Server SIG - work areas

[Dan Horák]

David Huff píše v Po 05. 01. 2009 v 14:37 -0500:
> > From dan at danny.cz  Mon Dec  1 14:05:39 2008
>  > From: dan at danny.cz (Dan =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Hor=E1k?=)
>  > Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:05:39 +0100
>  > Subject: Server SIG - work areas
>  > Message-ID: <1228140339.3664.75.camel at eagle.danny.cz>
>  >
>  > Hello,
> 
> Sorry for replying to an old thread however I am just now catching up on 
> the discussions from this list.  My first impression is that there looks 
> to be a lot in common with the server sig and the "thincrust" project, 
> www.thincrust.org.  We are still in the early stages of the thincrust 
> project, however some of the things we have been working on are:
> 

Oh, it's never too late for a good discussion about the effective use
our limited resources :-)

> 1. Light weight base OS = AOS, currently a fedora spin
> 2. Tool to build reproducible appliance images form kickstart files, 
> appliance-creator, see the tooling section or the appliance-tools rpm.
> 3. Best practices and tools for post install setup for "appliances", we 
> are currently using puppet, see the "ACE" section of the web site.
> 
> Please check out the site and let us know if there any questions or 
> feedback.
> 

There is a nice overlap with the Server SIG goals in my opinion.

> One of the next steps for thincurst is to redefine the AOS package set 
> to make it smaller, more fine gained, and more reusable/extendible, 
> which seems to similar to some of the goals of the server list.
> 
> more comments below....
> 
> > 
> > it has been some time when the Server SIG was announced. And one goal
> > has been already almost accomplished - to start discussion about the
> > needs of the server community. For "Server" specific issues I have
> > opened our own mailing list - subscribe at
> > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fedora-server-list
> > 
> > One question raised during the discussions was "what is a server" and
> > the answer can be simple. The server is a combination of bootloader,
> > kernel and "the server", where "the server" can be a file server, web
> > server, database server, application server, etc. It is quite common to
> > have just one service running per hardware (both physical and virtual).
> > But a mix of running servers is also possible :-)
> 
> We have a similar definition for an appliance.
> 

And there were rumours that it is hard to define a server. Only your
focus is on the virtual hardware.

> > 
> > There are miscellaneous goals written on the wiki page, so it is time to
> > get them a little bit organized and to divide the work into more
> > specific areas. And they are here:
> > 
> > Installer
> >  - work with the anaconda team to keep anaconda suitable for server
> > installs (text mode, kickstarts, ...)
> >  - create a lightweight installer/bootstraper
> 
> see the appliance-creator, http://thincrust.net/tooling.html
> 

Yes, perhaps with only the support for real hardware missing after a
very brief view.

> > Kernel
> >  - everything about the kernel side of servers
> 
> We have not done anything here, however we have discussed pulling out 
> some kernel modules that are not needed for virtual appliances.  There 
> is not an easy way of doing this without "breaking" rpm, current 
> thinking is to use white/black listing of actual files.
> 
> > 
> > Admins corner
> >  - place for administration and monitoring technologies available in
> > Fedora
> >  - collects pointers to how-tos and other docs useful for administrators
> >  - work on the TUI counterparts of GUI system-config-* tools, should go
> > in hand with the backend/frontend separation
> 
> See: http://thincrust.net/ace-console.html

Complex system management in Linux environment generally is not optimal.


		Dan