Hi Sarah
I'm not sure if it just affects me, but your Mailer seems not to be really "quoting friendly" - at least I can not really distinguish between your answers and the text that you quote. So sorry if I miss something. Sorry! I have found a solution.
But I like to take the opportunity to start an explanation about the openSUSE infrastructure history and my role in that. So lean back and enjoy - maybe we can re-use parts of this email later somewhere ;-)
On Thu, 21 Jul 2016 08:23:05 +0200 Sarah-Julia Kriesch wrote:
I hope that's enough for Lars for bringing new admin policies for the Provo admins on the table...
I'm sorry, but this is something for the openSUSE heroes and not for a single person. You are right. Creating the policy is the job of the team. But you are
Hi Lars, Am Dienstag, den 26.07.2016, 11:53 +0200 schrieb Lars Vogdt: the teamlead and have to approve that all.
Even if I'm willing to distribute whatever we declare as policy and act as an benevolent dictator for the openSUSE heroes, we should discuss first if the current policy works: * https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Infrastructure_policy ...or if there is something missing (or even outdated, like the use of admin@o.o). We might also discuss if WE need some team rules?
From my POW we should not only discuss about the "team structure" but also about some internal rules, starting with the areas of expertise AND the area of responsibilities - including a list of services that are currently unmaintained. I know that most of this can only be delivered by me or my team, as we are the main openSUSE admins at the moment. I guess Gerhard can help here with a list of the current services running under the "openSUSE umbrella".
BUT
My main question/concern at the moment is where to store all the bits and pieces to make them easy to find and maintain. With hundreds of wiki pages - some of them translated, some not - it's not easy even for me to keep an overview about things going on. So if we say "put everything in the wiki", I like to get an idea about the planned wiki structure first. Or maybe we find/decide to use another place to have "our" documentation (which one?) stored?
Examples: We have https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Services_team which is now a mix of an old page (started in December 2010 !) together with some more up-to date content as "starting page". Thanks to Sarah for the update, btw.
On the other hand, we have: https://en.opensuse.org/Category:Infrastructure containing some more or less infrastructure related pages. I like the mediawiki Categories to put different pages with different topics together under one topic to make them easily findable - but others might see it different. You are right. And that's standard to do it so...
...and while I'm not really sure if it's needed, https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Infrastructure is completely missing. But I never understood the "Portal" stuff in mediawiki, so maybe I'm wrong here asking for such a page. You have got 2 wiki admins on this mailing list. :-) Portals are the main page for teams and openSUSE sub projects. There is a small description about it, what would be to do and there should be a
That's our main page of the team at the moment. list with all wiki pages for the special category on the right side. Most important topics are linked there, too.
These are just 3 examples for the English wiki. But there is more:
* https://status.opensuse.org/ - should become "the" information page about (planned) outages and problems - and Gerhard is working hard to get this page up and running (what is missing from your side, btw? Maybe we should collect/document the "wish-list" somewhere?)
* https://progress.opensuse.org/ - started as "project management tool" for us together with the former "boosters" team and the openSUSE board. Now openQA, the openSUSE release-managers and even the oSC 2015 team have also "their" projects there. The wiki provided in Redmine might IMHO be a good choice for "our" documentation - but on the other side this needs to be agreed inside our team and documented also in the "official wiki".
* https://gitlab.opensuse.org/ is another interesting point for discussion: at the moment, the permissions are restrictive as we plan to store all the configuration stuff there (Salt). Maybe Theo can start with some descriptive text "somewhere" about our (directory) structure there, about the workflow, how to participate, ...
* ... and there are probably more pages somewhere outside that are of interest *just* for potential openSUSE admins (Forums? More?). The problem is just that only a very limited subset of people know about them and even less Admins really document their work. But if we - right now - don't change that, I fear that in a few weeks everything will be as before...
That's the problem at the moment! We can't get the information where help will be needed (outside of SUSE) at the moment. That isn't documented anywhere... If nothing is changed in the next weeks, I can tell about the Fedora Infrastructure team and their structure. One of my last colleagues is a Member there. We can do what is working in other communitys, too. They have got weekly meetings for discussions and don't document "all" in the wiki. They tell about the first steps and what would be needed. They have got a status page with a list of all systems, too. You can't see only problems. You can see all systems there. So you can see all parts of the infrastructure. If somebody wants to join, he writes a mail and joins to the meeting where he can get tasks. The system administration is splitted into Application Management and System Administration.
Provo admins are part of the Sysadmin team and Lars is the team lead.
No. Sorry. This is wrong. I'm responsible for some (~10) people inside SUSE R&D - but SUSE itself is just one part of Micro Focus. A company with more than 4,500 employees around the world. The so called "Provo admins" are part of the Micro Focus IT, which is not only another team: it's a complete other business unit with different stakeholders and (business) interests.
On Mon, 18 Jul 2016 22:56:36 +0200 Christian Boltz wrote:> > In the first paragraph, I'd mention Provo to avoid that the admins
in> > Nürnberg, including you, also get blamed by people who don't read the> > full article.> I see this a bit different - maybe because I'm working here... From my> point, we are *one* team, even if we are distributed across countries> and even companies. If one fails, the other ones might at
Sorry for misunderstanding. But you gainsay yourselve in your last mail with: Am Dienstag, den 19.07.2016, 18:14 +0200 schrieb Lars Vogdt:> Hi> the moment
not> be able to step in - but who from the outside cares if it's "they" or> "we"?>
But Lars has to say a "Yes" or "No" for changing the Admin Policies in Provo. ;-)
There is no "yes or no". I don't like - and must not - change any policy in Provo or anywhere else in the "MF-IT" world. Please understand that I'm "just" (as you) someone from the openSUSE community there who can ask questions and request some help. It might be that my social network there is a bit better at the moment, but that's not the point:
WE are the openSUSE admins - there is no hidden amount of people working in some back office to keep all the machines, networks and storage up and running.
That's it what Christian and I weren't able to see any more and wanted to fix it... We looked after people from Provo at the oSC and asked Craig, whether he can do something there. He has got the best connections in Provo we need. We only must "want to" do it. Many people/ managers can push more than one person alone. I did that in the last company, if I wanted to change something in a workflow or in a structure, too.
SUSE sponsored some machines here and there - and some guys from my team volunteered to administrate some openSUSE services in the past as nobody else did. From time to time there are others who step by and offer there help - sometimes successful, sometimes not.
That's one of the reasons why I want to have the openSUSE infrastructure handled in a way that allows external volunteers to join and help with the daily business of such a beast. From my past (and current) point of view, we just did not want to maintain PHP applications inside my team. That was the reason why all this stuff is currently hosted in Provo: because some (former) MF-IT admins there volunteered to help and maintain it.
...and that's how it works: if there is some volunteer who is really DOING something, he/she is the one making decisions. That's how it works inside openSUSE and many other open source projects.
Our infrastructure problem is in the missing policies and documentation. So nobody really knows if something is possible or not - and if a volunteer looses interest, there is currently nobody else than people from the openSUSE heroes who step in to get the service up and running. Something I like to change ...
This mail is already too long (sorry for that and thanks for reading ;-) so I like to close here and wait for your questions and discussion points...
With kind regards, Lars That isn't too long. We are new in the team and need the information. ; -)
Best regards, Sarah -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: heroes+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: heroes+owner@opensuse.org