21:37:55 <mchua> #startmeeting
21:37:55 <zodbot> Meeting started Mon Feb  7 21:37:55 2011 UTC.  The chair is mchua. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
21:37:55 <zodbot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic.
21:37:57 <mchua> #chair ianweller
21:37:57 <zodbot> Current chairs: ianweller mchua
21:38:04 <ianweller> ow, i've been chair'd
21:38:07 <mchua> ianweller: so, you're picking up on the infra team thread that started last month on TOS
21:38:12 <mchua> #link http://teachingopensource.org/pipermail/tos/2011-January/001904.html
21:38:21 <mchua> #link http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/Infrastructure_Team
21:38:30 <mchua> ianweller: and you have an email blast draft (sorta) that will go out to the list tonight.
21:38:43 <ianweller> i should read through the entire thread first, again
21:38:51 <mchua> ianweller: after this convo, but yeah :)
21:39:08 <ianweller> mchua: i have a three-bullet outline, if that's what you call 'draft' ;)
21:39:09 <mchua> and you wanted feedback on what you're thinking about sending?
21:39:10 <ianweller> but anywho.
21:39:11 * mchua grins
21:39:19 <ianweller> yeah so here's the outline
21:39:29 <ianweller> - hello, here's who i am, because i haven't posted in months/years
21:39:55 <ianweller> - it's important we de-raptorize TOS infrastructure because we don't want it all resting on ctyler
21:40:01 <ianweller> - call for volunteers
21:40:27 <mchua> I'd like more expansion on the call for volunteers... do you have particular action items that need to be taken up?
21:40:41 <mchua> or stepping back a bit, some sort of goal here.
21:40:51 <mchua> SIGCSE makes a nice milestone - 2nd week of March, so that's a month away
21:40:51 <ianweller> the immediate goal is to actually have a team
21:40:57 <ianweller> the next immediate goal is..
21:40:57 <mchua> right, but the team is going to do... what, exactly?
21:41:06 <mchua> easier to get a team when you know what you need done, I think :)
21:41:27 <ianweller> - to have some sort of server somewhere (whether that be the current server, or hosted/donated by elsewhere) and if it's different from our existing infrastructure move everything over
21:41:31 <ianweller> - fix the wiki spam problem
21:41:42 <ianweller> - de-gunk said wiki of spam
21:41:55 <ianweller> - bring all software used on TOS.o up to date (within reason)
21:42:27 <mchua> Would wiki spam be rrix with your team as tech support?
21:42:36 <ianweller> yeah
21:42:40 <ianweller> mchua: (i remember there was a discussion in here Long Ago where we mentioned where to host the server. i don't remember what we got out of that discussion though.)
21:42:45 <mchua> (I mean, clearly, infra has to be involved, but "keep the wiki sane" is Ryan's responsibility)
21:42:48 <ianweller> (like, specifically what the decision was)
21:42:57 <mchua> ianweller: Uh... I do not think there were decisions made. Just options offered.
21:43:13 <ianweller> that would be a nice decision to make real soon now
21:43:16 <mchua> OSUOSL seemed like the general consensus, though I don't think there was a clear action path to make that happen, so nothing did.
21:43:49 <mchua> ianweller: Okay, so of those goals... all great ones - which ones do you want to be somewhere by SIGCSE, and where do you want them to be at?
21:44:01 <ianweller> i want a server and current infrastructure moved over by SIGCSE.
21:44:01 <mchua> like... do you want the server migration to happen before SIGCSE, or the spam problem fixed, or whatnot, and why?
21:44:11 <mchua> Okay. Moved over to another server which has... what qualities?
21:44:28 <mchua> 1. more than two people have root access
21:44:32 <ianweller> yeah
21:44:35 <ianweller> was just gonna mentino that
21:44:37 <mchua> 2. the people who have root access are publicly listed and contactable
21:44:42 <mchua> ianweller: you continue, I'm now out of ideas :)
21:44:50 <ianweller> mchua: honestly fixing spam... is not a huge deal. that's like two hours of work
21:44:57 <ianweller> install extension, hope shit works, check if shit works, done
21:44:57 <ctyler> 3. good bandwidth
21:45:03 <ianweller> ctyler++
21:45:14 <mchua> ctyler: yay! you're here!
21:45:18 <ianweller> #chair ctyler
21:45:18 <zodbot> Current chairs: ctyler ianweller mchua
21:45:45 <ianweller> i was just thinking maybe i should have "what kind of infra should we have on tos.o?" to my email outline, but i think the thread already covered that actually
21:45:48 * ianweller is skimming through it
21:46:13 <mchua> ianweller: A list of services in priority order to have on $newserver would be nice, because that's sort of the point of having a server.
21:46:33 <ianweller> <troll> wait, you don't just run servers just to run servers? </troll>
21:46:42 <mchua> ianweller: Clearly we want a wiki and a mailing list, so I'd suggest those be the two highest priority ones, and... I can't think of any others at the moment but I may be missing stuff.
21:46:47 <ctyler> I also think that the infra should be community-run, not $orgHasRoot
21:46:53 <ianweller> ctyler: absolutely
21:46:55 <mchua> I mean, a mediawiki migration is nontrivial, and a mailman one even less so, so...
21:46:58 <mchua> ctyler: ++
21:47:19 <mchua> ianweller: you have 4 weeks (including this one) before SIGCSE
21:47:26 <mchua> so let's think about what can be reasonably done by then.
21:47:42 <ianweller> - find somewhere with good bandwidth to host a box/virt machine
21:47:49 <ctyler> as far as services, there was a bit of a sticking point over whether we should be doing the trac-like thing (git/tickets/etc) on-demand for posses/schools
21:48:04 <mchua> ianweller: so, that's by... end of this week, start of next, end of next, christmas?
21:48:04 <ianweller> ctyler: yeah
21:48:25 <mchua> ctyler: Yeah, I think that after we have the list and wiki migrated the next question is "okay, so what other services are high-priority and which are nicetohave?"
21:48:42 * mchua is not a sysadmin, and does not necessarily know Proper Ways of Doing This, though
21:48:45 <ianweller> mchua: assuming i can find logs of when we were discussing this during commarch's july 2010 meeting (i think we logged it) then i can probably find a point of contact for OSUOSL. assuming ctyler is okay with that
21:48:47 * mchua is mostly an educated customer ;)
21:49:01 <ctyler> I think "anything that we can manage and which doesn't needlessly duplicate what the communities are providing" is a good answer
21:49:09 <mchua> ianweller: Jeff Sheltren at OSUOSL
21:49:16 <ianweller> ctyler: what does tos.o run on right now?
21:49:32 <ctyler> I'm ok with OSUOSL if it's shared-root
21:49:49 <mchua> ctyler: I'm not okay with anything that's *not* shared-root, across multiple orgs, personally
21:49:49 <ctyler> tos.o runs on a 15G kvm vm
21:49:55 <ianweller> shared-root is absolutely going to happen :)
21:50:15 <mchua> if there aren't at least 3 different organizations with someone with root on that box, I would consider it FAIL
21:50:20 * Jeff_S waves
21:50:26 <ianweller> Jeff_S: hi there!
21:50:26 <Jeff_S> sorry I didn't know there was a meeting
21:50:28 <mchua> Jeff_S: Just the man we're looking for. :)
21:50:31 <ianweller> Jeff_S: neither did i
21:50:34 <ctyler> nor I
21:50:36 <Jeff_S> lol
21:50:44 <ianweller> mchua just kind of ad-hoc made it happen.
21:50:46 <ctyler> it's meeting-by-coincidence
21:50:47 <mchua> Jeff_S: ianweller pinged me to look at his email draft and I said "uh, could we talk about this in #tos?" and... there you go.
21:50:57 <mchua> and ctyler dropped in, and then you did, and the fun started. :)
21:51:00 <ianweller> my non-written email draft
21:51:12 <ctyler> yum install thought-recognition
21:51:15 <Jeff_S> mchua: cool.  I've been out of town but was planning to dive into some TOS stuff this week after seeing karsten's email, etc.
21:51:25 <mchua> So, ianweller... can I tell you what I'd *love* to see from TOS infra (as a consumer, non-sysadmin type person) and then shut up and let you three talk?
21:51:34 <mchua> Jeff_S: Perfect timing. :)
21:51:38 <ianweller> mchua: go for it
21:51:40 <mchua> Okay.
21:51:43 <ianweller> Jeff_S: absolutely amazing timing :)
21:51:46 <Jeff_S> kind of, I only have ~10 minutes before I have to run off :(
21:51:52 <ianweller> oh.
21:51:55 <mchua> So, I'm talking about "by SIGCSE" here, which is "by start of 2nd week of March (March 9th)"
21:52:08 <mchua> thousands and thousands of CS profs there, largest CS edu conference in the *world*
21:52:13 <mchua> I would like:
21:52:30 <mchua> (place "uber-reliable, fast" as adjectives in front of everything)
21:52:53 <mchua> * the TOS mailing list to be humming along like a baby
21:53:07 <mchua> (as in, "this is a bad time to experiment with different version of mailman")
21:53:11 <mchua> * the TOS wiki to have
21:53:40 <mchua> (1) a snazzy-looking, possibly somewhat overhauled front page (I think rrix is supposed to take the load of doing this and getting TOS folks to help, but whatever infra backup he needs to make it look good, should happen)
21:53:47 <Jeff_S> I would actually like to see a server administered by OSL and with restricted sudo access to certain things and allow TOS admin access to applications (phpbb, mediawiki, etc.). and then let TOS leverage some of our central resources (DNS, mailman, email relays, mysql/postresql dbs, etc.)
21:53:54 <ianweller> Jeff_S: (your email is jeff [at] osuosl?)
21:53:55 <mchua> (2) deadwood pruned (again, rrix but with infra bckup)
21:53:58 <mchua> er, backup
21:54:01 <Jeff_S> ianweller: yes, jeff@osuosl.org
21:54:09 <mchua> (3) 0% downtime between March 7 and March 17
21:54:16 <mchua> please, *please* please please.
21:54:21 <mchua> and
21:54:27 <Jeff_S> that said, if TOS really wants to admin things itself, I'm happy to just setup a VM or whatever and let whoever at it
21:54:56 <mchua> * a concrete place that I can point professors who have sysadmin-interested students to, where they can, within 24 hours of initial contact, be doing Something Useful to help you folks
21:55:05 <ianweller> Jeff_S: can we leverage some of your central resources but not all? :)
21:55:08 <mchua> whether that's a ticket tracker or a promise to reply to email that week uberfast or whatever
21:55:08 <Jeff_S> also it seems to me that some of the POSSE needs might be met by supercell (see supercell.osuosl.org) or some "private" tos-only version of the same concept allowing people to spin up VMs on demand
21:55:12 <Jeff_S> ianweller: absolutely
21:55:25 <mchua> Jeff_S: ...ooh, I would like to hear more about that at some point.
21:55:39 <Jeff_S> mchua: yeah, great
21:55:52 <mchua> * a list of possible infrastructure offerings, along with a rough idea of what it would take (peoplewise, machinewise, $-wise, timewise) to make it happen, so that we can ask professors directly what sort of services would be most useful to them
21:56:00 <mchua> ianweller: that's all from me. got it? :)
21:56:02 <mchua> ianweller: too much?
21:56:09 <ianweller> mchua: i think that can happen.
21:56:58 <mchua> ianweller: basically, (1) reliable ml (2) reliable wiki, cleaned-up (cleanup is rrix's job, infra support for cleanup may be needed) (3) a place to point potential new members of the infra team, and (4) a "help us figure out what services to launch" survey of sorts
21:57:03 <mchua> that's it
21:57:03 <mchua> by SIGCSE
21:57:04 <mchua> 4 weeks
21:57:14 <ianweller> ctyler: thoughts?
21:57:28 <mchua> ianweller: Note that I only need all this stuff up for 10 days - March 7-17, if it's not up before then or goes down after that, it's okay, I'll buffer
21:57:29 <ianweller> mchua: i think that can be done.
21:57:36 <ianweller> hah
21:57:37 <ctyler> Sounds pretty straightforward.
21:57:52 <mchua> Note that I *don't* care what server it's on by March 7, or who has root on that server
21:58:16 <mchua> Definitely by summer I'd love to see the migration and the shared root thing going, but if it can't happen in 4 weeks that's... okay with me
21:58:28 <mchua> but I'm $customer and not $sysadmin, so :)
21:58:35 * ianweller personally needs to have shared-root happen with the new server No Matter What
21:58:45 * Jeff_S wonders why
21:59:03 <mchua> so, I guess one decision might be "shared root before SIGCSE or after, or we'll-try-it-but-may-not-finish-in-time-and-that's-okay?"
21:59:11 <ianweller> Jeff_S: i call it raptor-proofing
21:59:18 <ctyler> Jeff_S: He's been spending too much time with Fedorans :-D
21:59:24 <mchua> anyhoo, I need to pop out... ianweller, can you swing it from here? need anything else from me?
21:59:24 <ianweller> that too :)
21:59:28 <ianweller> mchua: got it
21:59:36 <mchua> that's really really what I want, won't add anything to the list before SIGCSE, you have my promise on that :)
21:59:46 <mchua> also also, /me != ianweller.manager, so ;)
22:00:02 <ianweller> mchua: ianweller.manager is type tuple
22:00:08 <mchua> I know I might not get all of it. But I'm willing to help/swap work (blag shamelessly for recruits, etc) to make it lighter on you folks if needed.
22:00:17 <ianweller> Jeff_S: so we can count on having some sort of VM hosted by OSUOSL? :)
22:00:26 <mchua> thanks ianweller. y'all got chair.
22:00:27 * mchua waves
22:00:29 <ianweller> Jeff_S: also let me know when you need to head out.
22:00:29 <Jeff_S> note that we work under a few different models at OSL:  1) OSL does all sys-admin stuff and let's "customer" deal with admining applications (drupal, mediawiki, whatever); 2) OSL admins and gives sudo access to certain things to a small set of admins; 3) we simply "co-locate" a server/vm and let the "customer" handle everything
22:00:31 <ctyler> mchua: it's not big, at least in the first few phases
22:00:48 <ianweller> okay
22:01:17 <ianweller> i think i would prefer 3. i'd like to hear what ctyler thinks.
22:01:18 <Jeff_S> for the short term, I think it would be best to migrate the lists to our central mailman install, and we can talk about migrating the website/wiki to a VM here (we have one setup for quaid to test phpbb on already actually)
22:01:30 <ianweller> ok
22:01:47 <ctyler> There's also an offer on the table for a VM at CDOT, with root access and good bandwidth
22:01:56 <ianweller> ctyler: CDOT?
22:01:57 <Jeff_S> ianweller: I just don't see why TOS wants to worry about sys admin/infrastructure stuff if it doesn't have to
22:02:12 <ctyler> Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology
22:02:16 <Jeff_S> ianweller: to be clear, I'm not trying to argue one way or the other, I'm just not clear on the benefit for TOS
22:02:17 <ianweller> ctyler: <nod>
22:03:07 <ianweller> Jeff_S: i feel like having the community handle the infrastructure makes it easier for us to run more services in a better way faster. given that we have a large enough sysadmin community
22:03:23 <ianweller> kind of the open source way approach to handling infrastructure that powers a community
22:04:13 <ianweller> so we have an OSUOSL offer, and a CDOT offer. i'm not sure i know how to decide. should i just talk about both on the list?
22:05:26 <ctyler> The OSUOSL offer is a superset (VM, db, mailman support) of what CDOT is offering (VM)
22:05:57 <ianweller> and honestly, if i don't have to administer mysql, i am a happy happy guy
22:06:01 <ianweller> :)
22:06:37 <Jeff_S> and I would still urge TOS to consider allowing OSL to admin the main TOS VM as I think it will be much more stable that way.  And then let people interested in infra for TOS concentrate on creating services to be used by POSSE, etc.
22:07:15 <Jeff_S> sorry but have to run now
22:07:23 <Jeff_S> glad to talk more on or off list
22:07:25 <ianweller> Jeff_S: thanks for popping in!
22:07:26 <Jeff_S> bbl
22:07:31 <ctyler> see you Jeff_S
22:07:36 <ianweller> ctyler: your thoughts thusfar?
22:08:35 <ctyler> Mel's list seems straightforward, hosting options overlap if what you want is a VM with root.
22:08:48 <ctyler> We just need to do it.
22:09:06 <ctyler> What do you need from me? DB or XML dump of the wiki, and mailman config and archive?
22:09:06 <ianweller> ok.
22:09:28 <ianweller> ctyler: eventually, yes, DB dump and mailman config/archive.
22:09:35 <ctyler> anything else?
22:09:51 <ianweller> i don't think i got word from him (or asked?) if we can use their mailman instance on our domain. i assume not
22:10:03 <ctyler> should be able to
22:10:09 <ianweller> ok
22:10:24 <ctyler> you don't want to go changing list addresses
22:10:29 <ianweller> exactly :)
22:10:48 <ctyler> tbh, I'd worry about the wiki first, the list volume is minute
22:11:12 <ianweller> ctyler: how should i approach this in your opinion? send an email to the list, addressing jeff, asking for a VM?
22:11:20 <ianweller> just send a listmail saying "hi here's what we plan on doing RFC"
22:11:51 * ianweller brb (2 min)
22:12:00 <ctyler> On-list request for VM sounds reasonable. Are you driving the infra team in place of quaid?
22:12:06 * ctyler presumes so
22:12:39 <ctyler> I have at least one person interested in volunteering
22:13:32 <ianweller> yes
22:13:43 <ianweller> that's part of my position on CommArch as of about a week ago
22:14:05 * ianweller just hasn't done anything yet because i was having fun catching up with school
22:14:15 <ianweller> ctyler: good to know about the volunteer.
22:14:27 <ctyler> I'll point him at the list :-)
22:14:33 <ianweller> yexplz
22:14:35 <ianweller> yesplz*
22:16:14 * ianweller starts typing up email
22:16:25 <ianweller> ctyler: anything else on your mind infra-wise? if not i'll #endmeeting
22:22:00 <ctyler> no, I'm good
22:22:11 <ianweller> sweet, i'll type up the request for Jeff_S and send it on tos@
22:22:13 <quaid> I have a quick question before I read the backlog
22:22:20 <ianweller> quaid: hi
22:22:50 <quaid> did you gain any insight from my email a few weeks ago to tos@ attempting to organize the short/medium/long & DIY/Teach+Learn/SEP
22:22:59 <quaid> (SEP = somebody else's problem)
22:23:08 <ianweller> honestly i don't remember which email that was
22:23:25 <quaid> http://teachingopensource.org/pipermail/tos/2011-January/001956.html
22:23:47 <ctyler> ah, the one I've had a half-composed reply to sitting in my drafts folder ever since :-)
22:23:56 <ianweller> oh yes, i read that
22:24:16 <quaid> ok, I'll now read the log for the last hour and know you all have read that :)
22:24:42 <ianweller> i do wonder how we want to implement that -- are we setting up lane 3 right now? :)
22:25:16 <ctyler> 3 and part of 2
22:25:36 <ianweller> okay.
22:28:09 <ianweller> alright i'm going to end this meeting log so i can reference it in an email :)
22:28:14 <ianweller> thanks, all
22:28:15 <ianweller> #endmeeting