Toolserver-announce May 2013

toolserver-announce@lists.wikimedia.org

3 participants
8 discussions

My fading out
by DaB. 29 May '13

29 May '13

Hello guys, I just extended my personal account until 5. January of 2014 – it is the last time I do this. At this day I will also remove my access as root of the Toolserver. Beginning of 1. July I will start my fade out, doing less and less work for the Toolserver until I am not longer visible. I announce that this early because I think it is fair for you to know that will happen and I like not just to vanish like some roots before. There are 4 main factors why I decided to not continue my work until the end of the Toolserver in December 2014. Reason 1 is that the Toolserver now has a second paid root and 6 months will be enough to teach amette and nosy what I know about the Toolserver. Reason 2 is that there was no real investment in the Toolserver in the first 6 months of 2013 and I very doubt that there will ever be any in the second half or beyond. Reason 3 is that I learned during the last weekend that the support of the Toolserver in the board of WMDE reached its minimum. One board-member announced publicly during the general meeting of WMDE that it is good that there is a timetable for the Toolserver now – I know only 1 timetable for the Toolserver and that’s Silke’s <s>plan of destruction</s> roadmap for migration [1]. Another board-member told me during a chatting in the halls that ToolLabs (or the move to) is "klasse" (~great). It is impossible to improve the Toolserver against the CEO *and* the board of WMDE. Reason 4 are you, the tool-authors. The participation in my survey [2] was pitiful low and the majority of these few who voted, voted to leave the Toolserver as soon as possible or this year – a trend that was already visible on the mailing-list before. So I conclude that the most of you don’t care and whose care will leave this year. While I asked for documentation (or at least correction) in the toolserver- wikis for years, nearly nothing ever happened. But now that ToolLabs is on the horizon you write documentation for THAT – freely. And it is really a joke to compare the empty new database-servers of ToolLabs with our old and heavy loaded servers for performance. Let’s see how fast they are if 10 slow queries, which had run for hours, run in parallel. With very few exceptions none of you helped to protect the Toolserver against ToolLabs; all you were interested in was that ToolLabs provides the same environment so your tools can continue to run there. When I read such phrases like "we have to stabilize the Toolserver until Labs is ready" or now "we need the Toolserver for redirects to ToolLabs" I could vomit! I promised in November 2012 that I will stay for another year and I will fulfill that promise – but not a day longer. There is no point in fighting for something if the something has already surrendered and no support is there (not from you, the toolusers, the board of WMDE, the CEO of WMDE or the general meeting of WMDE). These of you who are able to move to ToolLabs I wish luck. Let’s hope that the WMF does not decide to "re-focus" again too soon. Let’s hope that the WMF does not disable tools just because there are a little slow. Let’s hope that the WMF does not restrict the database-tables even more. Let’s hope that the WMF does not kick the volunteers out completely some days like they did with the WMF-wiki-admins some weeks ago. And hoping is all we can do, because the WMF is a undemocratic construct and ToolLabs is lead by paid roots, so whatever the WMF staff decides will happen. Maybe if one of these things happen you will remember the tiny, slow, unstable, but free Toolserver — but it will not be there anymore. Sincerely, DaB. [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Tool_Labs/Roadmap_en [2] https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Labs-Moving-Survey -- Userpage: [[:w:de:User:DaB.]] — PGP: 0x2d3ee2d42b255885

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Maintenance s1-user commons
by Marlen Caemmerer 28 May '13

28 May '13

Hello, unfortunatelly the commons copy on s1-user got terribly broken so I have to resetup this DB. But I do have another copy of s4 on z-dat-s4-a that I will use for dumping (I will have to stop replication in the mean time) I will do this on Friday after 7 pm UTC which mean commons will not be available on this host until resetup has finished. Cheers Marlen/nosy

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Status update on Tool Labs
by Silke Meyer 27 May '13

27 May '13

Hello to all tool maintainers! It was good to see several of you in person this weekend! Faces ftw! :) Here is a status update with what is now working in Tool Labs: First of all (looking at DaB.s survey and your comments): You _don't_ have to care about virtual instances, puppet or any of this. This is underneath/behind Tool Labs but you can just use the login server without having to know about it. What you get: * login server made to resemble the toolserver * database replicas from s1-s6, s7 is following in June. Access to all data you can access as a registered, unprivileged user. * possibility to create your own user databases * shared project storage, home directories (nfs) * possibility to add maintainers to your project via the web interface on http://tools.wmflabs.org/ * possibility to restore your files to the state they were in 1, 2, 3 hours ago, 1, 2, 3 days ago and on the last 2 Sundays. * infrastructure to run web services * job system: OpenGridengine * two different environments to develop tools in: "Tools" project which is a stable environment, "Bots" project which can be used for experiments with the environment, root access is possible in the latter. * bug tracking in WMF's Bugzilla (product: Wikimedia Labs, components: bots and tools for the two projects) * more stuff that is mentioned in the road map (link below). What we are still on: * documentation (let's crowdsource this!) * make Merlissimo's MerlLinkBot hunt down deprecated weblinks and point them to your tools' new URL. Looking for things you can help with? * Write down you experiences like some already did: Magnus Manske: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/Migrating_from_tools… or Russell Blau: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Russell_Blau/Using_pywikibot_on_La… * Help to improve the user interface of tools.wmflabs.org! Contact Coren/Marc-Andre Pelletier. Links: Tool Labs help: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nova_Resource:Tools/Help FAQ (ongoing collection of what you ask): http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Labs/Migration_of_Toolserver_tools Road map: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Tool_Labs/Roadmap_en (English) and http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Tool_Labs/Roadmap_de (German) What's next? Please come and try out the new database replication! If your tool is up and running in Tool Labs, _please consider documenting_ what you missed in the docs. By doing so you will help others a lot! Don't hesitate to ask! The best places to ask questions: * IRC (#wikimedia-labs), where Coren and petan (as Tool Labs admins) and many other experienced people hang around * the list labs-l (https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/labs-l) Do your tools need more adaptations than you think you can do? Wouldn't mind a helping hand? Ask me and I'll try to find you a helper! Best, Silke -- Silke Meyer Internes IT-Management und Projektmanagement Toolserver Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin Tel. (030) 219 158 260 http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.

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Introducing the new toolserver admin
by Silke Meyer 23 May '13

23 May '13

Hi all! Let me introduce Alexander Mette, the new toolserver admin who came to support DaB. and Nosy! Welcome! As soon as he is a bit more in touch with the toolserver, he would like to meet you in an office hour. (Will be announced separately.) You can reach him via e-mail as alexander.mette(a)wikimedia.de and on IRC as amette. Cheers, Silke -- Silke Meyer Internes IT-Management und Projektmanagement Toolserver Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin Tel. (030) 219 158 260 http://wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.

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Status of the toolserver
by DaB. 14 May '13

14 May '13

Hello all, as you have surely noticed the toolserver is even more unstable and unreliable than normal at the moment. The reason is that our ha-nodes are not longer working as intended and neither Nosy nor I are able to fix this. A quick word was ha-nodes are: The "ha" stands for "high available" and we have 2 servers for that. Some services at the toolserver are so important that a downtime is unacceptable (like /home, LDAP or the DNS) and for this reasons these services life at the ha-nodes. If one server goes down or crashes then the other can continue to operate all services with no or little interruption time and without working by a root. That worked great as long as River was here and not-so-good in the last months, but now it is totally broken. The problem is that both ha-nodes run Solaris and all roots are no Solaris- experts what makes it hard for us to find errors or in this case impossible. We have setup a very ugly workaround, but it is not stable and so the downtime of important services cause downtime for the hole toolserver – and more work for the roots. We can only think of one solution: Replacing the solaris at the ha-nodes with linux. But this can not start before Friday and it will take some time until everything is moved over. It will also cause some hours of complete downtime while /home is copied (we will separately announce this). In best case when Whitsun is over everything will be working again, in worst case it will need 2 weeks (I will be away between 21 and 26 for the general meeting of WMDE). The repairing of the ha-nodes has top priority, so everything else will be delayed (linux-update, database-reimports, account-creation (for VERY important ones send me a mail), etc.). If you have questions, please send them to the ML. Sincerely, DaB. -- Userpage: [[:w:de:User:DaB.]] — PGP: 0x2d3ee2d42b255885

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Upgrade to Debian 7 next Sunday
by DaB. 13 May '13

13 May '13

Hello all. Today Debian 7 was released as the new stable version. I now that some of you are eager to upgrade so you can get new version of programs. We will not disappoint you and so for I announce a maintenance for SUNDAY, 12. May 12:00 UTC for the userland-servers. You can find the complete list of updates at [1], and a short summary below. If you notice a problem please leave a comment in the bug or at the mailing-list so the admins can look for a solution; please notice that most of the removals are just renamings – make sure to check the "New"-section also. Sincerely, DaB. Updates: bash 4.1 → 4.2 emacs 23 → 45 g++ 4.4 → 4.7 gcj 4.4 → 4.7 libboost 1.42 → 1.49 libc6 2.11 → 2.13 mono 2.6 → 2.10 perl 5.10 → 5.14 php5 5.3 → 5.4 vim 7.2 → 7.3 New: python2.7 ruby1.9 [1] https://jira.toolserver.org/browse/MNT-1322 -- Userpage: [[:w:de:User:DaB.]] — PGP: 0x2d3ee2d42b255885

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Re: [Toolserver-announce] [Toolserver-l] Can't login to willow
by DaB. 12 May '13

12 May '13

Hello, At Sunday 12 May 2013 02:48:40 DaB. wrote: > Is this a side effect of the maintenance? the server oh which we had setup the temporary solution yesterday crashed today. During the last 2.5h I tried to restarted the nfs-server but I was not successful and I am out of ideas now. Because Nosy didn't documented what she did yesterday I can not just repeat it and we have to wait until she is available again. Until Nosy fix the problem again, the toolserver will be out- of-order – I know that that sucks but I can not change it. Sincerely, DaB. -- Userpage: [[:w:de:User:DaB.]] — PGP: 0x2d3ee2d42b255885

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Survey: Moving to Labs
by DaB. 02 May '13

02 May '13

Hello all, until now I had the impression that we (you, the authors, and me) fight together against WMF and WMDE for keeping the Toolserver and against Labs. Some mails and discussion in the last days gives me now the impression that this was wrong and (at least some of) you are eager to leave the toolserver as soon as possible. There is no point to beg the WMDE for new hardware and to invest much more time if 2 weeks after Labs is "ready" the toolserver will be empty. For this reason I created a survey at [1] that starts at midnight. Please take a moment of your time and place your nick in the section that suits you. Sincerely, DaB. [1] https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Labs-Moving-Survey -- Userpage: [[:w:de:User:DaB.]] — PGP: 0x2d3ee2d42b255885

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Toolserver-announce May 2013