I, Eric Desrochers, apply for Core Developer.

Who I am

I joined Canonical in August 2014 as a Technical Account Manager within Canonical's STS team. As a result of hard work and effort, I earned respect from my peers. Since then, I got promoted into the Sustaining Engineering team where some of my responsibilities are : driving customer and community bugs into resolution by troubleshooting, fixing bugs, providing guidance & workarounds, for different areas of expertise which may cover areas such as: kernel, drivers, virtualization, network, cloud, storage setups, ... and physical/virtual environment orchestration. Also working with other members within Canonical Ubuntu Engineering, Cloud Development Operations Team, Ubuntu User and Developers Community, Upstream Communities, ...

I think I have a good history of substantial direct contributions and a good sense of personal responsibility for the quality of Ubuntu releases and for the satisfaction of Ubuntu users.

My Ubuntu story

I officially started to used Ubuntu in 2006 for my personal computers. In the same time, in my professional life, I was also deploying a few hundreds OpenVZ (Virtuozzo) containers running Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake).

Ten years later, I am still running Ubuntu on my personal computers and now have the chance to work for Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. I've been a Technical Account Manager for 2 years and now I'm in the sustaining engineering team.

Ubuntu memberships

• Ubuntu SRU Developer

• Ubuntu Contributing Developer

• Ubuntu Member

• Ubuntu Bug Control

• Ubuntu Bug Squad

My involvement

• I'm part of the support engineering team in Canonical. Debugging/Fixing userspace/kernel issues/bugs.
• In a joint efforts rbasak and I prepared and then convinced the DMB to unanimously vote +1 for the creation of a new launchpad team: "SRU Developer".
• I've been involved in the "Patch Pilots" rotation in #ubuntu-devel to help.
• Active interaction (daily basis) with other developers in #ubuntu-devel, #ubuntu-release, #ubuntu-server, #ubuntu-meeting, ...
• Active participation in some MIR situations.
• In constant communication with SRU team folks, Coredev, server team, .... to make sure all bugs I or my team work on are not stuck at any stage, respect the SRU process, and get everything release to -updates with a reasonable time frame.
• Acting as a gateway between the support team and other Canonical functional teams.
• Active participation in the #ubuntu-server Office hours (AKA Ubuntu server meeting) on Freenode.
• Acting as key person/ressource in Canonical STS when it comes to SRU, Upload process, version, launchpad, .... questions.
• Guiding/Reviewing/Reworking (when needed) STS patches before it goes into coredev's hand for them to easily proceed with final sponsoring when devel release sponsoring is involved.

Ubuntu contributions / SRU

• Uploads I have sponsored

• My Uploads

• Launchpad Uploaded packages

MIR

• LP: #1700827

  • pcp - convert dpkg-source format to 3.0 (quilt) | LP: #1733646

  • pcp is missing Build-Depends for "libqt5svg5-dev" | LP: #1733619

• LP: #1704130

+1 maintenance

• [FBTFS] pcp is missing Build-Depends for "libqt5svg5-dev" | LP: #1733619

• FTBFS in bionic for cross-toolchain-base | LP: #1742277

FTBFS in stable releases

• FTBFS in trusty for debian-installer | LP: #1743787

Debian contributions

• Bug#883537: sosreport: Regresion from [sosreport] add per-plugin package verification lists.
• Bug#863374: sosreport: Docker plugin uses the wrong command for Ubuntu
• Bug#881822: pcp: pmatop binary segfault when ran as-is
• Bug#881650: pcp: Convert package from 3.0 (native) to 3.0 (quilt)
• Bug#878792: lshw crashes with SEGV in privileged containers, unless you disable the 'usb' test.
• Bug#839645: zfsutils-linux: python utilities script suffix (.py) should be removed as per Policy 10.4
• Bug#839071: zfsutils-linux: Issues based on the fact that ZFS relies on mtab.
• Bug#832938: zfs-linux: ZFS ARC python scripts location and scripts policy
• Bug#805879: libpam-sshauth: libpam-sshauth dropped support for publickey authentication)
• Bug#755848 netcfg: preseed d-i netcfg/hostname does not set hostname
• Bug#775847 openipmi: solterm is not working without ssl
• ...

Ubuntu Kernel contributions

• crash starting at kernel v3.13.0-72 in timer code (LP: #1546320)

• hpsa: move lockup_detected attribute to host attr (LP: #1581169)

• blk-mq: Reuse hardware context cpumask for tags (LP: #1572630)

• vmxnet3: segCnt can be 1 for LRO packets (LP: #1650635)

• scsi: hpsa: limit transfer length to 1MB (LP: #1720359)

• netfilter regression introducing a performance slowdown in binary arp/ip/ip6tables (LP: #1640786)

• ...

Upstream contributions

• ZFSonLinux (ZoL) | Issues 4680

• Sosreport | [zfs] Add plugin for Ubuntu/Debian

• Sosreport | [sosreport] Fix debian policy PackageManager misusage

• Sosreport | [networking] Add /etc/netplan/*.yaml collection for Ubuntu.

• Makedumpfile (ML : kexec@lists.infradead.org) | Merged in v1.6.2

• lshw (EZix) | Commit 7b99d35

• pcp | build: switch deb builds to using the quilt-based format

• pcp | build: add in a missing a Qt5-specific svg library dependency

• ...

Areas of work

I've been mostly involved in fixing userland and kernel bugs. Working on various packaging aspects including hotfix/testfix, SRUs, backports patches, submit patch to Debian (Of course, to contribute in fixing Debian but also to prevent the bug to recur in future Ubuntu merge/sync from Debian), Upstream patch, ...

I have a excellent knowledge of the Ubuntu release cycle and processes (for example SRUs)

Things I could do better

Build and consistently sustain my network by attending more local networking events in my area.

Plans for the future

General

I wish one day to have the chance to give back by mentoring someone the same way I've been mentored.

What I like least in Ubuntu

In general, documentation is good but unfortunately not maintained nor updated, which have the effect to turn out-to-date very quickly.

Comments

I have colaborated with Eric on a number of occasions. Since he became an Ubuntu SRU developer he reviewed and sponsored my patches several times. Moreover, he is always supportive and patient when asked for help or a piece of advice. Especially when it is related to the SRU process. Not long ago I was asked to start a MIR process for one of the packages (pcp). After initial analysis and the preliminary effort I asked Eric to take over this process. He also took over the MIR process of the pcp dependency - papi. He did a wonderful job coordinating this work with the effort of the upstream developers to eventually make pcp successfully pass pre-MIR security audit. -- dgadomski 2017-11-14 16:05:55

I recently collaborated with Eric to update ubuntu-advantage-tools. I am somewhat new to the SRU process and Eric patiently and thoroughly answered my questions and walked me through the process. I have a much better understanding now. This particular upload was very involved. Eric checked everything. Additional work was needed to meet all upload reqts. My colleague, Andreas, who maintains ubuntu-advantage-tools assisted me and Eric worked with both of us to make sure all the reqts were met for several releases including the development release. It took a bit of time and work, but Eric was patient and kept us informed. He did a great job and xenial is now ready to automate enabling fips. I asked Eric for his assistance with another SRU required for Common Criteria certification. Thanks to Eric's advice, I now have that update uploaded and going through the process. Thanks, Eric!! I look forward to working with you again. -- j-latten

I worked with Eric in a couple of SRUs: landscape-client, and ubuntu-advantage-tools. He is quick to spot mistakes and fix them. What I also particularly like is that he drives things forward, not letting them stall. His advice is always welcomed and I enjoy working with him. -- ahasenack

"Eric spent many hours helping out and mentoring multiple teams on the SRU process for getting the ubuntu-advantage-tools package SRU’ed into Ubuntu. He provided reviews and guidance on best practice in order to ensure that the patches were able to be accepted in a timely fashion." -- -- cjohnston 2017-11-20 22:00:54

I've worked a lot with Eric for over three years now. He is always ready to offer guidance. He helped a lot of people with the SRU process and made sure that the correct processes are respected. Furthermore, he has a lot of attention to details and pushes things forward with any occasion. I'm fully supporting him becoming coredev. -- alexmoldovan

I've known Eric for more than 20 years now and I had the opportunity to work with him twice including now at Canonical. I admire Eric's ability to push forward and never back down from a challenge. Eric is the kind of person who gets things done. Any team or organisation will always highly benefit from having Eric in them. He's helped me with merge requests in Launchpad and has helped me many times in my day-to-day responsibilities as a Technical Account Manager at Canonical. I support Eric's claim to becoming coredev 100%. -- davecore

Even though I cannot formally endorse Eric as I have not been a sponsor of any of his uploads, I would like to affirm his skills in packaging and Ubuntu engineering for core-developer membership. I have reviewed multiple SRUs from Eric and they were all high-quality. Also, whenever in doubt he always asks for advice from someone more experienced. -- sil2100 2017-11-29 10:11:27

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Endorsements

Marc Deslauriers

I have sponsored multiple packages for Eric into the dev release, and I see him handling SRUs on a regular basis. He is attentive to details, has a good knowledge of packaging, and has gained a lot of experience doing SRUs. I recommend that Eric becomes coredev. -- mdeslaur

Dan Streetman

As I just recently was approved as an SRU developer, I have only sponsored one upload for Eric, for which I found no problems or errors. However, I've worked with him for over 2 years and he is both very intelligent and very attentive to details, which are both important for a coredev. Additionally he has mentored me through the Ubuntu Development process so that I could apply for, and then be approved as, an SRU developer, so he not only has a strong understanding of what he needs to do as a coredev, but his understanding of the Ubuntu development process is so good he can teach others. He has an extremely strong knowledge of packaging, process, and the people who keep Ubuntu running. If he doesn't know an answer to a question, he knows which experienced Ubuntu developer to ask in IRC. As Ubuntu continues to grow, and the workload placed onto the Ubuntu Core Developers continues to grow, I highly recommend that Eric is approved as an Ubuntu Core Developer so he can help share that burden. -- ddstreet