Infrastructure/Meetings/2006-12-21

= Meeting of 2006-12-21 =


 * Time shown in EST

15:11 <@mmcgrath> We ready to get started? 15:12 * jcollie is if you are 15:12 <@mmcgrath> Alllrighty, role call! 15:12 <@mmcgrath> who's here. 15:13 /me 15:13 <@mmcgrath> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Schedule as always 15:13 * abadger1999 answers the call 15:13 * kim0 is here 15:13 I 15:13 * warren here 15:14 <@mmcgrath> Item 1, the Packaging Database. Anyone have anything to discuss regarding it? 15:14 Not much. 15:14 I have an updated schema that's got a few ugly spots. 15:15 <@mmcgrath> No worries. 15:15 I'll send it to the list and hopefully someone else can make some suggestions. 15:15 -!- ssrat2 [n=ssrat@host-69-95-160-236.pit.choiceone.net] has joined #fedora-admin 15:15 <@mmcgrath> Regarding VCS: 15:15 abadger1999, I've been trying to lean on our folks to release the brew schema sooner, so it can be part of an elegant PDB design earlier. 15:15 instead of glued on 15:15 <@mmcgrath> We got the SCM Sig 'started' the first email went out today. There's 9 people on the list. 15:15 warren: Yay :-) 15:15 mmcgrath, where? 15:15 <@mmcgrath> abadger1999: do you and f13 want to keep leading the way with this? I've just kind of been doing organization up to this point. 15:16 mmcgrath: Cool.  I think we need to use a public ml for that. 15:16 <@mmcgrath> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/SCMSig 15:16 Instead of just private mail. 15:16 <@mmcgrath> a dedicated public ml or devel or something? 15:16 <@mmcgrath> Doesn't matter to me, I was just going to let the group decide where to go with it. 15:16 Doesn't matter to me either. 15:17 Maybe announce on -maintainers and discuss on -devel? 15:17 (initial announcement) 15:17 <@mmcgrath> Could be. 15:17 brb 15:17 <@mmcgrath> I'm fine with either method there. 15:17 <@mmcgrath> iWolf: ping? 15:18 mmcgrath: I'll try to redirect email to -devel for that, then. 15:18 <@mmcgrath> k, we'll skip the db and upgrade stuff for now. 15:18 <@mmcgrath> 15:19 <@mmcgrath> luke's gone 15:19 <@mmcgrath> warren: do you think its time to move 'xen' to the done category or at least add which boxes we'll be converting next? 15:19 * mmcgrath notices the brb. We'll get back to that. 15:20 <@mmcgrath> dgilmore: ping 15:20 <@mmcgrath> k, skip. 15:20 <@mmcgrath> Configuration management. Have people been following the discussions on the list? 15:21 Yes. 15:21 lutter has some good points. 15:22 * warren back 15:22 mmcgrath, done, it is just a regular thing we do now 15:22 <@mmcgrath> warren: Should we activly convert what we have or just build it that way as new systems come about? 15:22 * mmcgrath votes for alter as new systems come. 15:23 mmcgrath, alter as new systems come, or when reinstalls are necessary. 15:23 mmcgrath: If you're talking about xen then I agree. 15:23 <@mmcgrath> k, we'll leave it at that then 15:23 -!- mmcgrath changed the topic of #fedora-admin to: config management 15:23 <@mmcgrath> :-) 15:23 ooo 15:23 <@mmcgrath> So I've been following it back and forth, what do you guys think? 15:24 <@mmcgrath> I mean, at this point I'd really like to see a matrix 15:24 i've started one 15:24 <@mmcgrath> of what we want, what the things do and maybe how well they do them. 15:24 Did we implement glump on one machine to see how it goes? 15:24 I think lutter has some good points -- if we actually want the features that puppet/bcfg2 provides then we should go with that. 15:24 <@mmcgrath> After all, this is a fairly small network at present, we're not talking about 10,000 machines. 15:24 If we don't then glump could be fine. 15:25 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/JeffOllie/ConfigurationManagement 15:25 <@mmcgrath> warren: not yet. 15:25 <@mmcgrath> We should though, I just haven't had time to get to it :-/ 15:25 i think that the strength of glump (nice and simple) is also its weakness 15:26 <@mmcgrath> I also like the idea of sponsering a project like that and making it better. 15:26 <@mmcgrath> AFAIK right now its only used at duke. 15:26 i think that we'll want to do things with a config mgmt system which will mean serving up custom scripts with glump 15:27 jcollie: I agree. It may turn out that we end up doing a lot more work to write the scripts in glump than just learning the syntax of one of the other projects. 15:27 plus, if you're writing a script are you going to take the time to do error checking etc 15:27 mmcgrath: That's a minus as well, though. Many people use and enhance puppet while it would just be Duke and us working on glump. 15:27 <@mmcgrath> has anyone here used cfengine or puppet in any sort of deployment? 15:28 no i've never used any of them 15:28 <@mmcgrath> me either. 15:28 although i'm about to roll out something using glump 15:29 <@mmcgrath> We'll have to revisit this when we get more experience in them. Anyone want to volunteer to evaluate puppet or cfengine? 15:29 <@mmcgrath> If not I'll flood the list with a request. 15:29 Wonder if we could get mricon to write something up for us? 15:30 He worked at Duke so he probably had exposure to glump. 15:30 <@mmcgrath> It'd be nice to get someone up to speed enough to write a bit about it and be able to answer our questions. 15:30 And his blog sounded like he used cfengine and was evaluating bcfg2 15:30 yeah, from his blog entry it looks like he's working in that space 15:30 <@mmcgrath> abadger1999: worksforme, could you send him a note? 15:30 mmcgrath: I'll do that. 15:31 what is mricon doing these days? 15:31 <@mmcgrath> K, we'll move on until we hear back. 15:31 -!- mmcgrath changed the topic of #fedora-admin to: Metrics / Hardware reporting tool 15:32 <@mmcgrath> So the board meeting was yesterday and it seemed they wanted me to keep moving foward on metrics. 15:32 <@mmcgrath> I'm working on a hardware reporting tool based off the RHEL5 rhn-client-tools (GPL). 15:32 -!- ssrat [n=ssrat@host-69-95-161-250.pit.choiceone.net] has quit [Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)] 15:32 <@mmcgrath> I'm going to write a server backend in turbogears (already started). I'm hoping to have something working-ish late january. 15:32 warren: I think he's doing web programming and sys admin stuff at a University in Montreal. 15:33 mmcgrath, opt-in and store stuff in a database at fp.o? 15:33 <@mmcgrath> warren: yeah, I'm hoping for it to be non fedora specific so that A) others could use it and B) we could, in theory, get stuff from other distros. 15:33 <@mmcgrath> I could see something not working in fedora but having it work in Debian for example, this way they could send us a profile and we could examine it. 15:34 sounds ambitious 15:34 mmcgrath, sounds like an ideal hosted.fp.o project =) 15:34 <@mmcgrath> I'm hoping to get something like this - http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html 15:34 <@mmcgrath> ;-) 15:34 <@mmcgrath> f13 showed that to me. I like the format. 15:35 <@mmcgrath> Anywho, thats that on metrics for now. Once the framework is done I'll be itching for people to test, hack and comment. 15:35 -!- mmcgrath changed the topic of #fedora-admin to: Postfix 15:35 <@mmcgrath> whats the word on the new smtp server? 15:35 Yeah, that's been my problem. 15:35 I just need to do it. 15:35 I'm traveling currently 15:36 <@mmcgrath> Ahh, no worries. After all, we do have a working system in place ;-) 15:36 Has anyone worked on adapting the alias generation stuff for postfix? 15:36 -!- mmcgrath changed the topic of #fedora-admin to: Caching Proxies 15:36 <@mmcgrath> warren: isn't the format the same? the aliases file? 15:36 -!- mmcgrath changed the topic of #fedora-admin to: postfix 15:36 mmcgrath, almost 15:36 oh crap, forgot meeting. 15:36 mmcgrath, I'll figure it out... 15:36 <@mmcgrath> f13: no worries 15:36 <@mmcgrath> k 15:36 -!- mmcgrath changed the topic of #fedora-admin to: Caching Proxies 15:37 <@mmcgrath> kim0: your time to shine, you around? 15:37 :) around .. 15:37 testing next saturaday 10:00 am GMT 15:37 <@mmcgrath> What numbers will we be getting after the test? 15:38 I'm storing all ab out .. but the interesting ones should be 15:38 requests / sec 15:38 and time per request .. 15:38 plus .. memory usage which will determine the max number of clients we can serve 15:38 memory/apache process basically 15:38 also, comparing how squid is helpful 15:39 one test with squid, and one without 15:39 <@mmcgrath> wonderful. 15:39 that's it 15:39 15:39 That'll be good. 15:39 kim0: Did we upgrade to the moin that works well with squid? 15:39 <@mmcgrath> Yep, and we'll probably plan on having at least a few more tests depending on how these results go. 15:40 abadger1999: paulo did that. The new version is up 15:40 * kim0 agrees, we'll probably need more tests later 15:40 <@mmcgrath> kim0 will you be able to test the old version with the new version? 15:40 <@mmcgrath> and get those numbers as well? 15:40 umm... to be meaningful, they'd have to be on the same machine ?! 15:41 dont think that's possible, right 15:41 <@mmcgrath> don't we have the original version on one of the ap servers? Isn't that how we upgraded :-D? 15:42 we could connect to that as well ... analyse what we get later 15:42 <@mmcgrath> sounds good 15:42 -!- mmcgrath changed the topic of #fedora-admin to: Open Floor. 15:43 <@mmcgrath> Anyone have anything else to discuss? 15:43 * f13 just thought of a great whitepaper 15:43 using microsoft virus zombies for site performance testing 15:43 lol @ that 15:43 what better way to get a wide range of systems in various locations to hit your site at a coordinated time? 15:43 hah -- DOS aimed at your own site :-) 15:43 <@mmcgrath> No! Bad f13! 15:43 <@mmcgrath> :-) 15:43 f13: get a link posted to your site on slashdot 15:43 * mmcgrath shakes finger 15:44 just like paying somebody to attempt to break into your facility/network. 15:44 jcollie: i was just thinking that same thing 15:44 Need someone with cfengine expertise? 15:45 <@mmcgrath> ssrat2: yeah, we could use a write up and a matrix comparing it to puppet and glump. 15:45 hi 15:45 sorry I wasn't around 15:45 Never heard of glump till you mentioned it (researching as we talk) 15:45 Not sure if this is the appropriate forum for this question, but have we ever considered "dogfooding" the next release of FC on the fedoraproject infrastructure? 15:46 poelcat: bad idea :/ 15:46 I've heard of puppet and examined some, but not anything in depth. 15:46 I do know Ruby well, though... 15:46 poelcat: we don't exactly have enough manpower to fix the kind of problems we'd run into doing that. 15:46 poelcat, so if the fp.o infrastructure survives the release announcement, then the release is good? =) 15:47 I've done doc editing and writing with the cfengine project in the past... 15:47 warren: :) ... just thinking of the "real world pounding" it would get :) 15:47 <@mmcgrath> ssrat2: if you could, go ahead and send a review of what you think of it pros and cons (both) to the fedora-infrastructure-list 15:48 I plan to join ASAP (normally I lurk for a while, but I just had to offer....) 15:48 f13: or maybe do a trial run for a day(s) with backup servers. if something is really hosed switch back to known good 15:48 <@mmcgrath> no worries, your input will be nice. 15:49 <@mmcgrath> warren: FYI regarding the SCM SIG, I've created a #fedora-scm channel for discussion when we finally start talking about it. 15:49 <@mmcgrath> Anyone have anything else to discuss before we close the meeting? 15:49 I'm confused as to why it took so long to create the SCM-SIG 15:49 poelcat: reinstalling and porting services every 6 months is !fun nor productive. 15:49 fedora summit said FPB would create it immediately 15:49 warren: wait loop. 15:50 warren: I thought Greg/Max was going to do it, Greg/Max thought somebody else was going to do it. 15:50 <@mmcgrath> warren: it just never happened I guess. Its there now though. 15:50 <@mmcgrath> f13: heh, so it ended up being me :-D 15:50 warren: also, if its a backburner item, there are FAR more important things to be worked on. 15:50 <@mmcgrath> f13: I asked abadger1999 earlier. do you guys want to keep being lead on that? I'm just kind of playing the coordinator role. 15:51 mmcgrath: anyone used arch (for SCM)? 15:51 mmcgrath: sure, we can keep leading it. 15:51 <@mmcgrath> f13: awesome, thanks. we should put a timeline together, how long till test1 15:51 <@mmcgrath> ? 15:52 f13: so from your perspective... not enough ROI to justify doing it? I was thinking we would might learn some good things. 15:53 mmcgrath: I think a generic 'after F7 goes out the door, work in earnest will happen on this project' kind of note. 15:53 ssrat2: Bad idea :-) 15:53 <@mmcgrath> So we're not planning on getting this done by FC7? 15:53 poelcat: correct. The I is far too high.  Not that the R wouldn't be nice. 15:54 mmcgrath: no, the board determined that this was not necessary to accomplish the merger, it just makes some things easier down the road. 15:54 f13: fair enough 15:54 <@mmcgrath> Sounds good then. 15:54 <@mmcgrath> That takes a bit of a load off actually. 15:55 <@mmcgrath> Alllrighty, anyone have anything else? 15:55  * mmcgrath topic About to close 15:55 -!- mmcgrath changed the topic of #fedora-admin to: About to close 15:55 ssrat2: There are several alternatives to arch these days that have most of the nice features it had but have less of the UI warts. 15:56  * mmcgrath will Close in 30 15:56 <@mmcgrath> 20 15:56 <@mmcgrath> 10 15:56 <@mmcgrath> 5 15:56 <@mmcgrath> -- MEETING END