Bleeding Orange and Purple

So today I headed over to ubuntu planet to get my daily fix, when I happen to spy my floating head next to a post. What's this? The last post from my blog was published! That simply won't do for an introduction, so this post will do so!

The reason my blog appeared in the planet blogroll is the same reason I now write this post. I would like to introduce myself as a newly minted ubuntu member! I couldn't be happier to bleed orange and purple. I have been 'around' ubuntu for a long time, but only recently began pursuing a more active role in the project. This culminated in me joining Canonical as the QA Community Coordinator₁ and now becoming a member :-) I would encourage anyone who might want to know more about me to simply visit the about me and contact me pages above. It has links to goodies like my ubuntu wiki page, launchpad information and contact details.

To those of you within the community who I've been working with already, thank you! It's been a blast getting to know everyone. And for those whom I haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting or working with, feel free to say hello. Join a call for testing, or other testing event and get some hands on time with myself and the other folks in QA; we always enjoy meeting new faces and new people.

You can expect to see more QA and testing posts coming from me on this space. I hope to here more from all of you as well. Happy Testing!

1. Yes, Jono Bacon is my boss, and no it's not quite as cool as you think it would be. jk <3 u Jono!

Call for Testing: 12.10 kernel on 12.04

EDIT: This has been migrated to the production instance. Check out the new post here to get invovled.

The first calls for testing for this cycle are happening! I am excited to not only announce the opportunity to help test this new kernel, but also to unveil some of the new features to the qatracker to allow us to better serve our needs for calls for testing.

Last cycle, calls for testing was a manual thing -- I asked, and the community responded, following along using instructions from a blog or mailing list post. Now we're going to put some more structure around this as I spoke about earlier.

The kernel team is committing to keeping precise up-to-date by providing kernels from the future releases in precise. The first one of these will be the 12.10 kernel which will land in precise as part of the normal 12.04.X update. In order for that to happen, the team is making available kernels to test on 12.04. If you need a newer kernel for hardware enablement, this is the kernel you are encouraged to run and report on. For those running the mainline kernel, this differs in that the ubuntu patchset and official support for this kernel running on 12.04 will happen when it is pushed via update.

So we're really testing a couple things here -- the 12.10 kernel on 12.04, but also the new qatracker. Feedback is encouraged on the qatracker also! Ok, so how does this work?

First, you'll need to use the staging site for the qatracker, were a package tracker has been setup. If you click on the 'Quantal kernel for precise LTS' link, you will wind up on a page showcasing the tests and instructions for this call for testing. If you click the 'Link to the installation information' link you will get information on installing and uninstalling the package and filing bugs against the package. Especially note the instructions for filing a bug properly; additional information is requested to help make your bug report more helpful to the development team. If you click the 'Kernel Smoke Tests' link you'll arrive on the page with the instructions for the testcase. If you login to the tracker using your ubuntu SSO credentials, you will be able to report results as well. This should look very familiar to those of you who have used the isotracker in the past. Neat eh? If you have any issues in using the tracker, feel free to get in touch with me.

I'm asking those folks willing to help test please head over to the qatracker and submit results. Note that the qatracker emails are turned off, but otherwise everything should function as expected for you. To leave feedback on the new site, file a bug and mention your using the new staging qatracker. Contributions to the qatracker are welcome and encouraged, contact me if your interested in helping out.