MPU Meeting Tuesday 1st February 2011

Software Build Farm

PkgForge has been announced to COs and they have begun testing it. Some of the design and usage rationale may need to be explained so people can understand what it does and why. Stephen has improved the website links and navigation. There was discussion on the various external repositories we use and the need for improving the quality of our own RPMs. Better automatic testing of RPMs should be a future project extension of PkgForge. Stephen is waiting for more feedback and plans to give a tech-talk. Log rotation needs attention.

Replacement for VMware Server

Comments on the draft report have been received and incorporated although Alastair still has to publish the final version. Testing F13 on bakerloo has been problematic due to package dependencies. There are also issues with the serial console setup under IPMI.

Miscellaneous Development

installroot

Kenny had submitted patches for linux-installroot (bug 376) to allow for parameters to be read in from the command line. Alastair incorporated the patch and it should hit the stable release on thursday (4th). We need to rebuild the F13 PXE kernel after that.

DIY Dice on F13

Trying to build F13 for DIY Dice has met with mixed results mainly due to the issue of package lists for desktops and servers and sorting out what should be in each list and their dependencies. This requires clear definition and user education for COs to understand the rationale of what goes where prior to rolling out SL6. Also daily testing of profiles on the develop release might help catch things early.

Bugs in File component

The File component treats pre-existing files and directories differently if no mode is declared. Files stay the same but directories get set 755. Stephen fixed this. There is also an issue with 'literal' text containing \n newlines not being processed. This is a hard problem.

Operational

Circle and satablade

to be moved this month.

Sauce

as an lcfg slave - ongoing

XFree on F13

Alastair said he would build this as a test for PkgForge. Stephen queried if this would adversely affect live machines as XFree is in boot.services but currently unused. It shouldn't be a problem but it should have been removed from boot.services.

Kernels

Stephen has rebuilt the SL5 kernel as there are ongoing live problems with crashes.The new kernels seem to fix the problem and we need to do the same for F13 and roll-out an AFS update (1.4.14).

Epping

VM has been moved off of Bakerloo which is now empty

Installroot

Kenny's patch - done

LCFG Documents

not yet

Pandemic documentation

each to update docs they previously wrote.

This Week

• Alastair
  • Put the virtualisation report up on wiki
  • Build lcfg-xfree with pkgforge
  • Update pandemic package service
  • Update pandemic server virtual
  • PkgForge code review
  • Finish DIYDICE F13
  • F13 on bakerloo to try kvm

• Chris
  • Update pandemic LCFG release
  • Draft equipment shopping list (MPUShoppingList)
  • Practical submit project
  • Rebuild F13 PXE after 3rd Feb
  • Update F13 kernel

• Gordon
  • Patch to boot component
  • Update F13 kernel

• Stephen
  • Document how to use LCFG component schema versions
  • Document how to branch LCFG components in svn
  • Update pandemic PXE
  • Update F13 kernel

-- AlastairScobie - 01 Feb 2011