16:30:58 <nirik> #startmeeting IRC Support SIG
16:31:05 <nirik> #topic Init process
16:32:24 * zcat sweats
16:32:36 * Sonar_Guy blinks
16:33:41 * nirik waits a few more for folks to wander in.
16:34:01 <mether> ping me at the end of the meeting. i have an idea i would like to discuss a bit
16:34:15 <nirik> mether: ok, we have an open floor at the end... will ping you then. ;)
16:35:35 * thomasj here
16:35:44 <nirik> ok, I guess lets go ahead and get started... not too much on my adgenda this week...
16:35:50 <nirik> #topic weekly stats
16:35:58 <nirik> http://theglaserfamily.org/ircstats/fedora-weekly.html
16:36:28 <thomasj> Heh, i can't believe i made it in the top ten this week.
16:36:38 <nirik> nothing too big on the links list or stats in general.
16:36:51 <nirik> Yeah, I wasn't around much, and yet i made it as well...
16:37:13 <nirik> this might be an indicator that we need to grow the pool of helpers somehow...
16:37:47 <thomasj> Or that it was a rather quiet week ;)
16:38:03 <XulWork> do we have any stats on the # of people in the channel?
16:38:24 <nirik> XulWork: not currently... it would be nice to have that though if someone could put together something.
16:38:58 <nirik> I found a munin plugin that would do it, but it would require a monitoring nick to join the channel every 5min, see how many are there and leave. That could get anoying. ;)
16:39:01 <XulWork> i would guess that there are about 40% more people in #fedora compared to a year ago
16:39:19 <nirik> it's down a fair bit from f11 release. We had a lot of people around then.
16:39:47 <nirik> thomasj: your client keeps track? or you just keep track of max?
16:39:55 <thomasj> XulWork, i have only the chanpeak: Peak for #fedora@freenode: 635 (Tue Jun  9 17:45:02 2009)
16:39:59 <thomasj> nirik, only max
16:40:28 <XulWork> ya i remember there were about 350 people on average about a year ago, now its like 500+
16:40:44 <nirik> so, if someone wants to work on graphing that, that would be great. ;)
16:40:47 <Sonar_Guy> XulWork: it has been about 450 since f9
16:41:46 <nirik> anything else on stats anyone has? or shall we move on?
16:41:50 <XulWork> ok so maybe its not growing as fast as i thought
16:42:31 <XulWork> nirik: well we could customize the stats page, like track number of question marks or something :)
16:42:51 <nirik> #topic common bugs / news
16:43:04 <nirik> XulWork: sure, it uses psig... I'm sure they would take patches. ;)
16:43:21 <nirik> so, in case folks missed it there is a udev entry on common bugs added recently.
16:43:36 <nirik> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F11_bugs#System_pauses_during_boot_for_over_a_minute_at_.27Starting_udev.27
16:43:37 <XulWork> ya i hit this bug on my pc at home
16:43:45 <nirik> so, keep an eye out for that one.
16:44:12 <nirik> Also, it seems amd/ati have released a fglrx that is supposed to "work" with f10/f11 kernels. So, we may see that hit soon.
16:44:59 <thomasj> Well, news, i know nobody likes it and everything is evil, but, the catalyst driver for 2.6.29/2.6.30 kernel will be in rpmfusion soon. CVS branch tagged, kmods built. Dunno what else is needed.
16:45:06 <thomasj> hah.. you beat me to it :)
16:45:25 <nirik> yeah... so keep an eye out for user reports on it, etc. As soon as it's pushed we should update the topic.
16:45:34 <thomasj> Will do
16:45:42 <nirik> anyone have any other news? bugs people have been hitting a lot?
16:46:04 <Sonar_Guy> Dang gnats here in georgia, oh not those bugs. . .
16:46:14 <nirik> ha
16:46:19 <thomasj> lol
16:46:36 <nirik> ok...moving on...
16:46:51 <nirik> #topic Obligitory plug for teachers for fedora-classroom
16:47:10 <nirik> Classroom is always looking for teachers. ;)
16:47:21 <nirik> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Classroom
16:47:44 * nirik waits a second to hear the deafening silence and then moves on.
16:47:49 <LinuxCode> hi sorry
16:47:53 <Sonar_Guy> lol
16:47:54 <thomasj> I will do this KDE classroom in about 4 weeks.
16:47:55 <nirik> welcome LinuxCode. ;)
16:48:00 * LinuxCode is late
16:48:18 <nirik> thomasj: excellent. If you know when, feel free to sign up on the wiki page now so we can advertise.
16:48:30 <thomasj> nirik, yep, will do
16:48:46 * nirik will probibly teach another one soon too... they are easy and fun.
16:49:12 <thomasj> hopfully easy :)
16:49:18 <thomasj> *hopefully
16:49:44 <nirik> it's pretty easy if you pick a topic you know well... then it's just like introducing someone to it... ;)
16:49:57 <nirik> ok, moving along unless there are any other classroom topics?
16:50:26 <nirik> #topic Open Floor
16:50:35 <nirik> shoot... mether has dropped off.
16:50:48 <Sonar_Guy> lol
16:50:49 <nirik> Anyone have anything for open floor? how are we doing? anything we can do to improve? ideas?
16:51:08 <XulWork> hmmm
16:51:49 <XulWork> do we have helper bots in #fedora?
16:52:04 <XulWork> so people can do something like @help topic and it will search fedorasolved.org or something?
16:52:21 <nirik> XulWork: yeah, there is fedbot... we keep the end user interaction on it low so it doesn't spew to channel
16:52:39 <nirik> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedbot
16:53:00 <thomasj> XulWork, you can do: !topic @ user
16:53:11 <thomasj> XulWork, you cant abuse that ;)
16:53:31 <XulWork> hm okay, where does it find topics?
16:53:35 <nirik> I'm open to the idea of having fedbot do more, but we should make sure it's not causing problems.
16:53:39 <XulWork> and can we program in new ones?
16:53:50 <thomasj> XulWork, it gives a link with the search funktion of fedorasolved.org
16:54:14 <thomasj> XulWork, nope, thats zcat
16:55:34 <thomasj> nirik, we could do some timeout as zcat does, so regular users cant abuse it.
16:55:39 <nirik> fedbot does have a google plugin, but it should only be enabled/working for admins in #fedora.
16:56:17 <nirik> It's often easier to point them just to the link they are looking for tho... I (and many others) have shortcuts setup for the various very popular ones...
16:57:09 <nirik> we could setup aliases for them in fedbot perhaps.
16:57:35 <XulWork> k
16:57:40 <XulWork> there's mether
16:57:46 <nirik> oh, that reminds me. I setup aliases in fedbot to list times since eol and release of various fedora versions.
16:58:08 * thomasj used it lately.. funny thing
16:58:29 <nirik> @f9eol
16:58:33 <fedbot> nirik: 5 weeks, 5 days, 2 hours, 58 minutes, and 31 seconds ago
16:58:45 <XulWork> @f10eol
16:58:48 <thomasj> oh, reminds me.. short test
16:58:49 <nirik> humm...that should be years. :( oh well, will tune it.
16:58:57 <thomasj> @f10eol @ XulWork
16:59:10 <thomasj> ok, not that way
16:59:24 <nirik> yeah, I could make it do that tho... just the way the thing is setup.
16:59:31 <LinuxCode> how about we make a self-help automated channel
16:59:35 <nirik> @f10eol
16:59:39 <LinuxCode> #fedora-autohelp
16:59:45 <LinuxCode> or something
16:59:52 <thomasj> o_O
16:59:52 <nirik> LinuxCode: ha. We could, but it would need a lot more than a bot in it.
17:00:15 <LinuxCode> nirik, well, like  what ?
17:00:21 <nirik> @fc2eol
17:00:22 <fedbot> nirik: 4 years, 18 weeks, 5 days, 3 hours, and 21 seconds ago
17:00:38 <XulWork> @rhel4eol
17:00:41 <nirik> LinuxCode: well, just a bot would be frustrating.
17:01:04 <nirik> there is no way it could do more than say 'google your problem' or something.
17:01:04 <LinuxCode> well, Im not suggesting we close down #fedora
17:01:06 <LinuxCode> hehe
17:01:17 <LinuxCode> nirik, @help sound pulse
17:01:28 <LinuxCode> link to fenris fix pulsar issues
17:01:31 <LinuxCode> etc..
17:01:44 <nirik> how would it know to trigger that? just 'sound'?
17:01:56 <LinuxCode> ?
17:02:03 <LinuxCode> multiple search term I suppose
17:02:08 <nirik> then if someone says 'sounds like my disk is going bad' the bot would give them the pulse link? ;(
17:02:23 <LinuxCode> nirik, ok, i see your point
17:02:31 <LinuxCode> would need some dev work for zodbot
17:02:31 <nirik> anyhow, it's possibly worth looking into, but we would need a lot more smarts in the bot. ;)
17:02:41 <LinuxCode> k
17:02:45 <nirik> mether: you back? we are in open floor... what did you have for us
17:02:57 <mether> yeah
17:03:12 <mether> fpaste is now default in Fedora 12 and I have something related to it
17:03:30 <nirik> cool. Forgot to mention that.
17:03:55 <mether> Red Hat support group uses sos (available in Fedora) as well that collects a whole bunch of data, tars it up and the customer can send it over
17:04:01 <mether> for the support folks to look into
17:04:16 <mether> i was thinking fpaste could be extended a bit to do something similar that is very lightweight
17:04:36 <mether> fpaste --whatever-foo
17:04:47 <mether> would collect the yum repolist, rpm qa and /etc/fedora-release
17:04:48 <mether> for example
17:04:50 <nirik> mether: thats a good idea. ie, 'uname -r' 'yum repolist' and 'cat /etc/fedora-release' ?
17:04:57 <mether> yeah
17:04:59 <mether> whatever is necessary
17:05:04 <mether> for us in #fedora
17:05:08 <mether> to answer the usual questions
17:05:19 <mether> of course zcat has to implement them
17:05:24 <mether> or someone should send a patch
17:05:29 <nirik> well, uname and fedora-release are often the first things that get asked for weird problems... since we need to confirm they are on fedora and it's a supported release.
17:05:30 <mether> but that shouldnt take much time
17:05:37 <mether> correct
17:05:42 <mether> instead of asking one by one
17:05:45 <nirik> repolist is often next for yum issues. ;)
17:06:02 <nirik> I wonder if smolt id would be good, or too much info?
17:06:07 <mether> just ask them to run fpaste --support
17:06:11 <mether> and ask them to paste the url
17:06:22 <mether> which then gives you common data
17:06:23 <mether> you want
17:06:27 <LinuxCode> could have addiitonal triggers too
17:06:31 <mether> sure
17:06:36 <mether> for more specific stuff
17:06:38 <nirik> sounds like a great idea.
17:06:39 <mether> extra arguments
17:06:41 <LinuxCode> now that is the best idea I heard all week
17:07:28 <LinuxCode> but then, we could also hijack sos for fedora use or ?
17:07:36 <nirik> cool. Hopefully zcat or someone can work on getting that done and let us know. ;)
17:07:51 <mether> yeah
17:08:00 <mether> another related idea
17:08:09 <mether> i think the ks file for test images
17:08:12 <mether> in spin-kickstarts repo
17:08:17 <mether> creates a desktop link
17:08:27 <mether> that logs into #fedora-qa
17:08:44 <mether> does someone want to do something similar for gnome and kde live images and/or dvd image?
17:09:10 <nirik> mether: not sure they want a irc link by default on their desktops?
17:09:16 <nirik> you mean for final releases?
17:09:20 <mether> that i will ask
17:09:24 <mether> yes potentially
17:09:42 <zcat> (sorry, stepped away. *frozen blueberries*)
17:09:46 <nirik> I think that would be cool... as long as the various spins are ok with another icon by default. ;)
17:09:56 <mether> i dont want to flood the channel
17:09:57 <mether> so i thought i will ask first
17:09:57 <mether> before asking them
17:10:09 <nirik> we might want to make sure at least the channel/network is listed in all irc clients...
17:10:20 <mether> yeah
17:10:24 <XulWork> good idea
17:10:32 <mether> i think this team could think about similar things
17:10:38 <mether> that integrate the irc help
17:10:39 <mether> with the distribute itself
17:10:49 <mether> fpaste is one of course and can be extended
17:10:51 <LinuxCode> nirik, there could be a link or something peopl;e click on
17:10:53 <mether> desktop icon is another
17:10:55 <zcat> mether, would need a consensus on what a --support option should post by default. otherwise, we can just tailor the request, such as:    (uname -r; yum repolist) | fpaste
17:10:58 <LinuxCode> and it opens a irc capable client
17:10:59 <mether> but i think there are more such possibilities
17:11:03 <nirik> yeah. Need to word it correctly to... it shouldn't be 'fedora support' it should note more that it's peer, etc.
17:11:09 <zcat> mether, multiple queries in the subshell
17:11:23 <mether> zcat, yes. thats right.
17:11:36 <mether> but the initial list could be rather short
17:11:49 <mether> uname, yum repolist, /etc/fedora-release etc
17:12:07 <zcat> overlaps a bit with smoleSendProfile
17:12:11 <zcat> *smolt
17:12:32 <mether> well you could collect the smolt profile itself
17:13:01 <mether> either by reading /etc/sysconfig/hw-uuid
17:13:04 <mether> and if not present
17:13:11 <mether> run the command
17:13:22 <nirik> smolt doesn't catch repolist does it?
17:13:26 <mether> no
17:13:39 <mether> neither does it collect rpm -qa
17:13:52 <mether> things that are useful for support
17:13:59 * nirik nods.
17:14:17 <nirik> ok, lets think on this and try and come up with what we want it to do... and perhaps hit on it again next week?
17:14:20 <LinuxCode> one problem is, what do we do with people who havent got a network connection
17:14:25 <LinuxCode> or their dns doesnt work
17:14:26 <XulWork> desktop version is also important when people ask desktop related questions
17:14:38 <nirik> LinuxCode: yeah, thats always a problem... ;( not gonna help here.
17:15:03 <mether> LinuxCode, no magic solutions for that
17:15:12 <thomasj> A option that will output to a file
17:15:12 <LinuxCode> but anything that prevents us from tryping a million queries is good
17:15:35 <zcat> mether, that info can add up. i guess it's a good thing daMaestro recently increased the paste size limit from 512K to 16MB.
17:15:41 <mether> i have seen the questions being asked by the people trying to help
17:15:45 <mether> is extremely repetitive
17:15:54 <LinuxCode> mether, indeed, and annoying mate
17:16:00 <mether> zcat, you might look at sos like i said
17:16:01 <LinuxCode> hehe
17:16:10 <mether> zcat, it does collect a shit load of info
17:16:33 <mether> i am hoping we dont need that much
17:16:40 <mether> very doubtful
17:16:50 <nirik> yeah, sos seems overkill much of the time.
17:16:51 <mether> i think a lighter version would suffice
17:16:55 <mether> we can improvise over time
17:17:03 <mether> real time community help ! = commercial support
17:17:31 * nirik nods.
17:17:40 <mether> anyway thats just the idea
17:17:43 <nirik> for f10/f11 folks we will need to have them install fpaste as well.
17:17:57 <mether> yes
17:18:07 <mether> f12 onwards that will be a solved problem
17:18:15 <mether> we just need to ask them to run a single command
17:18:17 <nirik> foobar: please run 'yum -y install fpaste; (uname -r; yum repolist) | fpaste' and paste the resulting link back here.
17:18:18 <mether> and give us the link
17:19:06 <nirik> anyhow, good idea. ;)
17:19:12 <mether> what i am asking is essentially convert fpaste into a sort of generic support helper
17:19:13 <nirik> anyone have anything else for open floor?
17:19:42 <ricky> Kind of a generic question - has the atmosphere towards people asking for help improved much in your opinion?
17:20:00 * ricky recently heard a complaint about somebody being accused of using illegal software, but that could have been isolated
17:20:03 <nirik> sometimes yes, sometimes no.
17:20:35 <nirik> I think overall things are better, but there are still people who are more hostile/sarcastic/unhelpfull.
17:20:47 <zcat> ricky, depends on how vague and oft-repeated the question is
17:21:24 <ricky> Thankfully the person was kind of involved with Fedora already and didn't get turned off of it, but I can imagine a new user getting a very bad impression from that :-/
17:21:28 <nirik> Is limesurvey in yet? If we had an instance we could setup a poll for some feedback and ask a random 10% of the channel to go fill it out. ;)
17:21:48 <ricky> I'm beginning to see why you guys brought up the +v option a while ago - I'm starting to doubt my own arguments against that from months ago :-)
17:21:51 <nirik> or better add it to the join message for a day. ;)
17:22:06 <ricky> That would be excellent for feedback - good idea!
17:22:59 <mether> zcat, do you think you will be able to implement that? do you agree with the idea?
17:23:02 <nirik> yeah, it's a dificult issue. There is no way to be sure.
17:23:33 <ricky> Would the survey be worded to ask for more general or specific feedback?
17:23:46 <nirik> unless we moderate the channel entirely, there will be cases of bad advice or the like. I think the best approach is to get so many helpers that the bad advice gets shouted down and seen for what it is.
17:24:06 <nirik> ricky: not sure. If we had a servey thing we could do it lots of ways...
17:24:11 <zcat> mether, sure, but fpaste is no longer generic. i'm not opposed to a fedora-specfic "--sysinfo" option. not sure everything it should include.
17:24:33 <zcat> mether, ram, swap, smolt id, uname, repos, ...
17:24:43 <LinuxCode> nirik, the problem is sometimes that people wont listen
17:24:49 <LinuxCode> see the Mariak_keys person
17:24:59 <mether> zcat,  rpm -qa. that should be enough for now
17:25:04 <nirik> LinuxCode: No names please.
17:25:29 <zcat> mether, but that's small enough to just pipe it in
17:25:30 <nirik> you can only help people so much if they don't want to listen...
17:25:37 <LinuxCode> misspelled anyway
17:25:49 <LinuxCode> yeh but then you send somebody to #fedora-devel
17:26:11 <LinuxCode> and they still doubt people like spot/f13 on rpm questions
17:26:12 <mether> zcat, sure. if a user can run a single command and give us the output as a single link, that should help quite a bit, i think. dont care about specific implementation details
17:26:19 <LinuxCode> and then they go into #rhel and into #centos
17:26:33 <LinuxCode> so people from #rhel start messaging me about that
17:26:35 <nirik> LinuxCode: yeah, some people are difficult. You can't help everyone. Just need to realize when it's hopeless and bow out.
17:26:50 <LinuxCode> ;-| yeh and then they return and are rude
17:27:10 <LinuxCode> makes you wonder why you even bother, sometimes
17:27:35 <LinuxCode> just one fo those things I guess
17:27:36 <nirik> LinuxCode: yeah, it's up to use to continue to be polite and calm even with those people. If they start disrupting the channel, then they should get removed.
17:28:01 * nirik notes we are nearing the end of our hour... anything else before we close the meeting out?
17:28:23 <XulWork> is this meeting held every week?
17:28:25 <LinuxCode> one little thing, why is this now starting at 1730 my time ?
17:28:31 <LinuxCode> hehe
17:28:36 <LinuxCode> full hours would be better ;-p
17:28:38 <nirik> XulWork: yep
17:28:40 <thomasj> XulWork, yes
17:28:54 <nirik> LinuxCode: we moved it because someone (I can't recall who) wanted it late.
17:28:56 <nirik> later.
17:29:11 <nirik> we could discuss moving it again, but this does seem to be a time most people are around... or many anyhow.
17:29:18 <LinuxCode> cant we make it a full hour then as in start at 5 or 6 or whatever
17:29:32 <thomasj> whats the difference?
17:29:39 <thomasj> an hour is an hour
17:29:44 <LinuxCode> difference is, you an remember it
17:29:45 <ricky> Just out of curiousity, is this meeting usually announced in #fedora?
17:29:55 <nirik> ricky: I have been doing so yeah...
17:30:04 <LinuxCode> can*
17:30:05 <LinuxCode> sorry
17:30:14 <ricky> Nice, thanks for doing that :-)
17:30:36 <nirik> LinuxCode: well, we can see about it, but people are used to this time, so I think changing it now would just be somewhat disruptive.
17:30:49 <thomasj> +1
17:30:56 <nirik> just add it to your calendar/alarms. ;)
17:31:30 * LinuxCode cant wait until we get a calendaring solution ready for fedora usage
17:31:38 * nirik really needs to go get some stuff done, so will close out the meeting here very soon.
17:31:48 <nirik> #endmeeting