MPU Meeting Tuesday 24th April 2012

LCFG Server Refactoring

The report has been written and sent to COs, the project will be submitted for sign-off at the next Development meeting. There haven't been any comments from COs so far.

Simple KVM Service

Alastair has written the report and sent it to MPU, Chris replied with a few suggestions which have been incorporated. It now needs to be sent to all COs.

We need to get a KVM server running with the stable release, if only to prove that it all works correctly. The ex-vmware server piccadilly is now available to be reinstalled, Chris will do this to check that the process is fully documented and reproducible. The volumes on the KB evo have now been setup for northern and piccadilly, Alastair will ensure it's all working before Chris does the install. The other server, northern, is going to need some downtime to attach the SAN partition, this shouldn't be too much of an issue as the VMs on that server are all either for testing or are non-critical in some way.

Server Upgrades

The openafs build server, lochranza, is now running SL6 and most of the work has been completed. A few of the build scripts still require adjustment and some work is required to get packages building for el6 and the newer versions of fedora.

Stephen has started the preparatory work for the upgrade of the PkgForge master server. As part of this work the various package lists have been properly separated so that those packages from SL6 are added to the profile.packages_options resource.

Chris has installed a replacement (porto) for the packages export server, cochin. He still needs to configure the AFS access to complete the switchover, there was a bit of confusion over how this was done but it seems to work as documented.

Server Hardware

Chris has written up his notes on his blog 1, 2.

There was some discussion about whether it would be possible to make an inventory of the BIOS and firmware versions for all the DICE machines. This could prove very useful when diagnosing problems and would allow us to target upgrades at machines with particular versions. The BIOS version would be easily done through the clientreport.

It was agreed that it would be very handy to have a local cache of all the different firmware available.

The idea was raised of making a bootable USB stick that could be used for flashing firmware.

Miscellaneous Development

freshenrpms

The script used to manage our local package repositories was enhanced so that the yum repository data has SQLite database files. It also now has a --fullrebuild option for those times when you need to rebuild the metadata even though no packages have been changed. This is particularly useful if the metadata has become corrupted.

Operational

central

All the VMs on central need power-cycling as it's on a go slwo again. We will raise this at the Operational meeting.

sleep on zip

sleep is still not working on Alastair's HP dc7900, zip, even with the latest BIOS.

SAN storage

The SAN volumes for piccadilly and northern have now been done by the Services Unit.

devel.h

Some of the stuff in the dice/options/devel.h header is actually more appropriate for the co-desktop.h header. This is causing problems with testing configurations on develop machines and then moving them to stable. Mostly the things are in that header for historical reasons as the co-desktop.h is still a relatively new thing. Stephen will investigate and shuffle things.

kvm package lists

We should add the kvm package lists to the weekly testing scripts to ensure they do not cause conflicts or have unresolved dependencies.

telford SAN space

We need to move the packages volume off the IBM storage array onto an evo in the IF machine room. We need the space for the new KVM servers when they arrive.

This Week

• Alastair
  • Send simple KVM project report to COs - decided to stall closing until have full KVM service at Forum available
  • SAN access for piccadilly - upgraded to SL6 and SAN volume configured
  • SAN access for northern - requires a visit to KB to reattach to main SAN
  • Take forumtracker to CEG - USU will pick up
  • Add doc on freshenrpms --fullrebuild to MPUPackageRepository
  • Start inventory project
  • Package up Neil's whererpms
  • Review outstanding LCFG bugs
  • network component in perl

• Chris
  • Chris to upgrade piccadilly as stable KVM
  • Finish cochin upgrade
  • server h/w project
  • Review outstanding LCFG bugs

• Stephen
  • Complete upgrade of lochranza
  • Complete upgrade of pkgforge master
  • Ask Craig about storage space for telford's AFS packages
  • Add FAQ entries on version pinning and not adding all packages to _options to MPUWhichProfilePackages
  • Process other units' responses about their perl-AFS module usage (which functions etc)
  • Finish Theon work
  • Review outstanding LCFG bugs

-- AlastairScobie - 24 Apr 2012