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This is an incomplete DRAFT.

To be carried out by: nominated stable release manager, with support from the stable release updates and release teams

Goals:

• Refresh hardware support in LTS releases for carefully-selected hardware
• Roll up accumulated stable updates into updated images to reduce download requirements for new deployments
• Maintain stability of existing installations

Between Release minus 6 months and Release minus 2 months:

1. Discuss candidates for new or improved hardware support with affected parties. Some sources for this work should be:
   • the Canonical support team (via Steve George)
   • customers
   • the Ubuntu kernel team
   • the Ubuntu QA team
2. Establish a hit-list of bugs to fix in the point release using a milestone. Milestoning bugs is not a commitment to including the changes in the point release; they may be deferred after further information becomes available.
3. In concert with affected developers, triage the hit-list for feasibility.

Release minus 2 months:

1. Process stable release updates as normal. For hardware-enabling fixes, the package should be tested on the affected hardware prior to submitting to sign-off for -proposed.

2. Discuss the possibility of a Canonical press release for the point release with Gerry Carr.
3. Liaise with IS, QA, and certification to arrange for testing resources.

Release minus 1 month:

1. In coordination with QA, verify that all candidate bugs are fixed.

2. Upload a new base-files package to -proposed to bump the lsb_release description (example for 6.06.2). Do not change the DISTRIB_RELEASE value, which is used programmatically by third-party software.

3. If the kernel or associated modules have been changed, upload debian-installer after all the binaries are in place. If the ABI changed, make sure to take account of this throughout debian-installer/build/config/ and in the installer seed for all flavours being built.

4. Change cdimage/bin/make-web-indices, cdimage/bin/publish-release, and debian-cd/CONF.sh to use the new release version number.

5. Change cdimage/bin/run-germinate and debian-cd/CONF.sh to build from -proposed temporarily.

6. Build CD images (which will be published on cdimage.ubuntu.com) and smoke-test in some convenient environment to check for obvious failures.

Release minus 3 weeks:

1. Contact IS, QA, and/or certification as appropriate to request testing for hardware recertification.
2. Iterate CD images as needed based on testing feedback, in coordination with the kernel team.

Release minus 6 days:

1. Once testing is verified to be complete, move packages to -updates.

2. Notify Scott James Remnant to perform a ReadaheadListUpdate

Release:

• release images as final, and move the previous images to old-releases.ubuntu.com:

  • Check with James Troup whether the previous point release needs to be moved off before prepublishing due to mirror space constraints.
  • Prepublish images:

    DIST=dapper ARCHES="i386 amd64 sparc powerpc" for-project ubuntu publish-release ubuntu-server/daily 20080110.1 server poolonly (similar for alternates, desktops, etc.)

  • TODO much more detail here
• Create a snapshot of the archive:

  lp_archive@drescher:~$ point-release-snapshot dapper dapper.2-security-updates-snapshot

  which will create a hardlink farm in ~lp_archive/point-releases/.

• File a bug on ubuntu-website to have https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes updated.

TODO:

• Anything else?
• Standard criteria for adding -updates tag to bugs