Short info about today's IRC meeting (2021-09-15)
by Peter Boy
Again, for everyone's convenience, a brief summary of our IRC meeting right here
For greater details see meetbot
Summary: https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2021-09-15/fedora-server...
Full log: https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2021-09-15/fedora-server...
Topics discussed:
=== Bug: Max size arm-32 exceeded, install media blocked ===
#link https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1963007
Unfortunately, none of the participants, with the exception of jwhimpel, who wanted to take care of the size overrun analysis and possible kernel issues at the previous meeting, were present. Jwhimpel did not receive a response on the ARM list.
The only available solution is to increase the size limit without examining in detail why the size has now been exceeded.
AGREED: We take a week to get additional information and otherwise just increase size limit.
ACTION: jwhimpel contacts ARM folks again about possible ARM32 kernel issue
=== Facilitated deployment of key services by combining rpm and Ansible ===
The project is progressing, jwhimpel is in the process of refactoring. Currently we can only wait for the first beta version.
As a further goal of the implementation the compatibility/usability also with RHEL 7/8 (and CentOS stream) was added.
=== Open Floor ===
There was an interesting spontaneous discussion about BTRFS specifically for home servers (as an alternative to NAS systems). Our documentation should be supplemented with that topics/ideas.
=== Next meeting ===
Next meeting is scheduled for Oct. 6, that is
=== in 3 (three!) weeks. ===
Otherwise we would have 3 meetings in September and then leave our rhythm of 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month.
Alternatively, we could have a meeting on Sept. 29 and then meet again just a week later on Oct. 6. If anyone thinks this is better, please give feedback here on the list.
Prospective agenda so far:
1. Follow up actions
2. Further development Fedora Server documentation.
3. Facilitated deployment of key services by combining rpm and Ansible
4. Open floor
1 year, 8 months
Agenda Items on 2021-06-15 (today) 17:00 UTC
by Peter Boy
The meeting will be held
===========================================================
Fedora Server IRC meeting Wednesday, Sept. 15 17:00 ==UTC==
#fedora-meeting(a)irc.libera.chat
===========================================================
I got no request for additional agenda items. So the agenda will be as already announced.
1. Follow up actions
2. Continuation: Bug max size arm-32 exceeded
3. Continuation Facilitated deployment of key services by combining rpm and Ansible, use case Wildfly
4. Open Floor
ad 4:
In particular, to discuss: Where and how we want to make our Ansible artifacts available.
1 year, 8 months
Feedback on Documentation After a Fedora Server Install
by Stephen Daley
Just finished building from spare parts my new homelab test server, and installing Fedora 34 on it. Concerning the documentation I have the following feedback, but please keep in mind I'm not a sysadmin, just a homelab tinkerer.
1. Net Install ISO of Fedora Server worked great, sane defaults that give you a working ssh server and cockpit out of the gate after the install is wonderful.
2. I really struggled with the documentation when it came to disk partitioning.
- I have 5 hard disks in this server build:
1 - 160 GiB
4 - 1 TB drives of different manufactures
- Planned to have the 160 GiB drive hold the following partitions and mounts (/BiosBoot, /boot, /swap, /) with the other partitions being formatted /Biosboot as biosboot, /boot as xfs, /swap as swap, and / as Btrfs.
- I planned to create a RAID 10 Btrfs pool with the 4 -1 TB drives for /home
- Issue #1 I thought I had UEFI booting on this system, so I followed the directions to create a BIOSboot partition of 200 MiB, but when I attempted this both in "Custom" and "Advanced Custom" it kept changing the partition size to 2 MiB so either this is expected behavior because Anaconda knows my system better than I do (good possibility) or there is a bug.
- Issue #2 "Custom" just failed on me when I attempted to create a Btrfs partition for the / partition on the 160 GiB drive that was not connected to the Btrfs partitions on the other four drives. Perhaps this is not how I should have done it, but my thinking was that if my 160 GiB drive failed it wouldn't affect the "data" pool, I would just have to put a new system drive into the server, reinstall Fedora Server and reconnect /home to the "data" Btrfs pool. Although "Custom" failed when attempting this, it did seem to work in "Advanced Custom."
- Issue #3 I found it very difficult to determine how to plan and partition my 5 drives for the needed paritions and Btrfs / RAID10 pool. I think this is because the documentation has a little snippet in the Fedora Server install documentation, but then you really need to read the two other sections that are referenced as well, https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f34/install-guide/install/Ins... (this takes you directly to the section, and then this section is probably a good idea to read as well https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f34/install-guide/install/Ins... (which is not specifically referenced in the Fedora Server documentation). I'm wondering if there would be some value, especially now that Fedora is "all-in" on Btrfs to give a "suggested/starter/beginner" disk partitioning scheme that covers a Btrfs RAID pool in the Fedora Serve
r documentation, or would it be possible to distill this information from the current 3 different sources in to a single resource with perhaps a flow chart for illustration purposes?
3. I'm confused as to why this is needed:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-server/sysadmin-postinstall/#...
- I read the note, "According to the default installation, SSH login is only possible using an SSH key file. However, the setup cannot be done as part of the installation. If this step is omitted, logging in as root via SSH is not possible."
- However, I was able to SSH login in using the user that I created during the install and gave administrative privileges to. So then I just used "ssh-copy-id" to copy my Public Key file to the server, and then I could log in without a password.
- Did I do a non default install by adding my own administrative user? If that is the case wouldn't it be better to make that the default so a new Fedora Server user would have a way to ssh into their new install right away?
4. I would love to write up a documentation page about configuring your server to use "wakeonlan" which I find is super helpful for a homelab person. I would basically rewrite this article that I found:
https://www.pangodream.es/make-your-wol-configuration-truly-sticky
- The blog writer is referring to Ubuntu server, but it worked perfectly for my system, and this motherboard doesn't like the other methods that you can find on the internet mostly because I think they trigger before the network interface is ready to have its settings configured.
- One question that I have is, most of my rewrite would borrow heavily from this man's work, and I feel that his steps are the best I have found on the internet searches that I have done on this topic if your server runs systemd, which Fedora does. Do we have a way to give this author some credit if my rewrite borrows heavily from his blog article?
I'm so thankful for the Fedora Server Working group whose work has gotten me this far, if I can help with any of the documentation points above by submitting rewrites as pull requests let me know. Also, because I'm so new to the server world, there may be good reasons why my thoughts above don't make sense as well or wouldn't be helpful to new Fedora Server users.
1 year, 8 months
Introduction - Looking for direction
by Stephen Daley
I would like to take a more active role in documentation, in the hopes that Fedora has a resource that is as useful as the Arch Wiki. I have been using Fedora Workstation (back in the 7,8,9 days) most recently since Fedora 31 as my main computer at home. Also for the last year and a half my son and I have been running our home server on Fedora Server as well. We would like to do even more in our "homelab" with Fedora server, but we struggle with finding documentation for things like Podman, integrations with Cockpit, managing data pools with the new features of Btrfs on Fedora, and especially SELinux as it relates to running services like Syncthing. It seems like Fedora could be one of the perfect playgrounds for the homelab tinkerer because of how quickly Fedora adopts new technologies, but at the same time it seems like the documentation lags behind those new technologies. I was thinking today that I could be frustrated by that or help the Fedora community by being part of the solu
tion.
Currently, I have been giving my free time to MX Linux, doing some QA testing for their upcoming release, but my heart is in the area of documentation which seems to be an area that MX Linux doesn't need a lot of help in at this time. They have a main developer who is documenting all their features and tools well. From the current look of the Fedora server docs it looks like there is a need for documentation writers. Is there are roadmap of tasks that a non-sys-admin could help out with, or are you looking for more experienced sysadmins to tackle Fedora Server Docs? You won't hurt my feelings if you feel that my lack of experience will be more of a hinderence to the Fedora Server docs than a help. Examples of my writing on Linux topics can be found at discoverfoss.com.
1 year, 8 months
Short info about today's IRC meeting (2021-09-01)
by Peter Boy
Again, for everyone's convenience, a brief summary of our IRC meeting right here
For greater details see meetbot
Summary: https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2021/fedora-meeting.2021...
Full log: https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2021/fedora-meeting.2021...
Topics discussed:
=== Follow up actions ===
1. Follow up testing libvirt modifications: postponed next meeting
2. AGREED: TASK: Synchronize Server full install and net install iso images (ticket 32 & 48) postponed until after release Fedora 35
=== Bug: Max size arm-32 exceeded, install media blocked ===
#link https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1963007
Before we simply increase the accepted size of the iso we want to evaluate, why the net install iso has grown so much and if the kernel modules are required as they are currently included in the iso.
#action jwhimpel gather information
=== Facilitated deployment of key services by combining rpm and Ansible ===
Thanks to jwhimpel we make great progress and might have a test version end of October / November.
Longer discussion about how server specific playbooks should be disseminated, at one of the general Ansible sites or more Fedora Server specific. No decision yet.
=== Next Meeting ===
Wednesday Sept. 15, 2021 17:00 UTC
Planned topics so far:
a. Follow up actions
b. Continuation: Bug max size arm-32 exceeded
c. Continuation Facilitated deployment of key services by combining rpm and Ansible, use case Wildfly
1 year, 9 months
