Standup Notes 2020 07 16

Participants (alphabetical): Allie, Conor, Erik, John, Kevin, Kushal, Mickael, Nina, Ro

Topics and Call-outs

SecureDrop 1.5.0

• Some ways a user "deleted" could end up in the system weren't caught, a fix for that will go into RC2

• Release issue: https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop/issues/5368

• QA matrix: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y8Kiy0NzWxKsoKy9KmmtfQNpCWZxZsbDymP6yJg7FJs/edit#gid=373736950

• Erik: Some Weblate comments may have gone missing, see infra #2798

  • May just be UI issue

• @comradekingu suggesting shorter wording for alert https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop/pull/5375

  • Erik suggests to leave as-is, merge https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop/pull/5379/files which standardizes "onion service" terminology

  • John to take a spin through the comments, flag anything we may want to change before RC2

  • Kev doing NUC5 QA on RC1

  • Ro doing NUC7 QA on RC1

• Comamnd to create the hardware details in qubes dom0: qubes-hcl-report VMNAME This saves the report in the VMNAME.

SecureDrop Workstation Kernel Issue

• Glitch (any window opened in SD VMs producing graphical noise) for one pilot user due to paxctld loading issue in postinst, which causes build failure of u2mfn module that Qubes requires (built via dkms autoinstall)

  • Why did postinst not just error out?

  • During the apt upgrade of the metapackage, we run dkms autoinstall, which looks like it's always exiting zero, regardless of error state.

  • For greater resilience on system boot, we may want to alter boot order of paxctld.

  • Erik to test on X1, start tracking spreadsheet for kernel results

  • Conor to open PR for securedrop-debian-packaging, no need for kernel rebuild

SecureDrop Client Release

Allie

Yesterday:

• Took PTO to make up for working on Friday

  Investigated font notification issue in https://app.uxpin.com/dashboard/project/2354448

  Spent time debuggin https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop-client/issues/1109

Today:

Review new client changelog PRs and prepare client release

Bi-weekly tech meeting: create facilitator guide

Prep for user interview on Friday (go over research plan and user study docs again)

Reproduce https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop-client/issues/1125#issuecomment-656938451

Continue working on https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop-client/issues/1109

Blockers or Asks:

• None

Conor

Yesterday:

• debugging recent workstation kernel release

Today:

• first pass at fixing workstation kernel metapackage (will file issue first)
• resuming apt repo package cleanup

Blockers or Asks:

• dkms autoinstall seems to exit zero always. can we override that to fail-fast?

Erik

Yesterday:

• Knowledge share re: release comms w/ Ro
• Reviewed some Weblate comments, deferring further review until comment issue is resolved; put in onion service PR
• Poke at kernel issue (only Conor was able to repro)

Today:

• Weblate comments (historical)
• A few meetings, aiming to poke at https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop/issues/5347 (old codepaths, no need to fold into 1.5.0)
• User research check-in pre-Friday

Blockers or Asks: None

John

Yesterday:

• release

Today:

• release: rc2
• looking into possible Weblate comment loss
• QA

Blockers or Asks:

• None. Thanks for all the quick reviews.

Kev

Yesterday:

• Kernel troubleshooting

Today:

• QA
• onion service PR review

Blockers or Asks: None

Kushal

Today:

• Spent time in https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop/pull/5380
• QA started on 1.5.0~rc1

Tomorrow: Hopefully some sleep. Blockers or Asks:

• None

Mickael

Yesterday:

• some release tasks
• Default branches Today:
• Client release w/ Allie
• QA?

Blockers or Asks:

• Nightlies are failing, requires merge of https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop-debian-packaging/pull/177

Ro

Yesterday:

• Release comms mtg; meeting new intern

Today:

• QA

Blockers or Asks: None