March 2022 - Cloud - lists.wikimedia.org

[Cloud-announce] Eliminating Debian Stretch in Cloud VPS
by Andrew Bogott 13 Oct '22

13 Oct '22

Debian Stretch's security support ends in mid 2022, and the Foundation's OS policy already discourages use of existing Stretch machines. That means that it's time for all project admins to start rebuilding your VMs with Bullseye (or, if you must, Buster.) Any webservices running in Kubernetes created in the last year or two are most likely using Buster images already, so there's no action needed for those. Older kubernetes jobs should be refreshed to use more modern images whenever possible. If you are still using the grid engine for webservices, we strongly encourage you to migrate your jobs to Kubernetes. For other grid uses, watch this space for future announcements about grid engine migration; we don't yet have a solution prepared for that. Details about the what and why for this process can be found here: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/News/Stretch_deprecation Here is the deprecation timeline: March 2021: Stretch VM creation disabled in most projects July 6, 2021: Active support of Stretch ends, Stretch moves into LTS <- You are Here -> January 1st, 2022: Stretch VM creation disabled in all projects, deprecation nagging begins in earnest. Stretch alternatives will be available for tool migration in Toolforge May 1, 2022: All active Stretch VMs will be shut down (but not deleted) by WMCS admins. This includes Toolforge grid exec nodes. June 30, 2022: LTS support for Debian Stretch ends, all Stretch VMs will be deleted by WMCS admins _______________________________________________ Cloud-announce mailing list -- cloud-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org List information: https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/cloud-announce.lists.wikimedia.…

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Changes in schema of MediaWiki links tables
by Amir Sarabadani 12 Aug '22

12 Aug '22

(If you don’t work with links tables such as templatelinks, pagelinks and so on, feel free to ignore this message) TLDR: The schema of links tables (starting with templatelinks) will change to have numeric id pointing to linktarget table instead of repeating namespace and title. Hello, The current schema and storage of most links tables are: page id (the source), namespace id of the target link and title of the target. For example, if a page with id of 1 uses Template:Foo, the row in the database would be 1, 6, and Foo (Template namespace has id of 6) Repeating the target’s title is not sustainable, for example more than half of Wikimedia Commons database is just three links tables. The sheer size of these tables makes a considerable portion of all queries slower, backups and dumps taking longer and taking much more space than needed due to unnecessary duplication. In Wikimedia Commons, on average a title is duplicated around 100 times for templatelinks and around 20 times for pagelinks. The numbers for other wikis depend on the usage patterns. Moving forward, these tables will be normalized, meaning a typical row will hold mapping of page id to linktarget id instead. Linktarget is a new table deployed in production and contains immutable records of namespace id and string. The major differences between page and linktarget tables are: 1- linktarget values won’t change (unlike page records that change with page move) 2- linktarget values can point to non-existent pages (=red links). The first table being done is templatelinks, then pagelinks, imagelinks and categorylinks will follow. During the migration phase both values will be accessible but we will turn off writing to the old columns once the values are backfilled and switched to be read from the new schema. We will announce any major changes beforehand but this is to let you know these changes are coming. While the normalization of all links tables will take several years to finish, templatelinks will finish in the next few months and is the most pressing one. So if you: - … rely on the schema of these tables in cloud replicas, you will need to change your tools. - … rely on dumps of these tables, you will need to change your scripts. Currently, templatelinks writes to both data schemes for new rows in most wikis. This week we will start backfilling the data with the new schema but it will take months to finish in large wikis. You can keep track of the general long-term work in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T300222 and the specific work for templatelinks in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T299417. You can also read more on the reasoning in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T222224. Thanks -- *Amir Sarabadani (he/him)* Staff Database Architect Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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[Cloud-announce] Reminder: All Debian Stretch VMs should be removed by May of 2022
by Andrew Bogott 29 Apr '22

29 Apr '22

There are still dozens of VMs in cloud-vps running Debian Stretch. All of these hosts will need to be deleted and replaced with VMs running either Buster or Bullseye in the next few months. Beginning in May we will begin to shut down Stretch instances. Please check this page for your projects, and take whatever steps are necessary to move off of Stretch: https://os-deprecation.toolforge.org/ Don't hesitate to reach out for help on IRC or mailing list if you need help with this migration. You may find Cinder volumes (https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Adding_Disk_Space_to_Cloud_VPS_ins…) especially useful for transferring data between VMs. Note that we do NOT recommend in-place OS upgrades of VMs; it is almost always better to start with a fresh host and transfer workloads over. Details about the what and why for this process can be found here: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/News/Stretch_deprecation Here is the remaining deprecation timeline: May 1, 2022: All active Stretch VMs will be shut down (but not deleted) by WMCS admins. June 30, 2022: LTS support for Debian Stretch ends, all Stretch VMs will be deleted by WMCS admins _______________________________________________ Cloud-announce mailing list -- cloud-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org List information: https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/cloud-announce.lists.wikimedia.…

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[Cloud-announce] PAWS upgrading to pywikibot 7.0.0 on 2022-03-28
by Vivian Rook 03 Apr '22

03 Apr '22

PAWS upgrading to pywikibot 7.0.0 there are some breaking changes: Support of Python 3.5.0 - 3.5.2 has been dropped (T286867) generate_user_files.py, generate_user_files.py, shell.py and version.py were moved to pywikibot/scripts and must be used with pwb wrapper script With some more in the Code cleanups section of the changelog: https://doc.wikimedia.org/pywikibot/stable/changelog.html -- *Vivian Rook (They/Them)* Site Reliability Engineer Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/> _______________________________________________ Cloud-announce mailing list -- cloud-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org List information: https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/cloud-announce.lists.wikimedia.…

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Re: Announcing the 2022 Wikimedia Hackathon
by Haley Lepp 26 Mar '22

26 Mar '22

Hello all! We hope you'll consider joining us at the Hackathon from May 20-22. While the Hackathon will be online, we encourage community members to apply for grants <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2022#Local_Meetup_Grants> to host or attend local meetups around the world. Grants can range from 500-5000 USD. Applications are due March 27. There are also scholarships available <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2022#Scholarship_Stipends> to cover costs of online attendance, such as childcare and data packages. Applications are due April 1. Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions. Cheers! Haley and the rest of the 2022 Hackathon committee On Fri, Mar 4, 2022 at 11:16 AM Haley Lepp <hlepp(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > Hello everyone! > > Your friendly neighborhood Hackathon committee is thrilled to announce the > 2022 Global Wikimedia Hackathon! We invite you to join us for three days of > collaborating, interactive sessions, and social fun from May 20-May 22. > The Hackathon will be held online and there will be grants available to > support local in-person meetups around the world. You can find more > information about this on our MediaWiki.org page > <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2022>, which will > continue to grow over the next few weeks. For more details, read below. > > Who: The Hackathon is for anyone who contributes (or wants to contribute > to) to Wikimedia’s technical areas - as code creators, maintainers, > translators, designers, technical writers and other technical roles. You > can come with a project in mind, join an existing project, or create > something new with others. The choice is yours! Newcomers are welcome. > > We will send out more information on how to schedule a session in the > program soon. You can also add yourself to the participants list > <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2022/Participants>, > and mention if you would like to help with tasks such as facilitation or > welcoming newcomers. There will be scholarship stipends available- please > stay tuned for more information. > > What: A Wikimedia Hackathon <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Hackathons> is > a space for the technical community to come together and work together on > technical projects, learn from each other, and make new friends. > > When: May 20-May 22. The schedule will be announced shortly. We are > trying to plan events so that people in all time zones can participate > comfortably. There will be core hours several times a day when most events > will occur, and online social and hacking spaces open 24 hours a day > throughout the three days. > > Where: The Hackathon will primarily be held online. However, very soon we > will share an application for local affiliates to apply for grants to host > in-person local meetups. Meetups can be anything from social gatherings > with food, to a party for watching the opening or closing ceremony, to a > pre-event workshop, to renting a venue where people can participate > together in the online event. Grants can range from 500-5000 USD. Stay > tuned for more information! > > How (can you help)?: > > 1. > > We are seeking another committee member! The commitment is around 3 > hours per week. If you are interested, please contact > hlepp(a)wikimedia.org > 2. > > We have an ideas page. > <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Hackathon_2022>What are > you interested in? What would you like to see or do in this year’s > hackathon? Please share your ideas with everyone! This is a community > Hackathon and we will work together to put on a great event. > 3. > > Do you have any accessibility or translation requests? Please contact > hlepp(a)wikimedia.org > > > Cheers, > > Your Hackathon Committee > > Andre <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:AKlapper_(WMF)> > > Haley <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:HLepp_(WMF)> > > Jay <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Jayprakash12345> > > Lucas <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Lucas_Werkmeister> > > Marios <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Magioladitis> > > Neslihan <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Flanoz> > > Selene > <https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=User:SYang_(WMF)&action=edit&re…> >

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Second Pywikibot workshop on Friday, March 25th, 16:00 UTC
by Srishti Sethi 23 Mar '22

23 Mar '22

Hello everyone, The second workshop on the topic of "Running Pywikibot scripts" is coming up - it will take place on Friday, March 25th at 16:00 UTC. You can find more details on the workshop and a link to join here: < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits/Workshops#How_to_run_a_…> [1]. This workshop will introduce participants to the bot scripts available via the Pywikibot framework and how to use them. If you missed attending the first one, it would be beneficial to have Pywikibot installed on your computer before the workshop. We look forward to your participation! Best, Srishti On behalf of the SWT Workshops Organization team [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits/Workshops#How_to_run_a_… *Srishti Sethi* Senior Developer Advocate Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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[Cloud-announce] Network maintenance today
by Andrew Bogott 22 Mar '22

22 Mar '22

In about an hour (at 15:00 UTC today) we'll be upgrading the networking servers for cloud-vps. This may cause brief networking interruptions for both cloud-vps and toolforge. No action should be needed on your part. -Andrew + the WMCS team _______________________________________________ Cloud-announce mailing list -- cloud-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org List information: https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/cloud-announce.lists.wikimedia.…

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[Cloud-announce] [REMINDER] Toolforge Debian Stretch Grid Engine deprecation
by Seyram Komla Sapaty 21 Mar '22

21 Mar '22

Hello, all! This is a follow-up on our earlier announcement[0] of the above. Thanks to those who have already migrated their tool(s) from Debian Stretch grid or are in the process of doing this. At the start of this process, there were 867 tools running on Stretch grid. The current number is 821. === Recap === We are migrating away from Debian Stretch[1] to Debian Buster for all of Toolforge servers, and the most affected piece is the Grid Engine backend in particular. We need to shut down all Stretch hosts before the end of support date to ensure that Toolforge remains a secure platform. This migration will take several months because many people still use the Stretch hosts and our users are working on tools in their spare time. == What should I do? == You should migrate your Toolforge tool to a newer environment. You have two options: * migrate from Toolforge Stretch Grid Engine to Toolforge Kubernetes[2]. * migrate from Toolforge Stretch Grid Engine to Toolforge Buster Grid Engine.[3] == Timeline == * 2022-02-15: Availability of Debian Buster grid announced to community - DONE * 2022-03-21: Weekly reminders via email to tool maintainers for tools still running on Stretch - IN PROGRESS * Week of 2022-04-21: ** Daily reminders via email to tool maintainers for tools still running on Stretch ** Switch login.toolforge.org to point to Buster bastion * Week of 2022-05-02: Evaluate migration status and formulate plan for final shutdown of Stretch grid * Week of 2022-05-21: Shutdown Stretch grid We thank all of you for your support during this migration process. You can always reach out via any of our communication channels[4] [0] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/cloud-announce@lists.wikimedia.… [1] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/News/Toolforge_Stretch_deprecation [2] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Toolforge/Jobs_framework#Grid_Engi… [3] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/News/Toolforge_Stretch_deprecation#Move… [4] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Portal:Toolforge/About_Toolforge#Commun… Thanks. -- Seyram Komla Sapaty Developer Advocate Wikimedia Cloud Services _______________________________________________ Cloud-announce mailing list -- cloud-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org List information: https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/cloud-announce.lists.wikimedia.…

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[Cloud-announce] Cloud-vps bastion upgrades today
by Andrew Bogott 21 Mar '22

21 Mar '22

In a few hours we'll be replacing the existing cloud-vps bastions with new systems running Debian Bullseye. Because this is a DNS change, existing bastion sessions should not be interrupted. New connections will produce fingerprint warnings that will require you to update your .ssh/known_hosts. Here are the fingerprints for the new systems: primary.bastion.wmcloud.org, eqiad1.bastion.wmcloud.org, bastion.wmcloud.org: ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:QlZONtScYR4O5jGnrmKRhWVF9lJE+aReENpHXqeOL/4 secondary.bastion.wmcloud.org: ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:tRgnLMmISSuByzzeX8yXWcdFKjZad8Hdy6Y7E6jgaGI -Andrew + the WMCS team _______________________________________________ Cloud-announce mailing list -- cloud-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org List information: https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/cloud-announce.lists.wikimedia.…

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Redis eviction stats?
by Roy Smith 21 Mar '22

21 Mar '22

I'm thinking about using the Toolforge Redis instance for a persistent data store. For the data I want to store, it's OK if there's occasional evictions due to memory exhaustion, but only for fairly small values of "occasional". So, I'm curious what the situation is for this particular instance. How often does data tend to get evicted? If the answer is, "We haven't seen that happen in many months", then I'm fine. If the answer is, "It happens every day", then I need to be looking at a different data store.

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