MPU Meeting Tuesday 7th December 2010

LCFG Server Refactoring

Stalled.

Software Build Farm

There is now a website giving status reports, a list of jobs and various task, buildfiles and logfiles.Stephen used the Perl Catalyst toolkit which makes it easy to generate websites. The practical side of the project is now largely done and Stephen has no more plans to extend the functionality. The next stage is to document the APIs before carrying out the code review which Alastair will do. The project will need a component for starting and stopping the daemons by name etc.

Replacement for VMware Server

Alastair and Chris held a virtual meeting, but aren't sure where the log is. Chris to check his client. Some conclusions - on F13 the boot component didn't start, since there's no clean shutdown and the prevents restart. (lcfginit should throw away existing state?) Suspend. Alastair was looking at the suspend stuff on the IS VMware server. The ldap, routing and kerberos hooks are not working. KVM on the the other hand does not do suspend to disk, Stephen thinks a new kernel (2.6.34) may provide this, this should be added to the project report. Virtual Box, may be moving to a less free license. We cChris will test KVM and make a list of what COs need to do to use it as a server. Notes for the report : avoid Xen citrixware, look at RHEV a little. RHEV tools moving from windows to Linux Alastair will write the project report.ould use KVM as a virtual box replacement Alastair will look at the RHEV/Hypervisor.

Miscellaneous Development

Virtual box

fixes are gradually being rolled out.

scsi-root header

going into stable this Thursday

data projectors

the IF-4.31 data projector isn't working with F13. Discsussion of video drivers, etc... Chris to advise support to keep lectern machines on SL5 just now. The XFree component needs sorted. xorg-conf.d gets ignored. (Add to activities list)

Operational

Bakerloo

to Metropolitan moves done.

New DIY Dice

Alastair to check this using Morlich

Virtual Servers

units to migrate virtual servers off Bakerloo onto central or metropolitan

Circle and Satablade

moves not done.

Bakerloo nagios

kill

scsi-root

done

F13 meeting room machines

defer - add XFree on F13 first - stop people rebooting - dice/options/podium.h - need KDM and different theme on podium machines

Package mirror Sauce

done

Rmirror

passive monitoring - action to Neil/services-unit does it have apacheconf? add a backup-pkgs.lcfg CNAME to dns

Sauce LCFG slave

not done

Trailblazer

done (and it goes fast)

VMware tools

Chris to test

Small Projects

Bugs

There was a discussion about some of the bugs that might be killable. E.g. gbios: apart from the listed bug this has been showing up in the weekly faulty components list. It's still relevant and needs fixed not killed. Action on Carol for the non-bug part. Agreed that revising the LCFG bugs should be added as a twice-yearly activity.

Small project choices

Looking at which wee projects should be tackled next led to discussion of what would be useful and/or popular. Suggestions were, wake-up on demand, dynamic list of lcfg component versions, update alternatives management, adding extra raid types, buildtools documentation, kernel module fixes (minimize multiple reboots)

AOCB

CO kit

There was discussion about the amount of hardware COs have on their desk and the need to audit what it's being used for and reduce this. This included the unit's MAC minis. All COs should review what kit they have and virtualize if possible.

This Week

• Alastair
  • Start writing Virtualisation report
  • Try KVM hibernate with latest F13 kernel - no need as discovered that save and restore are available for suspend
  • Look at whether RHEV tools are now java based - no they're not, management tools are still Windows Server based
  • Check morlich with new diydice lcfg server
  • Configure apache on sauce to serve packages
  • Look at suspend/resume hooks with new VMwareTools - work fine (perhaps wasn't waiting long enough on first attempt)

• Chris
  • Ask user support to tie down meeting room machines to SL5
  • Mail units asking them to move guests off bakerloo onto central or metropolitan by 20th December
  • Test F13 VMwareTools suspend/resume
  • Virtualisation project

• Gordon
  • Look at bugs and produce list of proposed kills and merges.

• Stephen
  • LCFG tutorial

-- AlastairScobie - 07 Dec 2010