MPU Meeting Tuesday 10th August 2010

LCFG Server Refactoring

Lots of the outstanding changes have now been tested and reviewed.

Server Hardware

Signed Off.

Installroot

It is now possible to build the F13 installer on an F13 machine rather than being dependent on F12. Still need to actually rebuild the PXE installer for F13.

We are now in a position to begin generating the installer CD images each week.

F13

In terms of the MPU work this project has now calmed down a lot. There are still quite a few rough edges to smooth out, we need to make a list and work through them. Other than that we are just adding packages to the LCFG level occasionally.

ctrl-alt-backspace

Alison reported that ctrl-alt-backspace does not kill X on F13. Stephen will investigate what is required to enable this feature.

xsession

It looks like that gdm is not allowing users to have .xsession files to start up a window-manager of their choice.

Miscellaneous Development

Nothing this week.

Operational

SL5.5 PXE

This was updated.

routing problems

George has done some work on the LCFG routing component. This might fix the VM install problems. Alastair has had success with virtualbox and F13, he might try VMWare. We should maintain a proper list of any failures so that we can pass on details to George.

bpbeast dual-path

This has been done.

resolvconf in installer

Alastair has redone the resolvconf settings so that they also work for the inf/lcfg level.

gdm and xauth

This works by default so we do not need to configure gdm

VMs and SL5.5

Alastair scheduled all the VMs to get SL5.5 upgrades at different times, this has avoided the previous problems. Alastair noted that the VMs using blobs on bpbeast updated much quicker and we could probably have done multiple VMs at the same time.

F13 partitioning problem

Alastair fixed a problem with parted not being able to cope with blank disks. The quick fix was to add a disk label before partitioning if nothing was found.

Server criticality report

The usefulness of the criticality report could be improved by adding the information from the profile.comment resource.

F13 build host

This needs a reinstall, Chris will do it this week.

VMWare console info

Chris has updated the VMWare console instructions.

piccadilly

Chris will reinstall the VMWare server piccadilly so that it has less swap and a larger local scratch partition which can be used, in an emergency, for VM guests.

MPU reboots

We need to finish rebooting the MPU machines to complete the SL5.5 update. Stephen will circulate a list and let people choose which they will do.

telford SAN volumes

These need sorting out as telford is currently relying on 3 different arrays. This wasn't the original intention so it must be using the wrong partition somewhere. We are also not doing any regular automated releases of the AFS volumes, this needs to be fixed and we need to switch to accessing the packages via the read-only versions of the volumes.

metropolitan

Now that the bpbeast is using dual-path FC we can bring into service the third VM server in the Forum. Chris will do it this week.

This Week

Alastair will:

• F13 installroot
• F13 issues wiki page
• Look at ethernet card for HP D180

Chris will:

• RAT
• Reinstall buildf13
• piccadilly local disk
• Bring metropolitan into service
• Write some docs on updating tibs and the component

Stephen will:

• Server refactoring project

-- StephenQuinney - 16 Aug 2010