Who updates the debian-cloud-testing images in GCE?

[Theodore Y. Ts'o]

I noticed recently that the images debian-cloud-testing images were
lasted updated in August, which seems quite out-of-date compared to
the images in debian-cloud.

% gcloud compute images list --project debian-cloud-testing --no-standard-images
NAME PROJECT FAMILY DEPRECATED STATUS
debian-10-buster-v20180823 debian-cloud-testing debian-10 READY
debian-9-stretch-v20180820 debian-cloud-testing debian-9 READY

% gcloud compute images list --project debian-cloud --no-standard-images
NAME PROJECT FAMILY DEPRECATED STATUS
debian-9-stretch-v20181113 debian-cloud debian-9 READY

It wasn't clear to me who was responsible for updating
debian-cloud-testing. I asked internally inside Google, and I got a
response that normally it wasn't Google's Cloud Image team which
updates the debian-cloud-testing project, but rather Debian.

The person who responded said they did have access so they *could*
update it, but I was concerned that if in fact this project was owned
by debian-cloud, it would step on toes if I asked the Google Cloud
team to update images in debian-cloud-testing project.

The main reason why I'm asking is because I'm interested in doing some
testing with Debian Buster, and the Buster has changed significantly
since August. Specifically, the grub package has changed enough that
simply doing a "apt-get update ; apt-get -y --with-new-pkgs upgrade"
results in a non-functional image when the automated script[1]
finishes.

[1] https://github.com/tytso/xfstests-bld/blob/master/kvm-xfstests/test-appliance/gce-xfstests-bld.sh

I've since found a workaround, using:

apt-get update
apt-get install -y debconf-utils curl
debconf-set-selections <<EOF
grub-pc grub-pc/install_devices multiselect /dev/sda
EOF
export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
apt-get -y --with-new-pkgs upgrade

.... so it's not urgent for me; but it would be nice if a nicer Buster
image was made available to debian-cloud-testing so others don't run
into the problems that I did. I just want to make sure it happens in
the right way without anyone feeling bypassed in the process.

Thanks!!

- Ted

[Zach Marano]

Hi Ted,
Actually it is the Google Cloud team right now that owns that project and
and it is best effort to publish anything that works there. Eventually, the
Debian Cloud team will take ownership of producing testing images using
Debian infrastructure. We are not quite there yet however. We don't publish
updated Debian testing and unstable images very often- they are only for
development purposes and not officially supported by Google or Debian at
the moment. You should build your own images using the GCE Fai configs
<https://salsa.debian.org/cloud-team/debian-cloud-images> that we are all
working on but there is no guarantee that what you get will work correctly
until Buster is released as stable.

-----
Zach Marano

Post by Theodore Y. Ts'o
I noticed recently that the images debian-cloud-testing images were
lasted updated in August, which seems quite out-of-date compared to
the images in debian-cloud.
% gcloud compute images list --project debian-cloud-testing
--no-standard-images
NAME PROJECT FAMILY DEPRECATED
STATUS
debian-10-buster-v20180823 debian-cloud-testing debian-10
READY
debian-9-stretch-v20180820 debian-cloud-testing debian-9
READY
% gcloud compute images list --project debian-cloud --no-standard-images
NAME PROJECT FAMILY DEPRECATED STATUS
debian-9-stretch-v20181113 debian-cloud debian-9 READY
It wasn't clear to me who was responsible for updating
debian-cloud-testing. I asked internally inside Google, and I got a
response that normally it wasn't Google's Cloud Image team which
updates the debian-cloud-testing project, but rather Debian.
The person who responded said they did have access so they *could*
update it, but I was concerned that if in fact this project was owned
by debian-cloud, it would step on toes if I asked the Google Cloud
team to update images in debian-cloud-testing project.
The main reason why I'm asking is because I'm interested in doing some
testing with Debian Buster, and the Buster has changed significantly
since August. Specifically, the grub package has changed enough that
simply doing a "apt-get update ; apt-get -y --with-new-pkgs upgrade"
results in a non-functional image when the automated script[1]
finishes.
[1]
https://github.com/tytso/xfstests-bld/blob/master/kvm-xfstests/test-appliance/gce-xfstests-bld.sh
apt-get update
apt-get install -y debconf-utils curl
debconf-set-selections <<EOF
grub-pc grub-pc/install_devices multiselect /dev/sda
EOF
export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
apt-get -y --with-new-pkgs upgrade
.... so it's not urgent for me; but it would be nice if a nicer Buster
image was made available to debian-cloud-testing so others don't run
into the problems that I did. I just want to make sure it happens in
the right way without anyone feeling bypassed in the process.
Thanks!!
- Ted

[Theodore Y. Ts'o]

Post by Zach Marano
Hi Ted,
Actually it is the Google Cloud team right now that owns that project and
and it is best effort to publish anything that works there. Eventually, the
Debian Cloud team will take ownership of producing testing images using
Debian infrastructure. We are not quite there yet however. We don't publish
updated Debian testing and unstable images very often- they are only for
development purposes and not officially supported by Google or Debian at
the moment. You should build your own images using the GCE Fai configs
<https://salsa.debian.org/cloud-team/debian-cloud-images> that we are all
working on but there is no guarantee that what you get will work correctly
until Buster is released as stable.

Hi Zach,

Thanks for the clarification about and the pointer!

- Ted