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