Hi,
https://jira.toolserver.org/browse/TS-1599 says inter alia:
| This is not the first time I try to open this ticket at | Jira. The last two times I tried, the message "You are not | authorized to perform this operation. Please try to log in | or sign up for an account. Close this dialog and press | refresh in your browser" appeared and the whole ticket was | gone and I got logged out automatically. wtf? It's really | disappointing that there seems to be no way to restore the | whole story I'd written. :-((
This is still the same issue as reported by Krinkle at http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.toolserver/5506 in November. The backlog in JIRA for various other issues in the Toolserver project is quite impressive as well.
So we should add more roots, ideally of course Solaris/Linux bilinguals with 20+ years of HA and MySQL replication expe- rience and lots of spare time on their hands, practically any bright mind who can track down some bug, update the pup- pet configuration and care for all the other tidbits while documenting their work meticulously, so that the roots can focus on the more complicated stuff.
Silke, what are the requirements WMDE imposes on toolserver admins? Being of legal age in their country of citizenship, residence and Germany? Disclosing their identity to WMDE? Anything else?
Tim
Hello, At Tuesday 05 February 2013 02:07:48 DaB. wrote:
So we should add more roots, ideally of course Solaris/Linux bilinguals with 20+ years of HA and MySQL replication expe- rience and lots of spare time on their hands, practically any bright mind who can track down some bug, update the pup- pet configuration and care for all the other tidbits while documenting their work meticulously, so that the roots can focus on the more complicated stuff.
unfortunately it is not that easy (and finding a solaris-person is quite hard). There are other problems too. For example you have to find somebody who is accepted by WMDE (as owner) AND WMF (as database-owner). Than there is nearly no or no up2date docu. Also WMDE still believes that the toolserver will not survive this year so the contract would be limited (so much learning for a short job). The person would also have to life with me, you all and the community – and neither is easy sometimes. Another point is that the influence of WMDE would increase (Wes Brot ich es, des Lied ich sing) and taken the position of WMDE I'm not sure if that is a good idea.
I know that some of you wait for stuff to happen and I'm sorry that it takes a lot of time sometimes – but my to-do-list is long and even my time is limited. I hope to fix some things during my next semester break (beginning in 2 weeks), but not everything will be fixed.
Good night.
Sincerely, DaB.
(anonymous) wrote:
So we should add more roots, ideally of course Solaris/Linux bilinguals with 20+ years of HA and MySQL replication expe- rience and lots of spare time on their hands, practically any bright mind who can track down some bug, update the pup- pet configuration and care for all the other tidbits while documenting their work meticulously, so that the roots can focus on the more complicated stuff.
unfortunately it is not that easy (and finding a solaris-person is quite hard). There are other problems too. For example you have to find somebody who is accepted by WMDE (as owner) AND WMF (as database-owner). Than there is nearly no or no up2date docu. Also WMDE still believes that the toolserver will not survive this year so the contract would be limited (so much learning for a short job). The person would also have to life with me, you all and the community – and neither is easy sometimes. Another point is that the influence of WMDE would increase (Wes Brot ich es, des Lied ich sing) and taken the position of WMDE I'm not sure if that is a good idea.
I wasn't thinking about a paid job, but harvesting the vol- unteer potential of the toolserver usership. If there are problems along the way, we'll sort them out. But not moving forward because there *might* be problems is not acceptable IMHO given that we have many *existing* problems right now.
I know that some of you wait for stuff to happen and I'm sorry that it takes a lot of time sometimes – but my to-do-list is long and even my time is limited. I hope to fix some things during my next semester break (beginning in 2 weeks), but not everything will be fixed.
And that's the reason why we need more roots. There is no point in forcing all the work on two people and them to rush fixes (which usually doesn't result in good quality), when we have lots of people around who could solve issues in a jiffy.
Tim
Hello, At Tuesday 05 February 2013 15:27:24 DaB. wrote:
wasn't thinking about a paid job, but harvesting the vol- unteer potential of the toolserver usership.
AFAIK the WMF accepts only paid persons anymore.
But if the users would like to help, they can it even now: Update the pages in the wiki, write a patch for cron, add rules to puppet and help to clean it up, help newbies in the IRC and JIRA, add nagios-rules, prepare the switch from jira away (or find its problem), help Merl with the SGE, help Danny with the dumps, help Kai with OSM – and there are many more things.
I have no problems with more roots (heh, if there are enough, I can leave ;-)). But beside the formal problems (WMF and WMDE), there is also the problem that to incorporate a new roots needs a lot of my time – and if the new root becomes inactive short time later my time was wasted. River appointed a few users to roots over the time, but I'm the only one left and most of my "colleges" were never very active.
So in a nutshell: If you like to help the TS: Do it. If you need a special right and I know you, ask me and I will see what I can do. If you need to become a root and are SURE to stay, fight with WMDE and WMF (and me) and if you are successful I will show you how deep the rabbit hole goes ;-).
Sincerely, DaB.
On 5 Feb 2013, at 14:49, "DaB." WP@daniel.baur4.info wrote:
AFAIK the WMF accepts only paid persons anymore.
Are you sure? Are you saying the WMF only accepts paid roots to their own servers, or the Toolserver?
Hi!
DaB is right: WMF as the database owner accepts only paid roots. As to WMDE, we are ready to pay another root who is willing to work for WMDE and able to handle the requirements of the toolserver (that you know better than I do right now). You are welcome to propose people (or yourselves) or to help specify the requirements for a job advertisement.
I see your point, DaB, the work you would put into instructing a new person. So another possibility could be to pay an external service provider to get a bunch of things done in one go to decrease the to do pile. Which is rather a short-term help and still requires some DaB. For this, I would need a list of tasks that you, DaB and Marlen, would like to delegate. Any opinions on this?
Personally, I am new to this topic. At this point, it is hard to tell how long the transition will take, but if I may roughly estimate I think the toolserver will realistically NOT leave us in 2013. Also, I do not consider this as an attempt to "increase WMDE's influence" (at least, I am not going to brainwash people ;)) but as part of our commitment to keep up support of the toolserver.
Cheers, Silke
Silke Meyer wrote:
DaB is right: WMF as the database owner accepts only paid roots. As to WMDE, we are ready to pay another root who is willing to work for WMDE and able to handle the requirements of the toolserver (that you know better than I do right now). You are welcome to propose people (or yourselves) or to help specify the requirements for a job advertisement.
I see your point, DaB, the work you would put into instructing a new person. So another possibility could be to pay an external service provider to get a bunch of things done in one go to decrease the to do pile. Which is rather a short-term help and still requires some DaB. For this, I would need a list of tasks that you, DaB and Marlen, would like to delegate. Any opinions on this?
I imagine that most Toolserver users are less interested in the mechanics of the machine than they are in its results. As I see it, the primary purpose of the Toolserver is to provide replicated databases. The Toolserver has other (secondary) purposes such as providing shared hosting and storage, but that is so ubiquitous on the Web these days that it's not really relevant here.
Focusing solely on the replicated databases for a moment, they've been corrupt for months. Months and months. What can be done about this? Would having additional roots help with this?
MZMcBride
Hello, At Tuesday 05 February 2013 20:24:03 DaB. wrote:
Focusing solely on the replicated databases for a moment, they've been corrupt for months. Months and months. What can be done about this? Would having additional roots help with this?
it took a long time for different reasons (political ones, hardware-shortages, technology changes, learning and (for a very small part) personal-shortage). But the situation improved during the last weeks: I have written a replacement for trainwreck, the WMF provides dumps now on short-time-base (few days), we have a contact person there, I have learned how to import the new dump-format, and Nosy and I have setup 1 of the new servers as db-server. The s2-import will be the first step to replace/re-import all clusters. I'm not sure about the sequence yet (but s5 will be the next), but if everything works all clusters SHOULD be new withing 6 weeks. And no, in this special field another root would not help in my eyes.
Sincerely, DaB.
Please excuse my possibly lame question:
Is there any possible mid-step between root and regular user? Something like power-user?
For instance I wanted to cleanup the mess in user store as well as more automatize the dumps, however I can't do either of it because of lack of necessary rights. And of course comparing to database, cron, jira and other issues these activities are much lower importance so current roots won't have any time for that. And vicious circle is closing...
Kind regards
Danny B.
---------- Původní zpráva ---------- Od: Silke Meyer silke.meyer@wikimedia.de Datum: 5. 2. 2013 Předmět: Re: [Toolserver-l] Adding more roots
"Hi!
DaB is right: WMF as the database owner accepts only paid roots. As to WMDE, we are ready to pay another root who is willing to work for WMDE and able to handle the requirements of the toolserver (that you know better than I do right now). You are welcome to propose people (or yourselves) or to help specify the requirements for a job advertisement.
I see your point, DaB, the work you would put into instructing a new person. So another possibility could be to pay an external service provider to get a bunch of things done in one go to decrease the to do pile. Which is rather a short-term help and still requires some DaB. For this, I would need a list of tasks that you, DaB and Marlen, would like to delegate. Any opinions on this?
Personally, I am new to this topic. At this point, it is hard to tell how long the transition will take, but if I may roughly estimate I think the toolserver will realistically NOT leave us in 2013. Also, I do not consider this as an attempt to "increase WMDE's influence" (at least, I am not going to brainwash people ;)) but as part of our commitment to keep up support of the toolserver.
Cheers, Silke
(anonymous) wrote:
wasn't thinking about a paid job, but harvesting the vol- unteer potential of the toolserver usership.
AFAIK the WMF accepts only paid persons anymore.
But if the users would like to help, they can it even now: Update the pages in the wiki, write a patch for cron, add rules to puppet and help to clean it up, help newbies in the IRC and JIRA, add nagios-rules, prepare the switch from jira away (or find its problem), help Merl with the SGE, help Danny with the dumps, help Kai with OSM – and there are many more things.
I have no problems with more roots (heh, if there are enough, I can leave ;-)). But beside the formal problems (WMF and WMDE), there is also the problem that to incorporate a new roots needs a lot of my time – and if the new root becomes inactive short time later my time was wasted. River appointed a few users to roots over the time, but I'm the only one left and most of my "colleges" were never very active.
So in a nutshell: If you like to help the TS: Do it. If you need a special right and I know you, ask me and I will see what I can do. If you need to become a root and are SURE to stay, fight with WMDE and WMF (and me) and if you are successful I will show you how deep the rabbit hole goes ;-).
I don't think that works. For example, if you want to fix the issues with JIRA (which are probably just some miscon- figuration), you need to have access to JIRA, and the mail logs, and the webserver, and the database, and whatnot. To do this, you effectively have to be root.
I also don't think that a lot of familiarization for new roots is necessary. After all, the servers don't run on magic, but on software, and if you are able to find your way around JIRA, or OSM, or something else that needs attention, you are *very* probably skilled enough to read and under- stand configuration files and code.
And finally I think that we shouldn't artificially heighten the entry barriers for people trying to help. Someone of- fering their knowledge and time to help with toolserver ad- ministration shouldn't have to promise a long term commit- ment, and they certainly shouldn't have to "fight" so that the recipient will accept their gifts. On Labs, which is scheduled to have replicated databases by the end of the month, there is no such barrier, and it may become increas- ingly difficult to convince volunteers to invest any time in the toolserver.
Tim
Hello, At Wednesday 06 February 2013 00:31:31 DaB. wrote:
I also don't think that a lot of familiarization for new roots is necessary. After all, the servers don't run on magic, but on software, and if you are able to find your way around JIRA, or OSM, or something else that needs attention, you are very probably skilled enough to read and under- stand configuration files and code.
Trust me, the toolserver is a *little* bit more complex than your machine at home. It is a full-grown cluster with more than a dozen hosts, a SAN- infrastructure, HA-services and everything is mixed with Solaris and Debian. I have more than 20 years of computer-experience, but I needed over a year to understood everything (and I still discover new things from time to time).
On Labs, which is scheduled to have replicated databases by the end of the month, there is no such barrier, and it may become increas- ingly difficult to convince volunteers to invest any time in the toolserver.
In this case you should just wait until the end of the month and than switch to labs, leaving the toolserver with all its problems behind. Just for clarification: I do not have "convince" people to come to the toolserver, they come by alone. And we will see how many users are eager to leave if Wikilabs is ever working.
Sincerely, DaB.
(anonymous) wrote:
I also don't think that a lot of familiarization for new roots is necessary. After all, the servers don't run on magic, but on software, and if you are able to find your way around JIRA, or OSM, or something else that needs attention, you are very probably skilled enough to read and under- stand configuration files and code.
Trust me, the toolserver is a *little* bit more complex than your machine at home. It is a full-grown cluster with more than a dozen hosts, a SAN- infrastructure, HA-services and everything is mixed with Solaris and Debian. I have more than 20 years of computer-experience, but I needed over a year to understood everything (and I still discover new things from time to time).
Does someone need to understand all that to fix JIRA?
On Labs, which is scheduled to have replicated databases by the end of the month, there is no such barrier, and it may become increas- ingly difficult to convince volunteers to invest any time in the toolserver.
In this case you should just wait until the end of the month and than switch to labs, leaving the toolserver with all its problems behind. Just for clarification: I do not have "convince" people to come to the toolserver, they come by alone. And we will see how many users are eager to leave if Wikilabs is ever working.
Apparently, they don't come on their own. The last admin to join (before Nosy) was Reedy about two years ago, and with his contract with WMF I don't know if he could really be counted as "volunteer" :-). Since then, there have been no new unpaid admins, while the number of users and thus the admins' workload seems to have been increasing constantly.
Tim
Hi!
After consultation with WMF, I would like to correct what I wrote the other day about toolserver admins. According to Erik Möller, WMF needs all toolserver admins to
- be identified with their real name;
- have been individually vetted by WMF operations;
- have signed a non-disclosure-agreement with the chapter.
Whether someone is actually paid by a chapter is not crucial. Sorry for the confusion! Cheers, Silke
Silke Meyer silke.meyer@wikimedia.de wrote:
After consultation with WMF, I would like to correct what I wrote the other day about toolserver admins. According to Erik Möller, WMF needs all toolserver admins to
- be identified with their real name;
- have been individually vetted by WMF operations;
- have signed a non-disclosure-agreement with the chapter.
Whether someone is actually paid by a chapter is not crucial. Sorry for the confusion!
No problem; nice to see that we have a lot more options now.
Tim
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