Hello all,
with the beginning of the next year (2011) I will not longer accept new
interwiki-bot-accounts, if:
-The homewiki of the bot has at least one active interwiki-bot, which runs on
the toolserver, OR
-The homewiki has less then 1000 articles.
(There can be exceptions if there is a good reason of course)
The homewiki is that wiki where the bot starts and where the account-requester
got his/her bot approved (see [1]).
If the account-requester requested the account only for the interwiki-bot, the
request will be rejected; if he/she requested the account also for other
things, only the interwiki-bot will be denied of course and the rest of the
request will be handled the normal way.
For interwiki-bots which runs already on the toolserver, there is no change at
the moment. When you find a free minute: Please add your bot to [2] and check
if there are inactive bots listed for your wiki.
The goal of this change is to limit the number of interwiki-bots on the
toolserver (and improve our documentary a bit).
Sincerly,
DaB.
[1] https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Account_approval_process, Request
process, Point 4.
[2] https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Wikimedia_bots
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Hi,
On the morning (UTC) of December 6th we will perform general maintenance[0] on
all servers. Services will be affected as follows:
Service | Expected impact
-----------------------------+-------------------------------------
Entire platform | As described in maintenance schedule[0]
JIRA, MediaWiki, FishEye | Under 30 minutes outage for each service
| during upgrade
Start time: Monday, 6th December, 12AM UTC
End time: Monday, 6th December, 8AM UTC (estimated)
Details:
This is a schedule general maintenance, which we use for various non-critical
tasks. The expected outages are as described in the maintenance schedule[0].
Most of the changes for this maintenance are in the local TS software, /opt/ts;
all software will be upgraded to the latest version, and some minor changes
will be made. The full list of upgrades, including Perl modules, is available
here:
<https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Admin:Pending_maintenance_tasks>
The following changes will also be made:
* Mono will now install directly in /opt/ts instead of /opt/ts/mono/2.0. If
you call "mono" without an absolute path, this will not affect you. If you
currently call "/opt/ts/mono/2.0/bin/mono", you should change this to remove
the full path before the maintenance.
* The preferred OpenSSL is now /opt/ts/bin/{amd64,}/openssl, which is OpenSSL
1.0.0b instead of /usr/sfw/bin/{amd64,}/openssl (0.9.7d). This should not
affect users, but if you currently call the version in /usr/sfw with a full
path, you may wish to remove the path so you automatically use our version,
which is better.
We will additionally make some changes to how the software is compiled; if you
have compiled your own C or C++ programs, this will affect you, and you should
read the section "Changes to ts-specs environment" below. If you do not have
any locally-compiled software, this change will not affect you.
During the maintenance, some software may not work correctly (e.g. programs or
libraries not found).
--
JIRA, FishEye, MediaWiki and phpMyAdmin will also be upgraded.
--
The default Python version will change from 2.6 to 2.7. If you currently use
/usr/bin/python, this change will happen for you automatically. If you use
/usr/bin/python2.6 explicitly, you will need to change to /usr/bin/python2.7 to
use the new Python.
If you have programs which don't work under Python 2.7, you should a) report
this in JIRA, and b) switch to /usr/bin/python2.6 before the maintenance. If
there are no problems with Python 2.7, we will remove Python 2.6 from the
system during the next maintenance (January 2011).
We will patch Python 2.7 to revert the fix for bug 1054943[1], which introduced
a regression affecting Unicode normalisation[2][3].
--
The default "gcc" will become GCC 4.5.1, rather than 3.4.3. This may affect
you if you build locally-installed Perl modules, especially if these modules
use C++ code. This is described in more detail below.
--
Changes to ts-specs environment
===============================
This section only applies to users with locally-compiled C or C++ software.
The new version of ts-specs (/opt/ts) installed during the maintenance has
switched the default compiler from Sun Studio to GCC 4.5.1. This is described
in more detail at [4]. In brief:
* You should change from your current compiler (Studio, GCC 3.4.3 or GCC 4.4)
to GCC 4.5.1, /opt/ts/bin/gcc.
* If you recompile any Studio- or GCC 3.4.3-compiled C++ code with the new
compiler, you need to recompile all of it, because the ABIs are not
compatible.
* GCC 3.4.3 will no longer be installed.
* If you use Studio-compiled versions of C++ libraries in
/opt/ts/<lib>/<version>/, you should change to the GCC version in
/opt/ts/<lib>/<version>-gcc/.
The following libraries require special handling:
* Studio-compiled versions of MySQL++ and VIPS were previously installed in
/opt/ts/lib. If you use these libraries, you should switch to the version
that we will install in /opt/ts/<lib> (where <lib> is "mysqlpp" or "vips").
The Studio-compiled version will remain available for now.
* Studio-compiled versions of ImageMagick, sigc++ and cairomm are currently
installed in /opt/ts. They will be replaced with GCC-compiled versions
in the same path, and Studio-compiled versions will not be available.
If this adversely affects you (because you use these libraries and need time
to migrate), you should let us know before the maintenance.
[0] https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Maintenance_schedule
[1] http://bugs.python.org/issue1054943
[2] http://bugs.python.org/issue10254
[3] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/toolserver-l/2010-November/003633.html
[4] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/toolserver-announce/2010-November/0003…
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Hello all,
I will reboot nightshade tonight at 0:20 UTC, because of a kernel-update
(Critical maintenance). Please see [[MNT-901]] for details.
Sincerly,
DaB.
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Hi,
During the general maintenance on Dec 6th, we will change the default Python
version (/usr/bin/python) on the Solaris user servers from 2.6 to 2.7. You may
wish to test your tools with /usr/bin/python2.7 before then.
- river.
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Hi,
In the past, our policy on SGE (batch job scheduling) was that it should only
be used for jobs which run once then exit, and that it should not be used for
jobs which run continuously.
This policy has now changed, and SGE can be used for all jobs, including
long-running jobs. This effectively obsoletes Phoenix and similar tools, since
SGE with cronsub provides the same functionality.
Because SGE makes it easier for us to scale the Toolserver cluster, as well as
making your tools run more efficiently (and therefore quicker), we recommend
that all tools be converted to SGE where possible. The wiki page now has a
quick-start section explaining how to do this:
<https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Batch_job_scheduling#Quick_start>
(While SGE has a lot of features and can be complicated, we've tried to make it
easy to use for the typical cases; if something is not clear, please let us
know.)
- river.
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Hi,
The webservers (wolfsbane and ortelius) have been added as SGE submit hosts,
which means you can submit jobs from these servers (e.g. from CGI scripts).
However, jobs will not run on these servers.
- river.
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Hi,
Since no major issues have been raised regarding the conversion of nightshade
to Solaris, this has been schedule for the maintenance window on January 3rd,
2011. For more information, see
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/toolserver-announce/2010-September/000…>
During the maintenance window, we will back up crontabs to
$HOME/crontab.nightshade, and then reinstall the OS. This will take about 30
minutes. After the reinstall, the system will be identical to willow.
Users who currently use willow for cron will not have to make any changes.
Cronjobs using SGE will automatically be scheduled on nightshade as appropriate.
SGE jobs which force "-l arch=lx24-amd64" will fail to run, since there will be
no Linux hosts left. If you currently do this, you should remove the arch
limit.
Users who have crontabs on nightshade should review the old crontab file (which
will be saved as $HOME/crontab.nightshade), then run this command to install
it:
$ crontab $HOME/crontab.nightshade
Note there are some differences between Linux and Solaris cron; in particular,
"/" syntax is not supported. See <https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Solaris#cron>
for details.
Any issues which prevent your tools running on Solaris must be fixed before the
conversion date. If you need system changes for this, file a request in JIRA
and include [solaris] in the summary. We will not delay the conversion unless
serious unanticipated issues are discovered.
- river.
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Hi,
During the next maintenance window (Dec 6), we will switch from Sun Studio to
GCC as the standard C and C++ compiler for ts-specs (/opt/ts). If you have
have locally-compiled C or C++ software, you should read the rest of this mail.
Otherwise, this change does not affect you.
We this change for several reasons:
+ Some open source software (especially C++ software) is only tested on
GCC, and doesn't compile with other compilers. We have to maintain
(sometimes extensive) local patch sets to compile this software with Studio.
+ On x86, using GCC doesn't cause a performance penalty, and GCC now supports
some features (e.g. OpenMP) which were previously only supported in Studio.
+ Since C++ ABIs are not portable between compilers, we currently need to
provide compiled libraries for both compilers.
+ Users often try to link software using the GCC compiler, but with the
Studio-compiled libraries.
If you compile C or C++ software, this change will affect you as follows:
+ If you use TS GCC 4.4 (in /opt/ts/gcc/4.4/bin), you do not *have* to make any
changes, but we will shortly be installing GCC 4.5 and making /opt/ts/bin/gcc
(and g++) symlinks to the latest compiler versions. So, you may wish to switch
to /opt/ts/bin/gcc when this is done rather than using a specific compiler
version.
+ If you use Sun GCC 3.4.3 (in /usr/sfw/bin), you should switch to our GCC, because
we will remove Sun's GCC during the maintenance window. (However, we will
not remove the runtime libraries, so there is no need to recompile
immediately.)
+ If you use Studio (cc and CC), you should switch to GCC (gcc and g++) and
recompile.
+ GCC-specific compiled libraries, currently in /opt/ts/<library>/<version>-gcc,
will stay there for now, in order to avoid breaking existing software.
During the following maintenance window (Jan 3), the Studio versions in
/opt/ts/<library>/<version> will be replaced with the GCC version, so using
the "-gcc" suffix will no longer be necessary.
- river.
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Hi,
Users were supposed to received an automated mail 28 days before account expiry
(which is currently 1 Dec for most users), but due to an issue with the program
which sends the mails, they were not sent. The problem has been fixed and
users will receive another mail 7 days before expiry, but in the mean time you
may wish to run 'acctrenew' on willow now to renew your account.
- river.
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