MPU Meeting Tuesday 20th October 2009

Power Management Project

Not much happened. Chris will prepare a newsletter article on sleeping machines in the student labs. We will offer the service to all users who have the supported hardware models on their desktops.

rpmsubmit

apache on brendel has been failing every Sunday when the logs are rotated. It didn't do this in testing so need to do further investigations. Possibly a change to the apacheconf component is required to do a graceful reload instead of full restart. Alastair will try that to see if it helps, he will also look at genoa to understand why it does not have the same problem.

Yum repository support still needs to be added to allow the running of mock.

Alastair plans to put the refreshpkgs scripts onto another server in case brendel dies, can then turn on easily.

AFS Component

Not much happened. Stephen reckons with a short burst of effort this could be wrapped up fairly soon. He would really like Simon to review his code and check the test cell bigfan.inf.ed.ac.uk before any roll outs happen.

TIBs

Not a lot happened. Stephen noted that the LCFG TIBs defaults package needs to be added to a stable package list.

LCFG Server Refactoring

Nearly all the macros have been removed from the Perl code and replaced with variables in a new Perl module (LCFG::Server::Config).

Pandemic Planning

• Stephen still needs to write up some notes on the PXE service.
• The testing release has been successfully done by Roger and Alison.

Miscellaneous Development

lcfg-ngeneric

Stephen has made a change to the way the Dispatch method in LCFG::Component works. The string-eval used when calling the method has been removed. As this might have knock-on effects he is keeping it in the develop release for a couple of weeks to help spot any issues.

lcfg-mysql

Chris has patched the LCFG mysql component and created a new version (1.1.14) which has a fix for creating the DB root user account. Stephen mentioned that we need to check the correct ACLs are set for the root user account.

Personal Development Topics

Stephen mentioned that he now has a copy of the new edition of "Learning Python" and he is planning to work through it.

Chris suggested a few topics taken from the technical strategy meeting minutes. These include a better understanding of various legal issues; SELinux; encryption of data on mobile machines; lightweight LCFG platforms to give users access to newer Linux distributions.

LCFG Users Day

The timetable for the LCFG Users Day is mostly complete, Kenny will send out another email once he is back from his holiday next week. Stephen suggests we encourage all Informatics COs to, at least, come to the part of the tutorial which covers the new LCFG build tools.

Operational

bugzilla

Chris has been battling the LCFG bugzilla and mysql components in his work on upgrading _bugzilla.inf= to version 3. He hopes to have it all done soon. Stephen should add a "wee" project to the list to complete his work on adding support for setting all bugzilla configuration variables via the component instead of needing to use the web interface.

bugzilla security update

The LCFG bugzilla has been updated to get the latest security update.

twiki update

The LCFG wiki has been updated to get the latest security update.

updaterpms

Alastair has added the new feature for removing packages with broken scripts. Stephen will add the new version to the profiles for the develop release to test the changes.

DIY DICE newsletter article

Alastair will write a newsletter article on using DIY DICE in a virtual machine.

This Week

Alastair will:

• Think about project prioritisation
• Try apache reload on brendel
• Add yum support
• Repackage scli

Chris will:

• Think about project prioritisation
• Release Procedures docs
• upgrade bugzilla.inf
• TIBs
• Sleep newsleter article
• Plan lightning talk

Stephen will:

• Think about project prioritisation
• Look at apacheconf
• Setup Phil Wadler's new machine
• Server Refactoring
• LCFG Users Day

-- StephenQuinney - 29 Oct 2009