| Time | Nick | Message |
|---|---|---|
| 16:02 | hhardy | #topic Agenda |
| 16:02 | * Ideatorrent is set up (Dogi) | |
| 16:02 | * Improving documentation process and availability wiki git | |
| 16:02 | * Need cluebot or similar for wiki spam issue | |
| 16:02 | * Sugar and library list admin help needed | |
| 16:02 | * backups | |
| 16:02 | * New business | |
| 16:02 | #topic Ideatorrent is set up (Dogi) | |
| 16:02 | dogi | hi all |
| 16:02 | hhardy | Dogi has set up ideatorrent per ticket by Seth/is4 |
| 16:03 | dogi | http:/idea.mogidi.net |
| 16:03 | hhardy | Do you want to say something about how you envision us using this for OLPC? |
| 16:03 | dogi | please do all register an account |
| 16:03 | http://idea.mogidi.net/drupal5/user/register | |
| 16:05 | so in the meantime I will explain the purpose of this service | |
| 16:05 | at first there are developer and there community | |
| 16:06 | and this is a tool build for the community to give feedback to developer ... | |
| 16:06 | and sysadmins ... LO | |
| 16:07 | cjl | dogi have you asked any developers whether they wanted this? They seem to prefer Trac. |
| 16:07 | dogi | no it is build for all non devel |
| 16:08 | cjl | It might be nice for other sorts of ideas, but I hate to see tools proliferate to the point they overwhelm those who are supposedly using them. |
| 16:08 | dogi | it has rss for all developer ... which i think its nice |
| 16:09 | cjl | Since getting involved wit hOLPC, I've had to master IRC, wiki, RT, and I'm learning Trac, and I don't even write code. . . |
| 16:09 | I find it fun to learn new tools, others maybe less so. | |
| 16:10 | hhardy | So as of now, when a user has a suggestion they might post it to the devel list or enter a ticket for an enhancement into trac |
| 16:10 | How would that process work differently with this tool? | |
| 16:10 | cjl | or if not code related writes it up on wiki |
| 16:11 | dogi | cjl please create bevor u talk an account |
| 16:11 | so that i can give u the needed right to show u ... | |
| 16:11 | cjl | *sigh* |
| 16:11 | goes t ocreate yet another account. . . | |
| 16:11 | dogi | sorry |
| 16:12 | :) | |
| 16:13 | cjl | ok, i'M IN |
| 16:13 | dogi | thx |
| 16:13 | cjl | dogi: /me switches t oinside voice. |
| 16:13 | dogi | then create ur idea proposual ,,, |
| 16:14 | cjl | um, need to change "Change my Ubuntu QA email or password " |
| 16:14 | dogi | or go to sandbox to promote a waiting idea ... |
| 16:15 | yes i know that idea is not finished | |
| 16:15 | thx | |
| 16:15 | i gave u the right of moderator there | |
| 16:15 | so u can delete ... :) | |
| 16:17 | http://kuku.laptop.org/winpng/ | |
| 16:17 | hhardy | I suggest people look this over and comment to the olpc-sysadmin mailing list? |
| 16:17 | dogi | this are picture i did |
| 16:18 | hhardy | anything further on Ideatorrent? |
| 16:18 | dogi | http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Dogi/Ideatorrent |
| 16:18 | hhardy | #topic Improving documentation process and availability wiki git |
| 16:19 | There's not much new to report on this but we've seen a few instances of wiki downtime where having the docs on the wiki which is down is mighty inconvenient | |
| 16:19 | is there anyone who is more than a git novice? | |
| 16:19 | here now I mean? | |
| 16:19 | adric | still likes Subversion :) |
| 16:20 | hhardy | I will try to draft Bernie if nobody else volunteers |
| 16:20 | dogi | is novice ... :P |
| 16:20 | cjl | cjl votes for _bernie |
| 16:20 | cjb | hhardy: hm, how are they related? (the wiki isn't in git.) |
| 16:21 | cjl | cjb push some docs t oa git repo, avail when wiki is down. |
| 16:21 | adric | As an alternate for sysad docs, git has been suggested by several parties |
| 16:21 | hhardy | the idea is make a static copy of the wiki using something like wget then check that copy ito git |
| 16:21 | hopefully via a cron job | |
| 16:21 | Dogi came over and says mstone has some ideas on how to do this | |
| 16:21 | adric | prob want to dump the wikitext rather than wget the html, but yeah |
| 16:22 | mstone has some good ideas on a /root/docs folder on all managed servers | |
| 16:22 | cjb | how to create a git repo and put a file in it? all of the git tutorials cover that; I could point you at one. |
| 16:22 | m_stone | Do I hear my name being taken in vain? |
| 16:23 | hhardy | yes |
| 16:23 | not in vain however | |
| 16:23 | since you responded | |
| 16:23 | dogi | hi |
| 16:23 | cjl | cjb more on how to automate regular push |
| 16:23 | dogi | m_stone :) |
| 16:24 | adric | m_stone the stuff we chatted about a couple weeks back for server docs .. local store and git clones |
| 16:24 | cjb | ah. while true; do sleep 3600; wget laptop.org/wiki/path -o wikifile; git commit -a -m 'latest version'; git push; done |
| 16:24 | m_stone | cjb: enjoy the html you get from that. |
| 16:25 | hhardy | #IDEA <@cjb> ah. while true; do sleep 3600; wget laptop.org/wiki/path -o wikifile; git commit -a -m 'latest version'; git push; done |
| 16:25 | who is interested to help with this? | |
| 16:26 | m_stone | hhardy: the issue isn't really who wants to help with it. the issue is whether we can agree on a system that means basic requirements. |
| 16:26 | *meets | |
| 16:27 | the internalwiki is unhelpful because it's inaccessible. the teamwiki is unhelpful because there's no consensus on using it. the public wiki is unhelpful because there's a tiny bit of private data. | |
| 16:27 | etc. | |
| 16:28 | however, I think that everyone agrees that, in order to admin a system, one needs to have an account on it. | |
| 16:28 | cjb | ah. while true; do sleep 3600; wget laptop.org/wiki/Special:Export/path -o wikifile; git commit -a -m 'latest version'; git push; done |
| 16:28 | ^ returns wikitext. | |
| 16:28 | adric | cjb; + |
| 16:28 | hhardy | #IDEA <@cjb> ah. while true; do sleep 3600; wget laptop.org/wiki/Special:Export/path -o wikifile; git commit -a -m 'latest version'; git push; done |
| 16:29 | m_stone | consequently, I think that having an account on a machine should be sufficient to give you read + comment access to all public docs about the machine and that having root on the machine should give you the rest. |
| 16:29 | cjb | this is supposed to work too: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/inde[…]vities&action=raw |
| 16:29 | (but doesn't seem to) | |
| 16:29 | m_stone | I think the laptop.org/wiki part is what's wrong. |
| 16:30 | adric | "Forbidden Raw pages must be accessed through the primary script entry point." |
| 16:30 | m_stone | cjb: I don't actually care whether the docs are version-controlled or not because I can handle that independent of anyone else with an equivalent for-loop. |
| 16:31 | adric | can we make the access control work the way described above? Easily? |
| 16:31 | m_stone | e.g. I can put a cronjob on my laptop that does for s in $SERVERS; do rsync -avz $s/root/docs $server-`date`; done |
| 16:31 | hhardy | we dont need all pages only the VIG and sysadmin docs |
| 16:32 | m_stone | or equivalent git magic if I happen to like git. |
| 16:32 | cjb | m_stone: I agree |
| 16:32 | m_stone | as for adric's question: |
| 16:32 | here's a rough draft. | |
| 16:33 | cjb | The problem isn't at all that someone needs to show people how to use git, it's that you need to know how to get the right data out of mediawiki in an automated way including for our wikis with access control |
| 16:33 | m_stone | cjb: consequently, I think that we should store the data in a filesystem (which we all know how to use) and push it into a wiki if that's really needed. |
| 16:33 | (I happen to think it's not) | |
| 16:34 | cjb | hm, let me try to understand that |
| 16:34 | adric | Well, there is the wiki FS fuse module ... |
| 16:34 | cjb | so you want Machine:* to disappear? |
| 16:34 | that was pretty convenient | |
| 16:35 | m_stone | cjb: I tend to think that ssh $FOO cat /root/docs/purpose is fairly convenient too. |
| 16:35 | cjb | What if I can't ssh to foo? |
| 16:35 | m_stone | two answers: |
| 16:35 | a) then you shouldn't be reading its docs. | |
| 16:35 | cjb | What the way I enter foo is by sshing to solar and running "vserver enter" |
| 16:35 | ? | |
| 16:36 | What if foo lives in a safe? :) | |
| 16:36 | in other ways, I think that (a) is a cop-out. | |
| 16:36 | m_stone | cjb: then you go to the safe in order to read its docs, or you /republish/ those docs. |
| 16:36 | cjb | s/ways/words/ |
| 16:36 | m_stone | cjb: I did say that there were two answers. |
| 16:36 | cjb | m_stone: on some kind of.. wiki, or something? |
| 16:36 | m_stone | you did sort of cut me off. |
| 16:36 | cjb | it's true. I'm sorry. |
| 16:37 | m_stone | cjb: I don't care on what since it's not authoritative. |
| 16:37 | the authoritative docs should live on the machine. | |
| 16:37 | adric | ... and be cloned elsewhere |
| 16:37 | m_stone | anything else seems to me to be a central point of failure. |
| 16:37 | hhardy | m_stone: how does that help us when machine X is down? |
| 16:37 | ah IC | |
| 16:37 | m_stone | hhardy: because you have non-authoritative backups, don't you? |
| 16:37 | since they're so easy to create now? | |
| 16:38 | adric | And it's the clone that I wonder about the access control of, is all. |
| 16:38 | cjb | hhardy: it doesn't, so we republish that information in a wiki, and then everyone just uses the wiki anyway because it's more convenient |
| 16:38 | m_stone | cjb: that could be, but I don't think it will be. |
| 16:38 | cjb: it would obviously indicate that my ideas are wrong if it happened. | |
| 16:39 | i.e. that centralization is fine and good and that we worked out some way to publish the public bits. | |
| 16:39 | which I don't know how to do sanely with our wikis. | |
| 16:39 | but which I certainly know how to do with filesystems. | |
| 16:39 | cjb | I'd like your ideas a lot more if I didn't usually look at Machine:* pages when a machine is down or inaccessible to me. |
| 16:39 | m_stone | cjb: I'd like your ideas a lot more if I had some confidence that the Machine:* pages were going to be available when I need them. |
| 16:40 | and that we knew how to make the public parts public. | |
| 16:40 | cjb | I see |
| 16:40 | m_stone | I think the first problem is solvable. |
| 16:40 | it's ugly because mediawiki is ugly, but it's definitely solvable. | |
| 16:40 | just with some annoying scripting. | |
| 16:40 | I don't know how to solve the second problem. | |
| 16:40 | (with your system). | |
| 16:40 | I know how to solve it with a filesystem. | |
| 16:41 | e.g. by making a separate "public" folder to clearly demarcate what is public and what is private. | |
| 16:41 | cjb | == Public == ? :) |
| 16:41 | m_stone | cjb: how do you implement that so that members of the public can see it? |
| 16:41 | how do the logins work? | |
| 16:41 | cjb | how do you implement yours? |
| 16:42 | it's on a filesystem on production machines with restricted accounts. | |
| 16:42 | I don't see the difference between the two yet. | |
| 16:42 | m_stone | I'd copy them off. |
| 16:42 | cjb | then you can copy them off the wiki too! |
| 16:42 | hhardy | I'm calling timeout to this topic in 4 min |
| 16:42 | m_stone | either via my account directly or via a restricted-login public account with private passwords. |
| 16:42 | cjb: yes, I said that. I just said that it's a lot harder. | |
| 16:43 | as in, I don't /know/ a solution off the top of my head. | |
| 16:43 | cjb | okay. I remain unconvinced, but that's okay. |
| 16:43 | this is a good conversation to have recorded, at least | |
| 16:43 | m_stone | you'd rather that trust that I can write a parser which correctly extracts the public bits of your wiki pages? |
| 16:43 | hhardy | I suggest we continue the discussion at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC[…]rastructure_Group and/or on the olpc-sysadmin list |
| 16:44 | cjb | laptop.org/teamwiki/go/Machine:Solar/Public? :) |
| 16:44 | hhardy | I suggest that as a first approximation, we do *something* so that docs are still available when wiuki is not |
| 16:44 | cjb | hhardy: copy them into a text file. |
| 16:44 | m_stone | cjb: just seems like a big waste of time to me. (though I know that my proposal seems the same to you) |
| 16:44 | adric | Wait, are allowed to act? I thought this was a discussion -only group. :D |
| 16:44 | hhardy | *bonk* adric |
| 16:44 | cjb | m_stone: the proposals seem equivalent to me, yeah. |
| 16:45 | hhardy | and so that VIG has access to machine: pages at least most of them |
| 16:45 | cjb | (in the regard of having demarcated areas for public and private info) |
| 16:45 | m_stone | cjb: the wiki is just so hard to script. |
| 16:45 | (comparitively) | |
| 16:45 | cjb | yeah |
| 16:46 | m_stone | and I hate that I have to log in to it every 10 minutes. |
| 16:46 | I also despise using firefox's text editor. | |
| 16:46 | cjb | hhardy: honestly, I'd spend a half hour recording all the information the VIG might want currently in a single e-mail and sending it to the list |
| 16:46 | m_stone | all of these things are fixable, /maybe/, but it's /work/ that I don't feel motivated to do. |
| 16:46 | hhardy | time |
| 16:46 | cjb: certainly better than nothing | |
| 16:46 | cjb | m_stone: likewise |
| 16:47 | hhardy | #IDEA <@cjb> hhardy: honestly, I'd spend a half hour recording all the information the VIG might want currently in a single e-mail and sending it to the list |
| 16:47 | m_stone | cjb: whereas I'm confident that I could manage to put all the data onto the write machines /once/ in just a few minutes. |
| 16:47 | *right | |
| 16:47 | hhardy | #TOPIC Need cluebot or similar for wiki spam issue |
| 16:47 | dogi | :) |
| 16:47 | hhardy | brief discussion on this |
| 16:47 | we are having more than usual amount of defacement and blankings on wiki | |
| 16:47 | cjl | There have been spasms of fairly intense wiki vandalism |
| 16:48 | hhardy | there's general agreement I think that cluebot is a good measure |
| 16:48 | cjl | then they subside, and eventually recur. |
| 16:48 | hhardy | #LINK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cobi |
| 16:48 | cjl | the "community" patrol aspects of the wiki don't work as well as you might like. It tends to be one or two users doing most of the work. |
| 16:49 | _sj_ | aww |
| 16:49 | cjl | I did some analysis of this and posted it on the main wiki a while back onder a page called 'Bot Interest Group" |
| 16:49 | _sj_ | that's a factor of the [# of editors / popularity of wiki] ratio |
| 16:49 | we need to work on that. | |
| 16:49 | give newbies regular wiki tasks as one of the s-g and vig and other efforts | |
| 16:49 | RC patrol is a great simply newbie task. | |
| 16:50 | dogi | http://code.google.com/p/falebots/ |
| 16:50 | hhardy | _sj_: do you prefer this approach to cluebot? or in addition to? |
| 16:50 | cjl | _sj_: It is also desirable sometimes to investigate (and perhaps even implement) suitable technical solutions. |
| 16:50 | hhardy | #LINK <@dogi> http://code.google.com/p/falebots/ |
| 16:51 | _sj_ | hhardy, you never fail to surprise me. |
| 16:51 | we need cluebot. | |
| 16:51 | no large wiki should be without it. | |
| 16:52 | [rc is 'recent changes'] | |
| 16:52 | we have 25k pages on the wiki, which is more than middling size | |
| 16:52 | cjl | ffm had initially made some claims of knowing Cobi via Cluenet, but recently says he hasn't been active on that network for a while. |
| 16:52 | _sj_ | cjl, absolutely |
| 16:53 | I have been the longest proponent of getting cluebot to work | |
| 16:53 | this is my top infrastructure priority as far as the wiki goes | |
| 16:53 | I'm sorry that I don't know how to do it myself. | |
| 16:53 | cjl | An ideal situation would be to have Cobi act in a consulting vol (if someone jknows and can recruit him). |
| 16:53 | hhardy | and he's been advocating it for a long time too! :) |
| 16:54 | _sj_ | and it seemed as if someone with more scripting experience was interested in the problem |
| 16:54 | we can also write to the cluebot fans and ask for someone to lend a hand | |
| 16:54 | not just cobi | |
| 16:54 | hhardy | #LINK http://rt.laptop.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=1871 |
| 16:54 | _sj_ | any of the people working on the recent rewrite, say |
| 16:54 | hhardy | its by far the oldest active sysadmin ticket I believe |
| 16:54 | cjl | My only concern about Cluebot as it exists currently is it's potential lang-en bias |
| 16:55 | hhardy | BTW is there anyone who does not have access to the sysadmin queue on rt who wants/needs it from VIG? |
| 16:55 | cjl | there is Crispy-something working on hte ANN rewrite (apparently). |
| 16:56 | hhardy | I suggest updating that ticket if you know something useful, and take general discussion to the list |
| 16:56 | cjl | I have a cvague interst in ANN's and have posted ideas on Cripsy's page as to how to gather known good-bad sets of edits for the training sets. |
| 16:57 | but certainly not the coding skills. | |
| 16:58 | hhardy | SJ has had this opportunity posted since August and as its on the VIG page thought I'd mention: |
| 16:59 | #TOPIC Sugar and library list admin help needed | |
| 16:59 | #LINK http://lists.laptop.org/piperm[…]ugust/000703.html | |
| 17:00 | The sugar list has been moved to sugarlabs | |
| 17:01 | SJ says library list could use another moderator | |
| 17:03 | #TOPIC NEW BUSINESS | |
| 17:04 | anything further? | |
| 17:04 | _sj_ | I need to set up some web forms and run scripts on their inputs |
| 17:04 | I've posted a couple of times about this to sysadmin@ but perhaps not to vig | |
| 17:07 | hhardy | There's an rt ticket for this but cant find atm |
| 17:07 | http://rt.laptop.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=23365 | |
| 17:08 | ok thats it for today thanks! | |
| 17:08 | #LINK http://rt.laptop.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=23365 | |
| 17:08 | #endmeeting |