MPU Meeting Monday 30th July 2007

LCFG Website

Paul and Stephen met people from IS, who are working on ideas for the site. They'll bring back initial ideas in September, aiming for a final implementation in November.

The Solaris code needs a few more days' work. We need to do this, not least to give us the code we'll need broaden our support to encompass more package formats than just RPMs. Stephen will aim to get this done in time to close at the September development meeting.

Solaris Improvement Project

No further progress. Chris will check deadlines and try to get definite progress made before Craig goes on holiday.

FC6 Project

It's up for closure in Wednesday's development meeting.

SL5 Project

Alastair has put a proposal for this project into the development meeting.

Chris will organise another project meeting for the week after next (13-17 August).

The project's daily diary is now on the LCFG wiki at http://wiki.lcfg.org/bin/view/LCFG/SL5Diary

The project plan is now on devproj at https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/74

LCFG Brainstorming Meeting

Stephen's made a top level Future Development page on the LCFG wiki, containing links to the brainstorming conclusions and to the collection of ideas we had beforehand.

Paul's going to talk to, and ask for comments from, the development meeting this week about the LCFG developments.

Assuming all goes well there, we'll then submit proposals for a buildtools project (Stephen) and an LCFG documentation project (not yet allocated) in time to be considered at the September development meeting. Whoever considers the documentation project will need to decide the scope of the project, as it could encompass a number of things.

Paul will write up the LCFG server refactoring project in time for the October development meeting.

Operational

DICE LCFG service writeup

We'll document the DICE LCFG setup on the LCFG wiki in future to make it easier for others to see how we do it. We'll rescue/recycle any worthwhile bits of current and past writeups of our LCFG service.

WS490

The WS390 seems good enough for the MSc student at the moment.

qlogic/fc6

Alastair has found that the qlogic support software is extremely nasty: the only way to make an RPM appears to be to diff lists of all files on the filesystem before and after the software's installation, and make an RPM from the diff.

Kernel upgrade

The new kernel is in the development release. If all goes well it will go into the testing release on 6th August and the stable release on 9th August. PAE and Xen versions exist but currently lack AFS support. Work on adding the AFS support is ongoing.

MacOS 10.5

A new seed has been released, so Alastair once again needs to get the latest version so that Chris can do the install and testing.

xfree and network components

Updated versions are in this week's testing release.

Xen-aware kernel and grub components

The kernel component is now Xen-aware. The update for the grub component had to wait until the LCFG server's handling of multi-level lists had been fixed; the attempt to use three-level lists had exposed bugs of long standing. The LCFG server component has now been fixed. Once the new version has been installed on the LCFG servers the grub component changes can be added.

Status monitoring

We need to think about how we could use nagios to monitor each of our services.

• Stephen is going to take a look at Simon's new apache component which allows more of the apache config file contents to be specified via LCFG.
• Alastair is going to think about how best to use nagios for the RPM accelerator.
• Stephen suggests that a basic general "is this machine alive" test could consist of trying to contact the machine's sshd.

KB rack space

We urgently need more space on racks in the KB server room. Alastair will discuss the installation of a new rack with George.

This Week

Alastair will:

• Be on RT duty
• Get the latest MacOS 10.5 seed (again)
• Think about nagios for RPM accelerator
• Track FC5 bugs
• Pursue FC6 QLogic support
• Look at new apache component

Chris will:

• Install latest MacOS 10.5
• Work on the SL5 project
• Mail lcfg-discuss about the workshop recordings
• Talk to Craig about Solaris patching

Stephen will:

• Write up virtualisation notes and prepare a talk for COs
• Install a new LCFG slave machine
• Install a new LCFG test server machine
• Do even more work on supporting Alan Bundy's 30" monitor
• Get new lcfg-server version installed
• Work on the buildtools proposal.

-- ChrisCooke - 31 Jul 2007