Apertis is a Debian derivative distribution geared towards the creation of product-specific images for ARM (both the 32bit ARMv7 and 64-bit ARMv8 versions using the hardfloat ABI) and Intel x86-64 (64-bit) systems.

Apertis v2022dev0 is the first development release of the Apertis v2022 stable release flow that will lead to the LTS Apertis v2022.0 release in March 2022.

This Apertis release is built on top of Debian Buster with several customisations and the Linux kernel 5.9.x series until the 5.10.x LTS series is released.

Test results for the v2022dev0 release are available in the following test reports:

Release flow

  • 2020 Q4: v2022dev0
  • 2021 Q1: v2022dev1
  • 2021 Q2: v2022dev2
  • 2021 Q3: v2022dev3
  • 2021 Q4: v2022pre
  • 2022 Q1: v2022.0
  • 2022 Q2: v2022.1
  • 2022 Q3: v2022.2
  • 2022 Q4: v2022.3
  • 2023 Q1: v2022.4
  • 2023 Q2: v2022.5
  • 2023 Q3: v2022.6
  • 2023 Q4: v2022.7

Release downloads

Apertis v2022dev0 images
Intel 64-bit minimal target base SDK SDK
ARM 32-bit (U-Boot) minimal target
ARM 64-bit (U-Boot) minimal
ARM 64-bit (Raspberry Pi) minimal target

The Intel minimal and target images are tested on the reference hardware (MinnowBoard Turbot Dual-Core), but they can run on any UEFI-based x86-64 system. The sdk image is tested under VirtualBox.

Apertis v2022dev0 repositories

deb https://repositories.apertis.org/apertis/ v2022dev0 target development sdk hmi

Changes

This release begins the journey that will lead to the v2022 stable release in March 2022.

The large part of the new changes in this quarter have also been landed in the v2021pre release, with the v2021pre release notes describing them in detail.

Dynamic KVM/UML backend selection in Debos

During the v2021dev1 release cycle an alternative backend for the Debos image builder using UML rather than KVM was developed to make our build pipeline more cloud-friendly, since KVM is often not available on machines provided by cloud providers. Unfortunately UML is by design quite slower than hardware-assisted KVM and this introduced a performance regression for developers using machines with KVM virtualization available.

In this cycle the UML backend was landed to the upstream main branch, adding automatic backend selection: Debos is now able to use KVM if available and fall back to UML in other cases without any user intervention, giving the best performance available.

Deprecations and ABI/API breaks

Regressions

Loop device issues with kernel 5.9

Due to the lateness of the 5.10 LTS release, this release still ships version 5.9 of the Linux kernel, which has shown a few regressions with loop devices impacting the ability to use offline bundles for the Apertis update manager.

Experiments with the 5.10 release candidates seem to indicate that the issues have been addressed, and a minor update to the v2022dev0 release is thus planned in early January to ship the 5.10 kernel once it is released.

Mildenhall HMI flickering

Enabling hardware acceleration for the graphical stack on the i.MX6 images is now causing visual glitches in the Mildenhall HMI while the AGL compositor is not affected.

As a workaround it is possible to disable hardware acceleration when using the Mildenhall compositor:

sudo sed -i -e 's|Exec=/usr/bin/mildenhall|Exec=/usr/bin/env GBM_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 /usr/bin/mildenhall|' /etc/xdg/user-session-launcher/session.launcher

OSTree offline update bundle format change

The upstream libostree 2020.7 version supports two different formats for static delta bundles, as used for offline updates: the old one without signed metadata and a new one which also signs the superblock metadata to ensure it can be trusted.

Support for signed metadata was first introduced in Apertis with the v2021dev2 release and was later upstreamed.

However, during the upstreaming process the format has changed and Apertis now aligns to the upstream format.

This means that signed bundles created with the OSTree version from the v2021 development releases won’t be accepted by this release.

Missing support in the updater for the new OSTree signed offline update format

This release ships with a new libostree upstream version supporting signed metadata for offline bundles, but the Apertis Update Manager (AUM) lacks a few fixes to accept signed offline update bundles generated with it.

An update is planned in early January to fix this issue.

Deprecations

During this release cycle we have continued to mark obsolete or problematic APIs with the ABI break tag as a way to clear technical debt in future.

Breaks

No known breaking changes are part of this release.

Infrastructure

Apertis Docker images

The Apertis Docker images provide a unified and easily reproducible build environment for developers and services.

As of today, this includes the apertis-base, apertis-image-builder, apertis-package-source-builder, apertis-flatdeb-builder, apertis-documentation-builder, and apertis-testcases-builder, Docker images.

Apertis infrastructure tools

The Apertis v2022 infrastructure repository provides packages for the required versions of ostree-push and ostree for Debian Buster:

deb https://repositories.apertis.org/infrastructure-v2022/ buster infrastructure

Images

Image daily builds, as well as release builds can be found at https://images.apertis.org/

Image build tools can be found in the Apertis tools repositories.

Infrastructure overview

The Apertis Image Recipes provides an overview of the image building process and the involved services.

Known issues

High (3)

  • T7506 non-working upgrade with encrypted bundle with “(kernel 5.9)”
  • T7555 ImportError: No module named gobject when executing the connman-usb-tethering test
  • T7557 Mildenhall “flickering” in case if HW EGL support is enabled

Normal (78)

  • T2896 Crash when initialising egl on ARM target
  • T2930 Develop test case for out of screen events in Wayland images
  • T3210 Fix Tracker testcase to not download media files from random HTTP user folders
  • T3233 Ribchester: deadlock when calling RemoveApp() right after RollBack()
  • T3321 libgles2-vivante-dev is not installable
  • T3920 arm-linux-gnueabihf-pkg-config does not work with sysroots installed by ade
  • T4092 Containers fail to load on Gen4 host
  • T4293 Preseed action is needed for Debos
  • T4307 ribchester-core causes apparmor denies on non-btrfs minimal image
  • T4422 do-branching fails at a late stage cloning OBS binary repos
  • T4444 A 2-3 second lag between the speakers is observed when a hfp connection is made over bluetooth
  • T4568 Ribchester mount unit depends on Btrfs
  • T4660 Eclipse Build is not working for HelloWorld App
  • T4693 Not able to create namespace for AppArmor container on the internal mx6qsabrelite images with proprietary kernel
  • T5468 build-snapshot: allow to build packages without autogen.sh script
  • T5487 Wi-Fi search button is missing in wifi application
  • T5747 The /boot mountpoint is not empty
  • T5748 System users are shipped in /usr/etc/passwd instead of /lib/passwd
  • T5863 Songs/Videos don’t play on i.MX6 with Frampton on internal images
  • T5896 sdk-dbus-tools-bustle testcase is failing
  • T5897 apparmor-ofono test fails
  • T5900 evolution-sync-bluetooth test fails
  • T5901 eclipse-plugins-apertis-management package is missing
  • T5906 Video does not stream in WebKit on the i.MX6 internal images
  • T5931 connman-usb-tethering test fails
  • T5993 rhosydd: 8_rhosydd test failed
  • T6001 eclipse-plugins-remote-debugging test fails
  • T6008 The pacrunner package used for proxy autoconfiguration is not available
  • T6024 folks-inspect: command not found
  • T6052 Multimedia playback is broken on the internal i.MX6 images (internal 3.14 ADIT kernel issue)
  • T6077 youtube Videos are not playing on upstream webkit2GTK
  • T6078 Page scroll is lagging in Minibrowser on upstream webkit2GTK
  • T6111 traprain: 7_traprain test failed
  • T6231 gitlab-to-obs: Handle packages changing component across releases
  • T6243 AppArmor ubercache support is no longer enabled after 18.12
  • T6291 Generated lavaphabbridge error report email provides wrong link for full report link
  • T6292 gettext-i18n: test failed
  • T6349 sdk-code-analysis-tools-splint: 3_sdk-code-analysis-tools-splint test failed
  • T6366 sdk-cross-compilation: 10_sdk-cross-compilation test failed
  • T6369 apparmor-gstreamer1-0: test failed
  • T6444 aum-update-rollback-tests/arm64,amd64: Automatic power cut test should be reworked to reduce the speed of delta read
  • T6446 aum-update-rollback-tests/amd64: DNS not available in LAVA tests after reboot
  • T6614 aum-update-rollback-tests/armhf: Rollback situation is not reproduced on public armhf target and internal images
  • T6620 Repeatedly plugging and unplugging a USB flash drive on i.MX6 (Sabrelite) results in USB failure
  • T6662 SDK: command-not-found package is broken
  • T6669 Stop building cross compilers tools and libraries for not supported platforms
  • T6670 Remove or move git-mediawiki package from the development repo
  • T6727 FTBFS: Apertis v2020pre package build failures
  • T6768 Fix the kernel command line generation in OSTRee for FIT image
  • T6773 HAB testing: the unsigned image may pass validation in several circumstances
  • T6783 Kernel trace on armhf board with attached screen
  • T6795 SabreLite failing to boot due to failing “to start udev Coldplug all Devices”
  • T6806 HAB on SabreLite in open state accepts any signed kernel regardless of the signing key
  • T6885 gitlab-rulez fails to set location of the gitlab-ci.yaml on first run
  • T6887 ARM64 target does not reboot automatically
  • T6903 U-Boot boot counter is used for AMD64 & ARM64
  • T6961 audio-backhandling feature fails
  • T7000 DNS resolution does not work in Debos on some setups
  • T7012 Apparmor Denied session logs keep popping up on the terminal while executing tests
  • T7016 network proxy for browser application is not resolving on mildenhall-compositor
  • T7056 FAILED: Error running command: [‘ssh-copy-id’, ‘user@127.0.0.1’ errors are shown when running the sdk-persistent testcases
  • T7127 apparmor-functional-demo: test failed
  • T7128 apparmor-session-lockdown-no-deny
  • T7129 apparmor-tumbler: test failed
  • T7237 sdk-persistent-disk-sysroot test fails
  • T7238 sdk persistent memory tests fail
  • T7247 connman-new-supplicant: test failed
  • T7308 sdk-vb-fullscreen testcase link needs to be changed for v2019
  • T7333 apparmor-geoclue: test failed
  • T7340 newport: test failed
  • T7503 Failed to unmount /usr on ostree-based images: Device or resource busy log is seen on rebooting
  • T7511 Syntax highlight on the website is producing undesirable results
  • T7512 debos sometimes fails to mount things
  • T7530 ADE can’t download amd64 sysroot.
  • T7531 connman-usb-tethering testcase fails in apertis v2020 and v2019 images
  • T7559 grilo: test failed
  • T7567 hawkBit upload jobs are failing
  • T7569 add-repo: test failed

Low (15)

  • T1809 Upstream: linux-tools-generic should depend on lsb-release
  • T1964 Mildenhall compositor crops windows
  • T2226 Network search pop-up isn’t coming up in wi-fi settings
  • T2367 Videos are hidden when Eye is launched
  • T2483 Video doesn’t play when toggling from full screen to detail view
  • T2704 The video player window is split into 2 frames in default view
  • T3161 If 2 drawers are activated, the most recent one hides behind the older one, instead of coming on top of older one.
  • T3759 Status bar is not getting updated with the current song/video being played
  • T4166 On multiple re-entries from settings to eye the compositor hangs
  • T4296 Segmentation fault is observed on closing the mildenhall-compositor
  • T7204 Bluez pairing operation is failing from time to time
  • T7225 webkit2gtk-ac-3d-rendering test fails
  • T7406 RNG-Hardware-error error logs are seen on booting up the i.MX6 target
  • T7514 Remote outputs and local output, buffer size combined in Maynard/GTK
  • T7551 Maynard shows canterbury applications that shouldn’t be displayed

Lowest (28)

  • T1556 No connectivity Popup is not seen when the internet is disconnected.
  • T1960 remove INSTALL, aclocal.m4 files from langtoft
  • T2028 Documentation is not available from the main folder
  • T2299 Clutter_text_set_text API redraws entire clutterstage
  • T2475 Theme ,any F node which is a child of an E node is not working for Apertis widgets.
  • T2833 Interaction with PulseAudio not allowed by its AppArmor profile
  • T2995 Focus in launcher rollers broken because of copy/paste errors
  • T3174 Clang package fails to install appropriate egg-info needed by hotdoc
  • T3219 Canterbury messes up kerning when .desktop uses unicode chars
  • T3237 make check fails on libbredon package for wayland warnings
  • T3580 Canterbury entry-point launching hides global popups, but only sometimes
  • T3588 <abstractions/chaiwala-base> gives privileges that not every app-bundle should have
  • T3730 canterbury: Most of the tests fail
  • T3771 Roller problem in settings application
  • T3797 Variable roller is not working
  • T3798 In mildenhall, URL history speller implementation is incomplete.
  • T3909 MildenhallSelectionPopupItem doesn’t take ownership when set properties
  • T3969 MildenhallSelPopupItem model should be changed to accept only gchar * instead of MildenhallSelPopupItemIconDetail for icons
  • T3971 libbredon/seed uninstallable on target as they depend on libraries in :development
  • T3991 virtual keyboard is not showing for password input field of any webpage
  • T3992 Steps like pattern is seen in the background in songs application
  • T3996 Avoid unconstrained dbus AppArmor rules in frome
  • T4027 webkit2GTK crash observed flicking on webview from other widget
  • T4031 Mildenhall should install themes in the standard xdg data dirs
  • T4050 Render theme buttons are not updating with respect to different zoom levels
  • T4348 Inital Roller mappings are misaligned on the HMI
  • T4419 traprain: sadt: error: cannot find debian/tests/control
  • T4421 ribchester: Job for generated-test-case-ribchester.service canceled