Ubuntu updates it's supported kernels on a regular interval, a cadence. Today, June 28, 2024, that cadence is 2 weeks for security fixes and 4 weeks for non-security fixes. For our purposes here, I'm going to ignore the 2 week security SRU cycles and focus on the 4 week non-security fixes. Every 4 weeks new Ubuntu kernels are released to the -updates pocket. These updates contain patches that the upstream Linux community has released as part of their stable update process. These updates can also contain fixes requested by Ubuntu partners, users, Ubuntu Engineering, Canonical Support, etc. The schedule for these kernel SRU cycles can be found at https://kernel.ubuntu.com.
A key component of the kernel SRU process is a Launchpad bug referred to as a kernel tracking bug (KTB). For each kernel that is going through the SRU cycle there is an accompanying KTB that is filed against a special project that is unique to KTBs and whos tasks relate to the stages and tasks that the kernel goes through as it moves from the start of producing a kernel update all the way to releasing that kernel to the -updates pocket.
The tools in this project are intended to help examine the different stages kernel packages go through during an SRU cycle with the goal to understand these stages and how long the stages take with the goal of hopfully, reducing the length of each of these stages.
The KTB's history is pulled from Launchpad, changes to the description are discarded and the focus is on task status changes. Annotations are added to the output pointing out the beginning and ending of major stages in the kernel packages progress. The length of those major stages is also provided.
Using the information in a specific KTB the kernel set components associated with a specific kernel update are identified and the build information for those components is pulled from Launchpad. The original goal was to get the exact build times for each component which can be displayed via Launchpad's web interface. However, I've not been able to do that, instead the information I am able to extract is equally important as it is showing the total times it takes to build components from when they are submitted until the component is built. This includes DEPWAIT times I believe.
Gathers data from tracking bugs and put it into a local database. That database can then be interigated by using the stats utility. This tool can be used to perform a number of operations on the database. It can be handy to have a database of current and old KTB data so that statistics can be easily queried for and displayed. Statistics about different kernels of different SRU cycles can be compared.
Prints out a list of all of the sru cycles the database knows about.
Displays various statistics about the one or more kernels whose data has been captured and stored in the local database using db-update.
