Please include linux-oem-20.04 for Machine minimum kernel

[Rex Tsai]

There are some new hardware are not supported by GA and HWE kernel, eg Intel Tigerlake. The machine will not boot up correctly and stuck for the commission, which blocking people who like to deploy an image on the latest hardware.

The OEM kernels are implemented and tested for Client products, which support the latest silicon and hardware design. The linux-oem-20.04 are officially supported kernel by Canonical kernel/hwe team.

Please add the linux-oem-20.04 kernel into the minimum kernel list. Thanks

[1] linux-oem package : Ubuntu - https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-oem
[2] linux-oem-osp1 package : Ubuntu - https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-oem-osp1

[Lee Trager (ltrager)]

MAAS has a very strict understanding of kernels. This is done to allow users to set a minimum kernel version on a machine and have MAAS automatically select the correct kernel version or prevent a user from selecting an older kernel version. Because of this we'll need to add the kernels to the stream in lp:maas-images as well as teach lp:maas how to handle these new kernels.

We need to understand the following:
1. What is the short hand name for these kernels? Currently we have ga-18.04 and hwe-18.04, what should these be called?
2. Will these kernels have flavors? Currently we have -lowlatency, -edge, and -lowlatency-edge
3. How should MAAS determine which is the latest kernel? For example users today can configure a machine to have a minimum kernel version of hwe-18.04. When deploying Bionic that means they can only choose between hwe-18.04-lowlatency, hwe-18.04-edge, or hwe-18.04-lowlatency-edge. Should oem or oem-osp1 kernels be considered newer or older?
4. Which versions of MAAS need to support these kernels?

It may be easier to discuss this at our upcoming sprint.

[Lee Trager (ltrager)]

I met with the kernel team at the Paris sprint to talk about this bug. We agreed that these kernels are not a good fit to be added into the MAAS stream as they are mainly for consumer devices and the kernel names may be changing.

You can still use kernels that are not in the MAAS stream by adding the following to the end of /etc/maas/preseeds/curtin_userdata

kernel:
  mapping: {}
  package: linux-oem

[Rex Tsai (chihchun)]

Sorry, I missed the comment and did not have the chance to join the meeting of the sprint.

Yes, the linux-oem is designed for consumer devices, and the Device Enablement team is using MAAS with linux-oem kernel to deploy Desktop image and run automatically tests.

Some new hardware design can be only provisioned with linux-oem-osp1 kernel, once the OEM image is deployed to the target machine it will use the kernel package we shipped in the OEM image. The preseed settings does not seems to help on the provision issue.

- Short name can be oem-18.04 and oem-osp1-18.04
- OEM kernel does not have flavors.
- I think we should consider linux-oem is a flavor of GA kernel. I would recommand MAAS use the GA kernel as default. OEM kernel can be used for users who need the cutting edge kernel driver features on their hardware. OEM kernel is usually newer than hwe--18.04 and hwe-18.04-lowlatency.
- Currently we are using 2.5.0.