbers 2014 Automotive Microconference is targeting the
challenges of using Linux in the automotive domain.

In the last few years a lot of effort has been put into proofing that
Linux is a viable basis for all kinds of automotive systems. First
products are starting to ship and projects such as the Automotive
Grade Linux, GENIVI and TIZEN IVI are bringing automotive and open
source developers together to further foster the adoption of Linux in
the automotive domain.

This years track will continue these efforts and will include
discussions on the challenges of vehicle interfaces and diagnostics
and how they can be implemented. Further it will target general topics
including general kernel configuration, in terms of fast boot and
virtualization, and policy management and enforcement. The track
will also consider higher level topics such as driver distraction and
how this can be reduced.

In the last year containers on Linux have seen a number of new technologies and changes. Changes to cgroups, new tools like docker and lmctfy and continued maturity of the supporting Linux subsystems.

Currently, there are a number of development tools, such as Coccinelle, sparse and checkpatch, that are easily usable via the Linux build system and that are used by the Linux 0-day kernel test system. The goal of the Linux Plumbers 2014 Development Tools track is to exchange experiences on the use of these tools and to consider what should be done next. We particularly encourage presentations on current uses of development tools and on development problems that could benefit from tool support.

The microconference will consist of short presentations followed by discussions of related issues.

The Linux Plumbers 2014 Energy-aware Scheduling and CPU Power Management track is focusing on energy-awareness improvements for the scheduler and cpu power management frameworks (cpuidle, intel_pstate, cpufreq).

Following last years micro conference (power-efficient_scheduling) and the Kernel Summit workshop last year a number of areas were identified which need work to move towards improved energy-awareness in the kernel. This aim of this micro conference is to coordinate and discuss efforts made in these and related areas.

More details about some of the energy-aware scheduling efforts are gathered here: Energy-aware Scheduling wiki-page

The Linux Plumbers 2014 File and Storage Track will be focused on current challenges in the IO stack and ongoing work. This will be structured like the Linux File, Storage and Memory management event – individual topics will be discussed with an appointed topic lead, but presentations are actively discouraged. A few slides can be used to help frame the discussion.

Unlike the LSF/MM event, our plumbers track is going to be especially interested in pulling in people from the many communities that work in this space – not just kernel developers. Good examples of past topics include management of file and storage systems, dealing with new technologies like persistent memory at the various levels of the stack and how we interact with things like cloud storage or big data needs.

For more information on the file and storage track, see the wiki page here:

http://wiki.linuxplumbersconf.org/2014:file_and_storage_systems

We are getting more and more IOMMU drivers in the Linux kernel. For those we often have to close the gap between making them look similar through the IOMMU-API while supporting their unique features too. On this Microconference we will discuss the challenges and their solutions to improve the IOMMU code base already in the kernel as well as how we approach new challenges for future features like IO page faulting.

There are currently a few different implementations on how to do live kernel patching in the kernel. That is, the ability to apply a patch to the kernel while it is still running, requiring no reboot. The problem is that the kernel should only have one implementation. Although userspace may be different, the more the various implementations can cooperate the better.

Not only is this an issue of cooperation, but there are some serious issues with live patching itself. What is considered safe? Can anything except for trivial buffer overflows and off by one errors be corrected. How long should a patched kernel be running before it should be rebooted.

The Linux Plumbers 2014 LLVM Microconference is focusing on increasing the use of LLVM related technologies surrounding Linux.

Speakers should cover topics which help the adoption of LLVM and clang for things like the Linux Kernel, Android, yocto, etc.

Last year a lot of progress was made in patching LLVM and Clang in order to support kernel compilation. This year there has been a lot more progress in upstreaming patches to the Linux kernel in order to support the use of clang. Over the same time period progress was made on building both the Linux kernel and Android userspace. Clang is also now distributed as part of the Android NDK, and LLVM related tech is now included in most distros as well as projects like yocto. However the work isn’t finished yet. There is still much to fix and upstream to the related code bases in order to advance these goals.

This microconference will gather interested parties from the Linux kernel, LLVM, Android, yocto and related communities to plan the most expedient way to get support for using Clang upstream.

The pervasive use of networking by household appliances, sensor networks, manufacturing equipment, and even automobiles is posing quite a few challenges to network management. One of the nice things about network management tools is that there are so many of them to choose from, including NetworkManager, ConnMan, systemd, and wicked. This situation brings up questions about improved code sharing among these projects, interoperability for the inevitable situation where more than one is in use, and handoff of network configuration information.

This microconference will feature important discussions on other topics as well, including security issues, tethering, the interactions between NFS root filesystems and DHCP leases, the interaction between the various networking stacks and various DNS resolvers, and supporting system services that need some sort of connectivity at system startup (see Bugzilla 728965).

The Linux Plumbers 2014 Network Virtualization and Security track is focusing design and implementation of virtualization and security in the networking stack. Network virtualization is undoubtedly an exciting and disruptive technology that is becoming pervasive in the data center, however it could easily become a security and privacy nightmare. We need to address these issues as a community. This is important not just for the success of virtualization or cloud, but, I believe, is paramount to the future of the Internet itself!

Presentation slots are limited to 10 minutes with a maximum of 3 slides plus time allocated for the actual discussion. Each presentation should consist of a problem statement and a list of possible approaches to problem to enable community discussion.

Etherpad: http://www.linuxplumbersconf.org/2014/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/LPC2014_NetVirt.txt
Slides: http://goo.gl/ChGFnx

The Linux Plumbers 2014 Real Time track focuses on issues with the -rt patchset and with use of both -rt and the mainline kernel for real-time applications.

The Linux Plumbers 2014 Real Time track focuses on issues with the -rt patchset and with use of both -rt and the mainline kernel for real-time applications.

The tracing microconference will not be about presentations. It will be a plenary meeting of all participants in order to try and solve the issues within the tracing community.

Currently, there are many players: ftrace (with trace-cmd and kernelshark), perf (both kernel and userspace), systemtap, LTTng. There are also a need to get a programmable dynamic filtering into the kernel. This will require ktap and the BPF system coming together.

The Linux Plumbers 2014 Wayland track will be focussed on current and future work to integrate Wayland into the Linux desktop stack, and to make Wayland 100% ready to become the default graphical server for Linux desktops.

Today the Wayland compositor is already used in a variety of environments, ranging from automobiles to smartphones. Tomorrow it will be the default graphical server for Linux desktops, enjoying support from GNOME, KDE, etc.

Becoming the default graphical server for Linux desktops means that wayland needs to be tightly integrated with the rest of the Linux (desktop) stack.

The goal of this microconference is to discuss integration issues such as interaction with systemd, logind, and session management and other important topics, including drawing tablet protocol, input device calibration, privileged clients, socket-based Wayland activation, community window managers, and wifi displays.

The Linux Plumbers 2014 Wireless Networking track is focusing on ongoing topics related to wireless networking in the Linux ecosystem.. This includes 802.11 wireless LANs, Bluetooth, NFC, and related technologies.

The structure will be short introductions to an issue or topic followed by a discussion with the audience. A hard limit of 3 slides per presentation is enforced to ensure focus and allocate enough time for discussions.