server March 2022

server@lists.fedoraproject.org

9 participants
18 discussions

Proposal: Changes to Fedora Server default partitioning scheme
by Stephen Gallagher 13 Dec '24

13 Dec '24

The following proposal comes out of the discussion at this weeks Server SIG meeting[1] Fedora Server will have: * / (root) will be a minimum of 2 GiB and a maximum of 15 GiB * SWAP will continue to be calculated automatically based on available RAM on the system * All unused space will be assigned to a volume group and available to be assigned to new partitions or extend existing partitions. * Anaconda will continue to handle the appropriate EFI and /boot settings We also discussed during the meeting whether we should have a separate /var partition by default, but the general sense was that we might be better served by developing a mechanism to allow partitions to be split from existing mount points, which would be more flexible going forward. As we did not have quorum in the meeting by the point we got to this proposal, I'm taking it to the list for discussion and votes. For the record, the current behavior of the partitioning scheme is for / to be given up to 50 GiB of space and then any remaining space after that is assigned to a separate /home partition. [1] https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-1/2016-03-15/serversig.201…

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Federa 35 Server default editor
by Peter Boy 14 Mar '23

14 Mar '23

In Fedora 34 the default editor was nano, for Workstation and also for Server. In my latest default F35 Server installation I noticed vim-default-editor was installed. Did some good soul take pity and bring vim back to us or did something go wrong with my installation? Best Peter

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First experiences with beta candidate 1.2
by Peter Boy 19 Apr '22

19 Apr '22

I did some testing with beta-1.1 candidate Installation Went fine. /etc/resolv.conf a link again, no SELinux ACV messages with first boot any more. Cockpit The „Applications“ menu item still doesn’t list any installable applications The list of installed applications doesn’t contain cockpit-filesharing update. Question is: is that expected or a bug? @Matthew: When you select File Sharing you get a message "Failed to load NFS services. Is NFS installed or enabled?" (NFS) and "Samba must be configured to include registry. Add `include = registry` to the [global] section of /etc/samba/smb.conf“ (Samba) Is that intended behaviour or should the rpm install do those adaptations? And we are still missing localisation for cockpit-filesharing update Virtualization Installs flawlessly. The combo of qemu-kvm-core, libvirt, and virt-install now installs 104 packages on a fresh install, instead of 165 with beta 1.1 candidate. Either we will miss something or someone did a great job in housekeeping. Split name resolution doesn’t work for the libvirt internal network. I’ve to inspect that issue further. Possibly the configuration is still deficient (and not any of the apps). postgresql installed flawless Best Peter

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Cockpit 266 released
by Matej Marusak 31 Mar '22

31 Mar '22

Hi all, As it is the other Wednesday once again there is a new Cockpit release! Here are the release notes from Cockpit version 266: https://cockpit-project.org/blog/cockpit-266.html The main change is that we standardized on SI-based units for data sizes and rates. We also released Cockpit-podman with the same change. Cockpit 266: - source: https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit/releases/tag/266 - Fedora 35: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2022-fe3d361304 - Fedora 36: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2022-36fc9b915f Enjoy! -- Matej Marušák Associate Manager Red Hat <https://www.redhat.com> <https://red.ht/sig>

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Just a reminder: Next IRC meeting is April, 6 !
by Peter Boy 30 Mar '22

30 Mar '22

Just a reminder: TODAY there will be NO Server WG IRC meeting! Next regular meeting is April 6, 2022 ! The March has 5 „Wednesdays“ instead of 4 as most months have. Therefore, the gap between our „third Wednesday meeting“ March and „first Wednesday meeting“ April is *3 weeks* this time, instead of the usual 2 weeks. So everything quite regular, nothing aberrant or missing. Meet you Wednesday, April 6 - 17:00 UTC Peter

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New documentation in staging waiting for review
by Peter Boy 28 Mar '22

28 Mar '22

I just uploaded two new and two updated articles to staging. New: (1) Creating a virtual machine using a generic disk image – the example of virt-builder https://docs.stg.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-server/virtualization-vm-in… Using CentOS 9-stream as an example, the article guides you through the download of a third-party created VM image and subsequent customization. (2) Creating a virtual machine using a distribution’s Cloud base image – the example of CentOS https://docs.stg.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-server/virtualization-vm-in… Using the CentOS provided Cloud image the article guides you how to install a VM either using Cockpit or virt-install. It replaces the outdated article Virtual Machines based on Cloud Images Specifically those two need a review. Updated: (3) Adding Virtualization Support https://docs.stg.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-server/virtualization-insta… Slightly updated version (specifically adding a section about Cockpit) to include Fedora 36 (4) Installing a Fedora Server virtual machine using Cockpit https://docs.stg.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-server/virtualization-vm-in… Slightly updated, leaving off those parts which are now dealt with in the previous article, specifically about the connection type (System vs. Session) The former two urgently need a review. Please, answer to this mail when you pick up an article for review.

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Updated documentation about installing a virtual machine from Cloud image in Fedora Server
by Peter Boy 21 Mar '22

21 Mar '22

I just updated the article "Creating a virtual machine using a distribution’s Cloud base image – the example of CentOS“ in staging. It’s basically ready for publication and hence for reviewing, also accidentally still tagged as work in progress. I just want to test the provided configuration script with the latest Fedora Beta candidate. So, it would be nice if someone would pick it up for commenting and/or reviewing. I would like to remind that reviewing always resulted in a noticeable improvement and is not just a „nice to have“! Best Peter

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Some documentation updated
by Peter Boy 18 Mar '22

18 Mar '22

Hi, I just updated some of our documentation items: * System Administration – Post Installation Tasks https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-server/sysadmin-postinstall/ * Adding Virtualization Support https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-server/virtualization-install/ * Installing a Fedora Server virtual machine using Cockpit https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-server/virtualization-vm-instal… * Adding a graphical interface https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-server/usecase-gui-addon/ As discussed on a previous IRC meeting these articles were on staging for about 3 weeks. No one has raised concerns so far. Anyway, if anyone finds any mistakes, ambiguities or wording errors now, please make it known so that we can improve the text. Best Peter

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Virtualization libvirt installation problems and errors
by Peter Boy 17 Mar '22

17 Mar '22

While testing F36, I ran into a problem installing virtualization support on Fedora Server. Until now we installed qemu-kvm, libvirt, virt-install, and additionally cockpit-machines. That combo installs about 338 packages, at least 200 packages graphical desktop related (X11, wayland, gtk3, even poppler pdf renderer, see [1]). This breaks Fedora Servers fundamental headless core concept and installs lots of unusable and thus locally uncontrolled/unmaintained software. == In this respect, a correction is urgently needed. == === qemu-kvm === The cause of the problem is the use of package QEMU-kvm, which is aimed - hitherto unnoticed - at installation on a graphical desktop and therefore completely correctly assumes the appropriate packages. This in turn relies on the @virtualization group, which is the only public group supporting virtualization installation and is described accordingly in the Fedora documentation (without mentioning the graphical bias). In principle, the solution is quite simple. The qemu-kvm developers were wise enough to create a qemu-kvm-core group at the same time, which omits all graphical references and allows for an excellent installation on Fedora Server. === libvirt === Unfortunately, the maintainers of libvirt are far from this wisdom and insist that the libvirt package still relies on qemu-kvm, thus installing all the packages that QEMU-kvm-core omits again anyway. An analogous libvirt-core does not exist. Instead, Daniel Berrange refers to the list of individually available single packages, from which one (i.e. server WG) should please compile and test a suitable mix and watch the libvirt development steps to see if changes to the mix are required (see bug report by Martin Pitt [2]). == So we need to find a way to reliably determine a working set of libvirt packages for Fedora Server (or change the tool set). == Maybe we can find support in Debian/Ubuntu, whose libvirt maintainers have solved the problem, at least according to my first impression. === Group virtualization-headless === An initial approach to a solution could be the group ==@virtualization-headless==. This is a hidden group (see 'dnf group list -v hidden') that currently does pretty much the same as @virtualization, unfortunately. We could contact the owner and modify the group as required (or create a new group @virtualization-server). We could use that as a means to organize a suitable libvirt mix. === Cockpit-machines === As a further consequence, the cockpit-machines module is currently effectively unusable. It also has QEMU-kvm defined as a dependency. Even if we fix the libvirt problem with a suitable mix, cockpit-machines would currently undo this effort. Martin Pitt is on the way to fix it, see [3]. But we have to find a solution for F36. I’ll tag this issue for our next meeting. Any suggestions much appreciated. [1] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/server@lists.fedoraproject.or… [2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2063670 [3] https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpituous/pull/473

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A gentle reminder: Our IRC meeting will begin in about 30 min 2022-03-16 17:00 ==UTC==
by Peter Boy 16 Mar '22

16 Mar '22

The meeting will take place =========================================================== Fedora Server IRC meeting Wednesday, March 16 17:00 ==UTC== irc.libera.chat #fedora-meeting =========================================================== Please, check your local time using date -d '2022-03-16 17:00UTC' So far we have according to our plannings the following == Agenda == https://pagure.io/fedora-server/report/Meeting 1. = Follow up actions = 2. = Fedora 36 tests = https://pagure.io/fedora-server/issue/64 Goal: manual testing important features Please add your findings as comment to the ticket! =New=: Fix headless virtualization installation https://pagure.io/fedora-server/issue/80 3. = Planning Fedora 37 = https://pagure.io/fedora-server/issue/79 Goal: final determination of improvements Please add your options as comment to the ticket! 4. = Open floor = For any additions or changes, please reply to this email.

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Call for agenda items on 2022-03-16 17:00 ==UTC== meeting
by Peter Boy 14 Mar '22

14 Mar '22

The meeting will take place =========================================================== Fedora Server IRC meeting Wednesday, March 16 17:00 ==UTC== irc.libera.chat #fedora-meeting =========================================================== Please, check your local time using date -d '2022-03-16 17:00UTC' So far we have according to our plannings the following == Agenda == https://pagure.io/fedora-server/report/Meeting 1. = Follow up actions = 2. = Fedora 36 tests = https://pagure.io/fedora-server/issue/64 Goal: manual testing important features Please add your findings as comment to the ticket! 3. = Planning Fedora 37 = https://pagure.io/fedora-server/issue/79 Goal: final determination of improvements Please add your options as comment to the ticket! 4. = Open floor = For any additions or changes, please reply to this email.

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[Fedocal] Reminder meeting : Fedora Server WG
by pboy＠fedoraproject.org 14 Mar '22

14 Mar '22

Dear all, You are kindly invited to the meeting: Fedora Server WG on 2022-03-16 from 17:00:00 to 18:00:00 UTC At fedora-meeting(a)irc.libera.chat The meeting will be about: Standing meeting of the Fedora Server Working Group More information available at: [https://pagure.io/fedora-server/report/Meeting](https://pagure.io/fedora-se… Source: https://calendar.fedoraproject.org//meeting/10162/

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QEMU-kvm installation a dependency hell?
by Peter Boy 14 Mar '22

14 Mar '22

I just checked installation of qemu-kvm & libvirt & virt-install on a Fedora Server Edition, that is a headless server. It installed 338 packages / 158 mb including poppler, mesa, wayland, libX11, gtk3, cairo and a lot of additional graphic related software. I’m wondering, why I need Wayland or X11 etc for kernel virtualization and running virtual machines? It turns my headless server into a graphical workstation. It installs software that I don't need for running a headless server, and don't want there. If I install the same combo on a Debian / Ubuntu headless Server it installs about 40 packages / 20 mb. I know, the packages are not the same, but Debian/Ubunt doesn’t need X11, poppler, mesa, etc. for virtualization on a headless server. Can't we do the same?

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Some first findings testing F36 server edition (x86_64)
by Peter Boy 08 Mar '22

08 Mar '22

I just had a quick look on / test of Fedora Server 36 (rawhide 22-02-18). - Installation of DVD went smooth and ssh login via administrative user worked fine - Before I even did anything I noticed a SELinux ACE (SELinux prevents 20-chrony-dhcp from accessing file enp1s0.sources with create access) which then appeared repeatedly several times. Didn't cause any noticeable problems, but makes an ==untrustworthy impression== of the whole distribution when we not even have our highly praised security system under control. - Tried to install a system-nspawn mockup container without success. Couldn’t boot the container, got: >——< Welcome to Fedora Linux 36 (Thirty Six Prerelease)! Failed to load BPF object: Operation not permitted BPF LSM hook not enabled in the kernel, LSM BPF not supported Queued start job for default target graphical.target. >—-< Using headless server, wondering a bit about graphical target. I got a login prompt, but after typing in the credentials the prompt was just repeated, no working login. Starting it as system service produced the same SELinux bug that I've reported for years (since about F31 or so). Another indication that we are not in control of our security system. Unfortunately, I’m too stupid to understand how to enter something into our QA tracking system (apart from a bug report that probably won't fare any better than the ones already there). Has anyone else tried the rawhide pre-release version?

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Cockpit File Sharing - Samba
by Me 08 Mar '22

08 Mar '22

Greetings! Here's my notes from testing the Samba portion of cockpit file sharing. Any questions let me know. Systems used: Physical: Fedora 35 Server Virtual: Windows 10 build 20H2 Link: https://pagure.io/fedora-server/issue/73 Dependencies: Samba installed and running. (smb & nmb) add to smb.conf include = registry #added for cockpitfile sharing reload smb if it's already running. After the dependencies are met its close to a normal Samba share setup. Some steps are done at the terminal and the rest is done in Cockpit File Sharing. Terminal: Terminal in cockpit with root privileges. Create the directory used for sharing. Give it the permission for the user or group. If SELinux is enabled add the samba_share_t context to the directory. If firewalld is running add the samba service to it. At this point you can use File Sharing to configure the share. (directory, name, permissions, etc.) You can even reset or create the password for the user with access to the share. Mount in Windows explorer and test. After the above is met it works great in Windows 10. Thanks, Jason aka cooltshirtguy

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[REVIEW] Install a F35 VM using Cockpit
by Emmanuel Seyman 08 Mar '22

08 Mar '22

Hello, all. It's taken more time than I had anticipated but I have finally reviewed the "Install a F35 VM using Cockpit" page[1] of our user documentation. My first issue is with the sentence "If there is no entry Virtual Machines the admin missed to install the cockpit-machines module when installing the virtualization support. Select Applications further down and then Machines for installation.". My cockpit installation did not have the "Virtual Machines" menu option nor did I have the option to install cockpit modules. I could initially only remove installed modules. Coming back to this days later, I now see all cockpit modules, with the ability to install those I don't have. Is this a known issue or have I done this wrong? The _images/virtualization-vm-install-fedoraserver-cockpit-020.png image does not match the form I get on F35. I have a "Connection" option which gives me the choice between "System" and "Session". This is not reflected in the image. The documentation later states "After a test of the installation media the well known installation process begins. You may select Expand at the right top to increase readability". In my case, I HAD to click on 'Expand' for the VNC console to register my keystrokes. In the "Optional post-installation tasks" section, the first task is titled "Get rid of nano as default editor". I feel "Making vim the default editor" better reflects the contents of this section. I would also recommend replacing the command by "dnf install --allowerasing vim-default-editor" which simplifies the task. Regards, Emmanuel [1] https://docs.stg.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-server/virtualization-vm-in…

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Short info about this week's IRC meeting (2022-03-02)
by Peter Boy 04 Mar '22

04 Mar '22

Again, for everyone's convenience, a brief summary of our IRC meeting right here. For greater details see meetbot == Summary: == https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/teams/fedora-server/fedora-server.2022-03… == Full log: == https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/teams/fedora-server/fedora-server.2022-03… Topics discussed: === Follow up actions === Various actions are in progress as planned, currently nothing to discuss. === Check F36 changes and known issues - final pass === Details: https://pagure.io/fedora-server/issue/72 Finally, we compiled a list of those changes that we need to pay attention to specifically for Server Edition. === Specifying F36 manual test requirements - final pass === Details: https://pagure.io/fedora-server/issue/64 Based on list of changes above (#72) and further considerations, finally composed a list of tasks/checks/test to be worked through continuously during the Beta and RC phase. ==For some items we still need members to take care of!== === Review current Fedora Server Technical Specification – second pass === Issue: https://pagure.io/fedora-server/issue/58 Draft: https://hackmd.io/9or6pDs3Qq6DzzgVzXgmeQ?view No additions to the first draft. Action: pboy will complete the TBDs of the first draft on base of the current agreement.

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Question about our release QA process
by Peter Boy 01 Mar '22

01 Mar '22

Excuse my ignorance, but I'm just wondering what sense the regular rawhide "compose check reports" make. Who processes this information? E.g. in today's report "Fedora-Rawhide-20220224.n.1 compose check report" on devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org I find under New OpenQA failures URL: https://openqa.fedoraproject.org/tests/1146933 ID: 1146980 Test: aarch64 Server-dvd-iso base_reboot_unmount@uefi and about 17 other failure entries. Who cares about that? Or is not necessary to take care of it?

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