MPU Meeting Wednesday 21st January 2009

Buildtools Project

Nothing much happened this week.

Power Management Project

Chris circulated some design notes which are in the MPU list archive.

Miscellaneous Development

It looks like VMWare Server is going to the best choice for an interim virtualisation solution. This is mainly because the Xen networking scripts do not understand vlans so would need extensive reworking. There are also suggestions that Xen vlan support might be buggy so even after lots of work we might not have a stable solution.

The downside is that the easiest access to virtual servers would be through a browser plugin. The plugin seems to work well in Linux though so should be fine.

We now have two virtual host machines one of which is now up and running. We are aiming to get them into service as soon as possible. Tim needs this and MPU could use it for the build hosts and the test LCFG slave.

Operational

sysinfo

Stephen has removed all the sysinfo resources from the LCFG source profiles. This is the end of the sysinfo/inventory work which had to be carried out by MPU.

Fix for FC problems

We could use blurt or telford for testing fixes for the fibre channel problems. Need more SFPs as Craig is using all of the latest batch for the new AFS servers.

Machines with monitor resources

Carol has identified the machines with profiles which contain explicit monitor resources and noted which ones are identical. Stephen will look through the list and produce some replacement headers.

Dell Optiplex 760

Stephen has installed the RHEL 5.3 beta onto the Dell 760 and everything works fine, including the network and graphics which were previously unsupported. RHEL 5.3 has now been released, Alastair will download the DVD and also purchase another license so that Stephen can do some testing prior to the SL5.3 release.

MPU AT server decant

Chris has moved mousa to the FH machine room. He will look into replacing the test LCFG slave server with a virtual machine and then decommissioning bressay and boreas.

bugs.lcfg.org

This is coming along nicely and is to be found at bugs.lcfg.org. A small problem was discovered in the mysql component with it failing to correctly set the password for the mysql root user. An enhancement to the bugzilla component is also required to set the initial admin user to avoid bootstrapping issues. We need to come up the list of products and components that we want. At some point we need to add iFriend support and we would also like to allow free-from bug submission via email.

LCFG svn webdav

Stephen has completed the webdav support for the LCFG svn repository and plans for it to go live on tobermory after the stable release on 29th January. Currently there is a test site on bigfan using a copy of the data, it is accessible with the normal svn client at https://svn.lcfg.org/svn/lcfg/

subversion component

Whilst doing the webdav work Stephen has rewritten the subversion component in Perl, this will particularly help IS who have a lot of repositories. He also added support for generating authorization files which can be used by the apache webdav_svn authorization module.

LCFG svn websvn

Stephen has nearly completed the websvn support for the LCFG svn repository. There is a new lcfg-websvn component which manages the configuration, that still needs a bit of tidying up and the webpage templates need finishing. Currently there is a test site on bigfan using a copy of the data, it is accessible at https://svn.lcfg.org/websvn/

Spare PCI-E FC cards

These have now arrived.

nvidia header changes

Stephen has completed the nvidia header changes and they will be included in the stable release on 22nd January.

invedit access

Chris now has invedit access.

Servers with dhcp headers

Chris has removed the dhcp header from the source profiles for all our KB machines.

autoreboot for servers

We need to document how to use the autoreboot component on servers for COs.

Servers requiring a reboot

Alastair will bring up at CEG the issue of servers needing a reboot.

ext3 ACLs

When looking into the webdav support Stephen tried using ext3 file ACLs and reckoned they could be very useful. It only works when partitions are mounted with the acl option which is not currently the default on DICE machines. Stephen will check that this doesn't break anything and, if not, will alter the standard fstab resources.

DIY DICE under VMWare

Carol needs to get a license for the Linux version of VMWare Workstation.

This Week

Alastair will:

• Personal Development topics
• Look at virtualisation (commission one server)
• Order up more SFPs
• Purchase another RHEL licence for Stephen
• Purchase VMware workstation for Carol
• Raise at CEG issue of servers needing rebooted

Chris will:

• Personal Development topics
• Virtualised test LCFG slave
• Decommission bressay, boreas and kipper
• bugs.lcfg.org - Look at moving bugs and which products/components we need
• Packaging guidelines

Stephen will:

• Finish LCFG websvn
• Look at ext3 ACLs
• Document setting up unusual monitor and graphics card configurations
• Look at LCFG profiles with explicit monitor resources
• Document autoreboot for servers

-- StephenQuinney - 21 Jan 2009