MPU Meeting 23rd October 2006

64 bit project

The project is currently at milestones 5 and 6.

Alastair now has updaterpms running on kingsbarns. Also he has been working on converting torridon to use the inf headers

Stephen has built packages for lcfg-boot, lcfg-init and lcfg-lcfginit but they have not yet been tested. He has put together a set of changes to the LCFG PAM component to handle the fact that the modules are in a different directory on x86_64 and asked the Infrastructure Unit to sanity check them before they go live.

LCFG website project

This is at milestone 2. Stephen has spent more time working on the CGI scripts. There are now dynamic pages listing all available releases and showing basic information for a specific release.

Solaris improvement project

Chris is continuing to work on various aspects of moving the Solaris machines over to using lcfg/core. This is turning out to be a big job and he has decided to temporarily branch the headers to simplify the task of merging all the differences.

updaterpms/updatepkgs and AFS are now working

FC5 upgrade project

booting and installbase contexts

The updated packages are in the stable release. Alastair will now complete testing and documentation of the new features.(Action: Alastair)

rpmsubmit project

This is at milestone 1. Alastair has designed the AFS structure. Some compromises have had to be made regarding the web serving of the packages but this isn't too much of a problem as it can be worked around in the apache configuration where necessary. He will now publish the proposal to the MPU list and gather comments. (Action: Alastair)

Emulators Proposal

Alastair has completed work on this project proposal. It works fine with static IP, ideally it would be nice to make it work behind a NAT but that has all sorts of difficult implications.

This might not be big enough for a project, at least for doing the LCFG level work. For now it will just go on the wishlist of future projects.

Operational

FC5 on servers

Alastair will kick start the planning of the FC5 upgrades for the MPU servers by sending a message to the MPU mailing list detailing the machines. (Action: Alastair)

LCFG Header metadata

Alastair has not had time to take this any further. We will bring it back in January, or sooner if someone else has the spare time. We really want this for the next big upgrade.

FC5 Fibre channel Support

Alastair has done the necessary LCFG level work for this and the documentation has been drafted. Some work still needs to be done on software that is at the DICE level (Action: Alastair).

Upgrading LCFG servers to FC5

Chris has now upgraded crisps to FC5, and it is using apache2, currently without SSL support. It is using a header in live which the other LCFG slave servers can be switched to as they are upgraded. Once they are all done the live header can be moved into the dice tree to replace the current file.

openssh on Solaris

This is being held up by the work on moving the Solaris machines over to using lcfg/core files. We will bring this back in December (Action: Chris).

Script the building of install CDs for releases

Chris has been working on this, it is almost done. He will liaise with Stephen to check that the documentation on the wiki for building installroot is correct (Action: Chris).

Test FC5 DIY DICE

Stephen has not yet had time to look into this. He needs to spend some time familiarising himself with the system first (Action: Stephen).

PXE installroot

This has become more urgent now as the Dell 1850s (and newer models) are not supported by the current PXE installer. Stephen will work on producing a new initrd this week (Action: Stephen).

Test for LCFG server releases bug

Stephen still needs to talk to Paul about how to go about testing specific sections of the LCFG server code (Action: Stephen).

Unified defaults package list

The work to move the lists of defaults packages out of lcfg_fc3_lcfg.rpms into lcfg-defaults.rpms has now been completed. The move was announced to lcfg-discuss last week to warn users that unless they take action their server will be unable to build profiles.

Test FC5 on tummy

No progress, Stephen needs to find a spare afternoon to get this done (Action: Stephen).

Compressing logs

Stephen completed testing the logrotate clean-up script but did not get it deployed as the log compression changes flagged up a problem with the LCFG client component. It currently does a copytruncate on the logfile but this setting got temporarily lost. This means that currently lots of machines are not logging very much about what is going on with their LCFG client. An lcfg-client package with a LogRotate method has been tested on berwick and will now be tested on all FC5 develop machines this week.

New hardware

Alastair has ordered up the replacement model for the Dell Poweredge 850 so we can start organising the support. Users are starting to look at 1950 and 2950 machines and also the Dell Optiplex 745, which is the replacement model for the GX620. We need to order some of these models so we can begin developing support.

X11R6 directories

A user enquired about where the executables from /usr/X11R6/bin had gone to, the answer is that they are now in /usr/bin/. This flagged up the problem that xplanet and xv are now installing their executables into an unsupported, non-standard bin directory. A bug has been filed on xplanet in our bugzilla and RAT have been informed about xv. The /usr/X11R6/bin is not in the standard path but is added by scripts in /usr/share/defenv/ for X sessions.

MPU FC5 bugs in bugzilla

Stephen noted that we need to close our entries in bugzilla for the FC5 upgrade where the work has been completed.

Upcoming leave

Alastair is away for most of next week (at least Monday to Thursday). Chris and Alastair have swapped their RT duty weeks.

Next Week

Alastair will:

• Finish off the FC5 fibre channel work
• Publish the rpmsubmit AFS structure plan for comments
• Test and document the new boot/install contexts
• Start the planning of the FC5 upgrades of our servers

Chris will:

• Get apache2 working with SSL on crisps
• More work on lcfg/core on Solaris
• testing/stable releases
• Automate building and storing of CD install images

Stephen will:

• Build a new PXE installroot
• 64 bit project:
  • lcfg headers review
  • PAM changes
• Sort out logrotate cleanup script and lcfg-client LogRotate method